Talk: How does my Serbian change

An analysis about language variations in different social occasions

This study has the aim to address the constant change of one’s way of expressing themselves in their mother tongue (Serbian, in this case), when in various social occasions. The usage of different lexical, grammatical and syntax constructions would be presented with reference to what caused them.

Language is a live organism, that changes throughout the time, develops and adjusts to it speakers. One cannot simply dismiss the variations of any everyday spoken language, and claim that a language is by itself a homogeneous creation. Every person’s way of expressing themselves is different, but can we really take one individual’s personal utterance in order to provide a wider picture of the way a language changes, when used in different social circumstances as well as in conversations with diverse co-speakers? This is exactly what I did in my study.
By analysing my personal conversations, both in electronic form (chat, e-mails, comments on social media), as well as recorded, live conversations with various people, I was able to determinate how age, our relationship, mutual language(s), their origin, as well as our/their current place of living impacted the way I express myself during these conversations. Since variations of Serbian, in combinations with other (Slavic) languages, can particularly differ from one another, I was determined to present how a single person can influence a whole system of someone’s speech by just engaging in a conversation with him/her. The analysis that was carried out, by comparing various materials, helped me provide an answer to the question - how and why, to be more precise, what is the key element which impacts my way of expressing myself? I was hoping to show that, even though a certain person comes from a certain place and grows up in a certain environment, they can express themselves in diverse ways, just by being among different people.

Info

Day: 2020-11-20
Start time: 16:15
Duration: 00:30
Room: Ruqaiya Hasan
Track: Sociolinguistics
Language: en

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