ABSTRACT
Sociolinguistics appears to be at an impasse. Whilst experts ignore or dismiss television as a set of social factors, speakers across the globe equip themselves with ever more possibilities for watching more and more television; they also believe, unlike most linguists, that watching television affects the way they speak. The advent of television represents one of the most significant social phenomena of the twentieth century, and yet, oddly, whether television might influence language – or not – is a neglected area of sociolinguistic research.
