Lexis of the textbooks in the nineteen-eighties: a sociolinguistic approach

Abstract

Language is an essential part of a nation's identity. Language, especially its lexis, reflects social and historical changes that a nation goes through. It means that lexis development takes place simultaneously with social changes that occur over time. The second half of the twentieth century in Yugoslav philology is characterised by Serbo-Croatism, i.e. the intention to merge two languages into one. The political parlance became a part of widely used public language and permeated school textbooks as well. The paper analyses ideologically determined lexis in the textbooks for young learners that were used in schools in the nineteen-eighties. Qualitative and quantitative analysis was applied in order to obtain the answers to the following questions: Do texts in the analysed textbooks promote the values of the political regime in Yugoslavia?, Do they contain the lexis of political discourse, the so called ideologisms?, Is it possible to illustrate the transformation of ideological literary contents through visual arts? Textbook, as an important teaching aid when it comes to the development of pupils’ literary skills, can help promote political values of the ruling regime, in this case the values of the Yugoslav communist regime.

Keywords

• textbook analysis
• serbo-croatism
• political lexemes – ideologemes