
Turbulent social and political circumstances in the Western South Slavic language area caused the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the formation of new countries in the 1990s, which, consequently, had a major influence on the change of language status and on changes in the languages themselves. The result of these events was the “death” of the prestigious Serbo-Croatian language and the emergence of new standard languages based on the Štokavian dialect (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Montenegrin). Following a short description of the linguistic identity of the Serbo-Croatian language, this lecture reveals how the language was nationalised in the newly-formed states after 1991 (in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro). At that time a symbolic (and not communicative) function of language was in the foreground along with the language status (national language naming and language affirmation). Language is a means of connecting with the national identity that the advocates of nationalist politics used to promote their political ideologies by enforcing linguistic changes with the aim of creating as many differences as possible between Our language and Their language.
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