RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

In the study of television language we advocate a sociolinguistic rather than a рш-еlу linguistic approach since it takes not only the characteristics but the meaning and value of linguistic expression in a given social context, or the meaning it acquires when used to transmit this or that content and interpolated in the provinces of particular social structures and groups (from class, national-ethnic and religious groups to residential and generation groups). Accordingly, then, the methodology employed in this work does not view language as a formal system but encompasses variables related to the social context which influences the quite specific choice of types of linguistic intercourse. Analysis of the model employed, or one of its aspects (e.g. the lexical, semantic) we arrive at knowledge about the intentions and skills of the communicator (in this case the TV stafi) and the more or less immanent value framework encompassed by the content examined. A linguistic statement in the TV News, similarly, necessarily reflects concrete social relations irrespective of the degree to which it respects familiar grammatical structures and language standards. The inclusion of statistics in this approach makes it possible to discern the predominance of use of the various correct and understandable alternative forms, while taking various cross-sections - that is introducing the time dimension - allows insight into the meaning and direction of change. The investigations reported in part here, were conducted byRTV Belgr. de’s Research Centre from 1968 and 1969 through to tooay, although in varying scope. The lexicon of the TV News using samples of programmes in two years (1969 and 1974) was analyzed by Prof. Dragan Krstić of the Philology Faculty in Belgrade, and Dr Smiljka Vasić of thelnstitute forExperimental Phonetics and Speech Pathology inßelgrade, and the present author. The original programme of work calls for repetition of this study of samples of the lexicon every five years, so that, to maintain the continuity of the investigation, a new study should be made Linguistic structures do not change so rapidly that the results of the analyses made so far cannot be given