Croatian language as theme outside country culture (1945 – 1990)

Šunjić, Vice. (2017). Croatian language as theme outside country culture (1945 – 1990). PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Croatian Language and Literature.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij kroatistike) [mentor Samardžija, Marko].

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Abstract

The main objective of this dissertation is to give an overview of published linguistic papers referring to standard Croatian language, whose authors were either Croatian linguists living abroad or associated with the Catholic Church. The research will cover the time span from the end of the Second World War to Croatia's declaration of independence and will indicate the stance of Croatian linguists from abroad and those associated with the Catholic Church towards the Croatian language and its development in a not so favorable period (communist Yugoslavia). The research will put into correlation the linguistic study of Croatian by linguists from Croatia on one hand and representatives of the Croatian diaspora on the other hand. The research will rely on qualitative analysis of the content with the aim of establishing and explaining similarities and differences between the documents. Special attention will be given to in-depth analysis of papers on Croatian language from periodicals published by the Croatian diaspora and international linguistic journals, as well as from books by Croatian linguists living abroad and those associated with the Catholic Church. The first part of the dissertation gives a brief overview of the political history of the Republic of Croatia in the period between the end of the Second World War and the declaration of independence in 1990. This chapter also describes the linguistic history and the changes brought about by important political milestones. The second part of the dissertation describes in great detail the status of standard Croatian in the time period between 1945 and 1990. In order to facilitate the understanding of such a long period in history of standard Croatian, the developments in the second half of the 20th century were divided into six uneven phases. The boundaries between phases were determined by some of the breaking points in the history of standard Croatian, such as A Survey on Questions Concerning Serbo-Croatian Language and Orthography and the Novi Sad Agreement from 1954, the Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language from 1967 or the coming into effect of the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution. The third part of the dissertation encompasses portraits of Croatian linguists from abroad and those associated with the Catholic Church. In addition to biographical data, a special emphasis is put on their contribution to the development of the linguistic study of Croatian in the second half of the 20th century. The fourth and central part of the dissertation offers a breakdown of linguistic papers by Croatian linguists from abroad and those associated with the Catholic Church, followed by an individual analysis of linguistic questions that they most frequently focused on. The analysis of conclusions enables the linguistic study of Croatian by linguists from Croatia to be put in correlation with the linguistic study of Croatian by the Croatian diaspora. The conducted research confirmed some of the initial assumptions. It can be concluded with certainty that Croatian linguists from abroad and those associated with the Catholic Church published some quality papers that can undoubtedly be considered as valuable contributions to linguistic study of Croatian. The research revealed no significant difference of opinion with regard to development of standard Croatian in the second half of the 20th century between Croatian linguists from Croatia and those from abroad. Not taking into account some radical proposals, the stance and opinion of linguists from abroad were mostly in accordance with those of linguists from Croatia, with a perceivably greater amount of freedom found in the activities of the former. The conducted analysis proves that the researched papers were unjustifiably overlooked and forbidden in times of the Communist regime, in spite of their relevance for understanding the history of standard Croatian in the second half of the 20th century.

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