‘I wanna become a real rock star’

This ethnographic and conversation analytical study is based on authentic informal conversations of a group of German adolescent girls. The speakers regularly appropriate bits and pieces of media discourse and embed them in their daily communication. One prominent activity in the group’s communicative repertoire are para-social interactions, i.e. viewers’ engagements with television shows. I investigate the various linguistic resources and communicative strategies of the girls’ appropriation of texts from a particular music talent show. Furthermore, I explore the discursive and pragmatic functions of media engagements in this group and in general. The analysis shows that the standardized range of the mass media today do not necessarily result in a homogeneous audience reception because viewers read television texts in various ways.