Language Planning and National Identity in Croatia

Following the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, Croatian was declared officially to be a separate language, distinct from Serbian, and linguistic issues became highly politicized. This book examines the changing status and norms of the Croatian language and its relationship to Croatian national identity. It focuses on the period following the creation of an independent Croatian state in 1991, but encompasses broader historical developments to provide a context for understanding the contemporary linguistic situation. The complex history of language standardization in the Yugoslav lands and the emphasis on language planning in Croatia make this an especially interesting case study that offers insight into wider debates about linguistic identity, language policy, and language planning issues in general.

Keith Langston is Associate Professor of Slavic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Georgia, USA. He is the author of Cakavian Prosody: The Accentual Patterns of the Cakavian Dialects of Croatian and other studies on Slavic phonology and morphology, in addition to research on the sociolinguistic situation in the former Yugoslavia.

Anita Peti-Stantic is Professor of South Slavic Languages and the Chair of Slovene Studies at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She is the author of Language, Ours and/or Theirs: An Essay on the Comparative History of South Slavic Standardization Processes and a Slovenian-Croatian and Croatian-Slovenian Dictionary, as well as studies on South Slavic word order and clitic placement.