Lefteris Kailoglou

Being less alternative and more Brit-pop: The quest for originality in three urban styles in Athens

This paper examines three urban styles in Athens, each one linked to a different subculture (trendy, alternative, hard-core alternative) with different nightlife consumption spaces (Chatterton and Hollands 2003) in the centre of the city (Kolonaki, square, Mavili square and Exarheia square). These styles are characterised by four main features: a) morphological productivity and construction of new words, b) the use of unusual metaphors, c) the use of slang, and d) the use of taboo language). All three groups make use of these mechanisms of diverging from the conventional and/or formal and of forming their own distinctive style (Irvine 2001), but there is differentiation to the degree they choose to employ them. Moreover, the range of sources the speakers used to construct unconventional/informal features suggests that the emphasis is not on the features themselves but that they constitute a linguistic practice. This linguistic practice is related to the socio-cultural practices of the groups as the trendy group used these features least often, while the non-mainstream groups employed them more frequently. . In this light, divergence from the conventional (formal) can be seen as part of a wider set of practices creating stylistic distinctiveness and serving the purpose of authenticity as perceived by the members of each subculture. The focus here is, especially, on the style of the hard-core alternative group. Their usage of informal and unconventional features is linked to their quest for originality and differentiation not only from the ‘mainstream’, which is perceived as ‘inauthentic’, ‘temporary’ and ‘manipulated’, but from the ‘alternative non-mainstream’, too, which is perceived as ‘fake’ and equally ‘inauthentic’. 

References

Chatterton, P. and Hollands, R. (2003), Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power, Oxon: Routledge.

Irvine, J. (2001) Style as distinctiveness: The culture and ideology of linguistic differentiation. In P. Eckert and J. Rickford (eds.), Stylistic variation in language, 21-43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.