Abstract
Vernaculars are increasingly used in media. They are considered to be stylistic resources to attract audiences and to construct media identities. That increase seems to be particularly significant in the case of youth media, which is also the case of Gaztea, a youth webradio station within the Basque public EITB group that we analyse in this work. Gaztea was created in the 90’s and, at that time, its whole production was in Standard Basque. In fact, promoting the newly created Standard Basque was considered to be Gaztea’s principal public service remit. Nowadays, however, the hegemony of that standard in Gaztea has been challenged by a more heteroglossic model in which vernacular speech is strategically used to empathize with the young Basque audience and to construct media identities. At the same time, though, the dominance of Standard Basque persists in Gaztea’s general stylistic design and practice: Vernaculars are excluded from writing, as well as from informative genres and serious and leading voices. Those are some of the conclusions of the research we have carried out on the distribution of vernaculars and Standard Basque across modes, genres and voices in Gaztea, and also from the information we have drawn from interviews with the managers of the media in question. Results from both data sources are important to understand the current ideological views Gaztea shares with young Basque people, as well as how Gaztea positions itself as a stylizer in the language ideological world of Basque youth.
References
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 2010. The study of language and space in media discourse. In P. Auer & J.E. Schmidt (eds.), Language and Space. An international handbook in Linguistic variation. Theories and Methods, 740–758. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110220278.740Search in Google Scholar
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 2012. Repertoires, characters and scenes: Sociolinguistic difference in Turkish-German comedy. Multilingua 31. 301–326.10.1515/multi-2012-0014Search in Google Scholar
Atkinson, David & Helen Kelly-Holmes. 2011. Codeswitching, identity and ownership in Irish radio comedy. Journal of Pragmatics 43. 251–260.10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.021Search in Google Scholar
Bell, Allan. 1984. Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13. 145–204.10.1017/S004740450001037XSearch in Google Scholar
Bell, Allan. 1999. Styling the other to define the self: A study in New Zealand identity making. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(4). 523–541.10.1111/1467-9481.00094Search in Google Scholar
Bell, Allan & Andy Gibson. 2011. Staging language: An introduction to the sociolinguistics of performance. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15/5. 555–572.10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00517.xSearch in Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2001. Dialect stylization in radio talk. Language in Society 30. 345–375.10.1017/S0047404501003013Search in Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2007. Style. Language variation and identity. Key topics in sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511755064Search in Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2009. The mediated performance of vernaculars. Journal of English Linguistics 37(3). 284–300.10.1177/0075424209341188Search in Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2010. Language, Ideology, Media and Social Change. Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 24. 55–79.Search in Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas. 2014. Sociolinguistic change, vernacularization and broadcast British media. In Jannis Androulopoulos (ed.), Mediatization and Sociolinguistic Change, 67–96. Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110346831.67Search in Google Scholar
Cutillas-Espinosa, Juan Antonio & Hernández-Campoy Juan Manuel. 2007. Script design in the media: Radio talk norms behind a professional voice. Language & Communication 27. 127–152.10.1016/j.langcom.2006.04.001Search in Google Scholar
Echeverria, Begoña. 2005. Language attitudes in San Sebastian: The Basque vernacular as challenge to Spanish language hegemony. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 26(3). 249–264.10.1080/01434630508668407Search in Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12/4. 453–476.10.1111/j.1467-9841.2008.00374.xSearch in Google Scholar
Euskaltzaindia. 1968. Ortografia [Orthography]. Euskera XIII 203–2019.a.Search in Google Scholar
Government, Basque. 2012. Gazteen argazkiak 15. Hedabideak. Report of the Basque Observatory of Youth. Vitoria-Gasteiz: Spain. Available also in Spanish at:: http://www.euskadi.net/contenidos/informe_estudio/retratos_de_juventud_15/eu_retjuv15/adjuntos/11retratos15_eu.pdSearch in Google Scholar
Hualde, Jose Ignacio & Koldo Zuazo. 2007. The standardization of the Basque language. Language Problems and Language Planning 31(2). 143–168.10.1075/lplp.31.2.04huaSearch in Google Scholar
Jacqueline, Urla, Estibalitz Amorrortu, Ane Ortega & Jone Goirigolzarri. 2016. Authenticity and Linguistic Variety among New Speakers of Basque. In Vera Ferreira & Peter Bouda (eds.), Language Documentation and Conservation In Europe, 1–12.Search in Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra. 2000. Comic performance and the articulation of hybrid identity. Pragmatic 10(1). 39–59.10.1075/prag.10.1.02jafSearch in Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra. 2007. Corsican on the airwaves: Media discourse in a context of minority language shift’. In Sally Johnson & Astrid Ensslin (eds.), Language in Media, 149–172. London: Continuum.Search in Google Scholar
Jorgensen, Normann, J, J. 2010. The sociolinguistic study of youth language and youth identities. In J Normann (ed.), Love Ya Hate Ya: The sociolinguistic study of youth language and youth identities, 1–14. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Search in Google Scholar
Kelly-Holmes, Helen & David Atkinson. 2007. ‘When Hector met Tom Cruise’: Attitudes to Irish in radio satire. In Sally Johnson & Astrid Ensslin (eds.), Language in the Media, 173–187. London: Continuum.Search in Google Scholar
Lantto, Hanna. 2015. Code-switching in Greater Bilbao: A bilingual variety of Colloquial Basque. Thesis Dissertation, University of Helsinki.Search in Google Scholar
Milroy, James & Lesley Milroy. 1985. Authority in Language. Investigating Standard English. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Ortega, Ane, Urla Jacqueline & Estibalitz Amorrortu. 2015. Linguistic Identity among New speakers of Basque. International Journal for the Sociology of Language 231. 85–105.10.1515/ijsl-2014-0033Search in Google Scholar
Petikäinen, Sari, Kelly-Holmes Helen, Jaffe Alexandra & Coupland Nikolas. 2016. Sociolinguistics from the Periphery. Small Languages in New Circumstances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781316403617Search in Google Scholar
Spitulnik, Debra. 1992. Radio time sharing and the negotiation of linguistic pluralism in Zambia. Pragmatic 2(3). 335–354.10.1075/prag.2.3.12spiSearch in Google Scholar
Urla, Jacqueline. 1995. Outlaw Language. Creating alternative public spheres in Basque free radio. Pragmatics 5(2). 245–261.10.1075/prag.5.2.09urlSearch in Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. 1995. Changing forms of codeswitching in Catalan comedy. The social significance of codeswitcing and comedy. Catalan Review 9(2). 223–251.10.3828/CATR.9.2.12Search in Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn A. 2008. Language and Identity Choice in Catalonia: The Interplay of Contrasting Ideologies of Linguistic. In Kirsten Süselbeck, Ulrike Mühlschlegel, Peter Masson (eds.) Lengua, nación e identidad: la regulación del plurilingüismo en España y América Latina, 303–323. Madrid / Frankfurt am Maiin: Bibliotheca Ibero-Americana.Search in Google Scholar
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
