CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Strainovic, Jelena |
|---|---|
| Title | Nationalisation of Serbs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire: The Role of Language for the Crystallisation of National Identity |
| Summary | The thesis looks into the Serbian nation-building process during the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Hercegovina between 1878 and 1914. By focusing on two notable periodicals of the time, Otadzbina (Homeland) and Bosanska vila (Bosnian Fairy), the thesis indicates the instrumentalisation of language in the public discourse to define a national unit and evoke the interconnection among the minorities who inhabited the territory. Acknowledging the entrenched religious affiliation as a point of self-identification among the Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Orthodox and Bosnian Croats, the thesis challenges the conceptualisation of religion as the marker of collective belonging and posits language as the major tool in the nation-building process with ethnic affiliation as the fluid category of identification. The standardised Serbian vernacular used in the public discourse to deepen the us versus them context, underpinned by the impact of the print capitalism on the modernisation of Bosnia and Hercegovina, was the major marker of national identification and unison. To that end, the thesis indicates that language in the public discourse created an imagined community supporting Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic’s hypothesis according to which people in Bosnia are one narod (nation) of different faith i.e. Christian Orthodox, Christian Catholic and Muslim Serbs. The thesis demonstrates that language in the public discourse sidelined religious affiliation as a marker of difference and under the notion of sameness made ethnic affiliation the category of collective identification among the groups. With an overview of the major historical events following the transition of rule in Bosnia and Hercegovina, an increase in the culture of printing as well as the modernisation process, the thesis illustrates the key role of the standardised Serbian vernacular in the public discourse for the creation of a Serbian imagined community. |
| Supervisor | Pap, Andras Laszlo |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/strainovic_jelena.pdf |
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