{"id":847,"date":"2012-01-14T23:06:23","date_gmt":"2012-01-14T21:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/?p=847"},"modified":"2016-02-05T00:36:53","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T22:36:53","slug":"periodika-synedria102","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/periodika-synedria102\/","title":{"rendered":"Stamou, A.G., Maroniti, K., Dinas, K. 2012. Mediating urban vs. rural female identities in Greek television. Sociolinguistics Symposium 19 (21-24\/8\/2012, Berlin, Germany)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the present paper, we analyze how a popular Greek TV series mediates the urban vs. rural dipole through the construction of contrasting female identities. Despite the wealth of sociolinguistic studies on gender identity construction in interpersonal settings, limited research has been directed to mediated contexts (e.g. Behm 2009). Drawing upon the \u201cidentities in interaction\u201d sociocultural linguistic model of Bucholz & Hall (2005) plus the ethnomethodological tool of \u201cMembership Categorization Analysis\u201d (Sacks 1992), the analysis indicates that the TV series constructs a rather schematic construction of the world by conflating the Membership Categorization Devices of \u201cgender\u201d and \u201cgeography\u201d. Specifically, the category of \u201ctraditional woman\u201d, as incarnated by the villager Stavroula, is contrasted to that of \u201cprogressive woman\u201d, as represented by the \u201cAthenian\u201d Hara. Rurality is negatively associated with conservatism and oppression of women, while urbanity is attached to the positive values of progress and female emancipation. Consequently, the TV series seems to echo the naturalized binary opposition between \u201crural\u201d\/ \u201cprovincial\u201d vs. \u201curban\u201d\/ \u201ccosmopolitan\u201d knitted to the construction of modernity (Bauman & Briggs 2003). However, it rather negotiates this dipole, being placed into a late modern socio-cultural context. The male protagonist and mayor of the village where the plot revolves is represented as being hostile towards urban modernity. Moreover, Hara is depicted through the category of \u201ccity person\u201d, who holds a distorted and idealistic view of rurality, characterizing post-industrial urban people with no experience of rural life (the \u201crural idyll\u201d: Cloke & Milbourne 1992). At stylistic level, the TV series does not depict, as probably expected, a straightforward relationship between rural (traditional) female identities and feminine speech style on the one hand, and urban (progressive) female identities and masculine style of talk on the other, but treats the two symbolic resources as forming a stylistic continuum along which TV characters are positioned during the display of their gender identities in specific fictional contexts. The contrasting gender identities are further constructed through other sociolinguistic resources, including specialized lexis of foods and drinks in English, Italian and French (category of \u201cmodern woman of the city\u201d) vs. terminology of pests (category of \u201ctraditional woman of the country\u201d).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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References<\/p>\n

Bauman, Richard, & Briggs, Charles L. (2003). Voices of modernity: Language ideologies and the politics of inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n

Behm, Juliane (2009). The representation of gender-specific conversational behavior in informal talk: A pragmatic analysis of the American television series \u201cSex and the City\u201d.Examination thesis, Universit\u00e4t Rostock\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (http:\/\/www.hausarbeiten.de\/faecher\/vorschau\/145958.html<\/a>) (retrieved on 15th April 2011).<\/p>\n

Bucholtz, Mary, & Hall, Kira (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7, 584\u2013614.<\/p>\n

Cloke, Paul, & Milbourne, Paul (1992). Deprivation and lifestyles in rural Wales II: Rurality and the cultural dimension. Journal of Rural Studies, 8, 359\u2013371.<\/p>\n

Sacks, Harvey (1992). Lectures on conversation I, II. In Gail Jefferson (Ed.), Oxford: Blackwell.<\/p>\n

Mediating urban vs. rural female identities<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the present paper, we analyze how a popular Greek TV series mediates the urban vs. rural dipole through the construction of contrasting female identities. Despite the wealth of sociolinguistic studies on gender identity construction in interpersonal settings, limited research has been directed to mediated contexts (e.g. Behm 2009). Drawing upon the \u201cidentities in interaction\u201d … \u03a3\u03c5\u03bd\u03ad\u03c7\u03b5\u03b9\u03b1 →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7bC4U-dF","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/users.uowm.gr\/kdinas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}