What can language biographies reveal about multilingualism in the Habsburg monarchy? A case study on the members of the Illyrian movement

Abstract: The reconstruction of language biographies of the Illyrian movement members was based on their available, published or unpublished, texts written in all of the idioms they were using (Croatian dialects, Štokavian literary language, German, Latin). The focus of this research was primarily on journal and autobiographical entries and private correspondence, containing reflections on personal attitudes towards their own language behaviour and the language real-ity of their social environment. The aim of this research was to gather, from a micro-perspective, information about the dynamics of macro-level sociolinguistic developments in the first half of the 19th century, primarily focusing on German-Croatian bilingualism and the deliberate switch from the Kajkavian to the supra-regional Štokavian literary language in north-western Croatia. The fact that the supra-regional literary language gained prestige in a multilingual social setting in which public domains were appropriated for German and Latin can be considered an effect of cultural and political activities of the Illyrists. The methodology of this research has encompassed methods developed in textual linguistics, discourse analysis, qualitative content analysis and biography analysis. Firstly, our aim was to gather information on idioms that were predominantly used by the members of the Illyrian movement in various text types and domains in different periods. Secondly, we investigated the Illyrists’ reflections on the personal language use in various domains, personal theories on proper (native) lan-guage use and acquisition, as well as reflections on the relation of personal language use and a sense of belonging to a social, i.e. national group.