Chapter published in:
Diachronic Corpora, Genre, and Language Change
Edited by Richard J. Whitt
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 85] 2018
► pp. 171–170

The importance of genre in the Greek diglossia of the 20th century

A diachronic corpus study of recent language change

| University of Athens
| University of Athens
Greek diglossia has been mainly studied so far by focusing on linguistic attitudes rather than investigating actual use. This paper aims at studying evidence from a number of genres in the Diachronic Corpus of Greek of the 20th Century, including academic texts, public speeches, film scripts, newsreels, literature, song lyrics and private letters. The frequencies of the high vs. low variants of two pairs of basic grammatical items are compared across the nine decades of the corpus. It is suggested that recent language change in Greek largely depends on genre, which can account, among other factors, for the direction and timing of developments. Dimensions of text production like formality, conventionality, planning and (perceived) spontaneity contribute to the specificities of each genre.
Published online: 08 November 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.85.07fra
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