| dc.description.abstract | Sociolinguistics is a field that covers the relation between language and society. Over the past decades, there has been an increasing interest in language use, and the impact of societal variables on language. Attitudes connected to language are central to sociolinguistics, and are key to this study. The aim of my research is to investigate language attitudes in mass media, and specifically in Game of Thrones. Society is full of prejudice, and language is one marker that can evoke preconceived notions. This study is an attempt at revealing whether the attitudes in society are also apparent in a big TV production like Game of Thrones. Based on research on language attitudes in society, and previous studies on language use in media, I hypothesized that there would be a systematic correlation between language use and character traits and that the attitudes would reflect the attitudes in society. I chose to investigate the 74 most prominent characters over the first six seasons of Game of Thrones. To do so, I applied the societal treatment study method. This entails observing and analyzing already existing data, which in this case is six seasons of Game of Thrones. The speech of 74 characters was analyzed in line with the linguistic variables. Further, language use was investigated in the context of three non-lingistic variables: gender, sophistication and social attractiveness. The results reveal that the hypotheses were largely true, and uncovered a clear tendency for sympathetic characters to speak a non-standard accent, for sophisticated and/or unsympathetic characters to speak a standard accent, and for female characters to more often speak a standard accent than do male characters. All findings strengthen the findings from previous research, and can be said to reflect language attitudes in society. The question of whether these choices are conscious, remains unanswered, and can very well serve as a topic for further research. Additionaly, further research could aim at investigating whether these established attitudes are still evident in society. | eng |