Changing Identities: Language Variation on Czech Television by Tora Hedin (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 781 Hedin, Tora. Changing Identities:Language Variation on Czech Television. Acta universitatis Stockholmeinsis. Stockholm Slavic Studies, 29. Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2005. xv + 219 pp. Tables. Figures. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Appendix. Index. SEK 282.00 (paperback). This is a published version of the author's doctoral thesis,written inEnglish. The study examines indetail language variation inCzech television discourse, primarily between January 1997 and September 2003. It is a thoroughly researched and well informed work, with reference to all the important corpus-based studies of the spoken language ? Kucera, Kravcisinova & Bednaf ova, and Bayer and Maglione, as well as toGammelgaard and Bermel (who both draw on dialogue in literary texts) ? and to over seventy television broadcasts. The quantitative analysis is confined to a more manageable corpus of fifteen programmes, comprising 24,000 words, which are aimed at a range of different audiences and contain a mixture of prepared and unpre pared speech. Most of the examples cited have been well documented and analysed in other linguistic environments elsewhere, but comparatively little attention has hitherto been paid to themilieu of Czech television. The chapter on the historical background to theCzech language situation and the linguistic debate over the coexistence of Standard Czech and Common Czech (and their variant and intermediate forms) serves to contextualize the discussion of the empirical data. Chapter three provides a concise overview of language and the mass media, with some particularly helpful comments for the lesswell initiated on concepts such as the facade, the conversational framework and television as flow and image. It is to the author's advantage here that she is able to draw on a number of important studies in Scandinavian languages which are linguistically inaccessible tomost English- and Czech-speaking scholars. While the main part of the study employs a quantitative synchronic approach, the most engaging and thought provoking section of the book is arguably the qualitative diachronic analysis presented in chapter six. The explanation and exemplification of differences in language use in Czech television discourse before and after 1989 make for especially interesting reading and would provide the basis for a more detailed investigation in their own right.The final chapter on code-switching is similarly worthwhile, although this reviewer would have liked to see greater consideration given to the linguistic constraints on different types of code-mixing (both intrasentential and intersentential). The difficultyfor the author of thisbook is the sheer breadth of the subject matter and the range of the variables affecting television participants' choice of language variety.While a macrolinguistic study of this typemay provide a sound statistical basis for frequency-based analysis of usage, it can at best only offer tentative generalized suggestions as to the role played by the inter relationship between social, geographical, cultural and personal factors, variables such as age, professional status and gender, and the specific context of each television programme. It isperhaps a shame that the author did not correlate her main findings with the data from the Prague Spoken Corpus and the Brno Spoken Corpus of theCzech National Corpus with a view to defining more clearly any regional differences in usage. The fact thatCzech 782 SEER, 85, 4, OCTOBER 2007 television is largely Prague-based may have a more profound bearing on the use of language than has generally been appreciated. Not surprisingly, this study has many of the strengths and some of the weaknesses of a typical doctoral thesis. It offers a comprehensive summary and evaluation of existing research and provides very useful cross-references. It also highlights the complexity of language usage in a linguistic settingwhere stylisticallyand functionally divergent forms coexist, and where theprestigious 'standard' variant is not the spoken norm. Most importantly, it offers new statistical information to add to the existing body of data on morphological, phonological and lexical variation, and to substantiate claims that language choice always depends to a significant extent on the purpose of the dialogue and the formality of the situation.However, minor problems with editing and proof-reading detract from the overall quality of thework. Furthermore, the selection of television broadcasts inevitably contains a degree of subjectivity and is not indicative of the speech of the population as a whole. Finally, itwould appear that a...