The Symbolic Power of Language

"I am probably the last person in Croatia who claims that Croatian and Serbian are the same language"

VREME: We are witnessing changes in the language policy and language during the last five years. During Yugoslavia, they claim, they tried to unify the language, to make a synthesis of the Croatian and Serbian language, bringing about a thesis that Croatian wasn't allowed to be spoken, while those "two languages" are completely different.

DUBRAVKO SKILJAN: Changes in the language policy are unquestionable and apparent. It needs to be stated, that even in former times the language policy was never actually explicitly formulated, so that now, even though a lot more efficient that before, it is implemented more through different acts than it is clearly defined in the sociolinguistic and linguistic sense. I wouldn't say that in former Yugoslavia, at least not lately, there was a clear tendency to arrive at a unification of versions, but rather to retain the possibility of intercommunication of those versions, regardless of the fact which of those versions had truly existed and who had spoken them on the whole territory which was then referred to as the Croat-Serbian communicational space. Today, the language policy in Croatia very clearly wishes to determine a symbolic space, since it is, in its basis, part of the general policy which is openly based on the national principle.

How do you look upon the fact that the Serbian community - at least what is left of it - is trying to invent a new version of the Serbian language in Croatia?

It seems to me, in the framework of all policies which are being carried out here, as a sort of logical answer. Why should we expect that the Serbian national community, in the sense of its being politically aware, would react differently under these circumstances than the Croatian community, in the sense of its being nationally aware? If Croats as a political community strive to close their symbolic space, to retain it for themselves only, there are no reasons for us not to suppose that Serbs in Croatia shall do likewise. It is, in a way, an inevitable two-fold game, a game with two participants who will play out the game intended for them and which, probably, suits a part of those communities.

We have here sworn in court interpreters for the Serbian language, who, truth to say, at this moment are mainly concerned with the written word and are "interpreting" it from the Cyrillic into the Latin alphabet. How do you look upon such a thing?

That is an expected consequence - if the language policy claims that the Croatian language is different to the language with which, until a short while ago, it was connected, it is to be expected that in the formal legal sense court interpreters are introduced for all languages which are not Croatian. It is a completely different matter how impractical that is, and in most cases, completely unnecessary. Therefore, in talks held on different levels between the Croats and the Serbs in Croatia, between the Croats and the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or between the two states, it is very obvious that translators aren't needed. In its ultimate consequence, that doesn't necessarily have to prove that the languages are identical, but it can be a symptom which shows us how spread out the communicational space is.

How similar are the Serbian and Croat languages, anyway?

You are asking the wrong person, since I am most probably the last person in Croatia who publicly claims that, in terms of type and structure, that is from the standpoint of characteristics which are inherent to the language structure, the Croatian and Serbian language - as well as the Bosnian and Montenegrin - are one and the same language. I believe that it can be proven, for example, by the fact that their phonetic system is the same. As long as a man of average education, who has completed his high school education anywhere on this territory, can, without reserve and without mistakes, analyze, on the basis of his knowledge acquired on his mother tongue, a text written on one of these others idioms, until then it is highly probable that, structure-wise, those languages - that is idioms, belong to the same language. However, from the viewpoint of a third criterion, which in linguistics is referred to as merit, that is from the viewpoint of the state of consciousness of the speaker and the speaker's opinion on his own language, at least from the Croat perspective, it could obviously be stated that Croatian has been accepted by a majority of speakers as a separate and different language. And, it doesn't necessarily have to have any connections with the structural similarities.

It is a fact that amongst the "Serbian entity" of Bosnia and Herzegovina the Serbian dialect (ekavica) has been imposed. The language is changing in other parts of BiH as well, the same is happening in Serbia, and especially in Croatia. Could they become new, different languages in the future?

As a linguistic expert and scientist I shy away from predicting the future, and besides that, it is extremely difficult, even from the standpoint of an "average speaker", to answer that question. Theoretically, it is possible that in some not too distant future languages start functioning very clearly as different languages, until, during a longer period of time, they actually become so. It has been proven in Scandinavia, in processes which are different to ours, but in a certain manner similar to them, that they can last longer than a century. However, whether that happens doesn't depend on the speakers nor on the characteristics which are inherent to the language, but rather primarily in which manner - here I am not speaking of the political side of the process - shall the communicational space which once encompassed Yugoslavia be articulated. If those communicational links, which arise from different types of need, still exist, then those processes shall at least be slower, if not completely slowed down. But, if a certain type of "Roman wall" shall be erected between the Eastern and Western empires, it is to be expected that those processes shall be much quicker than they were in Scandinavia. What is, not very successfully, in European terminology classified as the "flow of people and ideas" shall in a large measure determine how the idioms on this territory shall act and what shall become of them.