A new voice of everyday womanhood: Bridget Jones’s diary and the birth of modern chick-lit

This article examines Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) by Helen Fielding as the foundational text of modern chick-lit, focusing on how everyday language becomes a mode of gender self-representation. Through analysis of diary form, irony, and conversational syntax, the study shows how private speech registers internalised social norms and negotiates post-feminist femininity through humour and self-commentary. The novel is interpreted as a linguistic and cultural document of the 1990s that establishes chick-lit as a discourse-based genre grounded in everyday female communication rather than thematic unity.