Iš kokių norlandienčių juokiamasi? Stilizuota kaimo žmogaus reprezentacija švedų televizijos seriale „Leif & Billy“

• Main Author: Budrikaitė, Monika
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: Swedish; Lithuanian; English
• Published: Institutional Repository of Vilnius University 2021
• Subjects: Northern Sweden
• Online Access: https://repository.vu.lt/VU:ELABAETD143818577&prefLang=en_US

The negative representation of the people from northern Sweden - Norrland - is still very much alive even today. Norland has been described in various discourses as an unproductive, weak peripheral region of Sweden, suffering from problems of unemployment and population decrease, while the typical Norrlander is portrayed as conservative, backward, and unemployed (Eriksson 2010). Media plays a significant role in people’s lives and is often referred to as a reflection of society. It can become a tool for disseminating, questioning, creating and otherwise acting on the prevailing ideologies in society. Furthermore, media also can affect and shape the sociolinguistic environment (Coupland 2007), which results the growing interest in fiction by recent sociolinguists. The present study explores the stylized representation of a rural people in a highly popular Swedish situation comedy “Leif & Billy” (2017-2020). The aim is to find out what stylistic resources are used to depict rural people in the TV series and what language ideologies this stylization implies. Contemporary researchers propose to expand the concept of style and consider non-linguistic elements such as clothing, hairstyles, gestures, facial expressions, posture and other to be included in the stylistic analysis as socially significant (Eckert 2002, Auer 2007, Coupland 2007), therefore both linguistic and non-linguistic elements used for the depiction of rurality are discussed and analyzed in this study. 34 episodes were reviewed, and six of them were selected according to the formality-informality scale and the set of defined criteria for a deeper sociolinguistic analysis. Study shows that the characters of the series are portrayed as others in all senses: out of the ordinary and therefore becomes a target of laugh. We see them as out-of-date, uneducated, unprofessional, rude, dependent on benefits - in other words, losers. Humour triggers as they unsuccessfully attempt to change their identities and are unable to accommodate. It should be noted ...