Brotherhood and unity

Abstract

Nationalism and national identity are abstract yet extremely powerful forces that can be at once a source of cohesion and faction. And a government’s ability to harness or rein-in these powers can be a crucial factor to its longevity, lest it be overcome by them on other fronts. These concepts—along with nation itself—are an amalgam of many elements that can include culture, economics, geography, history, language, politics, religion, etc., and the importance of a particular element can vary from group to group. In this dissertation, the focus is on the salience of language as an essential element of national identity, and the exploration of this topic has been done through an analysis of elementary language primers from 1941 through 1992 from the region known for a majority of that time as Yugoslavia. I argue that we can measure how important governments think language is as a component of a particular national identity by seeing how they treat and utilize—even instrumentalize—the language or languages spoken in their territory. This direct governmental use of language as a tool is particularly important in revealing how that government connects language to the national identity(-ies) in question. Certainly language policy and laws passed by a government to bolster or limit a particular language’s use can tell us a lot—in a very straightforward and overt way—about what that government sees as important; but, there is another more subtle—yet potentially more long-lasting—thing that can strengthen these efforts even further: teaching children. Looking at educational materials, in this case elementary language primers, can provide insight into what the government thinks is important with respect to its national identity. This analysis, done within a framework that focuses on three historical periods in the history and development of Yugoslavia, shows that governments do use language primers as a vehicle to promote and strengthen the nation, national identity, and national cohesion. We can be fairly confident that every book analyzed in this study was approved or published by the government where it was used; and, in each of the three historical periods that fall within the scope of this study, we see the goals of the state reflected in the language, content, and pedagogical methodology of the primers that were published during a given period.