According to the website of the Institute for the Croatian Language and Linguistics (Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikslovlje, or IHJJ; www.ihjj.hr/institut.html), ‘since its beginnings, in other ...words already for more than a millennium, the Croatian language has been the fundamental guarantor of the preservation of Croatian identity’. The idea of language as an expression of identity has deep historical roots; for example, in the western tradition we find evidence of this already in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Greek philosophers:
5 And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, art thou an Ephraimite? If he say Nay;6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand. (Book of Judges, Chapter 12 King James Version)
As discussed in Chapter 4, Croatian has a rich tradition of grammars and dictionaries dating back to the 16th century. The works from the earliest periods are on the whole descriptive and inclusive ...in their nature, but in the 19th century we begin to see a greater emphasis on the avoidance of foreign expressions or other elements deemed to be undesirable for some reason. Particularly in the final stages of standardization, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, there begin to appear language handbooks dedicated to the promotion of ‘good’ or ‘proper’ usage. In the study of language advice in the modern standard language, it is possible to divide such works into several different periods, which are of different durations and had varying degrees of influence on the life of the language. Such periodizations are necessarily inexact, and individual authors of such works do not always conform entirely to the general trends of their times, but we believe that a division into three broad periods provides a useful framework for discussion.1 We cannot give a detailed discussion of every individual work here, but will focus on those that we feel to be most significant or widely influential.
At a round-table discussion about the standardization of Croatian and the current status of its norms organized by the Matica hrvatska in the spring of 1998, the linguist August Kovacec stated:
And ...furthermore, among the other criticisms I would mention one more, a criticism to all of us, but first and foremost to the Croatian authorities. It seems to me that Croatia has missed a chance, but it’s not yet too late to try our luck again. This is the standardization of the language through the schools. Through television or through radio or through newspapers you can support certain elements of the norm that have already been planted somewhere. You can water what already exists, but through television and radio you will have great difficulty in setting the norm free out into the world so that it will become alive, so that it will be respected.But in the schools, instead of patriotic texts full of emotion, which in and of themselves are fine, but from which there is not much benefit, it seems to me that it would be more useful to edit the texts in school textbooks, from arithmetic and language in the elementary schools to high-school subjects, chemistry, mathematics, physics, and geography, so that the language in them will be impeccable. (Samardžija 1999: 333, emphasis added)
The idealized Romantic concepts of the nation and the role of national languages are closely tied to the idea of national rights (Pupavac 2012: 62). If we return to the quotation from Fichte ...mentioned in Chapter 2 (from his Addresses to the German Nation, delivered in Berlin in 1807–1808 while it was occupied by Napoleon’s troops), he explicitly connects language and national identity with political rights in the next clause: ‘it is true beyond doubt that, wherever a separate language is found, there a separate nation exists, which has the right to take independent charge of its affairs and to govern itself (Fichte 1922: 215; emphasis added). The understanding of language as fundamental to cultural and national identity necessarily implies the right of a language community to use its language freely, and to define the language on its own terms. Croatian linguists have frequently made such claims in their arguments defending the idea of a separate Croatian linguistic identity. For example, the Matica hrvatska issued a ‘Memorandum on the Croatian language’ which demanded that all international political, scholarly, and cultural institutions respect ‘the inalienable right of the Croatian people and the Croatian state to their own language and its proper name, that is: to the independent Croatian language’ (Matica hrvatska 1996: 166; see also Matica hrvatska 1991 1967: 7; HAZU 1996: 164, 2005: 42, 46, 2007b).
The connection between the Croatian language and Croatian national identity is a powerful one, which played a role in the secession of Croatia from the former Yugoslavia and continues to occupy an ...important place in Croatian society today. It is based on an essentialization of language, which is viewed as an objective and primary marker of ‘Croatianness’. This misconception has deep historical roots and is obviously not particular to Croatia. However, the specific historical and linguistic situation in Croatia and other SFRY successor states makes it an especially rich source for the study of language planning and the relationship of language and identity.
Institutions of Language Planning Langston, Keith; Peti-Stantić, Anita
Language Planning and National Identity in Croatia
Book Chapter
Various organizations, such as academic institutions or language academies, may be involved in language standardization or other language-planning processes, as discussed in Chapter 2. The literature ...on language planning often refers to the role of language academies, in particular, but there has been relatively little research that attempts to analyze the activities of such organizations in detail or to evaluate their effectiveness. According to Eastman (1983: 8), ‘Language academies are language-planning agencies that make decisions about the direction of language policies and the form their elaboration takes in a particular context’. The earliest and most commonly cited examples of language academies are the Accademia della Crusca (founded in 1584), the Académie française (1635), and the Real Academia Espanola (1713), all of which have ‘academy’ as part of their name and have a long tradition of influence in their respective language communities. According to Joseph (1987: 111), modern language planning boards, which are found in a number of countries, function as contemporary equivalents of language academies. It is clear that a variety of institutions or organizations, with different statuses and organizational structures, may be active in language planning. The Republic of Croatia does not have a single, officially designated, national language academy for the regulation of the Croatian standard language, but there are several institutions or organizations that have aspired to fulfill some of the same functions.
The last decade of the 20th century represented an extremely turbulent period for Croatia. By 1990, the old political system of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was collapsing, and ...tensions among Croatia and the other constituent republics were running high. After the first multi-party elections in Croatia in the spring of that year brought Franjo Tudman and his nationalist Croatian Democratic Union party to power (the Hrvatska demokratska zajednica, or HDZ), the Croatian government began to revive old Croatian national symbols, to rename streets and squares, and to create Croatian national institutions to compete with those associated with the federal Yugoslav government (Tanner 1997: 229). On 22 December 1990, the Croatian Parliament (the Sabor) ratified a new constitution which removed the word ‘socialist’ from the official name of the republic and asserted Croatia’s rights as a sovereign state (Tanner 1997: 230). Among other controversial changes, it declared the official language of the republic to be Croatian (Sabor Republike Hrvatske 1990, Article 12; see also Jaroszewicz 2004: 147). On 25 June of the following year, in tandem with Slovenia, Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia, and war broke out soon afterwards.
