Students attitude towards emerging diversities in the English language a sociolinguistic study

Abstract

The thesis attempts to explore the linguistic diversities in the headlines of newspapers and analyze studentsand#8223; attitude towards the emerging diversities in the English language. Research has been carried out in three phases. During the first phase, content analysis of 200 headlines after the influx of social media and 100 before the advent of social media has been done. After the content analysis, statistical analysis of the collected data has been done to find out the studentsand#8223; attitude towards the diversities. The questionnaire comprising three sections was framed. Sections 1 and 2 consist of 20 statements each, while section 3 consists of 40 statements. Overall, there are 80 statements. Statements 1 20 deal with studentsand#8223; attitude towards changes in the English language at grammatical level. Statements 21 40 refer to the influence of diversities on studentsand#8223; formal writing. Statements 41 80 refer to the attitude of the studentsand#8223; regarding learning creative forms (Convergence) or moving away from using correct English (Divergence). In the third phase, the degree of variance on the basis of Demographic as well as Geographical variables such as education, age, gender and geographical area has been statistically verified. The analysis has been done by using simple t-test, and one-way ANOVA. The results of the content analysis indicate that maximum diversities have occurred due to the use of short words and the omission of verbs and auxiliaries. The article comes next in terms of diversity. It has been omitted in many headlines. Next comes the word-order and use of numbers. There are many headlines which are not well-connected because of the omission of conjunctions. The use of redundant capitalization and compounding also make expression diverse where capitalization is not required and compounding or division of words is not necessary. Punctuation makes sense of a sentence. Its omission not only makes a sentence meaningless but complex and difficult to comprehend. The findings of the study sugges