STAVOVI STUDENATA SRBISTIKE I STUDENATA NEFILOLOŠKE ORIJENTACIJE O PRIHVATLjIVOSTI SOCIJALNIH FEMININATIVA U SAVREMENOM SRPSKOM JEZIKU

Abstract

The subject of this paper is to analyze and interpret the attitudes of Serbian language and literature students and students who are not philologically oriented (Psychology, Pedagogy, Sociology, and Social Politics and Social Work majors) from the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš, Serbia toward the levels of acceptability of social feminatives in contemporary Serbian. The analyzed examples include nouns derived by derivational suffixes -(n)ica (e.g. atašeica ‘attache f.’, naučnica ‘scientist f.’), -ka (e.g. administratorka ‘administrator f.’, akušerka ‘accoucheur f.’), -(k)inja (e.g. avanturistkinja ‘adventurer f.’, stručnjakinja ‘expert f.’), predominantly excerpted from the book Priručnik za upotrebu rodno osetljivog jezika (2019). The main aim was to study the factors that have an influence on the acceptability level of the analyzed social feminatives – the gender of the respondents, their program of study, year of study, and frequency of occur- rence of the gender sensitive language forms in their everyday language use. The respondents were asked to rate their perceived level of acceptability (on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 – completely unacceptable to 5 – completely acceptable). Average values greater than 3.4 were determined for 66.67% of the analyzed social feminatives, indicating a prevalent level of acceptability among the respondents. However, average values lower than 2.61 were deter- mined just for 7.69% of the analyzed social feminatives. The most acceptable social feminatives on average are the following: šefica ‘boss f.’, ministarka ‘prime minister f.’, urednica ‘editor f.’, načelnica ‘chief f.’, naučnica ‘scientist f.’, reporterka ‘reporter f.’ (an average value above 4.5) and the least acceptable are: sutkinja ‘ judge f ’, atašeica ‘attache f.’, menjačica ‘changer f.’, vojnikinja ‘soldier f.’, lovačica ‘hunter f.’ (an average value below 2.6). A statistically significant differ- ence was noted among the philology students and non-philology students when it came to rating the (un)acceptability of the selected feminatives. Furthermore, a statistically significant difference exists between the complete (un)acceptability of social feminatives among Serbian language and literature students on the one hand, and Sociology, Psychology, and Social Politics and Social Work students on the other. Finally, a statistically significant difference also exists between the acceptability of the selected feminine noun forms ending in the deriva- tional suffix -(k)inja and the selected feminine noun forms ending in the derivational suffixes -(n)ica and -ka.