During the last two centuries, ethnolinguistic nationalism has been the norm of nation building and state building in Central Europe. The number of recognized Slavic languages (in line with the normative political formula of language = nation = state) gradually tallied with the number of the Slavic nation-states, especially after the breakups of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. But in the current age of borderless cyberspace, regional and minority Slavic languages are freely standardized and used, even when state authorities disapprove. As a result, since the turn of the 19th century, the number of Slavic languages has varied widely, from a single Slavic language to as many as 40. Through the story of Slavic languages, this timely book illustrates that decisions on what counts as a language are neither permanent nor stable, arguing that the politics of language is the politics in Central Europe. The monograph will prove to be an essential resource for scholars of linguistics and politics in Central Europe.

Exploring Russian as a pluricentric language, this book provides a panoramic view of its use within and outside the nation and discusses the connections between language, politics, ideologies, and cultural contacts. Russian is widely used across the former Soviet republics and in the diaspora, but speakers outside Russia deviate from the metropolis in their use of the language and their attitudes towards it. Using country case studies from across the former Soviet Union and beyond, the contributors analyze the unifying role of the Russian language for developing transnational connections and show its value in the knowledge economy. They demonstrate that centrifugal developments of Russian and its pluricentricity are grounded in the language and education policies of their host countries, as well as the goals and functions of cultural institutions, such as schools, media, travel agencies, and others created by émigrés for their co-ethnics. This book also reveals the tensions between Russia’s attempts to homogenize the 'Russian world' and the divergence of regional versions of Russian reflecting cultural hybridity of the diaspora. Interdisciplinary in its approach, this book will prove useful to researchers of Russian and post-Soviet politics, Russian studies, Russian language and culture, linguistics, and immigration studies. Those studying multilingualism and heritage language teaching may also find it interesting.

This book analyzes the creation of languages across the Slavophone areas of the world and their deployment for political projects and identity building, mainly after 1989. It offers perspectives from a number of disciplines such as sociolinguistics, socio-political history and language policy. Languages are artefacts of culture, meaning they are created by people. They are often used for identity building and maintenance, but in Central and Eastern Europe they became the basis of nation building and national statehood maintenance. The recent split of the Serbo-Croatian language in the wake of the break-up of Yugoslavia amply illustrates the highly politicized role of languages in this region, which is also home to most of the world’s Slavic-speakers. This volume presents and analyzes the creation of languages across the Slavophone areas of the world and their deployment for political projects and identity building, mainly after 1989. The overview concludes with a reflection on the recent rise of Slavophone speech communities in Western Europe and Israel. The book brings together renowned international scholars who offer a variety of perspectives from a number of disciplines and sub-fields such as sociolinguistics, socio-political history and language policy, making this book of great interest to historians, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists interested in Central and Eastern Europe and Slavic Studies.

Examines Russian language politics and its impact on different Russian speaking communities

The Slavic group of languages - the fourth largest Indo-European sub-group - is one of the major language families of the modern world. With 297 million speakers, Slavic comprises 13 languages split into three groups: South Slavic, which includes Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian; East Slavic, which includes Russian and Ukrainian; and West Slavic, which includes Polish, Czech and Slovak. This 2006 book, written by two leading scholars in Slavic linguistics, presents a survey of all aspects of the linguistic structure of the Slavic languages, considering in particular those languages that enjoy official status. As well as covering the central issues of phonology, morphology, syntax, word-formation, lexicology and typology, the authors discuss Slavic dialects, sociolinguistic issues, and the socio-historical evolution of the Slavic languages. Accessibly written and comprehensive in its coverage, this book will be welcomed by scholars and students of Slavic languages, as well as linguists across the many branches of the discipline.

'Politics and the Theory of Language in the USSR 1917-1938' provides ground-breaking research into the complex interrelations of linguistic theory and politics during the first two decades of the USSR. The work examines how the new Revolutionary regime promoted linguistic research that scrutinised the relationship between language, social structure, national identity and ideological factors as part of an attempt to democratize the public sphere. It also looks at the demise of the sociological paradigm, as the isolation and bureaucratization of the state gradually shifted the focus of research. Through this account, the collection formally acknowledges the achievements of the Soviet linguists of the time, whose innovative approaches to the relationship between language and society predates the emergence of western sociolinguistics by several decades. These articles are the first articles written in English about these linguists, and will introduce an Anglophone audience to a range of materials hitherto unavailable. In addition to providing new articles, the volume also presents the first annotated translation of Ivan Meshchaninov's 1929 'Theses on Japhetidology', thereby providing insight into one of the most controversial strands within Soviet linguistic thought.

During the controversial 2004 elections that led to the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, cultural and linguistic differences threatened to break apart the country. Contested Tongues explains the complex linguistic and cultural politics in a bilingual country where the two main languages are closely related but their statuses are hotly contested. Laada Bilaniuk finds that the social divisions in Ukraine are historically rooted, ideologically constructed, and inseparable from linguistic practice. She does not take the labeled categories as givens but questions what "Ukrainian" and "Russian" mean to different people, and how the boundaries between these categories may be blurred in unstable times.Bilaniuk's analysis of the contemporary situation is based on ethnographic research in Ukraine and grounded in historical research essential to understanding developments since the fall of the Soviet Union. "Mixed language" practices (surzhyk) in Ukraine have generally been either ignored or reviled, but Bilaniuk traces their history, their social implications, and their accompanying ideologies. Through a focus on mixed language and purism, the author examines the power dynamics of linguistic and cultural correction, through which people seek either to confer or to deny others social legitimacy. The author's examination of the rapid transformation of symbolic values in Ukraine challenges theories of language and social power that have as a rule been based on the experience of relatively stable societies.

"The first and rather simple classificatory schemes of the Slavic languages appeared in the first half of the 19th century. The idea that languages develop from one another caught on when the heuristic diagram in the form of Stammbaum (genetic tree) was employed to portray this hypothesis in the second half of the 19th century. Quite unrealistically, the Stammbaum suggests that languages are discrete and self-contained entities, which rapidly branch out from their “parent languages,” as if they were actual “babies” born on a given day. On the other hand, it is well attested that the relatively “sharp” linguistic boundaries arise only between dialect continua, and even those can be bridged by creole continua. Within the dialect continuum language forms change gradually from village to village. The concept of “a language” requires that a segment of a dialect continuum (invariably connected to a power center, that is, a capital) be made into the basis of a written language, which is standardized by its widespread employment in administration, education and literature, and by the compilation of authoritative dictionaries and grammars as well. With the rise of standard languages, the illusion of discrete languages emerged, and became the normative concept of thinking about languages in general. In Central Europe this paradigm of thinking about the linguistic feed backed with the legitimizing force of ethnic nationalisms, in emulation of the German and Italian models. As a consequence, the specifically Central European model of ethnolinguistic nationalism came into being, characterized by the following equation, language = nation = state. This formula became the normative political standard in Central Europe. In accordance with it, ethnolinguistic nation-states were founded in the region. The linguistic Stammbaum perfectly suited the political needs of these new ethnolinguistic nation-states, because, “in the scientific manner,” it emphasized the “inherent separateness” of their languages and nations, which, in turn, legitimized the existence of the corresponding states as separate polities. Afterward, the self-fulfilling prophecy of this ethnolinguistic norm was actualized by official and social stigmatization of dialects, promotion of standard national languages via the mass media and the educational system, forced and economically-driven mass population movements, and expulsions of the speakers of languages other than the national ones. Inevitably, with the founding of the Central European nation-states the wealth of various classificatory schemes of the Slavic languages was “standardized” in line with the political reality to the still prevailing triple division of the Slavic languages, which apportions these languages between the Eastern, Southern, and Western “branches” of the Slavic “genetic tree.” This classification is presented as “scientific” and based on linguistic findings. But there are just two Slavic dialect continua, Northern and Southern, bisected by the West Germanic and East Romance dialect continua, and the remnant of the Finno-Ugric dialect continuum. Hence, it appears that the division between the Eastern Slavic languages, and the Western ones hinges rather on religious, alphabetic, and political cleavages, that is, extralinguistic ones. The normative force of the political equation language = nation = state that underlies the triple division of the Slavic languages is extremely strong to this day. German and Italian are shared as national languages by several nation-states and minority languages of stateless nations/ethnic groups (Sardinian, Frisian, Sorbian) are recognized in Italy and Germany, though sometimes grudgingly. On the contrary, not a single Slavic language is shared as a national language by nation-states. Thus, the breakup of Yugoslavia entailed the breakup of Serbo-Croatian into Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and, perhaps, Montenegrin. What is more, Poland withheld recognition to Kashubian as a language until the late 1990s, and still does not agree to recognize Silesian. Similarly, Bulgaria refuses to recognize Pomakian, Belarus Polesian, Ukraine Rusyn, and Croatia Bunjevcian as languages. It is so, because in the Central European paradigm of ethnolinguistic nationalism that would be tantamount to recognizing the speech communities of these languages as separate nations, ergo, their right to establish their own nation-states. The triple classificatory scheme of the Slavic languages, though of such recent and rather unscientific (that is, not purely linguistic) origin, has become a dogma of Slavic studies, accepted worldwide. This shows how intimate are the links between politics and academia; how the political influences research results; and how, by chance and coincidence, a heuristic device (for instance, the Stammbaum) suits some current political needs, and can be proclaimed the “true reflection” of reality, while the political is busy shaping this reality so it becomes identical with what is proclaimed. The reinforcing normative relationship between the model and reality being so strong and politically motivated, outside observers tend to mistake the model for reality. This explains the widespread, popular and unwavering acceptance of the triple classificatory scheme of the Slavic languages outside the Slavophone countries."--Abstract on pages i-ii.

In After Newspeak, Michael S. Gorham presents a cultural history of the politics of Russian language from Gorbachev and glasnost to Putin and the emergence of new generations of Web technologies. Gorham begins from the premise that periods of rapid and radical change both shape and are shaped by language. He documents the role and fate of the Russian language in the collapse of the USSR and the decades of reform and national reconstruction that have followed. Gorham demonstrates the inextricable linkage of language and politics in everything from dictionaries of profanity to the flood of publications on linguistic self-help, the speech patterns of the country’s leaders, the blogs of its bureaucrats, and the official programs promoting the use of Russian in the so-called "near abroad." Gorham explains why glasnost figured as such a critical rhetorical battleground in the political strife that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse and shows why Russians came to deride the newfound freedom of speech of the 1990s as little more than the right to swear in public. He assesses the impact of Medvedev’s role as Blogger-in-Chief and the role Putin’s vulgar speech practices played in the restoration of national pride. And he investigates whether Internet communication and new media technologies have helped to consolidate a more vibrant democracy and civil society or if they serve as an additional resource for the political technologies manipulated by the Kremlin.

This work focuses on the ideological intertwining between Czech, Magyar, Polish and Slovak, and the corresponding nationalisms steeped in these languages. The analysis is set against the earlier political and ideological history of these languages, and the panorama of the emergence and political uses of other languages of the region.