ABSTRACT
The goal of this chapter is to discuss some distinctive sociolinguistic characteristics of the European Mediterranean. It discusses the issues of politeness has assumed an important role within Greek sociolinguistic research. In the twentieth century the Greek language significantly moved towards standardisation. The latter is a codified and written version based more closely on the model of the spoken language, which was specified as the language of education and state administration, and labelled as 'Modern Greek'. In European Mediterranean countries such as Spain and Italy, the discussion of the issue of language and gender came later than in other Western European countries. A key sociolinguistic characteristic of Spain is the presence of recognised autochthonous minority languages, namely Basque, Catalan and Galician. Sociolinguistics research on language and gender in these Mediterranean countries has pointed out some specific linguistic practices, such as the asymmetrical lexical and semantic references and linguistic asymmetry in professional titles.
