The mediation of ‘youth language’ in mainstream mass culture: evidence from a Greek family sitcom

Authors

  • Theodora P. Saltidou University of Western Macedonia Author
  • Anastasia G. Stamou University of Western Macedonia Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v8i2.223

Keywords:

TV series, social dialect, speech style, teenage identity, standard language ideology

Abstract

?y acknowledging the ideological framework upon which the media and mass culture operate, contemporary sociolinguistic research aims to explore how such texts shape viewers’ understanding about the speech of social groups and the way they eventually perpetuate or challenge certain social and linguistic stereotypes. In light of this, we examine the way ‘youth language’ is represented in a popular Greek family sitcom. As a product of late modern mass media, which tend to celebrate nonstandard, oral and conversational styles of talk, the TV series under analysis set out to familiarise a widely diversified TV audience with ‘youth language’. Hence, the construction of youth identity through the speech style teenage characters were depicted to employ was relatively favorable. Nevertheless, the TV series did not avoid perpetuating ?mostly through the visual images of young people it built? many of the stereotypes of the dominant discourse of adolescence. Eventually, this TV series contributes, even though in a subtle way, to the confirmation of established ideas about young people and their identity, and is in dialogue with relevant representations of youth detected in other mainstream mass media.

Author Biographies

  • Theodora P. Saltidou, University of Western Macedonia
    Theodora Saltidou holds a BA in Greek Philology from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and an MA in Language and Literature in Education from the University of Western Macedonia. She is currently carrying out doctoral research on the mediation of youth language at the Department of Early Childhood Education of the University of Western Macedonia. This paper is part of her MA dissertation under the supervision of Dr. Stamou.
  • Anastasia G. Stamou, University of Western Macedonia
    Anastasia G. Stamou holds an MA in Language in Society from the University of East Anglia, UK, and a PhD from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She is an Assistant Professor of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis at the Department of Early Childhood Education of the University of Western Macedonia, Greece. She is currently investigating the mediation of sociolinguistic reality in Greek mass cultural texts. She has published a number of studies in international peer reviewed journals, such as Discourse & Society, Critical Discourse Studies, Language & Communication, Language Awareness and Critical Studies in Media Communication.

Published

2014-12-31

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Saltidou, T. P., & Stamou, A. G. (2014). The mediation of ‘youth language’ in mainstream mass culture: evidence from a Greek family sitcom. Sociolinguistic Studies, 8(2), 223-248. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v8i2.223