Review article
Acquisition planning in regard to a small linguistic community (Example of an Italian enclave in western Slavonia)
Vesna Deželjin
orcid.org/0000-0002-5370-4509
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Abstract
Almost a quarter of a century ago, in 1992, Michael Kraus affirmed that a language should not fear for its future, i. e. won’t be extinguished, if it is spoken by at least 100 000 speakers. However, this statement failed to be reliable since there have been languages spoken by hardly 100 000 people that have not been endangered as well as those whose future is insecure and even at risk despite a million of its speakers. The Italian communities situated in western Slavonia, and in particular on the territory of three small towns, Lipik, Kutina, and Pakrac, represent one of those highly endangered linguistic enclaves. This paper aims to detect reasons that endanger the Italian speaking communities in western Slavonia, since other Italian communities in Croatia do not face the same situation. I start from the assumption that within the existing legal acts and institutionalised activities, there have been recesses concerning acquisition planning, unexploited so far, that could slow down the process of vanishing of this Italian enclave, or that could help it to preserve its cultural identity.
Keywords
Italian speaking enclave; endangered linguistic community; acquisition planning
Hrčak ID:
190908
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2017.
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