Language Planning in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Analysis of the Role of Translators as Agents in Language Change
Language planning and policy (LPP) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has been constructed on the basis of a standard language ideology that has often excluded the speakers from the language legitimisation process. The LPP efforts for the Bosnian language have led to conflicting covert and overt language policies that have resulted in linguistic insecurity among speakers and a failure to build a supranational identity through top-down language planning. By considering the processing, production and attitudes towards doublets this study examines the understudied role of speakers in language change driven by LPP in BiH. Specifically, it focuses on how translators as model speakers navigate top-down constraints of standard language ideology and exert bottom-up pressure to influence the diffusion of lexical innovations in the Bosnian language. To investigate this dialectical relationship, I conducted two experiments integrating acceptability ratings, processing, and production measures. The first experiment, an acceptability ratings task with translator trainees and foreign language students, examined systematic preferences for lexical innovations, potential processing advantages of established items, and the influence of individual differences on doublet evaluation. The second experiment, an interpretation task with professional translators and foreign language students, explored lexical selection patterns and the cognitive representation of doublets through response time and entropy analyses. The results show a preference for long-established items in both production and acceptability, although the relative distribution of established and innovative items varies across doublets, ranging from near-equal usage to complete dominance of one form. Sociolinguistic receptivity emerged as a key predictor of item acceptance, with translators showing higher ratings and more stable response times across entropy levels, which implies that expertise may enhance efficiency and receptivity to variation. This speaker-centred research challenges the views held by language planners in BiH whereby language is considered a tool for ethnic self-indexing. Rather, this study demonstrates that for speakers of the Bosnian language doublets are associated with complex patterns of competition that extend beyond simple ideology-driven choices. Ultimately, the results of this study show that language change in BiH is not primarily driven by top-down language policy and underlying ideologies, but by speaker agency, receptivity to innovation and the strength of entrenchment of the doublet items in speakers’ mental lexicons.
language planning and policy, doublets, Bosnian language, standardisation, translators, language attitudes, language change, language variation, speaker agency, entrenchment, mental lexicon
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations