Impact of Age, Gender, and Education on Dialect Word Usage in the Shaki Dialect of Azerbaijani

Abstract

This article deals with the relationship between social variables and dialect word usage in Shaki, Azerbaijan. The research employed a quantitative correlational research design. The data was collected from 176 informants, who were native speakers of the Shaki dialect of Azerbaijani, via an online questionnaire. Twenty dialect words from the Shaki region were included in the closed-ended questionnaire. The respondents wereinstructed toprovidedemographicinformation about themselves and to indicate whether they used the selected terms in their everyday speech. The results showed that the older speakers used dialect words more often than the younger ones. Besides, the males used more dialectal forms in their everyday speech than the females. While there was a general trend that higher education led to a decrease in the use of dialect words, the difference between uneducated and university-educated respondents was insignificant. This suggests that education may play a role in shaping language practices; nonetheless, it does not completely eliminate the use of local dialect forms among speakers. The findings of the study contribute to the general knowledge of dialectal variation in Azerbaijani and emphasize the need to consider sociological factors in the analysis of language use. Additionally, this article calls for further studies that employ qualitative methods and include broader regional comparisons to obtain more comprehensive knowledge of dialect usage in different areas of the country.