Mother tongue as a determinant of ethnic identity in population censuses of Serbia

Abstract

Information about linguistic affiliation was always collected according to the notion of mother tongue. Although in demography, mother tongue is seen as a more objective component of ethno-national affiliation, research results suggest significant disparities that are correlated with changes in ethno-statistical nomenclature and flotant behaviour of particular ethnic groups. The divergence between language and nationality in Serbia's population censuses unambiguously indicate that several ethnic communities can simultaneously declare the same mother tongue, but also that members of the same ethnic group can declare different mother tongues. The oscillations that occur in changes of the size of the population of certain ethno-linguistic modalities are milder than the variability of ethno-national modalities. The most expressive statistical imbalances were recorded in ethnic groups which were introduced into statistical nomenclature due to the targeted ethno-national stratification of the existing nations. Ethnic dissolution of the existing people simultaneously caused the process of linguistic stratification, by the principle of joining >> affiliate& mother tongue, most often of dialectical diversity of existing languages. Changes in the statistical nomenclature of languages that were adjusted with the initiation of new ethno-national modalities during the XX and the beginning of the XXI century serve as a statistical verification of the linguistic stratification of existing languages according to the principle of domination of the subjective understanding of the national identity. In terms of census statistics, this means that the processes of national homogenization, which were based on the language as a factor of integration during the nineteenth century, were replaced by modern processes of linguistic (primarily dialectical) homogenization based on an unstable and statistically unreliable trait of ethnicity, which makes it a peculiar absurdity, both in theory and in practice.