This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Language and Identity Management Across Media A Communities of Practice Study of a Greek-Cypriot Student Society in Britain Christodoulou, Valentina Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). 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Language and Identity Management Across Media: A Communities of Practice Study of a Greek-Cypriot Student Society in Britain Thesis Submitted for the Fulfilment of PhD in Hellenic Studies Valentina Christodoulou September 2012 i Acknowledgements It is a pleasure to thank those who made this thesis possible. First and foremost I owe my deepest gratitude to my primary supervisor Prof. Alexandra Georgakopoulou for her valuable feedback, guidance and support throughout the past four years. Her contributions and great insights have kept me on toes and provided me with the necessary equipment to complete this work. Prof. Georgakopoulou’s talk at UEL in 2006, where I was an MA student at the time, is what inspired me to pursue this PhD. I am greatly indebted to Prof. Jannis Androutsopoulos for his constant support and contributions throughout this project. His knowledge and assistance have shaped this work. His work in the field of Sociolinguistics and Computer Mediated Communication has unavoidably been a source of inspiration. Additionally, I would like to thank Dr. Vally Lytra who has been my external assessor for the past four years, and whose contributions and guidance yielded fruitful results. This work would not have been possible without the help and participation of the members of the Cypriot Society under study. I would like to thank Savvas Hadjiphilippou, Yiannis Christodoulides and Nicoletta Hadjipavlou for their constant support and willingness to assist with the data collection. Members and participants in this study allowed me to mix business with pleasure on numerous occasions and that has made this study a pleasant journey. I would also like to thank my good friend Elina Pantou for being there in past-hour long telephone conversations, her uncompromising love and friendship, for being part of some of my happiest memories here in London and for always having a cup of ‘milk’ with me. Additionally, I would like to thank my friend and researcher role- model Irene Theodoropoulou for insightful comments and advice on my work. My sincere gratitude and love are due to two very important individuals: my sister Natasa and my partner George who never left my side. A big thank you goes to them for all their love, support, understanding and sharing of their really bad jokes which nevertheless made me laugh when feeling blue. Special thanks are due to Nicoletta Hadjipavlou for being a great friend and a partner in moments of absolute procrastination. Nicoletta had to endure my low levels of sanity and panic attacks for the last two years of writing the thesis. She has been my own personal psychotherapist, a source of empowerment when the going got tough and a source of inspiration. Nicoletta has made the last two years of my PhD journey a beautiful and enjoyable experience. My journey has been made richer in temrs of love, support and memories with Nicoletta by my side. I have never ‘walked’ so much in my life as I did with her. ii Most importantly, I would like to thank the two most important people in my life and closest to my heart, my father Nikos and my mother Pistoulla for their endless love, empowering belief in me, support and encouragement to pursue this research program. Their love has offered me the world. I would not be the person I am today if it wasn’t for you. This work is dedicated to you. iii To my parents, Nikos and Pistoula I hereby declare that the work in this thesis is that of the candidate alone. iv Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Aims and Research Questions ............................................................................. 3 1.2 Overview of Thesis Chapters .............................................................................. 5 2. Theoretical Framework 2.1 A Focus on Identity .............................................................................................. 9 2.2 Sociolinguistic Approaches to Identity .............................................................. 11 2.3 From Speech Community to Communities of Practice ...................................... 16 2.4 Communities of Practice .................................................................................... 20 2.5 Language, Identity and Computer Mediated Communication ........................... 31 2.5.1 CMC Research in the Greek Context ...................................................... 34 2.6 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 37 3. Data and Methodology 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 39 3.2 The Greek-Cypriot student Society .................................................................... 42 3.2.1 Stages of Development ........................................................................... 44 3.2.2 The Society’s Linguistic Repertoire ....................................................... 49 3.3 Data Description ................................................................................................. 50 3.3.1 Focal Participants .................................................................................... 50 3.3.2 Data Types .............................................................................................. 56 3.4 Data Collection ................................................................................................... 58 3.5 Methods of Data Analysis .................................................................................. 61 3.6 Reflective account on the Collection and Analysis of Data ............................... 66 4. Community making processes across time and space: developing practices and member links 4. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 69 4.1 The Society’s Structural Elements ..................................................................... 72 4.1.1 Members’ Perceptions of Community Bonds ......................................... 75 v 4.2 Developing Society Practices Across Time ....................................................... 84 4.3 Mediation as a tool: Society E-mails and Website as Coordinating Mechanisms Between Mutual Engagement and Joint Enterprise ................................................. 90 4.3.1 The Discourse of Society Circulated E-mails ......................................... 95 4.3.2 The Society’s Website: Society’s Practices in a Virtual Locality ........ 102 4.4 Relations