Whither Variationist Sociolinguistics in Serbia? (original) (raw)

Socio-linguistic research of the dialect of Preševo in the South of Serbia

Baltistica, 2017

This paper shows the results of the research of the dialect of Preševo, a small town in the south of Serbia. Since social and urban dialectology and socio-linguistic methods of research in Serbian linguistics are new, a theoretical consideration is given first. Then the methods used in processing the material from the dialect of Preševo are explained. The implication scales and diagram which show the level of representation of dialectological features in relation to the standard features are shown too. The conclusion is that the dialect in this city has the features of the standard Serbian language and it is exactly how it is distinguished from the dialect of the villages.

Broad vs. Localistic Dialectology, Standard vs. Dialect: The Case of the Balkans and the Drawing of Linguistic Boundaries

2008

1. Preliminaries Dialectology as a scientific pursuit is interested in charting and accounting for the range and spread of similarities and differences—that is to say, variation—within languages, and where appropriate, across languages too. As such, dialectology and the study of dialects more generally intersect in several ways with Balkan linguistics, the study of the interactions among various Aromanian (a close relative of Daco-Romanian spoken mostly in Greece and Macedonia), Daco-Romanian (the language of Romania), Romani (the language of the Gypsies (Rom)), and Turkish—that show structural parallels linking them in a particular type of contact zone known as a " Sprachbund ". First, there can be dialect divisions within a language that indicate that one dialect or dialect area of a language has been influenced by neighboring Balkan languages while other dialects have not, or have not to the same extent. This is the case, for instance, with the Torlak dialects of Serbia...

Inter Lingual Influences of Turkish, Serbian and English Dialect in Spoken Gjakovar's Language

European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research, 2014

In this paper we have tried to clarify the problems that are faced "gege dialect's'' speakers in Gjakova who have presented more or less difficulties in acquiring the standard. Standard language is part of the people language, but increased to the norm according the scientific criteria. From this observation it comes obliviously understandable that standard variation and dialectal variant are inseparable and, as such, they represent a macro linguistic unity. As part of this macro linguistic unity and by sociolinguistic terms view, members of linguistic community speakers, through changes in phonemic and sub phonemic in toggle sounds, at the same time reflect on the regional and social affiliation background of the speaker. Gjakova is the city where fossils have remained as slang interlingual influences of Turkish language, Serbian language and after the war in Kosovo is very widespread of English slang. The methods we have used in the treatment of our case have been...

Influence of Bosnian dialects on youth speech in Slavonski Brod

2016

The aim of the paper is to present research on language and identity of the youth in Slavonski Brod, the town on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, due to its geographical location, has been under a significant influence of the neighbouring Bosnian dialects. This is a town characterized by great immigration processes during 1990s, in the times of Croatian War for Independence and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Throughout history, Bosnian Sava basin was inhabited mostly by Croats. After the occupation of this part of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Serbs during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, Croats were forced to leave the area and they inhabited Slavonski Brod in great numbers. Today, twenty or so years after the occupation of Bosnian Sava basin, a great number of young people can be heard using elements of Bosnian lexicon as well as syntactic structures typical for the parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina where a considerable flow of refugees came from. Con...

Notes on a New Dialectology of Montenegrin

2019

The paper presents some observations on the first post-Yugoslav handbook of dialectology focusing on Montenegrin (Čirgić 2017), which sets criteria for identifying the diacritic features of Montenegrin Štokavian. In contrast to Yugoslav-era treatments of the Štokavian dialect (e.g. Ivić 1958, Peco 1985), the new handbook individuates Montenegrin and presents it as an organic whole, rather than examining its relationship to the broader South Slavic dialectological context. The task is challenging, given that there are two distinct dialect areas of Montenegrin. The trend towards describing former-Yugoslav dialect areas in alignment with the new state formations has been noted for Lisac’s handbook (Lisac 2003; Greenberg 2004).

Linguistic Landscape of the City of Rijeka during the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Proceedings of The 3rd International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences, 2019

This paper examines multilingual usage and cultural pluralism in the public life of the city of Rijeka in the historical period from 1945 to 1990. That is the period after the Second World War, the era of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), marked by the emergence of a new collective identity. The aim of the study is to investigate the level of influence of political, economic and social changes on language usage and the choice of language(s) in the period of advanced industrialization, urbanization and globalization using an interdisciplinary approach, that is contemporary linguistic anthropological and sociolinguistic research that deals with the issue of cultural and language diversity of multicultural and multilingual environments. The paper focuses on the analysis of dynamics of pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of language usage in the city’s history. It is based on the historical analysis of signs of the lingusitc landscape by exploring archive materials and ...

The Dialects of Panslavic, Serbocroatian, and Croatian: Linguistic Taxonomies in Zagreb, 1836–1997

Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics

If linguistic nationalism presupposes a homogenous national language, then “dialect” taxonomies become interesting objects of study. This article examines three instances of linguistic nationalism published in Zagreb. The three texts, published in 1836, 1919, and 1995, come from (1) Ljudevit Gaj and Jan Kollár, (2) Dragutin Prohaska, and (3) Miro Kačić. The different texts propound three quite different taxonomies of “dialects” within the imagined national language. Changing strategies of dialect classification imply different understandings of the national language, reflecting in turn changing political circumstances. The Panslavism of 1836 gave way in 1919 to interwar Yugoslavism, or alternatively Serbo-Croatism, which in 1995 then gave way to Croatian particularist nationalism. The article ends with speculations about future linguistic taxonomies.

[Ilić Marija, Balla Mónika, Buljanović Sandra] Domains of Hungarian Language Use in Belgrade

Jezikoslovlje, 2012

This paper attempts at opening a dialogue on multilingualism in the city of Bel-grade today. Belgrade, like other Southeast European cities, has developed much differently over the past decades than other European capitals, e.g. during the 1990s, the city and its population experienced the break-up of Yugoslavia, the au-thoritarian and nationalistic regime, sanctions, NATO bombing, both large-scale out-migration and in-migration. All these changes were not stimulating for the city’s multilingualism. Belgrade, however, has more than 10 percent of population whose native language is not Serbian. This paper aims to explore the use of Hun-garian in the city. The analysis is based upon questionnaires that were dissemi-nated among Hungarian speaking population in Belgrade. The results we are go-ing to present are only preliminary, since the collected corpus is limited in terms of small numbers of respondents and insufficiently diverse sample, e.g. the major-ity of respondents were students of Hungarian. However, we would like to offer an overview of the Hungarian speaking population in Belgrade today and indicate possible trends and major domains of Hungarian language use. Added to that, we will take a critical stance on monolingualising tendencies of the state and its insti-tutions as well as on the policy of the compartmentalisation of languages. Key words: multilingualism; critical sociolinguistics; survey; Belgrade; Hungarian minority; domains of language use