Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

JEZIK U UPOTREBI / LANGUAGE IN USE
is so identified, but in such a manner as not to impede the overall presentation of
the common core as an over-arching system.
Although the grammar and vocabulary learned by the students is presented
as common to BCS (with the proviso that words specific to separate systems are
marked as such in vocabulary lists), each lesson presents the basic dialogues in
three parallel columns, identified as Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. (Montenegrin
is not given a separate presentation because its status as a separate codified
language is not yet sufficiently established; the basic characteristic traits of Montenegrin
are briefly described, however.) In this way, the student who is intent on
learning only one of the three is able to do so, the student who is interested in
making comparison with the other two is able to do so, and everyone is able to see
at a glance how much commonality there is, at least at the communicative level.
Reaction to these books in the West has been uniformly positive, especially
reaction to the sociolinguistic commentary (Alexander 2006: 370-426) for
its explication of a situation which continues to mystify those on the outside, and
most of all reaction to the textbook since it allows all the successor languages to
be taught in a single classroom in a nonconfrontational manner. Reaction within
former Yugoslavia has been muted, no doubt because each of the three successor
countries naturally wishes its own language and culture to take pride of place, despite
the inescapable financial fact that Western universities are lucky if they can
offer instruction in even one language from the former Yugoslavia. Inhabitants
of former Yugoslavia tend to view the label ‘BCS’ with irony, which is also understandable
(one cynical Bosnian report glosses SBH not as ‘srpski- bosanskihrvatski’,
but as ‘schizophrenic Bosnia-Herzegovina’).
One clearly negative reaction, however, has come from the Serbian scholar
Prvoslav Radić, who treats the book as one of two examples of what he calls ‘external
standardization of Serbian’ (his other example is of a toothpaste package
insert, which provides different versions for the Serbian and Croatian markets, respectively).
Of course, neither of his two examples represents ‘standardization’:
one is a translation of a single text and the other is a pedagogical presentation of
the basic facts a student needs in order to begin to acquire practical competence.
Rather, the article presents Radić’s perception as a native Serb, and communicates
the degree to which he feels each outsider’s conception of Serbian agrees or
does not agree with his own. Thus, he criticizes the unnamed translator because
s/he seems to take excessive pains to differentiate the ‘Serbian’ and ‘Croatian’
toothpaste descriptions, and he criticizes the textbook because it does not present
ekavian and ijekavian Serbian in equal measure, and because it presents all
the language material in terms of what he views as excessive yet inconsistent
‘polarizations’.
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