LANGUAGE ATTITUDES THROUGH AN INTERSECTIONAL LENS: VULNERABLE LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTIC VARIETIES IN SERBIA

This paper investigates the attitudes of members of vulnerable linguistic communities in Serbia towards their own languages. Based on the results of a quantitative survey carried out in 2023, the authors assess the attitudes of speakers of vulnerable languages towards the maintenance and revitalisation of their languages, including transmission to the younger generations and their introduction in the school system, and discuss their feelings regarding speaking the language with the members of the community and outside the community. Finally, they examine the correlation between the aforementioned variables and a series of demographic factors to determine whether there are any statistically significant relations between them. The research shows that the majority of speakers of vulnerable languages in Serbia show positive attitudes towards their language, regardless of gender in most of the cases. On the other hand, the variable ‘language of the community’ is correlated with all other variables, while the variables ‘age’ and ‘education level’ correlate with some of the aforementioned attitudes and emotions. This is partially in line with what has been recently termed an attitude shift by sociolinguists, a change in ideology implying positive attitudes towards one’s own endangered language, a phenomenon observed in several endangered language contexts worldwide.