Book chapter
Белорусский язык
In book
This book includes proceedings of the conference, that took place in the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus in October 2015. The articles are dedicated to phonetics, grammar, lexicology, lexicography and language functioning in modern global world.
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The paper describes attitudes to the Belarusian language in modern Belarusian society examined through the prism of comments on news articles on the Web. Besides comments on the sociolinguistic news articles, comments on the articles that are neutral from the point of view of the content but are written in Belarusian are analyzed, where the language choice itself becomes a trigger for sociolinguistic discussions in the comments. Such an analysis allows for getting the information about attitudes to the language under bilingualism, which could previously be obtained only through polling. The paper shows that despite the criticism of the Belarusian language being absent from the media, the language conflict is twofold: the society expresses discontent with Belarusian as a whole as well as discontent with its certain aspects. In particular, people criticize both usage of Russian borrowings (real or supposed) and usage of made-up words that allegedly do not exist in Belarusian according to commentators.
The paper describes the situations, when sociolinguistic discussions start in comments under news articles on different topics except sociolinguistics. Articles where the Belarusian language becomes a trigger for discussions are examined. The paper focuses on problems of language attitudes, attitudes towards two starndards of modern Belarusian and borrowings and also on problems of language purism.