The Role of Language in the Building of Croatian National Identity in Istria

Exemplified by Several Istrian 19th- And 20th- Century Periodical

Abstract

In this paper, we address the building of Croatian national identity in several Istrian newspapers of the 19th and 20th century, from the earliest publishing enterprises to 1955. This was a time of complex political circumstances and changes in the Istrian region, when an important role in the process of language planning and in language policy was played, among others, by publications that influenced the formation of the public language: Naša sloga, Hrvatski list, Pučki prijatelj, Istarska riječ, and Hrvatski glas. Texts dedicated to bilingualism and trilingualism, Germanization and Italianization of language in education, administration, post offices, seafaring, railway, Church, and other forms of both public and private communication reflect clearly the language policy of the period of building Croatian national identity. In the atmosphere marked by the general dissolution of cultural institutions (schools, people’s associations, libraries, societies, and journals) in both Croatian and Slovene – which helped the assimilation of the local population considerably – the emergence of publications in Croatian was extremely important for the language. Additionally, they were an important source of information and familiarization of the population with legal regulations concerning the status of the Croatian language, whereby these media became a powerful tool of spreading the rhetoric of the ruling parties that created or tried to influence the linguistic reality and practices.