구유고지역의 언어상황과 민족주의 '세르보크로아티아어' 문제를 중심으로

Language and Nationalism in the Former Yugoslav Region: With Special Reference to the Language Question of 'Serbo-Croatian'

Languages can serve permanent and potential insσuments of hegemony of peoples, one over the other because a language is the most important means for the expression of the experience, vision of the world, and system of values which the people of the language has accumulated through ages. For this reason, since the times of the Ancient Greeks it has been believed that a language has inseparable relationship with the ethnic group(or nation) which uses it as its native tongue. Having this fact in mind, this article diachronically examines various aspects of the recurrent ethnonationalistic conflicts in the former Yugoslav region expressed in the fonn of language war, especially between Serbs and Croats who are the two main leading ethnic groups(or nations) in the given region. The study carried out in this article reveals the following facts: 1) In a multiethnic and multicultural region such as the former Yugoslav region the relationship between language(s) and ethnic groups(or nations) of the language(s) varies depending on the political situation and sociocultural peculiarities of different historical periods which the two elements are found, and 2) due to the delay of the fonnation of a nation-state based on a separate ethnicity(or nationhood) the Yugoslav nations such as Serbs and Croats even up to now demonstrate a strong tendency to have resort to ethnonationalistic means in order to promote their national integration, and this tendency of theirs very often leads to the desire to extend their own language at the expense of the language of the other.