In this paper author Milena Marić-Vogel uses sociolinguistic analysis of the intersection of language and identity to explore the trends in linguistic shifts in BiH media since early 1990s.
Over the past decade a number of scholars have dealt with the linguistic aftermath of the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s. Some have described the ‘splittism’ manifested in the emergence of successor languages to Serbo-Croatian, whose ‘boundaries’ very much coincided with those of the new, independent states created where once stood Yugoslavia1. Others have addressed the standardization of the new languages2.
While speakers’ attitudes3 and the language of the media4 have also been subject to research, there has been no systematic attempt to quantify changes in speakers' preferences reflecting a realignment of linguistic identities that took place in response to major political developments in the region in the 1990s. Linguistic developments in Bosnia, in particular, lend themselves well to such a sociolinguistic analysis of the intersection of language and identity since they tell a story of identity-based linguistic change condensed in a very short time span: a variant of a word seen as characteristic of one particular ethnic group would come to be stigmatized as the balance of forces in the political and military arenas shifted.
In an attempt to explore the circumstances under which minor linguistic differences became a badge of ethnic and political loyalty, the study on which this article is based5 looked at the shift towards Croatian in the second half and aftermath of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia in print media published in Sarajevo. A watershed political event at that stage of the war was the Washington Agreement of February 1994, which ended the conflict between Bosniaks and Croats by creating a Bosniak-Croat Federation of ten cantons. Given that the study was concerned with ethno-linguistic change, it is important to note that, as a result of war-related population movements, by this point in time Sarajevo was already on the way to becoming a city with a majority Bosniak population.
The working assumption of the study was that the effort to maintain the Bosniak-Croat political union created by the Washington Agreement and the continued conflict with the Bosnian Serbs led to a realignment of Bosniak linguistic loyalties in favour of Croatian6. Apart from this most obvious factor, the study also looked into other possible reasons for the shift.
Study methodology and data
The empirical part of the study consisted of a diachronic comparison of texts7 published in Sarajevo-based newspapers in the early and mid-1990s (with a small control sample from 2000). A manual quantitative search was conducted on a small selection of newspapers: the weeklies Dani and Ljiljan (including its 1992 supplement Muslimanski glas), and the daily Oslobođenje. The results of the manual search were controlled against a quantitative corpus search of the Oslo Corpus of Bosnian Texts (most dated 1993 onwards)8.
The empirical investigation relied on the largest archive of Bosnian wartime print media, run as part of the Infobiro project at the Sarajevo-based Mediacentar (www.infobiro.ba). The survey sought to identify instances of morphological, syntactic and lexical variation between Croatian (hereinafter abbreviated as C) and the pre-war Bosnian idiom (pwB)9. The sample was also searched for non-Croatian and non-Oriental words from the new, post-war Bosnian standard that have been promoted as elements of the new Bosnian norm, notably those with the rehabilitated sound /x/, which before the war was considered a feature of archaic Bosnian speech, e.g. lahko [vs. Serbian (S) and C lako adj.n./adv. ‘easy’].
The most readily observable instances of variation involved symbolically-loaded words, or “iconic ethno-linguistic features”,10 such as those with the Church Slavonic reflex -št- vs. the Neoshtokavian -ć- (e.g. uopšte vs. uopće); with the Greek suffix -isa- vs. the German suffix -ira- (e.g. organizovati vs. organizirati); or with the ending –lac vs. –telj (e.g. slušalac vs. slušatelj). In all the three categories listed above, the first element of the pair had been overall more common in pre-war Bosnian speech11. Examples of syntactic variation included those with the infinitive vs. da-construction with finite complementation (e.g. pwB Ide da kupi knjigu. vs. C Ide kupiti knjigu), while a prominent instance of orthographic variation expected to be observed was that of the phonetic orthography of the future tense in pre-war Bosnian and Serbian vs. the morphological orthography of Croatian (e.g. pwB biće vs. C bit će).
Where the frequency of publication and articles on offer made it possible, a small sample – ranging from four to eight articles for any given year – was selected from issues of the three papers published in 1992 and 1993 (pre-Washington Agreement) and 1995 and 1996 (post-Washington and post-Dayton Agreement), as well as in 2000. While the sample was far from comprehensive, it was sufficiently large to indicate a tendency if not to address the putative language shift in a conclusive manner.
Findings
An analysis of the findings showed that a noticeable shift towards Croatian had, indeed, taken place in the language of the surveyed Sarajevo-based print media in the period 1992-200012.
Ljiljan
The most dramatic increase in the number of Croatian features was to be observed with Ljiljan, where the share of Croatian elements in the total number of symbolically-loaded words and constructions had risen from around 30 per cent in 1992 to around 70 per cent in late 1995 and around 54 per cent in 2000 (see Table 1). The drop of 20 per cent between 1995 and 2000 may be a result of a much smaller sample of texts or, indeed, of a different style of the new generation of Ljiljan writers. However, even this smaller share of Croatian traits apparent in 2000 exhibited three individual changes that seemed to be permanent: the use of words with -ć- instead of -št-; a preference for the Croatian verb ending -irati; and the morphological spelling of the future tense.
Despite the increasingly clear prevalence of Croatian lexicon over the years, examples of inconsistency, sometimes even within one and the same sentence, were still found, e.g. angažiran [vs. pwB/S angažovan ‘hired, working’] and pozorište [vs. C kazalište ‘theatre’]; Savjeta sigurnosti [a combination of pwB/S Savjeta bezbjednosti and C Vijeća sigurnosti ‘[UN] Security Council’:
Na Isakovićev odgovor Hukoviću da je trenutno angažiran u pozorištu, uslijedilo je novo Hukovićevo pitanje […]13.
[…] sve relevantne rezolucije Savjeta sigurnosti UN i sva osjećanja više od milijarde muslimana u svijetu14.
Noteworthy, however, is the fact that some Croatian words are absolutely never used, no matter how Croatian-coloured the individual author’s style may otherwise be. These include words like točno, tisuća and the Croatian names of the months. These words seem to draw the line of demarcation between Croatian and Bosnian.
As also noted by Neusius15, the number of characteristic Turkish loanwords in Ljiljan is overall surprisingly low given their prominence in the works of Bosniak language planners.
Table 1
Muslimanski glas/ Ljiljan
1992 1995 2000
pwB 84
36 23 C
41
108
42 Turkish loanwords
7 2 0 new Bosnian
0 5 0
Dani
Less dramatic but still significant is the increase in the share of Croatian features in Dani articles. While they account for around 12 per cent of the symbolically-loaded examples in 1992, in 1995-96 their share is around 32 per cent (see Table 2). A similar trend is seen when we look at the the language use of one and the same author: a typical text by the paper’s editor-in-chief, for instance, in 1992 contained around 10 per cent of markedly Croatian features, with the share increasing to anything from 20 to 60 per cent in 1996 and 2000.
The ratio of close to 50:50 between features typical of the pre-war Bosnian idiom and those characteristically Croatian in the Dani 2000 sample seems to suggest that the use of Croatian traits further increased in the post-war period. However, the very small sample in 2000 gives reason for caution in interpreting the findings.
As late as 2000, despite a noticeable shift towards Croatian, inconsistencies are still present in Dani. An editorial of 3 November 2000 includes examples of both C vanjskopolitičkog and pwB/S spoljnopolitičkog [‘(pertaining to) foreign policy’]:
Zato što bi pobjeda republikanskog kandidata Georgea W. Busha na predsjedničkim izborima sasvim sigurno značajno promijenila redoslijed prioriteta i obim američkog vanjskopolitičkog angažmana16.
[…] jedna od rijetkih Clintonovih spoljnopolitičkih odluka koju Bush bez ostatka podržava […]17.
Similarly to Ljiljan, the share of Turkish loanwords, considered to be one of the main distinguishing features of the new Bosnian language, is very low. As in Ljiljan, the number of words of Turkish origin seems to be diminishing over time. This may be a result of the initial enthusiasm in promoting this section of Bosnian lexicon giving way to reality and to long-established linguistic habits.
Table 2
Dani
1992-93 1995-96 2000 pwB
137 92 31 C
20 45
30 Turkish loanwords
4 3 2 new Bosnian 0 0 0
Oslobođenje
Although the least pronounced, a shift towards Croatian is observable with the daily Oslobođenje as well. From 1992, when the share of markedly Croatian features in its articles was a negligible eight per cent, the presence of Croatian traits rose to around 30 per cent in 1996 and in 2000 (see Table 3). Generally, the form općina seemed to be a definite preference, with a higher degree of inconsistency – when compared to Ljiljan and Dani – when it came to verbs in -irati and the morphological orthography of the future tense.
Table 3
Oslobođenje 1992 1996 2000 pwB 56 53 34 C
5
25
17 Turkish loanwords 0 0 0 new Bosnian 0 1 0 Arabic 0 1 0
Control searches run in the Oslo corpus of Bosnian texts confirmed the general trend of an increasing share of Croatian features.
Why the changes?
The changes in the language use of Sarajevo-based papers during and after the 1992-95 war prompt three major questions: Why did they take place? Which factors may have contributed to the shift towards Croatian evident in the changes? How permanent are the observed changes?
As mentioned above, an obvious circumstance triggering the shift was the political constellation that emerged in Bosnia as a result of the war. A new linguistic alignment slowly started taking shape as the contours of the post-war state of affairs first became visible in the form of the Washington Agreement. Several authors have identified this new political balance of forces as a factor in the shift of the language of Bosniaks towards Croatian.18 This observation seems to be confirmed by the findings of the diachronic analysis presented above.
The political motivation of the language change is also apparent in the degree to which particular Bosnian Muslim writers or speakers use emblematic Croatian words. It can be said that more nationalist Bosnian Muslim authors tend to use more Croatian elements than authors of a civic orientation (cf. Ljiljan vs. Oslobođenje findings above). This pattern is often merely a result of an effort to avoid emblematic Serbian words. Greenberg, too, suggests that the preference for Croatian forms may be “a political hint of the anti-Serbian feelings among the Bosniac population”.19 A higher frequency of Croatian features, especially nouns in -telj and verbs in -irati, in the speech of Bosnian media has also been reported by Čedić.20 He suggests that this higher frequency may also be due to the preference expressed for some of these features in publications codifying the new Bosnian language.
Given the overall political and linguistic context, a shift towards Croatian appears to have been the logical choice for the planners of the new Bosnian language. Though fierce at times, the fighting between Bosnian Croats, generously helped by Croatian government forces, and Bosniaks was of a localized nature compared to an almost country-wide Bosnian Serb offensive. As a result, Bosnian Croats and Croatian were seen as the lesser of the two evils, as it were. In addition, since Turkish loanwords could hardly be expected to meet the demands of modern functional domains such as technology, the entertainment industry or Western European-style public administration, Croatian provided the necessary non-Serbian lexical material. An alternative explanation may be that the recent shift towards Croatian in the speech of Bosniaks is a response to the forced “Serbization” of the socialist period21. This conclusion would, however, require a comprehensive comparative study of the language in Bosnia in the period between the two World Wars and during the communist times.
Language as a badge of identity
What often remains unmentioned in discussions focused on the similarity between the three new ‘languages’ in Bosnia is that the efforts to make them more mutually different have yielded one certain result: their speakers in Bosnia can today, with a rather high degree of precision, tell which ethnic group their interlocutor belongs to.
The differences between the three varieties may be small, but they are doing some serious identity work. Risking a non-academic simplification, we could say that the layman’s linguistic rule-of-thumb applied in today’s Bosnia could be: Croatian is what is not Serbian; Serbian is what is not Croatian; and Bosnian what is neither fully Croatian nor fully Serbian. To illustrate this more closely: if a person from Bosnia uses such markedly Croatian words as točno [vs. B/S tačno], tisuća or Europa [vs. B/S Evropa], chances are high that we are dealing with a Bosnian Croat. If a Bosnian interlocutor chooses clearly Serbian words such as savjet [vs. B/C vijeće], zapeta [vs. B/C zarez ‘comma’] or evro [vs. B/C euro], it is safe to assume that he or she is a Bosnian Serb. If, however, we talk to someone whose speech shows a considerable degree of Croatian influence but who still never uses words such as the above-mentioned točno, tisuća, Europa, savjet, zapeta or evro, he or she is likely to be a Bosniak. In the latter case, a larger share of words of Oriental origin may occur, but this is dependant on the concrete speech situation; these words are less likely to be used in formal settings.
Bosnian political scientist Tarik Haverić observes this ethnic perspective on language noting that “each linguistic/ethnic community has its own red rag, a set of words whose use is most strictly forbidden and based on which the speakers are classified in ethno-ideological terms".22
The absurdity of the situation in which the designation of one’s speech rests primarily on ethnic markers is best illustrated by cases where a speaker does not exhibit a sufficient amount of ethnically-marked features of any kind. In the absence of these ethnic markers, such a speaker would be assigned a language merely on the basis of his or her supposed ethnic background, often guessed from his or her name.
Giles’ ethnic boundary model
Giles’ ethnic boundary model23 comes the closest to explaining the current linguistic situation of Bosnia’s three major ethnic groups. Integrating the notions of social structure, inter-group relations and speech accommodation, this social psychological model seeks to predict the pattern of usage of ethnic speech markers in a dynamic environment and, by doing so, to account for ethno-linguistic change. It proceeds from the notion that boundaries between ethnic or any other social groups exist on various levels (linguistic, religious, racial or other) and typically serve to differentiate ingroups and outgroups. This differentiation is important for members of groups as it enables them to acquire a satisfactory social identity. Since language and ethnic speech markers are important dimensions of social identity for many ethnic groups, the accentuation of ethnic speech markers is a prominent strategy for ensuring differentiation from the outgroup.
Giles calls the process of accentuation of ingroup speech markers in search of a positive ethnic identity “psycholinguistic distinctiveness.” The fact that some speech markers may be more symbolic of ethnic differentiation than others suggests that there may exist a hierarchy of psycholinguistic distinctiveness. We should recall here Heckmann’s proposition that it is not the quality or objective extent of a difference, but the importance attached to it by a group, that matters24. This explains how apparently innocent words such as točno or opšti have become symbols of whole ethnic groups and their differences. In addition, Giles’ ethnic boundary model posits hard and soft linguistic and non-linguistic boundary continua which form the two-dimensional space given in Figure 1 below25.
Bosnia’s three ethnic groups fall in quadrant B as the non-linguistic boundaries between them, constituted by religious differences, can be considered hard and the linguistic boundaries soft. The hardness of the religious boundaries in Bosnia is due to the fact that ethnic differences are defined primarily by religion.
In a situation where the linguistic boundaries are perceived as soft, as in Bosnia, the tendency is to accentuate ethnic speech markers that make any given group distinct from the other. Giles points to the fact that, paradoxically enough, the most linguistic differentiation occurs in cases of soft linguistic and non-linguistic boundaries (see Figure 2 below). He finds confirmation for this premise in Turner, who suggests that in case of voluntary membership in a group, group cohesion is the greatest when the group fails on a task26. A group’s soft linguistic boundaries are perceived as ‘failure’ by its members, which mobilizes them to “a greater sense of ingroup cohesion and collective action on behalf of the group than were the boundaries perceived to be more secure”.27
According to Giles, another factor contributing to a group’s motivation to harden the boundaries in order to attain positive distinctiveness from the outgroup is its perception of its own status as unstable or unjust (illegitimate). Given different political and military constellations in different parts of the country during the Bosnian war, it is easy to imagine that such a situation created a sense of instability and illegitimacy with all the groups, which mobilized them to accentuate ethnic speech markers vis-à-vis the others.
Prospects
Judging by all appearances, the stage of the most invasive interventions in language in the former Yugoslav region, which Vajzović refers to as “euphoria”28, is over. What remains to be done now is to make sure the new norms are passed on to the new generations through the school system. This means that in twenty years’ time Bosnians of all the three ethnicities will still be likely to understand one another but may still, sadly, be acutely aware of the ’red rags’ that their predecessors bequeathed to them.
Okuka predicts that Bosnian will probably “take on the form of a hybrid between the Serbian and Croatian language tradition, with a stronger leaning towards Croatian, as determined by the current political constellation”.29 As for the shift towards Croatian, it is not likely to advance much further but may become more apparent in the next generation since they will have had only the new Bosnian language, with its preference for Croatian features, taught in school.
It remains to be seen if the country’s European integration, on which all hopes are pinned at the moment, will help ease the linguistic tensions as well. As candidates for EU membership and prospective members, Bosnia and its neighbours may start focusing on their commonalities instead of differences, which could have a positive effect on the ethnic relations within Bosnia and, thus, their linguistic ramifications.
Bibliography
Brestovac, Mahir. “Ubica iz ogledala ubijenoga”. Ljiljan, 15 November 1995, p. 11.
Bugarski, Ranko. 2004. “What’s in a name: the case of Serbo-Croatian.” Revue des études slaves 75/1: 11-20.
Czerwiński, Maciej. 2005. Język – ideologia – naród: polityka językowa w Chorwacji a język mediów. Kraków: Scriptum.
Čedić, Ibrahim. 2001. “Bosanskohercegovački standardnojezički izraz – bosanski
jezik”. In: Mønnesland, Svein (ed). 2001. Jezik i demokratizacija (zbornik radova). Sarajevo: Institut za jezik u Sarajevu: 72-73.
Ford, Curtis. 2002. “Language planning in Bosnia-Herzegovina: The 1998 Bihać
Symposium.” The Slavic and East European Journal 46: 349-361.
Giles, Howard. 1979. “Ethnicity markers in speech.” In: Scherer, Klaus R. and Giles, Howard (eds). Social markers in speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Greenberg, Robert D. 1999. “In the Aftermath of Yugoslavia’s Collapse: The Politics of Language Death and Language Birth.” International Politics (36): 141-158.
-- 2006. Language and Identity in the Balkans. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Gröschel, Bernhard. 2001. “Bosnisch oder Bosniakisch? Zur glottonymischen, sprachpolitischen und sprachenrechtlichen Fragmentierung des Serbokroatischen.” In: Waßner, Ulrich Hermann (Hrsg). Lingua et linguae: Festschrift für Clemens-Peter Herbermann zum 60. Geburtstag. Aachen: Shaker Verlag: 159-188.
Hajdarević, Hadžem. “Intelektualci koji žive na različitim planetama”. Ljiljan, 8 November 1995, p.34.
Haverić, Tarik. 2007. “Ako je daleko Princeton, nije trafika…” Dani, 26 January 2007, available at http://bhdani.com/default.asp?kat=txt&broj_id=502&tekst_rb=20
[Accessed on 24 February 2007]
Heckmann, Friedrich. 1992. Ethnische Minderheiten, Volk und Nation: Soziologie inter-ethnischer Beziehungen. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag.
Irvine, Judith T. and Gal, Susan. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In: Kroskrity, Paul V. Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities (School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press: 35-83.
Jurić-Kappel, Jagoda. 2003. “Bosanski ili bošnjački?” In: Neweklowsky, Gerhard (ed). Bosnisch-Kroatisch-Serbisch (Internationale Tagung “Aktuelle Fragen der Sprache der Bosniaken, Kroaten, Serben und Montenegriner,” Wien 27/28 Sept. 2002). Wiener slawistischer Almanach Sonderband 57: 95-101.
Kuna, Herta. 1991. “Neke osobine jezika časopisa turskog doba u Bosni i Hercegovini (druga polovina XIX stoljeća).” In: Okuka, Miloš and Stančić, Ljiljana (eds). 1991. Književni jezik u Bosni i Hercegovini od Vuka Karadžića do kraja austrougarske vladavine. München: Kovač: 39-46.
Langston, Keith and Peti-Stantić, Anita. 2003. “Attitudes towards linguistic purism in Croatia: Evaluating efforts at language reform.” In: Dedaić, Mirjana N. and Nelson, Daniel N. (eds). At War with Words (Language, Power and Social Process 10). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 247-282.
Mønnesland, Svein. 2001. In Mønnesland, Svein (ed). Jezik i demokratizacija (zbornik radova). Sarajevo: Institut za jezik u Sarajevu.
Neusius, Boris. 2002. “Die Sprachenfrage in Bosnien und Herzegowina.” Südosteuropa 51/4-6: 217-227.
Neweklowsky, Gerhard. 2000. “Serbisch, Kroatisch, Bosnisch, Montenegrinisch – Perspektiven.” In: Zybatow, Lew N. (ed). Sprachwandel in der Slavia: die slavischen Sprachen an der Schwelle zum 21. Jahrhundert. Ein Internationales Handbuch, Teil 2 (Linguistik International 4). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang: 543-559.
Okuka, Miloš. 1998. Eine Sprache – viele Erben: Sprachpolitik als Nationalisierungsinstrument in Ex-Jugoslawien. Klagenfurt/Celovec: Wieser Verlag.
Pećanin, Senad. “Uvodnik”. Dani, 3 November 2000, p. 3.
Thomas, Paul-Louis. 1998. “Fonction communicative et fonction symbolique de la langue sur l’exemple du serbo-croate: bosniaque, croate, serbe.” Revue des études slaves 70/1: 27-37.
Vajzović, Hanka. 2001. “Savremena jezička situacija u Bosni i Hercegovini: Komunikativna i simbolička funkcija jezika.” In: Mønnesland, Svein (ed). 2001. Jezik i demokratizacija (zbornik radova). Sarajevo: Institut za jezik u Sarajevu: 79-93.
1Greenberg, Robert D. 1999. “In the Aftermath of Yugoslavia’s Collapse: The Politics of Language Death and Language Birth.” International Politics (36): 141-158; Neweklowsky, Gerhard. 2000. “Serbisch, Kroatisch, Bosnisch, Montenegrinisch – Perspektiven.” In: Zybatow, Lew N. (ed). Sprachwandel in der Slavia: die slavischen Sprachen an der Schwelle zum 21. Jahrhundert. Ein Internationales Handbuch, Teil 2 (Linguistik International 4). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang: 543-559; Bugarski, Ranko. 2004. “What’s in a name: the case of Serbo-Croatian.” Revue des études slaves 75/1: 11-20.
2Ford, Curtis. 2002. “Language planning in Bosnia-Herzegovina: The 1998 Bihać Symposium.” The Slavic and East European Journal 46: 349-361.
3Langston, Keith and Peti-Stantić, Anita. 2003. “Attitudes towards linguistic purism in Croatia: Evaluating efforts at language reform.” In: Dedaić, Mirjana N. and Nelson, Daniel N. (eds). At War with Words (Language, Power and Social Process 10). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 247-282.
4Neusius, Boris. 2002. “Die Sprachenfrage in Bosnien und Herzegowina.” Südosteuropa 51/4-6:217-227.
5The Master's thesis "Language as a Mirror of War and Peace: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina" was defended at the University of Freiburg, Germany, in August 2007.
6The linguistic changes discussed here should be seen as not more than tendencies since all the three varieties of the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian/Croato-Serbian that are currently spoken in Bosnia – Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian – have the same dialectal basis and, therefore, no absolute line of demarcation can be drawn between them. Some maintain that in the pre-war speech in Bosnia the Croatian and Serbian variants “intersected”, some that they “co-existed” and yet others that they were “neutralized” (Jurić-Kappel 2003: 96). See Jurić-Kappel, Jagoda. 2003. “Bosanski ili bošnjački?” In: Neweklowsky, Gerhard (ed). Bosnisch-Kroatisch-Serbisch (Internationale Tagung “Aktuelle Fragen der Sprache der Bosniaken, Kroaten, Serben und Montenegriner,” Wien 27/28 Sept. 2002). Wiener slawistischer Almanach Sonderband 57: 95-101. Brozović (1970: 35, as referenced in Gröschel 2001: 176) compares this “middle position” of the Bosnian variant of Serbo-Croatian to that of Canadian English vis-à-vis British and American English. See Gröschel, Bernhard. 2001. “Bosnisch oder Bosniakisch? Zur glottonymischen, sprachpolitischen und sprachenrechtlichen Fragmentierung des Serbokroatischen.” In: Waßner, Ulrich Hermann (Hrsg). Lingua et linguae: Festschrift für Clemens-Peter Herbermann zum 60. Geburtstag. Aachen: Shaker Verlag: 159-188.
The planners of the new Bosnian standard which emerged during and after the 1992-95 war, however, reject the notion that Bosnian is a mere mixture of Serbian and Croatian, promoting the greater usage of Turkish borrowings and the preservation of the phoneme /x/ in a larger number of words (e.g. lahko, mehlem) as its chief distinguishing features.
7A comparison focusing on language change over time.
8A corpus compiled at the University of Oslo, with around 1.5 million words from texts by authors from Bosnia and Herzegovina, ranging from children’s literature to essays from cultural journals, for the most part published in the 1990s.
9Greenberg describes the language spoken in pre-war Bosnia as sharing phonological features with the Western, Croatian variety and morphological and lexical features with the Eastern, Serbian variety of Serbo-Croatian/Croato-Serbian (1999: 158), the lexical category being the largest.
10Irvine, Judith T. and Gal, Susan. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation.” In: Kroskrity, Paul V. Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities (School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press: 35-83.
11Cf. Kuna’s findings in a study on the language of three Bosnian ethnic newspapers published in the second half of the nineteenth century. It appears that at the time there already existed two variants in terms of the use of forms with -št- or -ć-, the former prevailing in Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Serb papers and the latter in Bosnian Croat papers. See Kuna, Herta. 1991. “Neke osobine jezika časopisa turskog doba u Bosni i Hercegovini (druga polovina XIX stoljeća).” In: Okuka, Miloš and Stančić, Ljiljana (eds). 1991. Književni jezik u Bosni i Hercegovini od Vuka Karadžića do kraja austrougarske vladavine. München: Kovač: 39-46.
12Cf. Raguž 1995, as referenced in Neweklowsky, Gerhard. 2000. “Serbisch, Kroatisch, Bosnisch, Montenegrinisch – Perspektiven.” In: Zybatow, Lew N. (ed). Sprachwandel in der Slavia: die slavischen Sprachen an der Schwelle zum 21. Jahrhundert. Ein Internationales Handbuch, Teil 2 (Linguistik International 4). Frankfurt am Main et al: Peter Lang: 543-559. Also cf. Neusius 2002; Czerwiński, Maciej. 2005. Język – ideologia – naród: polityka językowa w Chorwacji a język mediów. Kraków: Scriptum.
13Hadžem Hajdarević. “Intelektualci koji žive na različitim planetama”. Ljiljan, 8 November 1995, p.34.
14Mahir Brestovac. “Ubica iz ogledala ubijenoga”. Ljiljan, 15 November 1995, p. 11.
15Neusius, endnote IV, at 225.
16Senad Pećanin. “Uvodnik”. Dani, 3 November 2000, p. 3.
17Ibid.
18Okuka, Miloš.1998. Eine Sprache – viele Erben: Sprachpolitik als Nationalisierungsinstrument in Ex-Jugoslawien. Klagenfurt/Celovec: Wieser Verlag;
Thomas, Paul-Louis. 1998. “Fonction communicative et fonction symbolique de la langue sur l’exemple du serbo-croate: bosniaque, croate, serbe.” Revue des études slaves 70/1: 27-37; Greenberg, Robert D. 2006. Language and Identity in the Balkans. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
19Greenberg, endnote XVIII, at 149.
20Čedić, Ibrahim. 2001. “Bosanskohercegovački standardnojezički izraz – bosanski jezik”. In: Mønnesland, Svein (ed). Jezik i demokratizacija (zbornik radova). Sarajevo: Institut za jezik u Sarajevu: 72-73.
21Mønnesland, Svein. 2001. In Mønnesland, Svein (ed). Jezik i demokratizacija (zbornik radova). Sarajevo: Institut za jezik u Sarajevu: 20.
22Haverić, Tarik. 2007. “Ako je daleko Princeton, nije trafika…” Dani, 26 January 2007, available at http://bhdani.com/default.asp?kat=txt&broj_id=502&tekst_rb=20
[Accessed on 24 February 2007].
23Giles, Howard. 1979. “Ethnicity markers in speech.” In: Scherer, Klaus R. and Giles, Howard (eds). Social markers in speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
24Heckmann, Friedrich. 1992. Ethnische Minderheiten, Volk und Nation: Soziologie inter-ethnischer Beziehungen. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag.
25Giles, endnote XXIII, at 275.
26See reference in ibid., at 279.
27Ibid., at 279-280.
28Vajzović, Hanka. 2001. “Savremena jezička situacija u Bosni i Hercegovini: Komunikativna i simbolička funkcija jezika”. In: Mønnesland, Svein (ed). 2001. Jezik i demokratizacija (zbornik radova). Sarajevo: Institut za jezik u Sarajevu: 90.
29Okuka, endnote XVIII, at 111.
