Prof.dr.sc. DUNJA PAVLIČEVIĆ-FRANIĆ, full professor

Mr. KATARINA ALADROVIĆ SLOVAČEK, research assistant

Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb

HR - 10000 ZAGREB, Savska cesta 77

Phone: + 385 1 6327-339; fax: + 385 1 6177-860

E-mail:

The phenomena of language change in the age-related sociolects

Abstract

Different variations of the realizations of language as a system are called varieties. This is a sociolinguistic term which includes factors within the language as well as those factors outside the language (time, surroundings, age, sex, situation...). There are four basic levels of varieties: diachronic (temporal stratification), diatopic (spatial stratification), diastratic (social stratification) and diaphasic (functional stratification) (Dittmar, 1997; Milroy & Milroy, 2000;Mićanović, 2008).

In this paper changes in the Croatian language will be studied as diastratic varieties and as diaphasic varieties. The corpus will consist of a situational and age-determined language of adolescents, analysed on the lexical and grammatical levels. This sociolect has been changing markedly under the influence of two facts: the first one refers to the communication of the “global teenagers” in the electronic media (mobile phones, internet, chats) and the other one to the influence of the English language which, as a lingua franca, has been penetrating into the communication of the younger generations. The participants of this research were pupils from Croatian elementary and high schools (N = 300) aged 12–17. The data were collected by means of a symptomatic questionnaire (of Internet portals and mobile phones), in a field action research and through pedagogical observation. The data were analysed with SPSS statistical software using Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Hi-square test.

The aim of the research was to find out whether the undeniably high level of transfer from the English language will have a damaging effect on the Croatian lexical system. Moreover, we aimed to establish whether in this omnipresent electronic communication we are dealing only with the stylisation of the communicative process or with the changes which influence the creation of the new linguistic discourse.

Key words: diastratic varieties, diaphasic varieties, age-related sociolects, Croatian language acquisition

I INTRODUCTION

A language can be differently spoken, partially or completely differently written, depending on the speaker, time, place, and specific social circumstances in which communication takes place. Language changes arising as a result of various realizations of one and the same language are known as language variations or language varieties. Sociolinguistics distinguishes four basic levels of varieties (Dittmar, 1997; Milroy&Milroy, 2000; Mićanović, 2008): diatopic level or spatial stratification, diachronic level or temporal stratification, diastratic level or sociological stratification and diaphasic level or functional stratification.

In this study we have focused primarily on the diastratic and diahasic varieties and more precisely, on the sociolect-based communication of Croatian adolescents (aged 12 to 17), in the electronic media. Their communication has been going through changes influenced by the English language functioning as the “lingua franca”. Diastratic language varieties precede the phenomenon of the diaphasic stratification related to the functioning/non-functionong of the standard language, or conscious annulation of the standard language norms of the Croatian language speakers.

If we treat language as the varieties’ space, we necessarily have to talk about the sociolinguistic notions including linguistic and extralinguistic factors. Linguistic factors make up the system of the Croatian language and the differences between the standard language and the Croatian dialectal idioms. The extralinguistic elements involve the environment (language changes resulting from the societal influence), situation or context (language changes resulting from a specific communicative situation), and age/sex of the participants involved in the communicative process (language changes influenced by temporal stratification).

The most obvious changes occur at the lexical, grammatical and orthographic levels. The choice of the lexical material is directly influenced by the English language. Present is the interpolation of the English norms into the Croatian language as well as the transference of the “computational morphology” from the electronic media into language (IT signs, symbols, emoticons).

The outcomes and facts resulting from this study are part of an extensive several-years-long scientific project[1]. Possible ways and procedures of shaping internet and text messages of Croatian adolescents are presented and describes in the paper. In the course of the analysis of the examples gathered, a basic dilemma has emerged: are we dealing with the functionally different literacy and the stylisation of such communication, or is this a more serious problem, that ofthe “evading communication” and “media hybridisation” (Škiljan, 2000)? The aim of the research was to investigate if the undeniably high level of transference from the English language would have a harmful influence on Croatian lexical system and if, in the omnipresent electronic communication, this is the case only of the stylisation of the communicative process or of the changes influencing the creation of a new type of discourse.

II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

From a diachronic point of view, different languages in contact, primarily German, Italian and Hungarian, have influenced Croatian in the course of its standardisation. The German language has influenced the idioms of the Croatian north-west, Italian has influenced the idioms of Istria and Dalmatia, and Hungarian has had some lesser influence in eastern Croatia. The influence of these languages has weakened lately and there has been an ever growing transfer from the English language into the lexis of the functional communication in the Croatian language. Recently, a number of studies have been carried out investigating the influence of these languages on the Croatian language in general and on its vocabulary and functional grammar in particular (Kovačević & Pavličević-Franić, 2002; Jelaska, 2005; Pavličević-Franić, 2005; Vodopija, 2006; Vilke & Medved-Krajnović, 2006). Levels of varieties and the stratification of language on the sociological and functional levels have been dealt with by Croatian (Silić, 1998; Mićanović, 2008) as well as foreign authors (Dittmar, 1997; Milroy & Milroy, 2000).

Most theoretical treatises and empirical studies have found that a significant change has occurred on the level of the general usage of Croatian lexis in the past decade. The process began in the middle of the 20th century and has manifested itself primarily in Croatian literary artistic production. A greater influence of the English language on conversational communication has been noted in the past twenty years in almost all European languages, including Croatian.

Loan words from the English language into Croatian have penetrated at all language levels, yet they still mostly belong to the conversational style of spoken communication. As younger generations of speakers abolish the difference between spoken and written language, and between communicative and standard language communication in their media discourse of information transfer, anglicisms have flooded written communication. During that process, features are necessarily transferred from one communicational level to another and the intertwining of the communicational codes is under way, which can have positive and negative consequences. Such lexis mostly belongs to specialised domains (music, marketing, IT, science), certain age groups (adolescents, younger intellectuals...), or certain places (urban environments). Transference is mostly conditioned by the need to name a certain imported object or notion from the source language, although one should not disregard the prestigious power of the Anglo-American English language and culture in the field of music and film. It needs to be emphasized that in the corpus of the new English words in the Croatian language there is only a small number of adapted loan words, or borrowed anglicisms adjusted to the norms of the Croatian language, as most of them are unadjusted lexemes used in the same way as they are used in the source language. They have not been adjusted to the Croatian language in orthography, grammar, or morphology. The reasons are rarely linguistic, and are mostly extralinguistic, or socio-culturally conditioned. In accordance with the afore mentioned, the influence of the English language has been the cause of change at the level of the general language in use as well as the change occurring in the list of lexemes used in the conversational language and functional grammar of younger speakers, the so-called “global generation” or the “M” generation(Nikolić-Hoyt, A., 2006).

III FEATURES OF AGE-RELATED SOCIOLECTS

B. Bernstein's considerations of limited and elaborated language codes (1979) can be applied to the communication process in the internet and mobile communication as well. As text messages have the limit of 160 characters (with spaces), they assume characteristics of restricted codes. On the other hand, elaborated codes exhibit extensive and detailed qualities as well as the connotative approach. That means that a new type of linguistic form, or the mixed code, is created in which communication is necessarily condensed and it rests more on the redundancy and denotation than on linguistic information. Such means of communication allows one to form new varieties, a subsystem within a system as well as to createa new interlanguage with combined elements. A similar phenomenon occurs in internet communication in various social network chats. Such communication is the example of a concise semiotic code, more or less different than the expected texts found in the everyday communication process. Bearing all this in mind, in establishing the basic features of written communication, we can extract three groups of characteristics found in the communication of today’s adolescents in the Republic of Croatia: media-related (technological) features, sociological features, and linguistic-semiotic (code-related) features of messages. New media have become ever more sophisticated and have therefore enabled the creation of new media-related discourse types. Sociological features of text messages are being reflected in social context, in other words they are being developed under the influence of the environment within which adolescents communicate. They are conditioned by the age-group within which belonging to a certain age-related discourse shows. This enhances the creation of a communicative geotisation. In this way, instead of the spread of social and linguistic competences, a reverse process is under way, the shift away from the expected communication and enclosure within the group’s social environment. Linguistic features primarily refer to the language aspect of the communication in which the language of the messages becomes ever more particular, the “third form of communication” (Kesseler & Bergs, 2003), different and often incomprehensible to the participants of the communicative process who do not belong to the age-group in question (Pavličević-Franić, D., 2009). The choice of the medium, as one of the components of the communication process, or the message mediator, directly influences the creation of the “mixed subdomain” (Škiljan, 2000), in which all communicative discourses intertwine. This is exactly what happens in the communication performed via internet profiles and text messages. Code intertwining and mixing is apparent at all levels: clear borderlines between the manner of expression, spoken and written language, rhetorical and logical discourses are cancelled. The message is formed in a newly created semiotic interlanguage and in accordance with different rules of orthography and grammar. The deconstruction of the existing, connotative linguistic codes has become a basic feature of the internet and mobile communication pertaining to younger generations. In accordance with the given facts, the following features are associated with the age-related discourse of the new “M” generation,[2] to which adolescent communication belongs:

  • mixed code (the intertwining of various communication types-spoken and written language, private and public discourse, various language styles);
  • saturation with loan words (the interpolation of anglicisms and other differentiated sociolects, colloquial expressions, and elements pertaining to jargon);
  • semiotic interlanguage (the globalisation of signs and symbols, regardless of the primary language of the participants in the communication process - ; ; :-*, :D);
  • condensed communication (the summarising of utterances due to the restricted nature of the language code);
  • functional illiteracy (the conscious breaking of the norms of grammar and orthography to enable fast and simplified communication);
  • communicative impenetrability (a message rendered unintelligible or barely intelligible to the majority of speakers outside of the age-related and group-related discourse).[3]

Within the Croatian language, whose standard variety lexis includes around 30 000 000 tokens

(Tadić, M., Računalna obrada hrvatskoga jezika, 1997), varieties are mostly manifested at the lexical level. Under the influence of the English language and due to the vigorous penetration of signs pertaining to the electronic communication(IT symbols, e.g. :-<, X :# , :-*,:-&andemoticons )[4] into the general lexis of the Croatian language made of active and passive lexemes, the creation of the interlexis, or the lexis in transition is under way in Croatian (Samardžija, M.; Selak, A., 2001). For instance, neologisms (lajkati (to like),retard (a retard), moronka (a female morone), đrk (a jerk)), fashionable words, (kul (cool), supač (super), oki-doki (all right)...), revived words (choriti (to sleep), chagati (to dance), kulya (a failing grade)), unadapted loan words (message, baby, hi...). In the communication process this leads to the creation of a new and different discourse type, particularly noticeable in the media-based communication of adolescents andrather unintelligible to the speakers outside of their age-related sociolect circle.

IV THE STUDY

  1. Description of the study and subjects

The aim of the study was to investigate how and to what extent does the English language influence the speech of Croatian adolescents. The research has been carried out on a corpus consisting of three hundred pupils attending their final grades of elementary school, and high school students (N = 300) aged 12 to 18.In accordance with the aim, the following research problems have been posed:

Will the undeniably high level of transference from the English language have a negative effect on the Croatian language system, or can this phenomenon be defined as the widening of the list of lexemes and vocabulary enrichment?

Can such interaction occur without impinging upon the structure of the Croatian language, which, being a “small language”, should take increased care of its maintenance?

Three questionnaires were used as instruments in the study. Language varieties were noted. They were collected by means of three methods: the pedagogical observation of the speech of Croatian adolescents in everyday situations and conversations, content analysis of the Facebook profiles of the selected participants on the web page and content analysis of the text messages of the selected participants. In the first part of the research spoken communication was studied in which the researchers carried out a guided interview and participated in it as moderators. In the second part of the research, the individual written electronic media communication was studied. Content analysis was used to isolate the necessary examples out of the large corpus collected. Further, the SPSS statistical software tool was used to analyse the data. The tests used were the analysis of variance and t-test.The research lasted three months in order to allow us to find as many language varieties as possible and to help us form relevant conclusions on the basis of a great number of examples collected.

2. Hypotheses

In accordance with the aim and problems of the study, the following hypotheses have been posed:

H1 – It is expected that Croatian teenagers use many anglicisms, sociolects, and interlanguage abbreviations in their spoken interaction.

H2 – Most deviations are expected at the lexical level (anglicisms and regionalisms), followed by the grammatical level (ponology, morphology and syntax), followed by the level of orthography.

H3 – A great number of anglicisms is expected to be found in Facebook and text message communication.

3. Study results

In the analysis of the profiles[5] found on the web page it has been noticed that for their status[6] participants mostly use sayings (most often those are love aphorisms); verses of poems; descriptions of their emotions (giving their psychological profiles); their current social status (travelling, going out, important events...) and information for other users and their “friends”.The text exchanged by the participants in their messages mostly has the form of the conversation (dialogue) by means of which participants exchange information on everyday topics. Communication carried out via internet profiles and text messages differs in text length (text messages require short and concise communication, due to the limitation in the number of characters).It was interesting to find that the texts girls post on their internet profiles are significantly longer than the ones which are posted by boys. Also, girls use text messages in everyday communication more often than boys do, and their text messages have a significantly greater number of characters (greater amount of text). In communication, participants mostly use conversational style, saturated with anglicisms, sociolects, and localisms, as is typical of spoken communication.

Abbreviations are frequently used in both types of communication. They can be classified into three groups: English, Croatian, and international interlanguage abbreviations (which cannot be assigned to any one of the two languages). An interesting fact is that there is no consistently applied rule used in the formation of abbreviations. Therefore, various manners of formation can be found in the abbreviations analysed (vt – volim te (I love you), cu – see you); vowel deletion (ns – danas (today), znam (I know) – znm, sry - sorry); first letter of the word (pet – petak (Friday), inb - inbox); doubling letters (pozz – pozdrav (greeting, hello)); number insertion(4ever – forever, U2 – you too). A substantial number of the newly formed Croatian abbreviations has been collected. An increase in their usage is apparentwhen compared to the results of the previous study (Pavličević-Franić, Gazdić-Alerić, Aladrović Slovaček, 2009), in which English abbreviations were predominant in the corpus gathered (table 1). Interlanguage abbreviations are particularly interesting. They represent the so called hybrid discourse(Škiljan, 2000), the combination of linguistic and onomatopoeic elements, hardly comprehensible to the participants in the communication process who do not belong to the particular age or social group. The meanings of those abbreviations are very specific and hard to comprehend without the knowledge of the particular communication code. For instance, weeeeeeeee(vocal imitation of the English exclamation), marks positive emotions (when something is good, great, when we look forward to another person, event, success, grade ...).