»Ty vole« as a multifunctional means of communication in contemporary Czech

Abstract

The paper deals with the use of the expression ty vole ( that can be translated as man/dude/shit) in the current Czech language. Through the qualitative analysis of the material of spoken Czech corpora, the contribution demonstrates that this originally vulgar expression in contemporary Czech has lost its mischievous content in some contexts and it is used also with other meanings than vulgar or depreciative. At the same time, it is possible to observe the shift in its morphological classification, at present it is not always possible to characterize its form as a vocative of the substance of a word vůl/ox, i.e. also its position in the contacting function as addressing a communication partner, but it is formally ceased and it functions as a particle. Paralelly with it, it acquires new communication functions. The aim of the analysis is to describe the communication acquires new communicative functions. Corpus analysis is accompanied by an elicitation research probe among foreign students of Bohemistics. The aim of the elicitation is the individual interpretation of contexts and goals of using the vocabulary of ty vole.