After the establishment of the first University Faculties of Missiology (Protestant and Catholic) in Germany, there was a dynamic development of missiology in Europe. In the second half of the twentieth century several academic missiological centers were established in America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. The missiologists of the first half of the twentieth century through their scientific work have proved that missiology is a theological and interdisciplinary science. This was achieved by emphasizing in their publications that the essence of missiology finds its foundations not in references to history and direct missionary practice, but the theology of mission, i.e., the theological justification of the Church’s missionary activity. This trend of missiological reflection was highlighted in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and in numerous papal documents of the post-conciliar period. Teaching on the missionary nature of the Church has become the subject of scientific and interdisciplinary missiological reflection. Unfortunately, up to these days the acceptance of missiology as a theological science, is not yet fully understood and not always accepted.

The article attempts to consider issues related to the presence of various language varieties in Croatian literature – general/standard (native and foreign), regional (dialects, regiolects), social (sociolects). Focusing primarily on artistic narrative prose, the author tries to show how the heritage of centuries‑old multilingualism in the culture of Croatia translated into various stylistic phenomena, how it evolves and what consequences it may have not only for the language itself, but also for cultural phenomena. Thanks to this approach, an attempt is made to highlight the circumstances related to the choice of the Shtokavian dialect as the literary language in the 19th century.