Zanikání státního jazyka: běloruština v procesu formování národa
The Vanishing of a State Language: Belarusian in the Process of Nation-Building

Summary/Abstract: This study concerns the diminished use of Belarusian in Belarus. It analyzes the language’s position in nation-building, as it was an important part of the Belarusian nationalist movements. It applies a Miroslav Hroch’s model, which has been extended to include not only circumstantial preconditions, but also discursive phenomena. One of the study's main conclusions is that a more extensive spread of national self-identification and real political participation are necessary before the Belarusian nation can be considered fully-formed. It also points out that restricting the use of Belarusian to ethno-symbolic functions, which leads to a decrease in its use in everyday communication, has been part of Soviet nation-building as well as the current government’s effort to build a civic nation-state, rather than ethnic one.

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