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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 831

Part of Session 181: Folk linguistics and society (Other abstracts in this session)

Sociolinguistic Portrait of a Dialect User at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Attitude Analysis

Authors: Krūminienė, Jadvyga; Aliūkaitė, Daiva
Submitted by: Krūminienė, Jadvyga (Vilnius University, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities, Lithuania)

The paper aims at the analysis of the images of a dialect user in the different cities of Lithuania. It should be claimed that in the 20th century the School of Lithuanian Dialectology consistently hold the chrestomatic imperatives and hence formed the samples of dialect informants with the use of the so called NORM criterion. However, such a priori modelling of the sociolinguistic portrait of a dialect speaking subject is erroneous. No doubt, to ignore age, dwelling place or the factor of settled life when describing a representative dialect user would be incorrect. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that in the second half of the 20th century various mobility networks (including quazimobility, e.g. TV, radio) significantly altered the monolingual 'face' of a Lithuanian country dweller: one cannot expect from him/her a consistent dialect expression. Secondly, an intense urban migration determined the assimilation of several dialects and the formation of new dialects in the cities. Thirdly, the younger generation have been deconstructing their attitudes to the so called traditional dialects, or at least the ones more or less reminding them, and with their use start expressing their identity. Thus, the mentioned context encouraged the authors to model the sociolinguistic portrait of a dialectal speech representative. The chief tool employed in the portrayal is the questionnaire worked out for the analysis of the dialectal discourse perception and estimation. The paper discusses the data of the research carried out in 8 cities in different ethnographic regions. Over 500 respondents participated in it representing a particular age contingent (13-17 years old).

The research data shows that the younger generation only partially associate a dialect user with the dwelling place. The significant marks in the sociolinguistic portrait of a dialect user are as follow: age and sociocultural characteristics (positive: a dialect speaker respects his/her native country and is its patriot, etc.; negative: a dialect speaker is not polite, is inconsistent, etc.). It should be claimed that the antinomy city/country has not lost its power to differentiate among the representatives of Standard language versus dialect representatives.

Another important insight might be made from the given research data: different language environment (the environment of different dialects) considerably affects the attitudes and convictions of the respondents toward the dialect users. It is interesting to note that a dialectal speech representative was most positively characterized in the cities of Lowland (Samogitia).

It should be added that the sociolinguistic portraits of dialect users do correspond the reality. Such an insight was determined by the data worked out in the project “Modern Research of Geolinguistics in Lithuania: Optimization of Network of Points and Interactive Spread of Dialectal Information” started in March, 2011, and initiated by the Institute of Lithuanian Language. The project will be carried out until 2014. It collects the dialectal material from all the regions of Lithuania, the informants representing various generations. The first data shows that in the 21st century the representatives of the dialectal (or semi-dialectal) code do not have highly distinctive regional or social marks.