Contemporary Challenges before the Balkan Slavic Languages

Authors:

Pages: 25-36

Abstract:

Modern South Slavic literary languages are a function of ethno-cultural, confessional and political factors that have modelled for centuries the shape and notion of the Balkans among bearers of different mentalities and a different system of values. The wider context of research shows links with extra linguistic circumstances that shape a definite literary and language practice. In this paper the author accentuates on: the dialectal diversity of the South Slavonic linguistic territory and the old Slavic literary traditions; the role of the Constantinople and the Roman Catholic Church for the written practice of the Slav peoples; the effects of the policy of the multinational empires on the languages of the South Slav peoples; the idea of a common Slavic or South Slavic literary language and its evolution; the language policy within the boundaries of the “young” and independent South Slav countries; the literary languages on the territory of the Yugoslav Federation and its successors after its collapse; the contradictions due to the “multiplication” of language standards from the middle of the 20th till the beginning of the 21st century; the literary language studies, the reshaping of state borders in the Balkans and the pragmatics of the contemporary contacts in sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and ethno-linguistic aspect.

Keywords:

South Slavic literary languages, South Slavic dialects, balkanization, convergence, divergence, genealogical and political languages

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