The Names of the Balkan Peoples and the Names of the Inhabitants of Balkan Countries in Lexicography (on the Example of the Dictionary of Montenegrin National and Literary Language)

Abstract

Lexicography is yet another witness of the historic recurrence in the Balkans — fifty years after banning Miloš Moskovljević's Dictionary of Contemporary Serbo-Croatian Literary Language with Language Manual (1966), the distribution of the first volume of the Dictionary of Montenegrin National and Literary Language (2016) of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts was stopped due to political reasons. Among other things, the representatives of the Albanian and Bos­niak people in the Parliament of Montenegro demanded that the Dictionary of Montenegrin National and Literary Language be withdrawn due to the "offensive" and "discriminatory" definition of the terms Albanian and Bosniak. This has shown, once again, that Balkan ethnonyms and (or) demo­nyms have considerable weight in the descriptions of lexical material and that they can lead to the situation where politics defeats lexicography. That is why we will deal, primarily from a linguistic perspective, with the lexicographic definitions of ethnonyms and demonyms that are controversial in Montenegro. Starting from their foundation on ethnic or civic identity, we want to examine the possibilities and justification of the definition of these concepts bearing in mind the broader socio-political framework. Keywords: ethnonym, demonym, people, inhabitant, Balkans, dictionary, lexicographic definition, redefinition, ethnic identity, civic identity