Language Change in the Context of Urbanization: Socio-Cultural Factors and Functions
Abstract
Language is considered a continuously evolving social phenomenon and is largely influenced by broader socio-economic transformations. Urbanization, as one of the most impactful agents of social change, has extensively affected the development of people’s langues in modern societies. It mainly occurs according to the trend that new speaking methods and communication techniques arise more and more often, and one can observe migration to other places and the rise of communicative demands. Besides, in cases of urban living, people begin to learn and use new synonyms, abbreviations, expressions and finally adapt to new language expressions and rules, further learning the main principles of social vernacular. At the same time, in the Uzbek context, urbanization is not developed to the same extent and considered to be a dependent term. Despite the existing number of works related to urban linguistics, so-called cores behind the functioning of the relationship between people and their language, the analysis of how demographic, cultural, and socio-economic factors are interconnected with language in Uzbekistan is not conducted. Urban linguistics attribute has not been thoroughly examined and requires more awareness-raising. This paper aims to identify the socio-cultural determinants and social functions of language through the process of urbanization and highlight the integrative, differentiating, identificational, innovative, and social roles. The findings of the paper illustrate that urbanization contributes to the ease with which we learn a language, to the tendency to enrich language with new vocabulary. The usage of language has certain effects on human cognitive mechanisms and social aspects of living. This paper offers urbanization as a phenomenon that can be both unifying and differentiating. In conclusion, it is emphasized that future interdisciplinary studies on language policy and identity should be conducted as an integral part of urban linguistics. Thus, the interpreting and sense-defining function of urban linguistics are discussed.
References
J. A. Fishman, The Sociology of Language: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Language in Society. Newbury House Publishers, 1972.
W. Labov, Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972.
P. Trudgill, Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. London: Penguin Books, 2000.
P. Trudgill, Dialects, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2005.
D. Crystal, English as a Global Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
A. F. Valeeva, “The Influence of Urbanization on the Linguistic Behavior of Residents in a Multiethnic Region,” Studfile, n.d. [Online]. Available: https://studfile.net/preview/460442/
C. Syam, S. Seli, and W. J. Abdu, “Dynamics of Language Interaction in Multicultural Urban Communities: Analysis of Socio-Cultural Linguistic Environment,” Society, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 575–588, 2023.
V. S. Efimov, A. V. Lapteva, and E. I. Mikhailova, “The impact of urbanization on the transmission of culture and language of the Sakha people: a sociological analysis,” Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia, vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 127–134, 2015.
S. Sriyanto, “Human, change and urbanization: rural communities dynamics as socio-cultural and economic resources,” Dinamika Jurnal Ilmiah Pendidikan Dasar, vol. 6, no. 1, 2014.
H. Tören, “Urbanization, standard language, dialect,” Journal of Turkish Language and Literature, vol. 50, no. 50, pp. 113–120, 2015.
A. D. King, “The language of colonial urbanization,” Sociology, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 81–110, 1974.
A. Zijderveld, “Education in an Urbanized Environment; the Socio-Cultural Context of an Urban Society,” Education Law and Policy in an Urban Society: Yearbook of the European Association for Education Law and Policy, p. 61, 1999.
A. Adli and G. R. Guy, “Globalising the study of language variation and change: A manifesto on cross‐cultural sociolinguistics,” Language and Linguistics Compass, vol. 16, no. 5–6, p. e12452, 2022.
M. A. Mbata, “Interrelation between Linguistic Change and Socio-cultural Identity Preservation in Ain-Sefra Speech Community,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tlemcen, 2018.
J. A. Fishman, “Who speaks what language to whom and when?,” in The Bilingualism Reader, 2nd ed., London: Routledge, 2020, pp. 55–70.
