Język a tożsamość: przypadek Czarnogóry
Language and Identity: The Case of Montenegro

Summary/Abstract: The Montenegrin language was established as the official language of newly independent Montenegro in 2007. However, the idea of a separate Montenegrin language remained dormant until the mid-1990s, when a small group of Montenegrin pro-independence intellectuals, aiming to reconstruct all the trappings of a separate Montenegrin identity, started to emphasize the distinctiveness of the language of Montenegrins. How did it happen that once being a marginal idea, Montenegrin became the native language for almost 37 percent of the Montenegrin population in 2011? This article is an attempt to answer this question. It provides a brief overview of the language situation in Montenegro from the time of socialist Yugoslavia to the independence era, paying attention to the changes in the political elites’ attitudes towards the language issue. The standardization process of the Montenegrin language is described by focusing on the aspects, which are considered most significant from the perspective of identity. The paper also describes how the Montenegrin language is being narratized so that the language narrative is being produced as a part of the broader narrative about the Montenegrin identity. Finally, an analysis of the last two censuses’ data reveals changes in the population structure in Montenegro according to nationality and mother tongue between 2003 and 2011, i.e. the period when the issues of identity and language became extremely politicized.

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