THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC HERITAGE THROUGH THE LENS OF SERBIAN-MAJOR STUDENTS AND STUDENTS OF OTHER LANGUAGES

Abstract

With the rapid development of technology and the availability of mobile devices of various types and purposes, people and their entire reality are being moved into a virtual world where the levelling of diversity and multiculturalism is emphasized and cultivated. Therefore, in sociolinguistics and other social sciences, there has been an ongoing interest in the issue of the cultural identity of digital citizens. As, at a certain point, education became almost entirely dependent on digital platforms and the global network, students of philology found themselves in a similar situation. Bearing the aforementioned in mind, the present paper examines the attitudes of Serbian-major students and students of foreign languages, primarily English, German and Spanish, regarding the importance of preserving Serbian (in this case, native) cultural and linguistic heritage. The results demonstrated that the participants had generally shown positive attitudes. However, a more precise statistical testing revealed that there was a statistically significant difference in both the knowledge and attitudes between Serbian-major students and students of other languages. Gender likewise proved to be a statistically significant predictor of variation in attitudes, with male respondents and students who declared to be a gender other than male or female, inclined toward less positive attitudes. Year of study, the socio-economic and educational background of students’ parents were not statistically significant factors in predicting the variation in the responses. The findings have important pedagogical implications emphasizing the need for continuous education in matters pertaining to cultural and linguistic heritage.