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Robert D. Greenberg, Language and identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and its disintegration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2007

Lukas D. Tsitsipis
Lukas D. Tsitsipis
Affiliation:
Department of French, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 54124, Greece, [email protected]
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Extract

Robert D. Greenberg, Language and identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and its disintegration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. x, 188.

This book is an important contribution to the field of Serbo-Croatian and Balkan studies, as well as to general sociolinguistics. In a world that is reconfiguring its identities quite drastically, Greenberg targets one of the most complex, sensitive, and politically charged areas, that of the former Yugoslavia. The whole book attends closely to the unfolding drama of a people whose linguistic fate has followed various controversial attempts to keep the Serbo-Croatian language united, ultimately leading to its disintegration and the emergence of the languages of the relatively recently established new national entities. These are the outcome of the breakup of Yugoslavia: Serbia-Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina (not to mention the predominantly non-Slavic-speaking ethno-geographical units).

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Information
Language in Society , Volume 36 , Issue 5 , November 2007 , pp. 768 - 771
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

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References

REFERENCES

Gal, Susan, & Irvine, Judith T. (1995). The boundaries of languages and disciplines: How ideologies construct difference. Social Research 62:967–1001.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.