This book uses a specialized corpus of public language-related discourse to investigate links between language ideologies and ethnonationalism in contemporary West Central Balkans. Despite a century and a half of shared linguistic history, the nations making up the central part of former Yugoslavia continue to debate the ownership over the common language, creating much animosity, some legal issues, and often absurd circumstances. At the heart of the ongoing language debate over Central South Slavic is the belief in language as the cornerstone of ethnonational identity and the legitimacy of ethnic groups' claims to sovereignty. Given a history of conflict and the recent resurgence in extreme ethnonationalism, an understanding of ethnolinguistic contestation in the region is as important as ever. This book will be of interest to social scientists working in fields as diverse as (applied) linguistics, anthropology, media studies, political science, sociology and history, as well as other scholars with an interest in language and society.

Adnan AjSic is Assistant Professor of English at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. His writing has appeared in Applied Linguistics, Corpora, Journal of Language and Politics, Language Policy, and Times Higher Education as well as volumes published by Routledge, Wiley-Blackwell, and Multilingual Matters. He has served as an interpreter/translator for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Adnan Aji is Assistant Professor of English at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. His writing has appeared in Applied Linguistics, Corpora, Journal of Language and Politics, Language Policy, and Times Higher Education as well as volumes published by Routledge, Wiley-Blackwell, and Multilingual Matters. He has served as an interpreter/translator for the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, the Netherlands.

1.      Introduction 

 1.1.   Questione della lingua in modern West Central Balkans

1.2.   A brief sociolinguistic history of modern Central South Slavic

1.3.   Language, identity, and ethnonationalism in contemporary West Central Balkans

2.1.   Ethnonationalism

2.2.   Language ideology

2.4.   The current research context

3.      Data and methods 

3.1.   The corpora

3.2.   Methods and research design

4.1.   Keyword analysis

4.2.   Collocation analysis

4.4.   Analysis of variance

4.5.   Cluster analysis

5.      Qualitative results by method 

5.1.   Content and thematic analysis

6.      Language-related discourses, language ideologies, and ethnonationalism 

6.1.   The discourse of endangerment

6.3.   Monolingualism and standard language ideology

6.4.   Language as the essence of ethnonational identity

6.5.   The role of language in the Serbian ethnonationalist project

7.      Conclusion 

7.1.   The advantages of multivariate statistics and the three-step approach

7.2.   Linguistic authority and ethnonationalism in West Central Balkans

8.      Coda: Big data vs. small minds 

Appendices