Lithuanian language ideals
Group discussions with students about language diversity
Lithuanian language, language variation, dialects, and urban varieties often become the central topic of various discussions. People tend to share some strong opinions about young ways of speaking. However, youth is rarely invited to contribute to such debates. Therefore, in spring 2012 we decided to have a look into youth’s attitudes and organised filmed discussions in small groups each of six to nine upper-secondary school students in nine cities, ten schools in total. In Klaipėda, Telšiai, Marijampolė, Panevėžys, Šiauliai, Kaunas, Alytus, Utena and in two schools in Vilnius we have talked with 83 eleventh and twelfth graders (43 females and 40 males). The discussions took 1 hour and 40 minutes on average, we have gathered 16 hours 20 minutes of video-recorded material. To investigate students’ attitudes we gave them various tasks, showed some slides, video-clips and made them listen to some audio-recordings. Our aim was to find out how students rate the speakers of different varieties of Lithuanian and the varieties themselves (linguistic stereotypes). The discussion touched upon the social significance of the use of various foreign linguistic elements and upon how youth treated prevailing attitudes towards youth language use (myths about the youth language). The students were also asked what they thought about the practice of correcting others’ language (language corrections).
We would like to thank to all the teachers who helped us to organise this research. We are also very grateful to the students – our informants :) – who agreed to share their opinions and experiences with us.