Original scientific paper

Introduction to Vernacular Stylistics

Joško Božanić ; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Split

Abstract

In Croatian research on stylography, vernacular stylistics has a minor
status. The majority of Croatian citizens are native dialect speakers
of the Chakavian, Kaikavian and Shtokavian vernacular idioms. The
three largest Croatian cities are centers of the Kaikavian (Zagreb) and
Chakavian (Split and Rijeka) idioms. In spite of these facts, and the
enormous recent poetic production in Chakavian and Kaikavian idioms,
vernacular stylistics in Croatia is almost non-existent.
This article is a discussion of the role and significance of vernacular
stylistics in Croatian dialectology, which neglects the stylistic level of
expression, and in Croatian stylistics, which neglects vernacular texts.
The author especially focuses on the relationship between the Croatian
standard idiom and the organic idioms of Shtokavian, Chakavian
and Kaikavian texts and well as those texts whose stylistic level is
conditioned by the diachronic shift.
The author opens the discussion with a discussion of reception
theory in order to analyze various positions of the message recipient
which are conditioned by the division of the idiom on the synchronic
and diachronic axes. The article analyzes the stylistics of speech and
colloquial texts, the stylistics of texts from the diachronic perspective
and the stylistics of organic idioms. The paper problematizes the
question of the status of Chakavian and Kaikavian idioms as dialects/
vernacular in relation to the Croatian standard language.
This paper also thematizes questions regarding the relationship
between artistic and poetic production in organic idioms: the
question of the relationship between cliché-ridden poetisms and a creative intensification of the dialectic speech and the question of
the regionalization of dialectic literary production with regard to the
representative national literary production.
Finally, the author interprets a few brief texts in Chakavian,
Kaikavian and Shtokavian idioms in order to demonstrate the
interpretation models of vernacular stylistics.

Keywords

vernacular stylistics; text interpretation; Croatian language; Chakavian idiom; Kaikavian idiom; dialect; standard language

Hrčak ID:

86373

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/86373

Publication date:

15.10.2011.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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