Sociolinguistic case study on the linguistic rights of Serbs in Essay

Sociolinguistic case study on the linguistic rights of Serbs in Croatia - Essay Example It is the ability to speak in more than one language and to fully understand the communication patterns. Such occurrences have been enhanced by different factors such as; love for literature, geographical diversity and historical causes. Also, politics and psychological factors like seeking identity have contributed to linguistic diversity (International journal of the sociology of language 1974, 12). The homogeneity caused by languages influences genocide of other communities. This is the systematic destruction of a particular group of individuals based on their opinions or differences in either their religion race, or language. The study is to review the situation of the ethnic minorities by exploring the history of the area, the developments of languages and the current issues facing minorities in Croatia. Croatian, Hungarian and Serbian are the commonly used languages by the people of Croatia (Hogan and Wolff 2003, 122). Serbian and Croatian were sufficiently similar to be identi fied as Serbo-Croatian. However, during the war outbreak in 1991, Croatian was identified as the main language. In the census conducted in 2001 the minority groups were Serbs, Bosniaks, Italians, Hungarians, Albanians, Roma, Slovenes and Czechs just to name a few whose percentage ranged between 0.2 and 4.5 percent. Historically, the communities gathered in the same region through migration and there was a continuous ethnic tension among the Serbian and Croatian groups mostly being political. (Varennes 1996, 78).