UTICAJ DRUŠTVENIH MREŽA NA SVAKODNEVNU KOMUNIKACIJU I UPOTREBU JEZIKA: STAVOVI GOVORNIKA SRPSKOG JEZIKA

Abstract

With the advent of social media on the Internet, there have been certain changes in the attitudes and beliefs of speakers, especially in the domain of education, commerce, and communication. The accelerated advancement of technology posed a great challenge before social and linguistic communities to adapt to constant changes both on micro and macro levels. The present paper investigates sociolinguistic factors, such as gender, age and level of education, possibly affecting the attitudes of Serbian speakers towards the influence of social media on everyday communication and language. The main instrument for collecting data on attitudes was a survey consisting of three main parts, excluding the introductory part on demographic data. Namely, the first part was related to the impact of social media on society in general, the second was related to the general impact of social media on communication and human interaction, while the third part was related to the specific influence of social media on individual language use, in this case Serbian. The results demonstrated that age was a statistically significant predictor of the variability of attitudes regarding the impact of social media on society and culture and on specific language use. Gender was a statistically significant factor only when it comes to differences in attitudes about the influence of social media on society and culture, while the level of education was a statistically significant variable for attitudes about the influence of social media on the specific use of the Serbian language by individual speakers. The obtained results underline the importance of analyzing speakers’ attitudes and language ideologies with regard to their potential impact on specific language behavior and changes that may occur over time, not only in everyday speech, but in standard varieties, as well.