ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the interaction of the language-dialect distinction and the rise of national consciousness and nationalism in 19th-century Europe. Much as a nation is defined as a self-defining group, so too a language can, in this context, be defined as a self-defining idiom. Metalinguistic self-awareness intensified in the ‘long nineteenth century’, in tandem with rising national consciousness in Europe. In the process, different normative standards competed, and different aggregation levels of (self-identifying and self-differentiating) groups of speakers fluidly mirrored competing national programs. Various clusters of Slavic languages are probed into, for instance, Czech-Slovak or Illyrian/Serbo-Croatian. Some large-scale and long-term patterns can be mapped for this complex cluster of consciousness-raising processes. Over time, philological-historicist language definitions and normativities shift toward a sociological-demotic definition and normativity. Language identity is anchored less in history and more in territorial demarcations from related neighbors; by 1900, language definitions had become more atomistic and cross-community antagonistic.
