Attitudes of Greek native speakers toward Greek-alphabeted English (Engreek) and Greek-alphabeted French (Frengreek) in Digitally-Mediated Communication — The Association Specialists
  1. Schedule
  2. SESSION 4: Language, media, and technology A
  3. Attitudes of Greek native speakers toward Greek-alphabeted English (Engreek) and Greek-alphabeted French (Frengreek) in Digitally-Mediated Communication

Attitudes of Greek native speakers toward Greek-alphabeted English (Engreek) and Greek-alphabeted French (Frengreek) in Digitally-Mediated Communication (20206)

Evgenia Mouresioti 1 , Marina Terkourafi 1
  1. Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

As people are increasingly using digital media and communicating through script, alternative and innovative ways of writing have emerged. Among these, trans-scripting refers to typing a language in a script other than the one traditionally associated with it (Androutsopoulos 2020). Greek-alphabeted English (aka Engreek) was the first instance in Greek Digitally-Mediated Communication (GDMC) of using the Greek script to type words and phrases of a language (English) that is conventionally written in another script. Trans-scripting in GDMC is not limited to English, however; more recently, a wave of Greek-alphabeted French (aka Frengreek) also appeared in Greek social media. In both cases, specific events in the news prompted a rise in the use of each trans-scripting practice. To compare Greek native speakers’ attitudes toward Engreek and Frengreek, we adapted the Matched Guise Test to visual stimuli (Mouresioti & Terkourafi 2021) and presented online participants with the same text in different spellings, subsequently asking them to evaluate the author on various dimensions. By tracking the age, gender and educational background of participants by means of online surveys which combine indirect (visual matched guise test) and direct (questionnaire) tasks, we investigated to what extent trans-scripting is evaluated differently depending on the language it is used to represent. Our findings showed that while Engreek is regarded as a widespread means of writing that facilitates communication, Frengreek is neither widely used nor easy to read and yet, it is evaluated positively as an upcoming trend which signals a laid-back attitude. The underlying micro (context) and macro (linguistic market, language ideologies) factors must also be considered to account for these attitudes. 

  1. Androutsopoulos, J. (2020). Trans-scripting as a multilingual practice: the case of Hellenised English. International Journal of Multilingualism, 17(3), 286-308.
  2. Mouresioti E. & Terkourafi M. (2021). Καλημέρα, kalimera or kalhmera? A mixed methods study of Greek native speakers’ attitudes to using the Greek and Roman scripts in emails and SMS. Journal of Greek Linguistics, 21(2), 224-262.