Globalni memi u lokalnom konekstu: Kontakt bosanskoga i engleskog jezika na internetu
Global Memes in a Local Context — Contact between Bosnian and English on the Internet

Summary/Abstract: In accordance with the biological language model, memes are ideas and values, which spread within a community like viruses. They seem to have a cooperative function, enabling social coordination and a biologically based need for the defense and identification of potential intruders. Memes relate to cultural and language communities, language being the strongest link between people and their social reality, including their physical experiences and psychological and physical reactions to it. Today’s society functions locally, within cultural and language communities, and globally, beyond the nation and its limited territory. Such a global approach has been creating new, very often hybrid values, and consequently, new elements in language, mostly in the lexicon. Bosnian language and society inevitably interact with other cultures, languages and values, mostly through media and the Internet as a typical global platform for communication. This paper analyzes the linguistic content of the most popular Bosnian-Herzegovinian websites, with special emphasis on the global memes/lexical units that are entering its linguistic and cultural space, and which create new values as they adjust themselves to the local context. Analysis shows how much the Internet language reflects global values in this local context, and how this indicates trends of social change in Bosnia & Herzegovina.

• Details
• Contents