engleski

Linguistic purism in Croatia:– past and present

The objective of the paper is to analyse linguistic purism in Croatia in its historical perspective, with reference to the present situation. It has been generally assumed that in bilingual settings the language of a higher prestige is in a dominating position which implies its influence on the subordinated language at different linguistic levels. In many societies this is percieved as a threat to national identity which is closely related to language. Linguistic purism follows as a (mostly expected) reaction to the presence of such phenomena in a community. Whereas some elementary traces of purism can be found in every language, more pronounced forms arise as an answer to difficulties and problems within societies where cultural, civilizational or political pressure is present to a higher degree. In such circumstances language becomes an important tool in the fight for national identity and the preservation of the community’s culture. Due to the fact that Croatia has always been at the croossroads of different cultures, religions and languages, purist tendencies have been an important feature of language policy since the beginnings of the Croatian literary language. In spite of the fact that the targets of these purist tendencies have been changing during different periods of its development it has always been a traditional trait of the Croatian language. Several languages have played an important role in the history of Croatia, each of them having a different status, different impact, different areal distribution etc. In some periods in history certain languages had the status of official language as e.g. German and Italian. The consequences can be seen in a vast number of loanwords of various origins, but also in particularly fierce reactions to them on the part of many puristically oriented philologists. Recent history has brought new targets of such purist trends. In the 1990-s, due to the war and the political situation in the country, Serbian was felt as an intruder language. On the other hand, similarly to the situation in other (European) countries where the influence of English has brough about a wave of purist reactions, in Croatia as well many linguistis have been strongly opposed to the almost daily influx of new English loanwords.

linguistic purism; language policy; historical perspective

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