Baby Talk in Contemporary Bangla Language: A Sociolinguistic Analysis

This article examines the current sociolinguistic status of baby talk, used in the Bangla language that has been a vital area of interest in the field of ‘Bangla Child Language Development’; simultaneously it reveals the changes of Bangla baby talk that took place over the last forty-five years. In order to understand the features of Bangla baby talk, a qualitative research method was applied to collect and analyse the data. A semi-structured interview technique was used to gather information from the participants. Twenty-two Bangladeshi baby talk user mothers were interviewed. The data was mainly interpreted through content analysis. The findings indicate several linguistic changes of Bangla baby talk that are ultimately rooted in the social attitudinal change of Bangla speech community.