Sociolinguistic representations of the military in Greek comedy films

Abstract

Abstract 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’.