engleski

´Contested places´ in a language

The difficulty of defining a language partly derives from the fact that whatever is termed as such is made up of, possibly infinitely many, varieties. These varieties can be grouped along various axes: spatial, temporal, social, etc., which however do not remain neatly separated, but rather criss-cross each other. A language can then be considered as a multidimensional space created by juxtaposition, superimposition, and interpolation of different linguistic dimensions. In the space so conceived, each utterance can be placed at any point in which various dimensions intersect. Urbanolects – or urban koines, linguistic varieties formed in and propagated by urban centers – are an interesting example of large-scale criss- crossing typical of linguistic production. At least two dimensions loom large in the actuation of urbanolectal features: diatopic (geographic) and diastratic (social) ones, although other dimensions also play part in its further differentiation. In this paper we discuss the ‘contested’ dimension of urbanolects, i.e. the multiplicity of dimensions characteristic of modern urban speech due to which it has not been it the focus of research in Croatian linguistics. The goal of the analysis of some, mostly lexical and syntactical, urbanolectal features will be discussed to illustrate the multidimensionality as its inherent characteristics as well as the reasons for its being considered a ‘contested place’.

urbanolects; diatopic; diastratic

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