LANGUAGE AND GENDER – MALE AND FEMALE LANGUAGE PATTERNS IN THE GREEK SERIES MHN APXIZEIΣ THN MOYPMOYPA

Abstract

Television is a dominant medium that can influence one’s attitude and social ideologies formation since it reflects sociolinguistic reality and maintains language ideologies and existing social stereotypes. For that reason, we can mention so-called female and male language patterns and their main characteristics, which are to a great extent associated with social power, i.e. the role that an individual has in his social community or community of practice. This paper aims to examine whether the Greek media and more specifically, the Greek TV series promote so-called male and female language patterns, as well as social stereotypes directed towards women. In this paper, we analysed the linguistic behaviour of the protagonists of the Greek series Mην αρχίζεις την μουρμούρα. Qualitative non-experimental research based on the analysis of linguistic behaviour at the level of the characters‘ lexical choice, Vaso and Charis showed that their choice of language patterns is proportional to their social or professional status. In addition, we noticed the presence of certain social stereotypes, while it is evident that the use of stereotypical-female language patterns is associated with a hierarchically lower social position.