Language in post-Yugoslav Montenegro: An unstable complex of contested values
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Martin Henzelmann
Summary
This study highlights the language issue in Montenegro and demonstrates why language in the country represents an unstable and negotiable complex of values. First, it introduces some theoretical aspects that explain how a value can be attributed to a language. Second, it traces the circumstances under which Montenegro developed into an independent state after 1991, as well as the impact this had on the issue of language in the country. Third, the causes of fluid language identities are explained before focusing on an evaluation of the academic debate on the language issue. This debate has generated two antagonistic currents, and their respective value-driven principles are exemplified. The study concludes with an analysis of why the conflation of social opinion and scholarly viewpoints has resulted in Montenegro being the only country in the former Yugoslavia today where no causal relation between glottonym and ethnonym can be discerned.
Note
This study is based on the public colloquium following my habilitation, a postdoctoral university degree with a lecturer qualification, which took place in January 2023 at the Dresden University of Technology.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to the special issue
- Multilingualism as right and choice: A case study of Slovene speakers in Northeast Italy
- Language in post-Yugoslav Montenegro: An unstable complex of contested values
- The Prevalence of Italian Lexical Components in the Montenegrin Magazine Zeta
- Contemporary Croatian future II: a tense or a mood?
- Normative aspects and adoption of orthographical content in Montenegrin higher education
- The loss of synthetic past tense forms in Slovene in the context of the hypothesised Central European convergence area
- Egda žena otročęmь xoditъ. On the 5th prescription in the Old Church Slavic Folia medicinalia
- Aufklärung im Spiegel der slowenischen und deutschen Presse in der Krain im späten 18. Jahrhundert
- Variants and forms of physical lazzi in Dubrovnik’s smješnice of the 17th-century
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to the special issue
- Multilingualism as right and choice: A case study of Slovene speakers in Northeast Italy
- Language in post-Yugoslav Montenegro: An unstable complex of contested values
- The Prevalence of Italian Lexical Components in the Montenegrin Magazine Zeta
- Contemporary Croatian future II: a tense or a mood?
- Normative aspects and adoption of orthographical content in Montenegrin higher education
- The loss of synthetic past tense forms in Slovene in the context of the hypothesised Central European convergence area
- Egda žena otročęmь xoditъ. On the 5th prescription in the Old Church Slavic Folia medicinalia
- Aufklärung im Spiegel der slowenischen und deutschen Presse in der Krain im späten 18. Jahrhundert
- Variants and forms of physical lazzi in Dubrovnik’s smješnice of the 17th-century
