A MIXTURE WITHOUT MIXING: FEARS OF LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL HYBRIDITY IN THE SLOVENIAN-ITALIAN BORDERLAND

This article explores the recent trend of avoiding the terminology of "mixing" and "mixture" and accordingly replacing it with the term prepletanje ("interweaving") in current Slovenian social scientific literature as well as in public language use. The avoidance is especially remarkable in the SlovenianItalian borderland where the studies of linguistic and cultural contact, of bilingualism and multiculturalism are flourishing on both sides of the state border, in particular among the ethnic Slovenians from the Adriatic coast. The paper brings forward evidence of the systematic " mixophobic" nature of this rejection of the terminology and imagery of mixing and hybridization, replacing it with the notion of linguistic and cultural interaction in which interwoven strands can always be separated again, if necessary.