Language shift: The case of the Žeimiai area in the Kaunas-Jonava region

The linguistic study presented in this article was conducted in the Žeimiai area in the Kaunas-Jonava region in 2015–2017. It involved interviews with 21 members of three generations of one family (15 females and 6 males aged 19 to 95), over 20 hours of audio material in total; the informants also answered a sociolinguistic survey. The description and analysis of collected material involved: (1) analysis of the degree of viability of language variations used in the area on the basis of a model of sociocultural networks of Žeimiai town; (2) description of the linguistic landscape of the region; (3) description of the linguistic behaviour and attitudes towards local variations on the basis of informants’ replies in the sociolinguistic survey; (4) analysis of salient phonetic features of the informants’ speech that best describe the local language variation in use. The collected and processed material allowed the researchers to investigate the competitiveness of local language variations in this area, identifying ones that have greater demand with representatives of different generations compared to others (cf. Inoue, 1997, p. 41)