Abstract
This paper presents the quantitative analysis of Russian and English resources in Vilnius adolescents’ language. The analysis draws on Vilnius Adolescents’ Language Corpus data, documenting the linguistic practices of 10–16 year old adolescents from differently socially and ethnically marked Vilnius neighbourhoods. The research has revealed strong correlation between ethnic marking of Vilnius neighbourhoods and both frequency as well as lexico-functional variation of Russian resources. Creativity, playfulness, situational strategic use of Russian resources characterize the language of adolescents from ethnically marked neighbourhoods. In contrast, Russian resources among adolescents in ethnically unmarked neighbourhoods have been limited to slang and swearing. In addition, Russian resources may correlate with such values as toughness and masculinity as they were twice more frequent among boys (from ethnically unmarked neighbourhoods) than girls. English resources are available to adolescents through computer-mediated communication, popular culture. Accordingly, the frequency of English resources and lexico-functional categories are similar among adolescents irrespective of the ethnic marking of the district. Generally, Vilnius adolescents’ practices of using Russian and English resources can hardly be described as one system. It is rather an open, dynamic interplay of different sub-systems having their internal organization, norms, which correlate with gender or ethnic marking of Vilnius neighbourhoods.
Highlights
This paper presents the corpus analysis of Vilnius adolescents’ heteroglossic practices1
Vilnius adolescents’ linguistic practices do not exist in a vacuum but are closely associated with particular values attributed to Russian and English2, which may be different in society at large as well as among adolescents
Normalised frequencies of Russian and English resources by gender and ethnic marking of neighbourhoods were calculated with the SPSS statistical program
Summary
This paper presents the corpus analysis of Vilnius adolescents’ heteroglossic practices. Research of Vilnius adolescents’ linguistic practices has shown that Russian and English resources acquire different values in adolescents’ speech (Čekuolytė 2012). Research of Vilnius adolescents’ speech, sporadic (Čekuolytė 2012; Vyšniauskienė 2012), has shown that adolescents have developed a systematic organization of linguistic resources they use. This system and values may not coincide with the values of Russian and English in society at large but they cannot be described as the inadequate mixture, unnecessary insertion of Russian and English words, as commonly voiced in the public discourse on youth speech.
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