Vojvodina’s Minority Languages in Light of a Lan-guage Emancipation Theory
Vojvodina’s Minority Languages in Light of a Lan-guage Emancipation Theory

Summary/Abstract: This article analyzes the emancipation of forty-three ethnic minorities’ languages in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, using the theory of language emancipation advanced by Huss and Lindgren (2011). By applying the six criteria provided by Huss and Lindgren, notably, overall respect, legislative official status, new societal domains, two types of lan-guage shift, as well as corpus planning and language standardization, we conclude that the degree of language emancipation considerably differs from one language to another, with only about one-fourth of what we consider to be Vojvodina’s minority languages displaying considerable degrees of emancipation. While noting certain weaknesses of our pioneering approach, such as – on the one hand – a limited set of symbols we used to make different degrees of language emancipation appear visually different, and – on the other – the virtual impossibility of knowing everything about all who identify as minorities, never-theless we suggest that Vojvodina handles its minorities (and – by extension – their lan-guages) with respect. Still, we see room for improvement. Our article demonstrates just how complex the occurrence of multiingualism is, be it as a generally recognized one or else – as in the example of Vojvodina – a self-proclaimed one.

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