Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 8:1 (2017) ► pp.1–25

Sociolinguistic representations of the military in Greek comedy films

Laughing at the army

| University of Western Macedonia, Greece
| University of Western Macedonia, Greece
This paper aims to explore cinematic representations of the military in peacetime, and more importantly, from a socio-cultural setting in which mandatory military service is highly devalued. Focusing on three Greek popular comedy films, we examined humorous depictions of the military. By adopting the ‘identities in interaction’ model of Bucholtz and Hall, our analysis suggested that the use of the formal vs. the informal military sociolect indexed the contrasting identities of film officers vs. soldiers as well as their diverging views about the military. On the other hand, the use of the informal military sociolect by soldiers established an affinity among them, helping them to jointly construct the army in their talk as unjust, corrupted and ineffective for the Turkish ‘threat’.
Keywords: Greek army, military service, sociolinguistics of cinema, military sociolect, identities in interaction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The context of the study: The Greek military service
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Framework of analysis
    • 3.2Textual material
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Military service in the time of military junta
    • 4.2The army as unjust
    • 4.3Military service as a waste of time
  • 5.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 25 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.8.1.01sta
References (34)
References
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 1997. “Youth Language from a Comparative Perspective: Greek, French, German, Italian”. Studies for Greek Language: Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 562–576. Thessaloniki: Kyriakidis. (in Greek)Google Scholar
. 2001. “Youth Language”. In Encyclopedic Guide for Language, ed. by Anastassios-Phoivos Christidis, and Maria Theodoropoulou. Thessaloniki: Center of Greek Language. (in Greek). Retrieved February 1, 2016 from [URL]
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogical Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. by Michael Holquist, trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bamberg, Michael. 1997. “Positioning Between Structure and Performance”. Journal of Narrative and Life History 71 (1–4): 335–342. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bleichenbacher, Lukas. 2008. Multilingualism in the Movies: Hollywood Characters and their Linguistic Choices. Tübingen: Francke.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary. 2011. “Race and the Re-embodied Voice in Hollywood Film”. Language & Communication 311: 255–265. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2005. “Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach”. Discourse Studies 7 (4–5): 584–614.Google Scholar
Christou, Stavros, and Anastasia G. Stamou. 2013. “Representations of Military Sociolect in Greek Cinema”. Multilingual Academic Journal of Education and Social Sciences 1 (2): 15–24. (in Greek) DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2001. “Dialect Stylization in Radio Talk”. Language in Society 301: 345–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2001. “Style and Social Meaning”. In Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, ed. by Penelope Eckert and John Rickford, 119–126. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Charles. 1959. “Diglossia”. Word 151: 325–340. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frangoudaki, Anna. 1992. “Diglossia and the Present Language Situation in Greece: A Sociological Approach to the Interpretation of Diglossia and some Hypotheses on Today’s Linguistic Reality”. Language in Society 211: 365–381. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Godfrey, Richard. 2009. “Military, Masculinity and Mediated Represantations: (Con)fusing the Real and the Reel”. Culture and Organisation 15 (2): 203–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hiramoto, Mie. 2015. “Wax on, Wax off: Commodification of Asian Masculinity in a Global Market through Hollywood Films”. Text & Talk 35 (1): 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karpushina, Olga. 2002. “The Military Body: Film Representations of the Chechen and Vietnam Wars”. Studies in Slavic Cultures III (The Russian Body): 33–52.Google Scholar
Levy, Gal, and Orna Sasson-Levy. 2008. “Militarized Socialization, Military Service, and Class Reproduction: The Experiences of Israeli Soldiers”. Sociological Perspectives 51 (2): 349–374. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lippi-Green, Rosina. 1997. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
MaroufJr., Hasian . 2001. “Nostalgic Longings, Memories of the ‘Good War’, and Cinematic Representations in Saving Private Ryan”. Critical Studies in Media Communication 18 (3): 338–358. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moschonas, Spiros. 1993. “The Ritual of Formal Military Communication”. Studies of Greek Language. Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of Section of Linguistics of Department of Philosophy of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 30–46. Thessaloniki: Idryma Manoli Triantafyllidi. (in Greek)Google Scholar
Moskos, Charles. 1993. “From Citizen’s Army to Social Laboratory”. Wilson Quarterly 171: 83–94.Google Scholar
Petrucci, Peter R. 2008. “Portraying Language Diversity through a Monolingual Lens: On the Unbalanced Representation of Spanish and English in a Corpus of American Films”. Sociolinguistic Studies 2 (3): 405–423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Queen, Robin. 2004. “‘Du hast jar keene Ahnung’: African American English Dubbed into German”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 81: 515–537. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rofouzou, Aimilia. 2009. “The Greek Military Terminology: An Extensive Presentation in Comparison to the German One”. Proceedings of the 7th Conference Greek Language and Terminology, 1–13. Athens: ELETO. (in Greek)Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation I, II, ed. by Gail Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Saltidou, Theodora P., and Anastasia G. Stamou. 2014. “The Mediation of ‘Youth Language’ in Mainstream Mass Culture: Evidence from a Greek Family Sitcom”. Sociolinguistic Studies 8 (2): 223–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slocum, David J. 2005. “Cinema and the Civilizing Process: Rethinking Violence in the World War II Combat Film”. Cinema 44 (3): 35–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spiliotis, Kostas, and Giannis Fragiadakis. 2007. “‘Are you lazy, Newbie? Don’t you worry that you have to be sent to the Mess Hall again for duty?’: Morphological Features of the Greek Informal Military Sociolect”. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of Greek Linguistics, 1133–1148. Ioannina: University of Ioannina. (in Greek)Google Scholar
Stamou, Anastasia G. 2014. “A Literature Review on the Mediation of Sociolinguistic Style in Television and Cinematic Fiction: Sustaining the Ideology of Authenticity”. Language & Literature 23 (2): 118–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stamou, Anastasia G., Katerina Maroniti and Kostas D. Dinas. 2012. “Representing ‘Traditional’ and ‘Progressive’ Women in Greek Television: The Role of ‘Feminine’/ ‘Masculine’ Speech Styles in the Mediation of Gender Identity Construction”. Women’s Studies International Forum 35 (1): 38–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stassinopoulou, Maria A. 2000. “Creating Distraction after Destruction: Representations of the Military in Greek Film”. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 18 (1): 37–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stavridi-Patrikiou, Rena. 1999. Language, Education, and Politics. Athens: Oikos. (in Greek)Google Scholar
Watson, Rodney D. 1978. “Categorization, Authorization, and Blame-Negotiation in Conversation”. Sociology 121: 105–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Woodman, Brian J. 2003. “A Hollywood War of Wills: Cinematic Representation of Vietnamese Super-Soldiers and America’s Defeat in the War”. Journal of Film and Video 55 (2/3): 44–58.Google Scholar
Zimmerman, Don H. 1998. “Identity, Context and Interaction”. In Identities in Talk, ed. by Charles Antaki and Sue Widdicombe, 87–106. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Pua, Phoebe & Mie Hiramoto
2018. Mediatization of East Asia in James Bond films. Discourse, Context & Media 23 ► pp. 6 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.