A case study in the termination of the pluricentricity of a language: the Serbo-Croatian linguonym

The debates on the status and names of the language(s) of Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins, and Serbs have long tradition, not just in the countries of ex-Yugoslavia, but worldwide. The question carries the burden of an ultimate ideological filter amongst their speakers and often inflicts further conflicts. The paper describes the historical context of the latest stage of the Serbo-Croatian pluricentricity (1985-1990), the period that still has not been sufficiently explored. It has been shown that pluricentricity is not a state, but a process in which speakers are going through various stages of identification with some linguonymous or pluricentric concept in different socio-political contexts. The Yugoslavian case shows that pluricentric disbalance had direct political and linguistic consequences. It seems the pluricentric categorization can be enriched with some new criteria, such as shifting pluricentricity, and the speakers’ pluricentric perception in relation to their choice of name for a language.