Αναστασία Γ. Στάμου - Πανεπιστήμιο Δυτικής Μακεδονίας Mass culture constitutes the major vehicle through which linguistic variation is constructed and consumed, since it exploits all available sociolinguistic resources of a linguistic community. Hence, its analysis may help students become aware of a great range of linguistic variation phenomena, drawing upon their social experience. Yet, mass cultural discourse does not reflect sociolinguistic reality but represents it from a certain perspective, echoing particular ideologies about language and the world. Adopting a critical language awareness approach to language teaching, the central aim of mass cultural texts is then the development of a critical stance on the part of the students towards the representations of sociolinguistic reality. Drawing upon two case studies on the depiction of aspects of the sociolinguistic world in Greek television (i.e. sociolects of upper- and lower-middle social class and youth language), I attempt to sketch a four-plane analytical framework (i.e. linguistic, sociolinguistic, semiotic, ideological), which is proposed to be employed for the critical reading of fictional texts containing depictions of linguistic variation phenomena. ΛΕΞΕΙΣ-ΚΛΕΙΔΙΑ: γλώσσα των νέων, ιδεολογία, κοινωνιόλεκτος, κριτική γλωσσική εκπαίδευση, τηλεόραση