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Pragmatics meets Ideology: Digraphia and non-standard orthographic practices in Serbian online news forums
Abstract and Figures
Serbian is a unique example of active digraphia, that is, the use of two scripts
by the same speech community. Writers of Serbian use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets in various domains. Moreover, the Internet has brought to
the fore competing orthographic variants within the Serbian Latin writing system. Technology-driven and ideologically motivated, non-standard de facto orthographic norms emerge as a result of the medium’s affordances embedded
in a given socio-political context. This paper presents a case study on alphabet choice and the use of non-standard orthographic variants on two Serbian news websites, Politika Online and B92. The results show that a two-fold process occurs in Serbian orthographic practices, emerging from Internet discourses from below, including online commentaries: the dominance of the Latin alphabet
over Cyrillic; and the stabilization of non-standard Latin orthographic variants. Metalinguistic commentaries of online posters illustrate the tension between pragmatic concerns and language ideologies.
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... As a consequence, nationalists in Serbia have appropriated the alphabet as a distinguishing feature compared to Bosnian and Croatian (Saric and Felberg 2017). This distinguishing characteristic gives nationalists a way to convey the uniqueness of the Serbian nation and turns Cyrillic from an alphabet to a nationalist symbol (Jovanovic 2018, 614;Ivkovic 2013). ...
How do people respond to symbols related to nationalism, and does having political context matter? We argue that nationalist symbols influence perceptions when in a political context. Leveraging that the Serbian language can be rendered in Cyrillic and Latin, and Cyrillic is associated with nationalism, we examine the use of linguistic symbols in Serbia. Using social media data, we demonstrate that politicians employ Cyrillic to discuss topics traditionally associated with nationalism. Then, based on a pre-registered survey experiment, we show that exposure to Cyrillic absent political context does not alter nationalist attitudes but that respondents exposed to a politician’s message in Cyrillic viewed that politician as more nationalist. Our findings speak to the power of nationalist symbols, demonstrating that said symbols are powerful even when associated with subtle, language-based manipulations. Moreover, they have broad implications for how politicians signal their political beliefs, including how they work to associate themselves with everyday symbols.
... The Krajina Serbs' defense of Cyrillic against the imposition of Latin was one of the causes of the ethnopolitical conflict in Croatia. In modern Serbia, both Cyrillic and Latin scripts are used equally (even though according to the constitution, the official alphabet in Serba is Cyrillic) (Ivković, 2013), which is especially noticeable on official government websites where both scripts are used. For comparison, the transition to Latin in Turkey, carried out by Atatürk as part of his westernization policy, is not questioned today, not least because most Turkic post-Soviet countries are also adopting Latin, which is becoming a new bond consolidating the Turkic world. ...
The article examines the foreign policy of two countries—Turkey and Serbia— through the lens of ontological security, according to which macropolitical communities perceive security threats through perception of their own history and of their place in the world. As Turkey reshapes its identity, it is facing challenges rooted in the specifics of the Republic’s formation: neo-Ottomanism and a desire to regain leadership in the Islamic world, which contradict the ideological and institutional heritage of the Republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Problems related to the Kurdish minority and recognition of the Armenian genocide add to the general dissonance. Serbia, whose statehood is based on the foundation laid by Slobodan Milošević, has to adapt the Kosovo myth of its foundation to the current geopolitical realities of the Southwestern Balkans. The “victimhood” and defensive narratives designed to reduce ontological insecurity barely manage to maintain the stability of this macropolitical community.
... Croatia adopted only Latin as its official script in its postwar language policy and young Croatians are now largely illiterate in Cyrillic. Serbia, however, upheld its tradition of digraphia (Ivković 2013;Jovanović 2018). ...
Both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts are routinely used for writing in Serbian. In existing ideological discourses, using Cyrillic is associated by some with Serbian ethnic authenticity and loyalty to nationhood, but by others with conservatism, Russian-leaning politics and dangerous ethnonationalism. For some, using Latin is associated with cosmopolitanism and a western-leaning internationalisation, but for others with an assault on Serbian heritage, values and tradition. In this context, with which script do Serbians today most closely affiliate and does established ideological discourse actually inform script choices? By seeing this affiliation as linguistic citizenship, the paper analyses survey data and metalinguistic explanations about which script Serbians choose to represent their own names as the most personal of identities. The data show that while some simply write their name in either script depending on habit, younger Serbians, and Serbians outside metropolitan areas, seemingly bias Cyrillic for ethnonationalist reasons as discourse predicts. However, especially revealing is that linguistic citizenship among older Serbians is sooner mediated by lingering notions of Yugoslavia and Serbo-Croatian as country and language that no longer exist but once indexed ideals of equality and harmony in the region.
... A review of previous research shows that a larger number of studies were done in the Latin alphabet compared to the Cyrillic alphabet. The specificity of the Serbian language is reflected in the specific phenomenon of synchronous digraphy, which represents the parallel use of two alphabetic systems -Latin and Cyrillic (Ivković, 2013;2015). This means that the same word can be written in Cyrillic and Latin. ...
To understand the reading process, it is necessary to explore the mechanisms of visual word recognition. The basic level of that recognition is the processing of letters, their size and visual identity. The specificity of the Serbian language is characterized by the parallel use of two alphabetic systems – Latin and Cyrillic, which contain a number of common, but also their own unique letters. Since some of the differences between the fonts are based on visual specific aditions at the end of letter's lines, there is also a significant contribution of fonts in letter recognition and reading. The main goal of this study is to examine the effect of font type on the processing of Latin and Cyrillic words. The aim was also to examine the effect of letter degradation on the word processing in these two alphabetic systems. The study included two experiments with Latin and Cyrillic words written in lowercase and uppercase. Participants were 221 students from the University of Banja Luka. Three factors were varied in both experiments: alphabet, “visual availability” (which refers to the visibility of words after degradation), and font type. Two analyses were performed ANOVA by subject (F1 analysis) and ANOVA by item (F2 analysis). Results show that there is a main effect of visual availability on processing speed of words. Visual degradation has slowed reaction time, but this effect is not the same in Latin and Cyrillic words. Significant interaction of font and alphabet is confirmed only in F2 analysis, so these results have limited validity. This study also revealed differences between lowercase and uppercase. Degradation of lowercase was more detrimental that degradation of uppercase. The obtained results indicate that word processing in two alphabetic systems can be partly explained by the visual characteristics and grapheme structure of their letters.
This study aims to specify the definitions of two terms, bigraphia and digraphia, and examine how these phenomena appear in post-socialist countries. It is currently a global phenomenon to use two or more writing systems in one country, due to the spread of English and the Internet. Bigraphia means when the function and prestige of two writing systems (or two varieties of one system) are equal. On the other hand, when there is a difference in the function and/or prestige between two writing systems, it is defined as digraphia. The paper examines the combination of writing systems in post-socialist countries such as Russia, Belarus, Serbia, and Uzbekistan. In-digraphia refers to a situation in which variations of one writing system coexist, and out-digraphia refers to a situation in which two different writing systems coexist. A narrower sense of digraphia is observed in Belarus today: Belarusian Cyrillic-Т(BC-T) is used to write Tarashkievitsa and Belarusian Cyrillic-N (BC-N) is used to write Narkamaŭka. Out-digraphia is observed in Serbia and Uzbekistan. In these countries, Cyrillic and Latin scripts are used to write Serbian and Uzbek. Out-digraphia is also confirmed in Russian texts: It is commonly thought that only Cyrillic letters are used to write Russian, but recently the use of the so-called “macaronic alphabet,” which is a mix of Cyrillic and Latin letters, has become common.
The purpose of this article is to give a quick overview of intercultural tendencies in certain Russian regions’ modern linguistic landscapes: where they can be found, why languages other than Russian are used, what the purpose of their use is, and who uses them. The material for this study includes several thousand photos taken between 2010 and 2018 in different regions of Russia, representing advertising material and signboards where different languages and cultures meet. Methodologically, the photos were classified and analyzed according to the types of code-switching and hybrid structures appearing in and on them. Some history is given on the cities studied, as well as the state of the languages that are part of their linguistic repertory. A few particular situations are scrutinized, involving national republics and other areas where linguistic minorities exist (major cities, provinces, villages). A strong tendency for the use of foreign culture was evident in the findings all over the country; the English language was preferred, but not perfect; an Asian influence was emerging everywhere. Wordplay characterized the creative employment of letters and words. Yet the cultures of the former Soviet Union, as well as the cultures of linguistic minorities (other languages besides Russian) were underrepresented, even in the national republics. The conclusion is that the modern language of the street is oriented towards the fusion of diverse cultures, but not necessarily those that represent the ethnic and cultural richness of Russia. Multiculturalism as reflected in public signage is more lively than multicultural policy because of emotionality and linkages with styles and scripts.
This study investigated the language choices of provincial governments in China by employing the concepts of interest, norm, and power within the Language Management Theory (LMT) framework. We approached this issue by examining which language options were presented on the websites of 31 provincial governments in China (Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan not included), and found that 11 offered Chinese versions only, 16 offered both Chinese and English versions, and only four offered Chinese and multiple foreign language versions. For both the governments and international visitors, subsequent analysis suggested that additional language versions facilitated the fulfillment of communicative and symbolic interests. However, this entailed a higher loss of pecuniary interest from a government-based perspective. Here, the voluntary abandonment of pecuniary interest indicated both a lower power position and a more open attitude toward international communication. In summary, the data showed that not all provincial governments in China were ready to embrace globalization in the context of cyberspace.
Sociolinguistics is a dynamic field of research that explains the role and function of language in social life. This book offers the most substantial account available of the core contemporary ideas and arguments in sociolinguistics, with an emphasis on innovation and change. Bringing together original writing by more than twenty of the field's most influential international thinkers and researchers, this is an indispensable guide to the newest and most searching ideas about language in society. For researchers and advanced students it gives access to the field's most pressing issues and debates, as well as providing a platform for new initiatives in sociolinguistic research.
This chapter examines the linguistic features of CMC in Hong Kong, based on a 70,000-word corpus of email and ICQ messages collected mainly from undergraduate students whose first language is Cantonese, with English as their second language. Text analysis of the messages was complemented by a questionnaire survey. The study provides a comprehensive overview of CMC features in Hong Kong, including Cantonese-English code mixing and morpheme-by-morpheme literal translations. The analysis reveals that some CMC features observed in Hong Kong are different from those of other Chinese-speaking communities, such as the Taiwan-based CMC community described in Chapter 3, while other findings are comparable to those in previous studies of CMC in Chinese-speaking contexts.
Migration groups and diasporic communities are important contemporary sites for bi- and multilingual discourse on the Internet, which this chapter explores, taking discussion forums of German-based migrant groups as a case in point. German and home languages (such as Greek, Persian, and Indian languages) are both used on these forums, albeit in proportions depending on the participants, topics, and interaction contexts. Quantitative language choice analysis of a popular Persian discussion forum suggests that the assumed relationship between home-language preference and home-culture topics holds true on a general level, but is challenged by fine-grained analysis of language choice within single threads. Sequential analysis of code-switching on Persian and Greek discussion forums suggests that typical patterns of discourse-functional code-switching are common on these forums. Methodologically, this chapter outlines a unified approach to the study of multilingual computer-mediated discourse, suggesting how to complement qualitative code-switching with quantitative language choice analysis.
Ivković, D. (2015). Cyber-Latinica: A comparative analysis of Latinization in Internet Slavic. Language@Internet, 12, article 2.
This article proposes an account of the emergence of grassroots, non-standard Latin-based orthographic conventions in Internet Slavic – here termed Cyber-Latinica – in four standard languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet: Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, and Serbian. The comparative analysis shows that online writers in these languages employ a range of strategies specific to computer-mediated writing, resulting in a clear distinction between latinization practices in the ex-Yugoslav standard languages, Serbian and Macedonian, on the one hand, and Russian and Bulgarian, on the other. The analysis further shows that the emergence of novel orthographic conventions is not contingent on the grammatical structures and genetic proximity of the languages, but that the patterns are governed by the interplay of several factors underlying orthographic encodings: orthographic economy, shared alphabet inventory, keyboard and alphabet mappings, and societal bilingualism, including diasporic, linguistic minority, and second language writing practices.
Carol Myers-Scotton has edited a collection of essays that covers the choice of one style of English over another in everything from Bible translations to “surprise in poetry” to supervisor-worker interactions on the automobile assembly line. An important theme developed to varying degrees in these papers is the notion that speakers and writers, as rational actors, exploit the unmarked-marked opposition regarding audience expectations so as to convey messages of intentionality charged with social or psychological import.
The book is wide-ranging in its coverage, with detailed discussion of the context of language policy in a variety of countries and communities across North America, Europe, Africa and Asia.
This chapter investigates the use of Roman-alphabeted Greek in CMC, a phenomenon known as "Greeklish." Quantitative analyses of a group of discourse features were conducted on a small corpus of Greek and Greeklish postings to online discussion lists. The results show that Greeklish messages are generally more conducive than those written in Greek script to the activation of discourse strategies such as simplification, informality, and deviance. Via face-to-face interviews, a qualitative investigation was conducted of users' perceptions and value judgments regarding this phenomenon. Users were found to hold well-developed views on the expected contexts for using Greeklish, reasons for its use, and its peculiarities and aesthetics, expressing interesting opinions about its linguistic nature and the symbolic sociocultural load it carries.