engleski

Speak Croatian so as not to be understood by your fellow Croats : Croatian and Serbian linguistic identities from intelligibility to unintelligibility and back

At the outbreak of YPA's and Serbian paramilitary units agression against Croatia in the early 1990's local Serbs near Virovitica, northern Croatia, decided to move away to Serbia, while at the same time local Croats from east Srijem, Serbia, have been exposed to pressures to leave their villages. So the two rural populations exchanged their houses and land possesions and settled within the respective states. But, their national/ ethnic identity turned out to be too abstract to ensure their full integration in new social and linguistic environment: a multilayered clash of different lifestyles of the immigrants and the homeland inhabitants near Virovitica took place, though both groups were Croats. In some communicative contexts immigrants were expected to use words from Croatian standard language, in order to demonstrate their national identity (and they themselves eagerly tried to do it as well, considering such a linguistic practice self-explanatory), but in other social contexts they were required to adopt local forms, in order to prove that they acquired local identity, which has sometimes been dramatically confusing for them. The interactions of two levels of identity and the accociated linguistic items are analyzed from the point of perceptual dialectology and accomodation theory, and compared with the situation at the beginning of the 20th century, as to show how the perception of "typical" features of Croatian and Serbian languages changes depending on extra-linguistic factors, that is social, economic and political power-relations.

displaced persons - national identity - local identity - standard language - vernaculars - intelligibility

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