Linguistic and extralinguistic influences on the family idiolect of a vertically multilingual speaker of the Croatian language

Gudelj, Krešimira. (2017). Linguistic and extralinguistic influences on the family idiolect of a vertically multilingual speaker of the Croatian language. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Linguistics.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij lingvistike) [mentor Jelaska, Zrinka].

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Abstract

Everyday social changes have an impact on the life of the community as a whole, as well as on the life of an individual. While it used to be a custom for an individual to spend childhood in their place of birth, to educate themselves, to find a spouse and raise their children, today, due to a great mobility of population, many leave their place of birth to educate themselves, to find a job, to start a family. Apart from bringing their cultural and social patterns into the new environment, they also bring their language, their speech that differs from the speech of the environment and, in that way, they change the compact language framework. The question is how the idiolect of each of them will be affected by the starting of the family with a speaker whose language is a majority-spoken language or with a speaker whose language is also a minority-spoken language in the new environment. This paper explores how the speeches of individuals whose native idiom is different from the language of other members of the family or the environment. It also explores linguistic and extralinguistic influences on the family idiolect of a vertically multilingual speaker of Croatian language who speaks the local and the standard Croatian idiom, and, due to different life circumstances, also a third Croatian idiom – the environmental idiom which differs from the local idiom. We selected speakers who completed high school and university education because, having completed their education, all speakers should be able to use the standard idiom, and partially also the environmental idiom or the idiom of their spouse as the third idiom. We researched whether such individuals use a certain interlanguage for the purpose of communicating within their own family, i.e. an interidiom with variable features, or they create a new, contact idiom. The speakers were chosen based on their belonging to one of four groups, according to whether their idiom is I. a majority-spoken idiom within the family and in the environment, II. a majority-spoken idiom within the family, and a minority-spoken idiom in the environment, III. different from the idiom of their spouse and a minority-spoken idiom in the environment, IV. a minority-spoken idiom within the family and in the environment. The respondents belonged to one of the two groups of speakers. One group encompassed the speakers from Ston, and the other the speakers from Imotski. By a semi-structured interview, we examined which linguistic and extracurricular principles influenced the choice of the respondent's idiom. The interviews were recorded, which served as audio material, and then the parts were transcribed and analysed. Audio material was listened to and evaluated by 6 assessors who used scores to rate how much the recorded speeches differ from the local idiom of Ston and Imotski. The transcribed material was analysed phonologically, morphologically, syntactically and lexically in order to discover which features of the local idiom had been preserved and which had been replaced and by what. After comparing personal speakers’ views, the evaluation of six assessors and language analysis, the principles that affect the choice of idioms of vertically multilingual speakers were outlined. Six hypotheses have been made in this paper, three of which are fully confirmed, two partially, and one is not confirmed. It has been shown that not all changes in the local language of the respondents in the vertically multilingual community are in line with the initial assumptions and that the changes do not occur according to the division by groups, but result from the variety of factors, which is confirmed also by the assessors and the characteristics of speech. It has been confirmed that vertically multilingual speakers, whose native idiom is different from the language of other family members or the environment, try to bring their local idiom closer to the standard model. It has been partially confirmed that vertically multilingual speakers use standard or environmental lexemes when the speaker’s native lexemes are incomprehensible to the other members of the family. It has not been confirmed that vertically multilingual female speakers are more inclined to change their local idiom compared to male speakers, and when their mother idiom is different from the idiom of other members of the family or the environment, only a small difference was found in favour of the female respondents. It has been confirmed that the major changes in the idiom of vertically multilingual speakers are influenced by a variety of individual, different factors. Since all the speakers, with their graduate school, continued their education in another city, their local idiom became a minority-spoken idiom in the new environment. They had to use the standard language at the faculty, and they met and talked to speakers from other places, which was pointed out by some of them as a possible factor of change in their own speech. Regarding individual factors, one of them is growing up away from the family because of different life circumstances; the job has the most important impact on the choice of standard in vertical multilingualism, because the majority of respondents point out that in their work place they use, try to use or at least think they use the standard language; the children for whom they try to preserve their native idiom and in that way transfer a part of the local identity; the status of native and environmental idiom within the society and within the family; the awareness of the value of personal idiom because it expresses identity and the belonging to the personal language community; the desire to fit into a spoken environment or the desire for their own identity in a situation when they cannot use the mother tongue. The assumption that vertically multilingual speakers are not always aware of changes in their native idiom in a vertically multilingual community has been confirmed. It has been partially confirmed that the impression of the assessor about the idiom of a vertically multilingual speaker depends on the share of dialectal and standard or environmental features in the speech of an individual respondent because, apart from the number and share of the relevant characteristics, an important role is played by the use of local lexemes. By analysing the idiolect of the respondents, we noted which characteristics of the idiom of Ston and Imotski are constant and which are susceptible to change and disappearance. The paper also presents the tables showing the local characteristics of the respondents from Imotski and Ston compared to the standard ones and the samples of the respondents’ speech.

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