Linguistic Landscape of the City of Rijeka during the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Abstract

This paper examines multilingual usage and cultural pluralism in the public life of the city of Rijeka in the historical period from 1945 to 1990. That is the period after the Second World War, the era of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), marked by the emergence of a new collective identity. The aim of the study is to investigate the level of influence of political, economic and social changes on language usage and the choice of language(s) in the period of advanced industrialization, urbanization and globalization using an interdisciplinary approach, that is contemporary linguistic anthropological and sociolinguistic research that deals with the issue of cultural and language diversity of multicultural and multilingual environments. The paper focuses on the analysis of dynamics of pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of language usage in the city’s history. It is based on the historical analysis of signs of the lingusitc landscape by exploring archive materials and popular newspapers for that period. In order to achieve that, the method of deliberate sampling was used. It seems that political and language ideology is reflected in signs of the lingustic landscape. Thus, given the small number of Italians, the emerging bilingualism (Croatian-Italian) gradually disappeared. Based on the analysis of signs, those languages that are used in the langauge community of Rijeka are part of its lingusitc landscape. Furthermore, it is possible to speak about bilingual, however not multilingual population.