English Text Construction · 2011 · 90 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesEnglishLinguisticsDramaDramaturgyFictionDialogue AnalysisDramatic LanguageTelevision StudiesDialogue In DramaGenre CorporaLanguage In DramaLexico-syntactic Term PatternsScripted TelevisionTelevision Discourse AnalysisTelevision DramaTelevision Textual Analysis
The study examines how word and n‑gram frequencies differ between television dialogue and various other corpora. The authors analyze lexico‑grammatical patterns by ranking word frequencies in Gilmore Girls, other scripted shows, and unscripted spoken/written English, then compare these rankings across corpora. The analysis shows that Gilmore Girls’ dialogue is distinct, and that scripted television dialogue is generally more emotional, less narrative, and less vague than natural spoken or written language.
This article describes differences in the frequency of words/n-grams in television dialogue as compared with a variety of other corpora. It explores frequent lexico-grammatical patterns in the television series Gilmore Girls , in other fictional programmes, and in unscripted spoken and written English. Using ranked frequency lists, the ‘dramedy’ Gilmore Girls is compared both to unscripted language and to a corpus containing dialogue from ten other television series. The results allow us to describe both the specifics of the dialogue of this particular dramedy and the general characteristics of scripted television dialogue as compared to unscripted spoken and written language. The findings also confirm previous assumptions made on the basis of different data that television dialogue is more emotional, but less narrative and vague than naturally occurring conversation.