Abstract
This chapter aims to present the entangled relations of language and identity in the multicultural urban areas of Eastern Croatia, namely the city of Osijek and the children and youths that belong to these multilingual communities. This region of Croatia has witnessed numerous changes in governments and languages, either official or unofficial, and is known for the devastating consequences of the war that took place in the 1990s in this part of Croatia. In spite of the resulting depopulation processes, there are still 20 official minority languages spoken in the region and many of them are nurtured in minority education models in many of Osijek’s schools. In order to examine the complex relations of identity and language, 19 in-depth interviews were conducted with multilingual children and youths who attend these models. Children and youths with a diverse multi-ethnic background participated in the study which encompassed Serbian, Slovak, Hungarian, Albanian, German, Roma-Bayashi and Bosnian-Croatian. The interview questions covered a wide range of topics concerning the communicative practice and language attitudes of the interviewees and the data collected were analysed in the framework of critical applied linguistics drawing on the work of May (Journal of Linguistics, 9(3), 319–347, 2005) and similar thinkers, where linguistic identities are perceived as dynamic and hybrid phenomena. Furthermore, the input from linguistic anthropology and the notions of marked and unmarked identities (Bucholtz and Hall. Language and identity. In: A. Duranti (Ed.) A companion to linguistic anthropology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 268–294, 2004) also contributed in the data analysis. In this framework, unmarked identities are those that represent the elite and the powerful, which in the Croatian context, as the interviews have shown, are the Croatian and English language, while the use of other languages represents manifold and layered marked identities. The analysis of the data shows that, despite multilingualism being generally perceived as a personal resource, some common patterns regarding a diverse ethnic background emerged; the findings thus show that the hybrid multilingual identities are often performed as a form of hidden practice in closed communities, and are frequently perceived as an asset in places outside of Croatia, however, also as a form of resistance.
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Notes
- 1.
Osijek, the administrative and university centre of Slavonia and Baranja, has witnessed the decrease of 8 % in population between the last two censuses (Census of 2001 and 2011).
- 2.
In Croatia members of national minorities can effectuate their constitutional right via three basic models – A, B and C. The A model refers to classes in the language and script of the national minority, B refers to bilingual classes where natural sciences subjects are taught in Croatian, and humanities and social sciences subjects are taught in the minority language. The model C refers to nurturing of language and culture in up to 6 lessons a week (MZOS 2015).
- 3.
Bourdieu defines habitus as a durably installed set of dispositions which tend to “generate practices and perceptions, works and appreciations, which concur with the conditions of existence of which the habitus itself is the product (Bourdieu 2005: 13)”.
- 4.
The teaching of the Romani language organised at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb is fiercely criticized by the Bayashi community, considering that Roma-Bayashi is the language spoken by the majority of the Roma community in Croatia: “The fact is that 90 % of the entire Roma community in the Republic of Croatia are Roma-Bayashi, to whom the Romani language is completely foreign, and they do not want to accept Romani-Chip as their mother tongue since the Bayashi language, which they have been passing on by oral tradition for centuries, is actually the OLD ROMANIAN LANGUAGE …” (Balog 2015). This information confirms that the discourses of the elites generate knowledge without taking actual practices into consideration.
- 5.
One of the issues certainly worth investigating in further research would be to try and define this “kind of tradition”. According to statements from the interviewees, it is closely connected to the common experience of migration, exile and maintenance of common speech, yet it does not involve other cultural artefacts such as books, stories and songs. The existence of such a community brought together by common experience in Osijek can be perceived as a valuable source of ethnographic and ethno-linguistic data.
- 6.
Mehmedbegović (2011: 19) wrote about language as an individual cognitive asset. She points to the researches which have shown a positive correlation between bilingualism and mathematical skills in children (Cummins 1991: 84 as cited in Mehmedbegović 2011: 20), and general cognitive advantages arising from meta-reflections on language (Vygotsky in Mehmedbegović 2011: 20).
- 7.
The 2008 statistical data indicated 11 members of the Roma minority in tertiary education institutions (Novak 2008: 1).
- 8.
For more on the origin of the proverb see Braunmüller and Ferraresi 2003: 2.
- 9.
Later on in our conversation, Melanija, Laura and Žaklina’s father, who is the founder of a cultural arts society in Hrastin, was proud to emphasise that the Hungarian spoken in Hrastin is one of the purest and most correct forms of the Hungarian language. It might be interesting to compare the attitudes of Melanija’s father to her decision to speak Budapest Hungarian in some future research on language diversity in Osijek and the nearby area.
- 10.
For more on the importance of language in determining identity see Bucholtz and Hall (2004).
- 11.
For more on ethnic division in Vukovar see Čorkalo Biruški and Ajduković (2003, 2007). For a recent short analysis of the city’s ethnic and lingusitic division see DW’s http://goo.gl/1eTmEf.
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Meštrić, K.B. (2017). Habitus of Multilingual Children and Youths in Urban Areas in Eastern Croatia. In: Pink, W., Noblit, G. (eds) Second International Handbook of Urban Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40317-5_18
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