Language Change in the Context of Urbanization: Socio-Cultural Factors and Functions

Language is considered a continuously evolving social phenomenon and is largely influenced by broader socio-economic transformations. Urbanization, as one of the most impactful agents of social change, has extensively affected the development of people’s langues in modern societies. It mainly occurs according to the trend that new speaking methods and communication techniques arise more and more often, and one can observe migration to other places and the rise of communicative demands. Besides, in cases of urban living, people begin to learn and use new synonyms, abbreviations, expressions and finally adapt to new language expressions and rules, further learning the main principles of social vernacular. At the same time, in the Uzbek context, urbanization is not developed to the same extent and considered to be a dependent term. Despite the existing number of works related to urban linguistics, so-called cores behind the functioning of the relationship between people and their language, the analysis of how demographic, cultural, and socio-economic factors are interconnected with language in Uzbekistan is not conducted. Urban linguistics attribute has not been thoroughly examined and requires more awareness-raising. This paper aims to identify the socio-cultural determinants and social functions of language through the process of urbanization and highlight the integrative, differentiating, identificational, innovative, and social roles. The findings of the paper illustrate that urbanization contributes to the ease with which we learn a language, to the tendency to enrich language with new vocabulary. The usage of language has certain effects on human cognitive mechanisms and social aspects of living. This paper offers urbanization as a phenomenon that can be both unifying and differentiating. In conclusion, it is emphasized that future interdisciplinary studies on language policy and identity should be conducted as an integral part of urban linguistics. Thus, the interpreting and sense-defining function of urban linguistics are discussed.