Stavovi studenata univerziteta u nišu u vezi sa odnosom jezika i identiteta
University Of Niš Students' Attitudes Towards The Relation Between Language And National Identity

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents the results of a poll carried out among the students of sev-eral faculties of the University of Niš at the beginning of the spring semester 2012, on their attitude towards the relation between language identity and national identity (at both individual and collective levels). The faculties include the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, the Faculty of Law, and three departments at the Faculty of Philosophy, namely the Departments of English, Sociology, and His-tory. The basic aim was to establish whether the students consider language identity and national identity as closely intertwined. If so, such a standpoint could indicate that the given population is characterized by what can be termed ''linguistic nationalism''. If not, they could be argued to be closerto the position of ''linguistic cosmopolitism''. In addition, the paper undertakes to analyze the given outlooks in relation to a number of demographic variables, including those pertaining to the education and vocational orientation, sex, ethnicity, place of birth, the education of parents and the degree of religiousness of the students polled. The main results such an analysis has yielded are as follows. Firstly, the hypothesis put forward at the beginning of the paper has been confirmed – namely, the students at the Department of English indeed have more ''cosmopolitan'' attitudes on the issue when compared to their colleagues from the other departments/faculties where the poll was carried out (this holds especially in comparison to the students from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the De-partment of History at the Faculty of Philosophy, and somewhat less when it comes to the students from the Department of Sociology). Secondly, of all the demographic variables, the ''index of language nationalism'' that the paper has introduced correlates most strongly with the degree of religiousness of the examinees – the more religious they are, the higher the index.

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