Perm students’ ideas of the language norm and speech culture: experimental study

The article describes the results of a pilot sociolinguistic experiment the purpose of which was to study the ideas of modern youth about the language norm and speech culture. The main research question was how this social group assesses linguistic innovations / transformations and other facts of modern Russian speech. The research material was collected by means of a survey in which 80 informants took part. The task was to identify and analyze opinions on the concept of ‘speech culture’ and its features, ‘degradation’ / ‘nondegradation’ of the language, as well as the influence of the popular Russian TV series Real’nye patsany (Real Guys) on the creation of the image of Perm residents. The research results reveal the problems of speech culture essential from the point of view of young speakers, the most striking of which are the insufficient purity of speech, unjustified borrowing, and spelling mistakes. The presence of diametrically opposite ideas of the currently occurring processes (from the recognition of innovations to the idea of complete degradation) indicates that informants recognize the process of constant development of the language, which is, on the one hand, naturally-determined and, on the other, beyond the control of native speakers. The informants distinguish between the norm of the literary language and the norms of other language variants (for example, local variants of literary colloquial speech, various types of jargon), determine for each of the idioms their own sphere of functioning, socio-cultural environment, circle of speakers and, accordingly, their own evaluative characteristics of language variants, which do not always coincide with others.