Language Purism, Handbooks, and Differential Dictionaries

Abstract

As discussed in Chapter 4, Croatian has a rich tradition of grammars and dictionaries dating back to the 16th century. The works from the earliest periods are on the whole descriptive and inclusive in their nature, but in the 19th century we begin to see a greater emphasis on the avoidance of foreign expressions or other elements deemed to be undesirable for some reason. Particularly in the final stages of standardization, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, there begin to appear language handbooks dedicated to the promotion of ‘good’ or ‘proper’ usage. In the study of language advice in the modern standard language, it is possible to divide such works into several different periods, which are of different durations and had varying degrees of influence on the life of the language. Such periodizations are necessarily inexact, and individual authors of such works do not always conform entirely to the general trends of their times, but we believe that a division into three broad periods provides a useful framework for discussion.¹ We cannot give a detailed discussion of every individual work here, but will focus on those that we feel to be most significant or widely influential.