Ооднос између знања страних језика и перцепције идентитета у пограничним општинама југоисточне Србије
The Relation Between The Knowledge Of Foreign Languages And The Perception Of Identity In Border Municipalities Of Southeast Serbia

Summary/Abstract: Drawing on the previous study which tested the perception of the relationship between national identity and language in student population (Pavlović and Jovanović, 2012), the paper aimed at examining the correlations between the success of the respondents in foreign language learning in two high schools in south-eastern Serbia (from Niš and Bosilegrad), and their attitudes toward the relationship between national identity and language. Moreover, we also wanted to test whether there would be any correlations between their attitude toward the relationship between national identity and language and the success they have in foreign language learning. A survey questionnaire, printed in Serbian and Bulgarian, was distributed to forty third- and fourth-grade high school students in each town, of both Serbian and Bulgarian nationality. The questionnaire comprised three groups of questions: (1) the ones which examined the level of the so-called “linguistic nationalism” and “linguistic cosmopolitism”, (2) the ones which tested the attitudes of the students toward learning various foreign languages (English, Russian, Spanish, Chinese) and language learning in general, and (3) the ones concerning the marks that students achieved in mother and foreign language subjects at the moment they were tested. The analysis of the responses resulted in the general conclusion that cosmopolitan sentiments were dominant in both examined populations, that students specify English as their language of choice, and that there are no significant correlations between the chosen foreign language and successful learning, on the one hand, and the index of linguistic nationalism, on the other. On the whole, the differences between the responses given by the two groups of respondents were not that great, however, the correlations existing between the index of linguistic cosmopolitism and the students’ attitude toward language learning were only partial and limited to the group of students from the high school in Niš.

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