Resumen de On the bureaucratization of Serbian

Duka Klikovac

• This article covers the bureaucratization of the Serbian language over the last several decades. Emphasis is placed on seven features of bureaucratic language that make it less transparent and comprehensible to the receiver:

  (1) nominalization, (2) generality, (3) inde®niteness, (4) explicitness, (5) euphemisms, (6) wordiness, (7) quasi-scienti®c character and the use of words of foreign origin and of fashionable words. The author concludes that the general purposes of using such language include (a) the need to avoid responsibility for promises made, (b) the need to distort reality, to make it seem better than it really is, and (c) to show the speaker/writer as being responsible, diligent, and well educated, whether this is true or not. Many of the examples given show the universality of the phenomena, as such language is used in almost every economic and/or political system, regardless of the ideology behind them.