(NON)ACADEMIC LINGUISTIC THEORIES AS A DEVELOPMENT FACTOR OF BASQUE ETHNIC NATIONALISM (BASQUE-IBERIAN AND VASCONIC HYPOTHESES)

Purpose. The author analyzes the role and importance of academic Basque language studies in the development of Basque nationalism. Methods. The author uses the methods of intellectual history and the principles of interdisciplinarity proposed in the studies of nationalism. Results. Various concepts, based on the ideas and values of continuity and the continuous historical, linguistic and geographical presence of the Basques in their region of residence, are analyzed in the article. The author analyzes modernist versions of the history of the Basque language also. It is assumed that a symbiotic situation arose in Basque nationalism between a nationalistic imagination based on an ethnic paradigm and external academic studies, which stimulated academicization and formal normalization of nationalism, whose reputation too doubtful because its supporters preferred to use radical methods and violence. The author presumes that continuity theories and modernist approaches actualized the heterogeneity of the Basque nationalistic imagination. The article shows that modernists standardized the Basque language, turning it into a factor of the visualization of ethnicity and identity. It is also presumed that supporters of continuity were too active in their attempts to historize the ethnic paradigm of the Basque political imagination, inspiring the rise of symbolic prestige of membership in the Basque civil nation