Language in Modern Central Europe: A Steel Hand in a Kid Glove

In the 19th and 20th centuries language became the very basis of politics and also of nation- and state-building in Central and Eastern Europe, on a scale unknown elsewhere in the world.

In Europe, the received belief was, and is, that the speakers of a language constitute a nation. Ergo, the territory inhabited by the national language’s speakers should become their own, separate nation-state. Meeting this ethnolinguistic principle’s onerous requirements triggered renewed waves of language-, nation- and state-making as well as destruction. As evidenced, at the turn of the 21st century by the break ups of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, in the latter case followed by the splintering of the Serbo-Croatian language into Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian. Oftentimes the human cost of these ethno-political overhauls was staggering.

Dr Kamusella will consider the implications of this history for an understanding of the role of language in contemporary European society.

Funding Bodies