Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

Jelena Filipović: LANGUAGE POLICY AND PLANNING IN STANDARD ...
titles of teaching staff at the Department of Iberian Studies, School of Philology,
University of Belgrade (which I define as an interested community of practice).
At the official internet presentation of the Department terms such as sekretarka
(feminine form of the noun sekretar, ‘secretary, administrative assistant’) asistentkinja,
docentkinja, vanredna profesorka (feminine forms of the nouns assistant,
assistant professor, associate professor) appear along with asistent, vanredni
profesor (corresponding masculine forms of the same nouns), etc. Empirical evidence
from internal written communication indicates that this gender sensitive
use of academic titles has partially been accepted in other departments within
the School of Philology, so more and more often official memos are being sent
by upravnica and predsednica (feminine forms of the words ‘head (of the department)’
and ‘president (of a committee)’) and received by članice (‘member’
fem., pl.) and članovi (‘member’ masc., pl.) alike (for a more detailed discussion
on gender sensitive language policies in Serbian, see Filipović 2009b; Filipović,
forthcoming). My feeling is that such de facto language planning can become a
part of our standard language culture only after Serbian academic and general
public recognizes this language behavior as ‘commonsense’ and ‘normal’, i.e.,
as linguistic practice which does not put into jeopardy the survival of standard
Serbian as we know it.
At any rate, if we accept the idea that our societies are complex systems
and treat them as networks out of which interested communities of practice
emerge which allow us to adopt new information and adapt to it, we might be
able to produce emergent language behavior which would present a considerable
input in the process of new attitude formation toward the standard language. And
only when these new attitudes bring about a shift in the overall language behavior
and result in the creation of new language ideologies in terms of what is correct,
normal, acceptable, expected, etc. in the standard language, can we begin to formulate
new de iure language policies which will find their place in textbooks,
prescriptive manuals and official governmental declarations.
4. Conclusions
The alternative approach to language policy and planning in standard language
cultures presented in this paper is based on a new interpretation of language, its
forms, functions and communicative domains. Thus, language standardization
is not understood as a fixed top-down imposed canon which makes it practically
public written discourse. During that period, a number of female associations and charity societies
was founded, and it was completely normal for the terms predsednica, podpredsednica, članica
(feminine morphological forms for president, vice-president, member, etc.) to appear in their Statutes
and Bylaws.
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