engleski

Purified in Translation: Language in “Small Stories” from the Early 1990s

! is paper focuses on language policy and social changes which have taken place in Croatia during and since the 1991-5 war. I " rst describe the historical background, the war and the nineties being marked by excesses of linguistic purism and prescriptivism, alongside the formation of post-Yugoslav states in which national belonging was key to de" ning citizenship. ! rough examining the relationship between changing linguistic and social orders, I raise a number of issues for discussion. I argue that the legal framework of minority language rights has consolidated and legitimated a nationalist imaginary, increasing social divisions and reinforcing hierarchies asserted by some nationalists between national categories. For this reason, I suggest that the uncritical endorsement of or promotion of linguistic diversity can be dangerous. Second, in an activist-anthropological vein, I discuss possible reasons why academics trained in the social sciences and humanities have rarely participated in sociolinguistic debates concerning the new Croatian standard. I suggest such discussions could greatly bene" t from interventions by social scientists, so as to bring sociolinguistics into contact with other strands of the social sciences and humanities and move away from what I believe to be a problematic policy focus on “identity”.

language policy; activism; linguistic anthropology; Croatia

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