American Cinematography about Serb Language in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The paper focused on the linguistic analysis of two American feature films and on what they could confirm in the sociohistorical and cultural senses of the word. Those are the films Behind Enemy Lines (2001) and The Hunting Party (2007), which were distributed worldwide, and broadcast on various TV stations and their channels. The paper offers an analysis of modest film sections in Serb language, more precisely – in the language here selected to represent “Serbian“, in the way its speakers (actors) were instructed to represent the Serbs. Linguistic analysis indicates that the language represented in these films has served the purpose of the already habitual policy of the West towards the Serbs and the Serb language. Following its own geopolitical interests in the Balkans, that policy has always tended to minimise the Serb ethnic and linguistic area and limit it to Serbia, more precisely, to its central parts. Therefore the language of the actors playing Serbs in these Bosnian film stories was organised in such a way that they linguistically (ekavisms, da + present construction, etc.) and in every other sense represent newcomers, more exactly – the aggressors coming from Serbia, and not the Bosnia-Herzegovinian Serbs who have lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the first Serb settlements appeared in the Balkans.