Hostname: page-component-5cf477f64f-mgq6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-02T16:14:41.363Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Charting sociolinguistic inquiry in contemporary Greek contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2025

Alexandra Georgakopoulou Open the ORCID record for Alexandra Georgakopoulou [Opens in a new window]  and
Tereza Spilioti Open the ORCID record for Tereza Spilioti [Opens in a new window]
Alexandra Georgakopoulou*
Affiliation:
King's College London
Tereza Spilioti*
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this overview of the dynamic field of MG sociolinguistics in the last four decades, we show the decisive move of the field, in the spirit of sociolinguistics in general, toward permeable boundaries with other areas of linguistics that set out to investigate language-as-action and language-in-context, as well as toward synergies with other disciplines invested in the study of society and culture. The studies we discuss show how researchers have been documenting a changing, diverse society, considering different resources and environments where language is used, and with a growing focus on digital media. These studies also reflect a shift towards sociolinguistic research that addresses social justice issues and recent socio-political crises in Greek society.

Keywords

Modern Greek sociolinguisticslanguage, identities and culturecontext(s)digital mediacrisis discourses
Type
Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , April 2025 , pp. 152 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Androutsopoulos, J. (2009) ‘Greeklish’: Transliteration practice and discourse in the context of computer-mediated digraphia. In Georgakopoulou, A. & Silk, M. (eds.) Standard Languages and Language Standards: Greek, Past and Present. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing.Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, J. (2015) Networked multilingualism: Some language practices on Facebook and their implications. International Journal of Bilingualism 19 (2): 185-205.Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, J. (2020) Trans-scripting as a multilingual practice: The case of Hellenised English. International Journal of Multilingualism 17 (3): 286-308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archakis, A. & Tsakona, V. (2024) Exploring the Ambivalence of Liquid Racism: in between antiracist and racist discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Assimakopoulos, S., Baider, F. H., & Millar, S. (2017) Online Hate Speech in the European Union: a discourse-analytic perspective. Springer Open Access.Google Scholar
Baider, F. & Constantinou, M. (2017) “At night we'll come and find you, traitors”: Cybercommunication in the Greek-Cypriot ultra-nationalist space. In Hatzidaki, O. & Goutsos, D. (eds.) (2017) Greece in Crisis: Combining critical discourse and corpus linguistics perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 413-454.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, M. & Hall, K. (2004) Language and identity. In Duranti, A. (ed.) A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. Oxford: Blackwell. 369-394.Google Scholar
Canakis, C. (2017) The linguistic landscape of Stadiou Street in Athens: an ethnographic approach to the linguistic appropriation of contested space. Μελέτες για την Ελληνική Γλώσσα (Studies in Greek Linguistics) 37: 165-180.Google Scholar
Chatzidaki, A. & Tsokalidou, R. (eds.) (2021) Challenges and Initiatives in Refugee Education: the case of Greece. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Coupland, N. (2016) Introduction: Sociolinguistic theory and the practice of sociolinguistics. In Coupland, N. (ed.) Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-35.Google Scholar
Fabricio, B.F. & Moita-Lopes, L.P. (2020) Historicity, interdiscursivity and intertextuality in discourse studies. In De Fina, A. & Georgakopoulou, A. (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies. CUP. 70-90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcia, O. & Wei, Li (2014) Translanguaging: language, bilingualism and education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A. (1997) Narrative Performances. A study of Modern Greek storytelling. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A. (2007) Small Stories, Interaction and Identities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A. (2011) “On for drinkies?”: email cues of participant alignments. Language@Internet, Volume 8, article 4, urn:nbn:de:0009-7-32155.Google Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A. (2022) Co-opting small stories on social media: a narrative analysis of the directive of authenticity. Poetics Today 43: 265-286. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-9642609CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A. & Giaxoglou, K. (2018) Emplotment in the social mediatisation of the economy: the poly-storying of economist Yanis Varoufakis. Language@Internet, 16, article 6, urn:nbn:de:0009-7-47918.Google Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A. & Spanaki, M. (2001) (eds.) A Reader in Greek Sociolinguistics. Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A. & Vasilaki, M. (2018) The personal and/as the political: Small stories and impoliteness of the Greek crisis. Internet Pragmatics 1(2): 216-41.Google Scholar
Georgalidou, M., Frantzi, K. & Giakoumakis, G. (2020) Aggression in media-sharing websites in the context of Greek political/parliamentary discourse in the years of the economic crisis. Journal of Language Aggression & Conflict 8: 321-50.Google Scholar
Georgalou, M. (2015) Small stories of the Greek crisis on Facebook. Social Media + Society, 1 (2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115605859.Google Scholar
Giaxoglou, K. (2008) ‘Maniat Laments as Narratives: Forms and Norms of Entextualisation’. Unpublished PhD thesis, King's College London.Google Scholar
Hatzidaki, O. & Goutsos, D. (eds.) (2017) Greece in Crisis: combining critical discourse and corpus linguistics perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ioannidou, E., Karatsareas, P., Lytra, V. & Tsiplakou, S. (2020) Why and how to integrate the non-standard linguistic varieties into education: Greek Cypriot Greek in Cyprus and the UK, Languages, Society and Policy 1-9.Google Scholar
Kantara, A. (2022) Naturalising populism as a collaborative interactional practice in broadcast media. In Porsche, Y., Scholz, R. & Singh, J. N. (eds.) Institutionality Studies of Discursive and Material (Re-)ordering. Palgrave Macmillan. 277-99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitis, E. D., & Milani, T. M. (2015). The performativity of the body: turbulent spaces in Greece. Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal 1: 268-90. https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.1.3.04kitGoogle Scholar
Kitsiou, R. & Bratimou, S. (2023) Homescapes of im~mobility: Migratory transpatial repertoires during the pandemic. Language in Society. Published online 2023: 1-25. doi:10.1017/S0047404523000295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koutsogiannis, D. & Mitsikopoulou, B. (2007) Greeklish and Greekness: trends and discourses of “glocalness”. In Danet, B. & Herring, S. C. (eds.) The Multilingual Internet: Language, Culture, and Communication Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 142-60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Κουτσογιάννης, Δ., Ροθώνη, Α., Αντωνοπούλου, Σ., Κωνσταντινίδης, Α. & Γογωνάς, Ν. (επιμ.) (2024) Διδασκαλία της ελληνικής γλώσσας στη διασπορά: μια ολιστική προσέγγιση. Θεσσαλονίκη: घήσης.Google Scholar
Moschonas, S. A. (2004) Relativism in language ideology: On Greece's latest language issues. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 22: 173-206.Google Scholar
Μπουκάλα, Σ. & Στάμου, Α. (επιμ.) (2020) Κριτική Ανάλυση Λόγου: (Απο)δομώντας την Ελληνική Πραγματικότητα. Αθήνα: Νήσος.Google Scholar
Ogiermann & Bella (2020) Patrona, M. (2020) “You are not normal, you are against nature” Mediated representations of far-right talk on same-sex child fostering in Greek parliamentary discourse. Journal of Language and Politics 19 (1): 160-79.Google Scholar
Saloustrou, V. (2023) “That was rude”: Metapragmatic impoliteness evaluations in breaking news small stories. In Georgakopoulou, A., Giaxoglou, K. & Patron, S. (eds) Small stories research. New York: Routledge. 145-66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serafis, D. (2023) Authoritarianism on the Front Page: multimodal discourse and argumentation in times of multiple crises in Greece. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, M. (1992/1999/2002) Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spilioti, T. (2009) Graphemic representations of text-messaging: alphabet-choice and code-switches in Greek SMS. Pragmatics, 19 (3): 395-414.Google Scholar
Σπηλιώτη, Τ. (2009) Τα γραπτά μηνύματα (SMS): Γλωσσικές στάσεις και ιδεολογικές αναπαραστάσεις στον δημοσιογραφικό λόγο. घητήματα Επικοινωνίας, 3 (9): 62-74.Google Scholar
Spilioti, T. (2019) From transliteration to trans-scripting: creativity and multilingual writing on the internet. Discourse, Context & Media, Volume 29, 100294, ISSN 2211-6958, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.03.001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spilioti, T. & Giaxoglou, K. (2021) Translation and trans-scripting: Languaging practices in the city of Aθens. In Lee, T. K. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Translation and the City. London: Routledge. 278-93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tannen, D. (1986) “I take out the rock - dok!”: How Greek women tell about being molested (and create involvement). Anthropological linguistics. 25: 3. 359-74.Google Scholar
Terkourafi, M. (2001) Politeness in Cypriot Greek. A frame-based approach. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Themistocleous, C. (2021) From public to digital spaces: Spatial and media practices of the 2017 ‘Unite Cyprus Now’ peace protests. Discourse, Context & Media, Volume 42, 100504, ISSN 2211-6958, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2021.100504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tseliga, T. (2007) “It's all Greeklish to me!”: linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives of Roman-alphabeted Greek in CMC. In Danet, B. & Herring, S. C. (eds.) The Multilingual Internet: language, culture, and communication online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 116-41.Google Scholar
Tsiplakou, S. (2009) Code-switching and code-mixing between related varieties: establishing the blueprint. The International Journal of Humanities 6: 49-66.Google Scholar
Tsitsipis, L. (1998) A Linguistic Anthropology of Praxis and Language Shift: Arvanítika (Albanian) and Greek in contact. Oxford: Clarendon PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tzanne, A. (2021) Relational work in digital communication: The case of Greek food blogs. Athens: Pedio.Google Scholar
Wodak, R. & Angouri, J. (2014) From Grexit to Grecovery: Euro/crisis discourses. Discourse & Society 25 (4): 417-23.Google Scholar