Flicka och tjej - Språk och samhälle i förändring?

Abstract

Different concepts often evoke various emotions, positive or negative. The emotions can be related to the understanding and the meaning of the concepts. Two such concepts dealing with femininity are girl (‘flicka’) and chick (‘tjej’) and the aim of this study is to linguistically investigate the meaning of these concepts in order to understand the emotions they evoke. The emotions relating to these concepts may have to do with changes over time and therefore I will also study how these concepts have changed over five decades. Theoretically I employ a socio-cultural perspective where language and society are seen as related, and how we use language is seen as a way of constructing society. Methodologically my study is in the field of corpus linguistics, since I use large computerized textcollections for the study of meaning. Meaning in this context is defined as something that is revealed in language use, more specifically, in frequency-based language patterns such as collocations, adjective attributes and lexical relations in relation to the two concepts. My conclusions are that the two concepts flicka and tjej are used very differently through the years. Flicka has decreased in importance – both quantitatively (less used) and qualitatively (in fewer different contexts/about fewer topics). Flicka is also related to more negative attributes, and is used in passive roles. At the same time tjej has increased in importance quantitatively (used more) and qualitatively (more contexts/subjects). Tjej is also at the same time used in relation to positive attributes and in active roles. The changes in usage of flicka and tjej can be seen as interrelated in that there seems to be a matter of a division of labour between the two concepts. Flicka and tjej are used in different contexts and with different functions, which could explain the different emotions towards the concepts.