Kronika hrvatskoga jezikoslovlja
In this book, Ivo Pranjković (b. 1947), one of the most influential contemporary Croatian linguists, brings a lucid, polemical and chronicling panorama of Croatian linguistics from the mid-20th century to the early 1990s.
The book is not a classical history, but a chronicle – a collection of essays, commentaries and critical reviews of key events, books, polemics and figures of Croatian philology in a turbulent period (post-war standardization, purism, unitarism, Croatian Spring, normalization in 1971, the collapse of Yugoslavia).
Pranjković sharply criticizes unitarist tendencies, purist excesses, but also some contemporary approaches – often polemically (e.g. towards Stjepan Babić and others). The book is a kind of chronicler's diary: he records disputes about spelling, grammar, language identity in the context of politics and culture. The style is sharp, argumentative, erudite, but accessible – not a dry chronology, but a lively intervention in current debates.
A key work for understanding Croatian language policy of the 20th century – especially the 1960s–1990s.
One copy is available
