“Do You Understand What You're Accusing Me of?”: Confrontational Conversation in MTV's The Hills as a Means of Identity Construction and Social Positioning in Young Female Adults

Abstract

MTV's The Hills is a “reality” television program that follows the lives of four young female protagonists as they deal with concerns around work, friends, and relationships. The Hills presents a world of female friendships which is potentially continuous with the peer socialization of teen viewers and, as such, I argue offers a template to examine the importance of peer conversations in the construction of young female identities. In this article I draw on Harré's (1995) theory of social positioning to examine conversations around a particular confrontational incident in The Hills. Analysis of these interactions helps to make visible the roles of different types of conversation and interlocutors in the shaping of identity. I conclude that the ways in which this television program imparts modes of communication to young viewers reveals much about the importance of confrontation in conversational exchanges during the formative years.