| Summary: | This thesis is about the development of a national identity through the means of language, both as a terrain and a vehicle. This thesis argues the modern intellectuals’ sense of moral mission in colonial nation-building was a response to exogenous modernization, and involved imagining the people as Albanians separated from Albania. This was most clearly encapsulated in the adoption of the same standard language as Albania in 1968 and the intellectuals’ subsequent management and reaction to external constraint, which was imposed in such a way as to prove counterproductive and enhance the intellectuals’ status still further. Yet, because there are limits to the way in which imagination of a society can conflict with reality, the standard language has failed to bring political or linguistic unity. In arguing this, the thesis provides a new interpretation of the development of Kosovo Albanian national identity.
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