Keywords

1 Introduction

Geographers do not so much regard language. There is no explicit subdiscipline in analogy to the study of other cultural population characteristics like religion (religion geography) or ethnic affiliation (ethnic geography) – a subdiscipline that could be titled “language geography.” Geolinguistics is indeed a field of studies in the anglophone world as much as géolinguistique is in the francophone and geolinguística in the Spanish-speaking world. But they are rather affiliated to linguistics or regarded as interdisciplinary fields with just a few geographers engaged in them and far from covering all relations between language and linguistic communities on the one hand and space on the other. Their pendant in German-speaking linguistics is “language geography” (Sprachgeographie). Also this branch of linguistics, however, restricts itself on studying the spatial variation of words and pronunciations within a given language – so just on one out of the variety of spatial aspects of language (Goossens 1969; Goebl 1984, 1992, 2004; Auer and Schmidt 2010). In consequence, also not too much is available from a cultural-geographical point of view about the relation between language and space-related identity – a topic with a specific geographical touch.

Some studies in linguistics and also in political sciences, however, approach the relation between language and space-related identity quite closely and can be read with great profit in this context. Among them is certainly the handbook of contact linguistics (Goebl et al. 1996), Language, Space and Power: Urban Entanglements (Vuolteenaho et al. 2012), with a focus on the linguistic cityscape and city branding, and Language and Nationalism in Europe (Barbour and Carmichael 2000), as well as the works of political scientist Tomasz Kamusella, such as The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe (Kamusella 2009) or Scripts and Politics in Modern Central Europe (Kamusella 2012) heading at the relation between national identities, language, and script.

After having explained the role of language as a community builder and its relation to space-related identities in principle, this chapter will present the main types of relations between language and space-related identities by characteristic examples.

2 Language as a Community Builder and Its Association with Space-Related Identity

“Different factors create identity: territory, language, symbols, history, contact, functional relations, mutual interest, and education” (Schönwald 2013: 119). When we address language as an aspect of space-related identity, we refer to two factors mentioned here: territory and language. So we depart from the assumption that an individual or a group of people has – due to their strive for territoriality, immanent to human beings at all levels of human community building – entered into a relationship with a certain territory or section of geographical space and has made this relationship an aspect of personal or group identity and that this identity is supported by an additional factor or characteristic: language. We will more or less disregard the question of identity building with individuals but focus on communities in the sense of social groups sharing a common identity.

Not postulating from the beginning that language was a stronger factor in space-related identity building than others mentioned above, e.g., (common) history, it has certainly very suitable capacities for community building and therefore also as identity markers of group identities. Language includes individuals into a community and excludes others at the same time. This capacity is due to three facts. The first is evident: Language is a system of signs or codes and has to be acquainted to communication partners, should communication succeed. Somebody not skilled in the code system of a community will get a chance to be integrated only if this community is very welcoming, tolerant, polite, and educated, e.g. able to speak a trade language or the language of the outsider.

Secondly, language as a sign system corresponds to a system of concepts categorizing complex and otherwise unconceivable reality (Fig. 1). Only by this categorization, complex reality becomes conceivable. Without language the categorization of complex reality into a system of concepts would remain the individual achievement of a person, since it was not possible to communicate and to share it with others. We would not be able to produce a group culture, shared meanings (Hall 1997) in the sense of at least roughly similar interpretations of the world, of complex reality.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Relation language – concept system – complex reality

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Every language stands for and reflects a system of concepts that characterizes a culture and makes a group of people, a community, looking at least slightly different at our world, i.e., at complex reality. Thus, people speaking the same language have roughly the same system of concepts, which makes living in a community much easier.

It is true that language is not the only means of communication. Also by facial expressions, gesticulation, music, painting, map symbols, mathematics, and others, we can communicate. But these means are either less precise or restricted to certain fields.

The evolution of a certain concept system by the means of a certain language is driven by common interests of individuals as well as by the fact that the group of people communicating intensively with each other resides compactly in a certain territory, a certain section of geographical space, and faces a distinct natural environment. Different environments prompt the evolution of at least slightly different concept systems, and – in consequence – languages.

For communities residing at the northern fringes of America and Eurasia, for example, snow and ice play an important role, and thus the communities are inclined to develop various concepts for these features, to subdivide these concept fields into a larger number of subconcepts than others, and to attribute corresponding words of a language to them.

The same applies to communities of coastal dwellers with a seafaring tradition like the Croats residing along the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea: Winds are significant natural features there and are very important for them. Consequently, they divide the concept “wind” into various subconcepts and assign to them different words of their language depending on wind direction and force. They speak, for instance, of jugo, when the wind comes from the South; of bura, when it is a forceful, cold wind sliding down the slopes of the coastal ranges and stirring up the coastal water to a foam; of burin, when the wind comes from the same direction but is weaker (usually in summer); and of maestral, when it comes from the open sea and brings refreshing air in the early afternoon of hot summer days.

The third factor that makes language including individuals into a community and has a less including effect on others (language is not strictly excluding in this case) and thus a means of community building is closeness. This applies to several hierarchy levels (scales) of human communities, first and foremost to the lower levels. Closeness can be generated by special words for a concept or by the specific pronunciation or intonation of a given language. Families, partners or parents, and children, for example, like to create special words for some concepts not understandable for others and develop in a way a (for outsiders) “secret language.”

There are also subgroups in a wider community or society using specific words and developing a specific language variant such as the younger generation, workers, fans of sport clubs, hunters, fishermen, prostitutes, and criminals (Girtler 1996). They separate an in-group knowing and using these keywords from outsiders. Also the specific terminology of sciences may be regarded under this aspect.

Closeness is also the main community-building factor with dialects or vernacular languages. They differ by words, sometimes also by grammar, but most importantly by pronunciation and intonation. As soon as we meet somebody speaking the same dialect, we feel to have something in common with him/her – even if we may be very different in terms of social affiliation, age group, or other characteristics.

This is not as clear with standard languages. Standard languages in the sense of codified languages with a grammar and a dictionary are constructs and correspond only in exceptional situations to the actually spoken language. They are used on the stage and in official speeches, while in our daily intercourse a colloquial language, a colloquial language with dialectal coloring or a dialect prevails. At least by pronunciation and intonation a standard language varies by groups of speakers.

The German standard language, e.g., the official linguistic standard in Germany, Austria, Switzerland (together with French, Italian, and Romansh), Luxemburg (together with French, Letzeburgisch), and Belgium (together with Dutch and French), establishes communality just at the cognitive, not at the emotional level. A German from the North and a Bavarian will not feel closeness just by speaking the same standard German. Standard languages are therefore community builders just due to the first and second factors (because they enable communication and reflect a common concept system), not due to the third (they do not connect people by conveying closeness). They are, nevertheless, frequently styled symbols of group identities and acquire in this way, on an abstract level, a kind of connecting quality.

From what has been said so far, it should have become comprehensible, why languages are community builders and are therefore also regarded as markers of their identity. Whether they contribute also to the building of communities with a space-related identity depends on whether a community speaking a certain language is territory-based and has developed a relation to this territory and styled this relation a marker of its identity. When we take into account that (1) language is not a phenomenon existing independent of speakers – an abstract system as it is sometimes regarded by linguist; (2) but does have speakers, who form a network, a linguistic community, even as an essential condition for the development of a language; (3) individual speakers as well as the linguistic community in total have a certain location in geographical space; and (4) territoriality in the sense of a special relation to a section of geographical space is a basic attitude of human beings, all traditional languages are characteristics of human communities that have relations to a section of space and cultivate their space-related identities. Newly invented languages like Esperanto or Loglan – languages lacking a compact community of native speakers – are exceptions from this rule.

This means that traditional languages commonly spoken by a territory-based community have the capacity of being markers of space-related identity. It is just the question, how they rank in relation to other identity markers like religion or history.

3 Main Types of Relations between Language and Space-Related Identities

Due to the relations explained in the former section, languages function indeed often as symbols and markers of national, ethnic, regional, and local group identities. This is true for standard languages as well as for dialects or vernacular languages.

Most current nations define themselves primarily by language, although language may also rank second to other characteristics like religion or history as an identity marker.

Nation building can be based on an already existing language. But language may also follow an already existing national idea or develop parallel to the process of nation building.

Also for group identities related to subnational units like regions, landscapes, valleys, or populated places, standard languages can be essential ingredients. More frequently, however, these are dialects or vernacular languages.

3.1 Languages as Markers of National Identities

When Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) formulated his concept of the cultural nation in contrast to the civic nation, he defined nations as communities having some characteristics of culture in common. But among all the various cultural characteristics, he conceived language as ranking first. His concept of the cultural nation has spread over wide parts of Europe and gained ground especially in Central, East, and Southeast Europe.

3.1.1 Nation–Building Based on an Already Existing Language

On the background of Herder’s concept of the cultural nation, two prominent nations emerged: the German and the Italian.

German vernacular languages were already in the High Middle Ages conceived as closely related, but not before the Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) translation of the Holy Bible from Hebrew and Greek into the language of his surroundings, East Middle German, by introducing also many elements of Upper German, a first German standard language developed. It spread over all German-speaking lands, also to the North, where a very different vernacular language was and is spoken (Lower German) (König 1978; Stark 2012). This common German standard was the basis for the idea of a German nation. It developed in the first half of the nineteenth century not the least as a reaction to the Napoleonic occupation, but also driven by the French enlightenment, was near to be politically effectuated already in 1848 and ended in the political manifestation of the German nation’s space-related identity, the formation of the corresponding nation-state Germany in 1871. This state, however, included only a part of the community conceived as the German nation in Herder’s cultural-national sense, e.g., not the Germans in Austria-Hungary and Switzerland.

Similar developments occurred in other societies affected by Reformation: with Slovenes, Czechs, Poles, Estonians, or Finns.

Italian had been developed to a prestigious literary language by the literates Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) and thus arrived at a first standard already in the late Middle Ages. Petrarca and Boccaccio came from Tuscany and Dante from Ravenna in the Romagna. But he, too, derived his literary language from the Tuscan dialect, since he spent most of his lifetime in Florence at the court of the Medici, the cultural center of the wider region in this era.

Based on prestigious literature in a common and sophisticatedly developed language, an Italian national idea emerged from the beginning of the nineteenth century very much for the same reasons as the German, albeit later also in reaction against Austria with its possessions in northern Italy. The corresponding nation-state emerged between 1861 and 1870.

3.1.2 Languages Developed as an Identity Marker Based on an Already Existing National Idea or Parallel to It

But – as mentioned before – it is not only that national ideas are based on existing languages. It is sometimes also the other way round: nations are shaped on the basis of other cultural elements like denomination or historiography, and only then, as an additional element, they create or standardize the corresponding language.

A case in point and a very significant example is the building and abandoning of the Yugoslavian national idea accompanied by language construction. It is worthwhile to study it in some detail.

The rise of the Yugoslavian national idea and Serbo-Croatian. A certain sense of cultural community between the Southern Slavs developed first in the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces (1809–1813/1815). They comprised territories with Slovenian as well as Croatian and Serbian population. The dialects spoken in these territories had much in common. On their background and driven by the idea to achieve cultural community, in the early nineteenth century both the Serbian language and Croatian were codified based on the Štokavian dialect group, the dialect group with the widest spread of all Southern Slavonic dialects.

Figure 2 shows the distribution of the dialect group, which is subdivided into three subdialects or variants: (1) the ijekavian variant, (2) the ekavian variant, and (3) the ikavian variant. These variants differ not so much by words but by spelling and pronunciation. For example, while the ijekavian variant uses mjesto for “town, settlement, place,” the ekavian variant uses mesto and the ikavian variant misto.

Fig. 2
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Languages, dialect groups, dialects, and dialect subgroups in former Yugoslavia. (Map by Dick Gilbreath, University of Kentucky Gyula Pauer Center for Cartography and GIS; Data from Okuka 2012)

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The codification of Serbian by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864) close to the colloquial language was based on the ekavian variant of the Štokavian dialect, which is the dialect spoken in the largest part of Serbia proper except in the southeast, where the Prizren-Timok or Torlakian dialect is spoken. A first grammar book of Serbian was published in 1814, a first larger dictionary in 1818 (Ivić 1971).

Also the codification of the Croatian language by Ljudevit Gaj in the 1830s was based on the Štokavian dialect, although the Croats would have had every reason to start from the Kajkavian dialect, the dialect spoken in Zagreb and its northern surroundings. But in “Illyrian sympathy” with Serbs and indeed very rationally thinking, they decided to construct their language based on the larger dialect group, not spoken only by Croats but also by Serbs, which offered the better perspective for the later standardization of a common language. Contrary to Serbian, however, they choose the ijekavian variant spoken in larger parts of the Croatian territories as well as in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and even in southwestern parts of Serbia proper – so indeed also the most widespread variant.

Not basing the Croatian standard language on the Kajkavian dialect meant nevertheless a sacrifice, since Kajkavian was a well-developed dialect with a rich literature and had also its apologists (Lončarić 2002). To choose the other “truly Croatian” dialect, the Čakavian, spoken mainly on the Istrian peninsula and on the islands, was out of question, since it was already at that time a dialect on retreat and could stand the competition with the other two dialect groups only up to the turn from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century (Nehring 2002).

Thus, standardizing their two languages based on the same dialect group brought Serbian and Croatian in very close relation to each other and was a good precondition for a later Serbo-Croatian standard language.

It meant, however, at the same time the exclusion of Slovene and Bulgarian from a common language development. If Croatian had been standardized based on the Kajkavian dialect, which is close to dialects spoken on Slovenian territories, it would have been easier to integrate Slovene. Another major reason for the separate development of Slovene, however, was that the Slovenes had right in this critical period a bright poet, France Prešeren (1800–1849), who wrote his famous lyrics in Carniolan dialect (Grdina and Stabej 2002). In 1824, also Bulgarian, the other Southern Slavonic language, took a development, which led away from unification of all Southern Slavonic languages in the spirit of Illyrism. The parting of Slovenes and Bulgarians meant on the other hand even closer ties between Serbs and Croats and an acceleration of efforts to create a common standard language.

In 1850, already under the auspices of Yugoslavism, a movement for the political unity of all Southern Slavonic people, the “Viennese Agreement on a Standard Language” (Bečki književni dogovor) was signed. This was not much more than an expression of intent to create a common standard language. Its practical application lasted up to 1867 in Bosnia, 1868 in Serbia, and 1877 in Croatia-Slavonia (Rehder 2002). Codification of the common Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian language , as it was officially called, lasted still up to the end of the nineteenth century.

From the very beginning, this common language had some severe problems:

  • The Serbs were not ready to switch to the ijekavian variant, which would have been the more widespread, although the Croats had sacrificed their “own” Kajkavian dialect in favor of the common Štokavian. This meant that Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian continued to exist in two parallel variants: The ekavian (so-called Serbian) variant and the ijekavian (so-called Croatian) variant. Serbo-Croatian remained in this way an incomplete language as much as the Yugoslavs remained an incomplete nation.

  • Among the Croats, a subdominant opposition against this common metalanguage continued to exist but did not become dominant before the 1920s.

  • Standardization processes stopped to continue at the end of the nineteenth century and turned rather into the contrary thereafter.

  • Only the Serbs considered Serbo-Croatian as a real and functional language and Serbian and Croatian as regional or style variants of this language, while among Croats the opinion was prevailing that Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian was just an abstract system that is realized in two “concrete variants” (Croatian, Serbian) as well as in two “standard expressions” (Bosnian, Montenegrin). The latter was also the opinion of most linguists. This does not mean that (at least in the beginning) not also Croats wished to evolve Serbo-Croatian into a functional language without any subsystem. But experiences in the interwar period, in the first Yugoslavian state, drove them gradually to the opinion mentioned before.

Within these limitations, Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian functioned as the official standard language of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks (officially “Muslims in the ethnic sense”) and Montenegrins up to the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991 with the interruption of the Croatian Ustaša state from 1941 to 1945. It coexisted with the “concrete variants” Croatian and Serbian and the “standard expressions” Bosnian and Montenegrin. “Bosnian standard expression” was the title for a version of Serbo-Croatian with special reference to linguistic specifics used by Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, i.e., for instance, Ottoman words for administrative features from Ottoman times. It was not confined to the Bosniaks in Bosnia-Herzegovina, so it was to have an integrative function, but in practice it was little more than an ideological fabric (Okuka 2002). The “Montenegrin standard expression” integrated some words from regional dialects.

In the whole period from the end of the nineteenth century up to the end of the second Yugoslavia, especially from the foundation of a Yugoslavian state in 1918 onward, Belgrade used to deny or disguise the coexistence of variant languages or standard expressions, while Zagreb emphasized them. This was especially true during waves of Croatian nationalism, e.g., during the “Croatian Spring” at the end of the 1960s (Okuka 2002).

Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian was also the official language of the Yugoslavian Army and other official and semiofficial federal institutions, also in Slovenia and Macedonia, where otherwise Slovene and Macedonian (since 1945) functioned as official standard languages. It was also taught and understood in these other republics and had the role of a lingua franca. Federal institutions were inclined to use the ekavian (Serbian) variant (Okuka 2002).

The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the rise of successor languages. Already in the process of Yugoslavia’s dissolution, in Croatia’s first constitution of 1990, Croatian was proclaimed as the only official language in Croatia, and a few years later it became clear that also Serbian and Bosnian had succeeded Serbo-Croatian. This immediate switch from one language to three others was possible, because at least two of these other languages had always coexisted and were already used. The replacement of a metalanguage by national languages corresponded to the logics of the nation-state concept implemented by the successor states.

Croatia invested all efforts (through the educational system, the media) to implement its national language as soon and radical as possible. This had besides the existence of a ready-to-go language and a Croatian tradition starting in the 1920s to put their own language in the first line with very good political reasons. Croatia is a culturally rather heterogeneous country. The main divide parts the Central European interior from the Mediterranean coastland. But also the inhabitants of smaller regions like Istria, Dalmatia, the Lika, Slavonia, or the Hrvatsko zagorje (i.e., the hinterland of Zagreb) cultivate distinct regional identities and dialects (Budak et al. 1995).

On the territory of modern Croatia, three dialect groups are spoken: Štokavian, which was chosen as the basis of the Croatian and the Serbo-Croatian standard languages, Kajkavian, and Čakavian. At least Kajkavian can be regarded as a regional standard language and has a rich literature.

Not to declare Croatian the exclusive official language as soon as possible would have meant to risk a linguistic division of the country into eventually three languages and the support of centrifugal forces, which are anyway strong enough. Thus, the proclamation of Croatian as the official language was in the interest of Croatian national cohesion and a political must.

The decision was also immediately and radically effectuated, mainly by restitution of the state of affairs before the development of Serbo-Croatian in the middle of the nineteenth century. Old Croatian words were reintroduced, foreign words avoided (e.g., karta for map was replaced by zemlijovid, geografija for geography by zemlijopis, avion for aeroplane by zrakoplov). Much effort was invested to stress the differences from Serbian (kolodvor for railway station instead of Serbian stanica; glazba for music instead of Serbian muzika). A characteristic of Croatian (contrary to Serbian) is also the preservation of the infinitive: Molim platiti for “I would like to pay” instead of Serbian Molim da platim (Wingender 2002).

Today Croatian is without any doubt a functional standard language, very important for national identity and national cohesion.

Bosnian (Bosanski) is today the official glottonym for the language of the Bosniaks – the Bosnian Muslims. Contrary to Yugoslavian times, when Bosnian as a “standard expression” of Serbo-Croatian had the function of identifying the all-Bosnian specifics of Serbo-Croatian spoken by Bosniaks as well as Serbs and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina and was in this way a means of integration, it is now tailored to one national group in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to the Bosniaks, and not spoken by the two minority groups in the country. On the other hand, it is also the language of Bosniak minorities residing outside Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, the Muslims in Sandshak. Linguistically and from the viewpoint of an independent observer, it would therefore be more precise to call it Bosniak (Bošnjački), since it is, first, not the all-Bosnian language and, second, spoken also by people outside Bosnia.

It was the intention of the Bosniaks, the majority group and political elite in the newly independent country, to underline the country’s unity against Serbian and Croatian territorial claims also by a specific language. The intention, however, to make it the common language of the country could not be effectuated, since Serbs as well as Croats in Bosnia did not accept it. So it had rather a dividing effect.

In 1992, a first dictionary of specific Bosnian words was published. Since 1993, Bosnian is besides Serbian and Croatian, all of them in the ijekavian variant, an official language of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1995, the orthography was codified. The Dayton Accord of December 1995 acknowledged Bosnian as one of three official languages. In 2000, a Bosnian grammar was published (Völkl 2002). Further standardization is going on.

Bosnian replaces many Serbo-Croatian words by words derived from Ottoman (the predecessor of Turkish), which had been the official language throughout more than three centuries and up to 1878. This refers especially to concept fields like Islam, law, administration, state, craftsmanship, clothing, food, beverages, trade, monetary services, construction, army, arms, toponyms, music, games, and emotions (Völkl 2002). By some words also Ottoman suffixes are used. Very characteristic is also the use of Ottoman or oriental names; some names are even originally Bosnian.

The Serbian language at first just changed its name from Serbo-Croatian to Serbian. However, having lost the perspective of becoming the integrative language for a couple of nations and a larger territory, modern Serbian displays a trend of going back to the roots and of strict standardization. This is anyway an ambitious undertaking, since modern Serbian is still a polycentric language with several variants: the ekavian variant of Serbian is spoken in the larger part of Serbia; the ijekavian variant is spoken in southwestern parts of Serbia proper, Montenegro, Bosnia, and among Serbs in Croatia, everywhere with local specifics.

In a period of subordination under Belgrade, the official authorities of the Serbs in Bosnia (Republika Srpska) supported between 1993 and 1998 the ekavian variant (contrary to the official Bosnia-wide regulations) but then returned to the autochthonous ijekavian. Also the Serbs in Croatia switched between 1992 and 1995 to the ekavian variant. In the southeast of Serbia proper and among Serbs in Kosovo, the Prizren-Timok dialect group is spoken – a dialect group with Balkanic elements and different from Štokavian, which forms the basis of the Serbian standard language.

In 1997, a commission for the standardization of the Serbian language was installed. The model for standardization is the ekavian variant of Štokavian. However, contrary to the times of Karadžić, it is no longer the rural colloquial language but the idiom of the educated urban society in Belgrade and Novi Sad (Neweklowsky 2002).

Montenegro’s constitution of 1992 still says that the “ijekavian variant of Serbian” is the official language. (It should run “of Serbo-Croatian,” since Serbian never had an ijekavian variant.) In accordance with the political movement for separation from Serbia and independence, however, during the 1990s a movement for a Montenegrin ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identity other than Serbian evolved, although Montenegrins had always conceived themselves as Serbs in the cultural sense. It elaborated a Montenegrin standard language other than Serbian that stresses regional specifics, reintroduces words of the old Serbian language before the reforms of Vuk Karadžić arguing that Montenegro was the cradle of Serbian statehood and in Montenegro the oldest, the original Serbian was spoken.

The initiator of this movement was the linguist Vojislav Nikčević supported by the Matica Crnogorska, the Montenegrin Homeland Society, and a group of Montenegrin writers. In 1993, Nikčević published a monograph using the Montenegrin language. In 1997, he edited an orthography with three additional letters (Schubert 2002).

Still, this language is accepted only by a part of the former Serbo-Croatian-speaking population. But if public authorities and the educational system continue to support this language, it is just a question of time, when at least the younger generation takes it over.

The case of Serbo-Croatian and its successor languages shows a significant parallelism of language development on the one hand and the rise and fall of national identities and nation-states on the other. This is no surprise, since dominant political groups, national movements, and, of course, the state and its institutions are the main driving forces in language policy. It shows also that language development is affected by external relations and political dependencies.

Most indicative are the following aspects:

  • Serbo-Croatian remained an incomplete language as much as Yugoslavian nation building could not be completed.

  • Croatian was urgently needed by the newly independent country to promote national identity and cohesion.

  • Bosnian was redefined from a “standard expression” of all Bosnians into the language of the Bosnian Muslims. So it lost its integrative function for all national groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina in accordance with the political fragmentation of this country.

  • Serbian lost its perspective of becoming the language of a larger region and shows – like many retrogressive political and cultural movements with no longer need for integrative functions – signs of purism.

  • Montenegrins conceiving themselves as a cultural nation not earlier than from the later 1990s onward felt the need to support their nation building by a standard language of their own.

Macedonian – a language for a new nation. Macedonian was codified as a new standard language on the basis of a regional (not national) consciousness that did already exist and since the conception of a new nation was politically opportune.

Macedonian nation building was fostered by the communist partisan movement at the end of World War II addressing the Slavonic population of the cultural landscape Macedonia, who had earlier affiliated itself in the national sense to Bulgarians or Serbs.

Up to 1913, affiliation to a Bulgarian national identity was predominant. When in 1913, as a result of the Second Balkan War, the territory of modern Macedonia was awarded to Serbia and became in 1919 a part of the first Yugoslavian state dominated by Serbs; its Slavonic population was subjected to a radical Serbianization. All tuition occurred in Serbo-Croatian, Serbian civil officers occupied the leading positions, Serbo-Croatian became the exclusive official language, and the Serbian-Orthodox Church took over, what had earlier belonged to the Bulgarian-Orthodox Church, the region was called “South Serbia.” This colonizing attitude had a repugnant effect on a population that had looked at Serbia and the Serbs with some sympathy before.

Between 1941 and 1944, Bulgaria as an occupation force allied with the German Reich conducted a similar policy of Bulgarianization and earned the same bad feelings for it as the Serbs before. Both experiences, in addition to an already well-established regional identity, paved obviously the way toward developing a Macedonian national identity.

It was favored by the macro-political situation: political weakness of all neighbors, Stalin’s wish to restructure the Balkans (e.g., not to attach Macedonia to Bulgaria), and last, but not least, Tito’s attempt to build a federal and nationally balanced second Yugoslavia, for which a Serbian domination had to be avoided (Troebst 1994; Sundhaussen 2012).

Thus, together with the proclamation of a Macedonian nation and the implementation of a federal republic, Macedonian was established as its standard language in 1944. It had been based on a central-Macedonian dialect, the idiom of Pelagonia, linguistically equidistant to Serbian and Bulgarian (Srbinovski 1995; Hill 1995, 2002; Preinerstorfer 1962, 1998). In 1957, Macedonian national identity was completed by an independent Macedonian-Orthodox Church, which was in 1967 elevated to the rank of an autocephalous church – in the Byzantine-Orthodox sphere an indispensable attribute of a nation in the full sense.

Romanian – a language to reflect a new identity. Romanian is a new East-Romance language that was codified in the course of Romanian nation building. Before, the people later called Romanians spoke Wallachian dialects with many Romance elements, but also many Slavonic and other ingredients. These dialects were written in Cyrillic script. As a standard language, Wallachians were using Daco-Slavonic or a trade language (Greek, French).

As the cradle of the Romanian national movement as well as the Romanian standard language functioned the Greek-Catholic Church of the Wallachians in Transylvania (inside the Carpathian arc), at that time under Austrian, later Austro-Hungarian rule. It had been founded in 1697 as a church in union with the Roman-Catholic Church, was in juridical and dogmatic terms an integrated part of it, but practiced the Byzantine rite. Under political aspects, it was an expression of the Western orientation of Transylvanian Wallachians and for this reason also supported by the central authorities in the imperial capital Vienna. Vienna supported this church also to enforce the loyal Wallachians against the powerful and rather illoyal Hungarian landlords in Transylvania.

Right due to its Western and Roman orientation, this church advanced from 1770 onward to the cradle of the Romanian national movement. Its priests were partly educated in Vienna and Rome and met there traces and symbols of the Roman past of their own lands. They had the path-breaking idea of styling the humble herdsmen culture of Wallachians to successors of the Romans in the Balkans and to name them Romani (the ethnonym for Romanians in their language) (Boia 2003; White 2000). This elevated their countrymen to the heights of European history and culture and had of course also to be accompanied by a truly Romance language, which was subsequently constructed. It was based on Wallachian dialects, but by eliminating a lot of non-Romance elements and by introducing new words for concepts not needed in herdsmen’s dialects from other Romance languages, mainly Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. This established a comprehensive literary language functional in all concept fields. It was at first written in Cyrillic, but from the 1830s onward in Roman script – an exception among Orthodox nations but fully in line with the idea of a Romance identity.

From this germ inside the Carpathian arc, in closer contact with the European West and the ideas of enlightenment and very well affected by them, this Romanian national idea in combination with the new Romance language sprang over to the Danubian principalities Moldavia and Wallachia, the proper corelands of the Wallachian, now Romanian nation, but up to 1878 under Ottoman sovereignty.

3.1.3 Larger Space–Related Identities Not Supported by a Symbolic Language

There are, however, some nations lacking language as an identity marker. In a global perspective, prominent examples are Canada, South Africa, and India. Canada gets along with two languages (English, French), in combination official at the federal and exclusively official at the provincial level (Cartwright 1988). South Africa has 11 official languages at the country level, while locally always some of them have official status. In India, Hindi and (not with completely the same status) English are official languages nationwide and have an umbrella function for the myriad regional languages.

In Europe, prominent examples are Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria. In Switzerland three standard languages with the quality of identity markers of large neighboring countries (German, French, Italian) are spoken without any variation also in Switzerland. Obviously, common history, the specific political-administrative system and economic success convey identity enough to replace a common language as identity marker of the Swiss nation. Ideas to establish a Swiss standard of German, the largest linguistic community in Switzerland, were abandoned mainly for the reason that such a standard would have to be based on one of the rather divergent canton dialects disadvantaging all others.

Belgium with its three official languages (Dutch, French, German) is another case in point but much less convincing. It rather demonstrates that it is difficult to keep a country together without a common language. The Belgian problem is accentuated by the fact that the two main groups, Dutch and French speakers, were subject to an inversion in terms of economic success and prestige. The formerly more prestigious group and language (French-speaking Wallonians) are today in the economically inferior position.

Also Austrian cultural identity is not defined by language but by Austria’s specific history. While Austrians conceived themselves in the interwar period as Germans in the cultural-national sense, after the shock of World War II all relevant political forces promoted with great success a specific Austrian cultural-national identity different from the German (Thaler 2001) – an attitude and process very similar to the Montenegrin as described before. In a situation, when the German language was stigmatized by the events of World War II and the Holocaust, in the 1950s even attempts were made to establish an Austrian standard language. They were abandoned later, since it seemed after all preferable to remain a part of the wider German-speaking community and since it would have been difficult to define an Austrian standard. There exists an “Austrian dictionary” with quite a number of “Austria-specific” words, but many of them are used only in some parts of Austria, and many are used also outside Austria, in southern Germany, especially Bavaria (Fussy and Steiner 2012; Wiesinger 2008).

All these cases without a language as a national identity marker have, however, also in common that hardly an inhabitant would affiliate himself/herself in the first line to the nation. In Canada it would – if it was not the hometown – rather be the province (e.g., Quebec); in South Africa the ethnic group; in India the ethnic group or federal state; in Switzerland the canton; in Belgium the regions Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels, or the German-speaking community; and in Austria the province. Obviously, a national identity not supported by language as an identity marker remains rather faint.

The question, whether a common identity can emerge without a common language and, more precisely, a common language as an identity marker, arises also with the European Union (EU). At the moment (2019), the EU recognizes 24 official languages and does this for two declared main reasons: to reflect Europe’s cultural variety as an essential part of its identity and to grant all citizens and their representatives equal opportunities in political and democratic participation. In practice, this proves to be very complicated and certainly also impedes the evolution of a European supranational identity. In September 2006 – still in a relatively euphoric phase and before the global economic crisis – only about 15% of the respondents in all EU countries answered on the last Eurobarometer survey in this respect asking “How frequently do you feel European?” with “Often,” about 50%, however, with “Never” (European Commission 2010).

Should the European project fail – and some indications point into this direction – it will fail for the principal reason that the nation-states were not ready to reduce their powers in favor of the common project and that national ideas were not overcome. That 24 national languages are maintained and at the European level not replaced by a common “European” language (of course in addition to national and regional languages at sub-European levels) is the symbolic expression of these attitudes.

Alternatives to the current situation would be the following:

  1. 1.

    To elevate English, the by far most frequent trade language in Europe and anyway a polycentric language with several variants – so not anymore the “property’ of the United Kingdom (Seidlhofer 2011) – to the rank of the common European language.

  2. 2.

    To revive an old European cultural language, e.g., Latin. That the revival of an (almost) extinct language is possible, show the examples of Irish and Hebrew. Latin, however, would be symbolic only for Europe’s western cultural sphere, not for the byzantine east and southeast.

  3. 3.

    To establish an invented, “neutral” language like Esperanto (see Greimel 2003; Jeleń et al. 2002).

3.2 Languages as Markers of Regional Identities

3.2.1 Standard Languages as Regional Identity Markers

Also regional identities are frequently marked by standard languages. Spain is a good example. After the end of the authoritarian Franco regime in 1978 and in the course of the democratization process, finally all major regions of Spain were granted competences of self-government. Those of them with dominating or coexisting individual standard languages (Catalonia, Valencia, and the Baleares with Catalan or Valencian; Galicia with Galego; the Basque provinces and Viskaya with Basque) elevated them to the rank of official languages besides Spanish (in the field of toponoymy in Catalonia, Galicia, and the Baleares even exclusively) and styled them markers of regional identity (Batlle 2012). Except Basque, which is a language on retreat and even in Basque families only partly spoken as a family language, these are vigorous and in the case of Catalan even expanding languages.

But also small and otherwise regressive standard languages with only a few native speakers left are frequently styled markers of regional identities and expand in symbolic public representation. Cases in point are West Frisian as an identity marker of the northern Dutch province Friesland or the Celtic language Scottish Gaelic, which has its imprint on the linguistic landscape not only in small areas in the Northwest of Scotland, where it is still actively spoken, but also in larger parts of the Scottish Highlands.

Also in the former Communist East of Europe, minority cultures with their standard languages are used to provide regions with a specific coloring: The small group of Sorabians in eastern Germany with their two languages (Upper and Lower Sorabian) enjoyed wider public attention and representation already in GDR times; the Kashubians with also two standard languages in a region near Gdańsk in Poland, however, benefit from a later reorientation of Polish minority policies starting in 2005.

It seems that the general trend toward globalization and uniformity prompts reactions of closer affiliation to regions and emphasizing the specifics of regions.

3.2.2 Dialects as Regional Identity Markers

Notwithstanding the importance of standard languages, it is clear enough that dialects are the major symbols of regional (and local) identities. A dialect is the “naturally” grown, autochthonous language that emerged through a closer communication group or community, through a bottom-up process, in contrast to the standard language with its rather constructed character and top-down implementation. This does not mean that a dialect cannot be functional in several concept fields and codified and have its literature. In contrast to standard languages, however, dialects are not clearly delimited but have fuzzy boundaries with one dialect gradually shifting into the other.

Usually the spatial range of dialects corresponds to historical political entities of all ranks and kinds, within which they once functioned as the colloquial language. It is therefore no surprise that parts of the world with a tradition of political particularism have the most distinct dialects. Their distinctiveness was preserved up to the present day the more this former political particularism has in modern times been transformed into federal and decentralized political structures, which was frequently the case.

It is, however, also true that dialects undergo an erosion process due to the influence of the media, but even more importantly due to the fact that mobility in our post-agrarian societies has increased and the former local and compact communication groups have been replaced by widespread networks. Nevertheless, some dialects enjoy a similar renaissance as standard languages as markers of regional identities for the same reasons mentioned in this other context. They are, however, hardly spoken anymore with all their specifics but in a moderate version as a kind of colloquial language with a dialectal coloring.

A part of Europe with a lot of dialects still spoken are the regions of the former Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation with its particularism that was later transformed into federal and decentralized states: Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Czechia, northern Italy, and the Slovenian lands. Also Poland and Hungary with their oligarchic systems, weak central powers, and rather autonomous counties during longer phases of history left such traces in spite of later centralization (Okuka 2002). In contrast, centralistic France eradicated everything in this respect. Even in the French-speaking part of Switzerland – much in contrast to the German-speaking part – no dialects persisted.

Whether a dialect qualifies as a regional identity marker is, however, still another question. It depends on the prestige of the dialect, i.e., on the prestige of the community of its speakers or at least its promoters. In this respect, we observe, e.g., within Germany, a gradient from the South (Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg) toward the North and within the German-speaking part of the Alps (Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, South Tyrol) from the West to the East.

While in the German-speaking Swiss cantons the local dialect is so prestigious that it can be used in all communicative situations, i.e., also in official speeches as well as in television and broadcasting, in Vienna – at the eastern fringe of the Alps – even parents using dialect for communication among themselves would not dare to educate their children in this language being afraid that they would be stigmatized as social outsiders in kindergarten and school.

This has to do with the fact that in Switzerland, Bavaria, and in the western Austrian Alpine provinces (including what is today South Tyrol) a layer of free farmers independent of noble landlords had emerged very early and dialect was their language. So it was the language of the leading social group. In contrast, in eastern Austria with its dependent farmers, in fact agricultural workers, subordinated to a landlord up to 1848, the local dialect was the language of the ground layer of the society, while the upper classes spoke something near to the standard language or French.

In consequence, dialects are certainly major markers of regional identity in all German-speaking Swiss cantons, in Bavaria, South Tyrol, and the western Austrian provinces Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Carinthia, and Styria. Salzburg is a less obvious case, since it is composed of regions with rather divergent dialects. So they mark rather identities on the regional microscale than the overall provincial identity. A similar situation exists in Upper Austria, where dialects are still prestigious but vary within the province.

4 Conclusion

Language is very important for social cohesion and community building. Since most human communities are territory-based and have developed a space-related identity, language is in most cases an important, if not the primary, marker of space-related identities.

This is most obvious with national identities, which can develop on the basis of an already existing language or the appropriate language is constructed accompanying or after nation building. While it is always a standard language that supports and marks national identities, regional and local identities can also be marked by dialects or vernacular languages. It depends, however, on the prestige and communicative value of a dialect, whether it is used as an identity marker.

There are, however, also remarkable space-related identities getting along without being supported or marked by a symbolic language. From their faint identity, it could, however, be concluded that this is a disadvantage, the European Union being a striking example.