This monography is a synthesis of one part of a wider study upon the reasons and the stream of the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The research object of this book is to examine sociolinguistic feature of the break up of the former Yugoslavia observed from the prism of Serbian national question covering the period from 1967 to 1995.

The importance of the theme of this work might be seen from the fact that at the end of the Cold War era and a bipolar division of the world (1949–1991) on the territory of the European continent the acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide within the wider context of the civil/confessional war occurred only on the ground of ex-Yugoslavia for the sake of creation of the united ethnonational states.

Ideological elements of such a politics partially have been grounded on the linguistic-philological foundations of lingustic-national determination and cultural groupings of the Yugoslav citizens as one of the crucial criteria for the fixing of the political borders of separate independent ethnonational states in stead of one united supra-national Yugoslavia. “Linguistic engineering”, or “linguistic chirurgic”, was implied for the final aim to create independently standardized national languages within officially common Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, language by deepening and using as much as the dialectical/regional differences of the same language. The ultimate result was that minor speaking differences were proclaimed for the national characteristics and as such have been used to be the foundations of the newly declared autonomous national languages. Consequently, common Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, language cessed to exist and with him and a common Serbo-Croatian nationality. Obviously, common Yugoslav state was not needed any more and finally it was replaced by separate politically independent ethnonational states in which the language of majority was quickly codified/standardized and proclaimed as an official public language.

In other words, the main object of the work is to discover the ways in which various elements of linguistic diversity within Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, language have been “emblematised” and taken as markers of national and political identity – identity most vividly symbolised by a republican/national flags of Yugoslav (con)federation from 1967 to 1995. A special attention of the research is devoted to solve the problem of the intersection of language and religion among the speakers of the Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, language as determinants of ethnonational identity that has indeed been one of the defining clothes of at least the last two centuries of the history of the Yugoslavs. In terms of the linguistic situation of the speakers of Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, language, the book focuses on the utilization of dialectical/geographic diversity for realisation of national and political aims for creation of united ethnonational independent states. For that purpose, however, republican borders of ex-Yugoslav (con)federation had to be rearranged as the political boundaries between them (more precisely between Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia) did not correspond in any significant way to the major (ethno)dialect divisions. In short, my intention is to explore the particular case how the non-congruence between political boundaries of ex-Yugoslav republics and (ethno)dialect divisions of Serbo-Croat, or Croato-Serbian, speakers became one of the crucial reasons for inner political destabilisation of Yugoslavia that, unfortunately, finally ended with the bloody civil war (1991–1995).

This monography has six scientific aims:
1) To answer one of the most important sociolinguistic questions in contemporary South Slavic philology: for which reasons Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, language, as common mothertongue and literal language for 75% of the Yugoslavia's population, officially dissapeared from the linguistic map of the South East Europe and was replaced with three “ethnonational” languages (Croatian, Serbian and Boshnjak/Bosnian)?
2) To solve the problem of the role of language in the process of searching for ethnonational identity and group-cultural belonging of the speakers of the former Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, language particularilly in confessionally mixed areas of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
3) To resolve the quandary by analyzing archival sources and different scientific literature: did ethnolinguistic assimilation among Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, speakers was based on influences of one ethnoconfessional group to the other neighbouring one by borrowing of the certain linguistic characteristics in morphology, sintax, phonology and vocabulary?
4) To investigate the role of variability of linguistic differences in the same Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, language to the formation of officially separate standardized “ethnonational” languages on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia.
5) To explore the problem and present results: how differentlly “pro-Yugoslav” and “ethnonationalistic” linguists, sociolinguists and philologists have been understanding, explaining and solving the most urgent and actual problems and questions of the linguistic politics, ethnolinguistic identities and the streams of the further development of Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, sociolinguistics, philology and linguistic planning on both republican and federal levels.
6) To find out what was the role of linguistic nationalism within Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, language in the process of linguistic, cultural and finally political disintegration and decomposition of Yugoslav (con)federation.