1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
  4. Volume 26, Issue 1
  5. Article
Volume 26, Issue 1
  • ISSN 1384-6655
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9811
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

Previous corpus-based studies, which have mostly focused on a particular film or series, have identified various key characteristics of telecinematic language. However, a restriction on those results applies as regards the stability of findings across time and across individual productions. To address this gap, and following calls for more nuanced perspectives on telecinematic language as a whole, this study re-assesses a number of claims pertaining to lexical and lexicogrammatical aspects through a diachronic lens. To this end, it uses the Northern American sections of the new Movie and TV Corpora, multi-million word corpora compiled from subtitles of a wide range of film and series genres in the English-speaking world from the 20th and 21st century. Overall, the diachronic view of the data is suggestive of a highly complex nature of telecinematic language, with levels of emotionality and informality increasing over time for most items tested.

© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.00036.wer
2020-11-02
2023-12-04

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.00036.wer
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Androutsopoulos, J.
    (2012) Introduction: Language and society in cinematic discourse. Multilingua, 31(2–3), 139–154.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Al-Surmi, M.
    (2012) Authenticity and TV shows: A multidimensional analysis perspective. TESOL Quarterly, 46(4), 671–694. 10.1002/tesq.33
     https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.33 [Google Scholar]
  3. Allen, M.
    (2014) Contemporary US Cinema. Routledge. 10.4324/9781315837543
     https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315837543 [Google Scholar]
  4. Alvarez-Pereyre, M.
    (2011) Using film as linguistic specimen: Theoretical and practical issues. In R. Piazza , M. Bednarek , & F. Rossi (Eds.), Telecinematic Discourse: Approaches to the Language of Films and Television Series (pp.47–67). John Benjamins. 10.1075/pbns.211.05alv
     https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.211.05alv [Google Scholar]
  5. Baños, R.
    (2013) “That is so cool”: Investigating the translation of adverbial intensifiers in English-Spanish dubbing through a parallel corpus of sitcoms. Perspectives, 21(4), 526–542. 10.1080/0907676X.2013.831924
     https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2013.831924 [Google Scholar]
  6. Baños-Piñero, R. , & Chaume, F.
    (2009) Prefabricated orality: A challenge in audiovisual translation. inTRAlinea Online Translation Journal. www.intralinea.org/specials/article/1714
     [Google Scholar]
  7. BBC
    BBC (2019) BBC Subtitle Guidelines Version 1.1.9 (April 2019). https://bbc.github.io/subtitle-guidelines
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Bednarek, M.
    (2010) The Language of Fictional Television: Drama and Identity. Continuum.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. (2012) “Get us the hell out of here”: Key words and trigrams in fictional television series. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 17(1), 35–63. 10.1075/ijcl.17.1.02bed
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.17.1.02bed [Google Scholar]
  10. (2015) Corpus-assisted multimodal discourse analysis of television and film narratives. In T. McEnery & P. Baker (Eds.), Corpora and Discourse Studies: Integrating Discourse and Corpora (pp.63–87). Palgrave Macmillan. 10.1057/9781137431738_4
     https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137431738_4 [Google Scholar]
  11. (2018) Language and Television Series: A Linguistic Approach to TV Dialogue. Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/9781108559553
     https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108559553 [Google Scholar]
  12. (2019a) “Don’t say crap. Don’t use swear words”: Negotiating the use of swear/taboo words in the narrative mass media. Discourse, Context & Media, 29, 100293. 10.1016/j.dcm.2019.02.002
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.02.002 [Google Scholar]
  13. (2019b) The multifunctionality of swear/taboo words in television series. In J. L. Mackenzie & L. Alba-Juez (Eds.), Emotion in Discourse (pp.29–54). John Benjamins. 10.1075/pbns.302.02bed
     https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.302.02bed [Google Scholar]
  14. (2020a) On the usefulness of the Sydney Corpus of Television Dialogue (SydTV) as a reference point for corpus linguistic and stylistic analyses of TV series. In C. Hoffmann & M. Kirner-Ludwig (Eds.), Telecinematic Stylistics (pp.39–62). Bloomsbury. 10.5040/9781350042889.0008
     https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350042889.0008 [Google Scholar]
  15. (2020b)  The Sydney Corpus of Television Dialogue: Designing and building a corpus of dialogue from US TV series. Corpora, 15(1), 107–119. 10.3366/cor.2020.0187
     https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2020.0187 [Google Scholar]
  16. Bednarek, M. , & Zago, R.
    (2019) Bibliography of linguistic research on fictional (narrative, scripted) television series and films/movies (version 3, May 2019) https://www.academia.edu/30703199/Bednarek_M._and_Zago_R._2019._Bibliography_of_linguistic_research_on_fictional_narrative_scripted_television_series_and_films_movies_version_3_May_2019_
  17. Berber Sardinha, T. , & Veirano Pinto, M.
    (2017) American television and off-screen registers: A corpus-based comparison. Corpora, 12(1), 85–114. 10.3366/cor.2017.0110
     https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2017.0110 [Google Scholar]
  18. (2019) Dimensions of variation across American television registers. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 24(1), 3–32. 10.1075/ijcl.15014.ber
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.15014.ber [Google Scholar]
  19. Berg, C. , & Wilson, R.
    (2016) Film and television in popular culture. In G. Burns (Ed.), A Companion to Popular Culture (pp.204–222). Wiley-Blackwell. 10.1002/9781118883341.ch12
     https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118883341.ch12 [Google Scholar]
  20. Boberg, C.
    (2018) New York City English in film: Phonological change in reel time. American Speech, 93(2), 153–185. 10.1215/00031283‑6926135
     https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-6926135 [Google Scholar]
  21. Bonsignori, V. , & Bruti, S.
    (2015) How people greet each other in TV series and dubbing. In M. Pavesi , E. Ghia , & M. Formentelli (Eds.), The Languages of Dubbing: Mainstream Audiovisual Translation in Italy (pp.89–112). Lang.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Briechle, L. , & Duran Eppler, E.
    (2019) Swearword strength in subtitled and dubbed films: A reception study. Intercultural Pragmatics, 16(4), 389–420. 10.1515/ip‑2019‑0021
     https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2019-0021 [Google Scholar]
  23. Bruti, S.
    (2018) (Im)politeness rituals in The Young Pope and teaching pragmatics. In V. Werner (Ed.), The Language of Pop Culture (pp.230–252). Routledge. 10.4324/9781315168210‑11
     https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315168210-11 [Google Scholar]
  24. Bubel, C. M.
    (2006) The Linguistic Construction of Character Relations in TV Drama: Doing Friendship in Sex and the City [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. (2008) Film audiences as overhearers. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(1), 55–71. 10.1016/j.pragma.2007.10.001
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2007.10.001 [Google Scholar]
  26. Dose, S.
    (2012) Scripted speech in the EFL classroom: The Corpus of American Television Series for teaching spoken English. In J. Thomas & A. Boulton (Eds.), Input, Process and Product: Developments in Teaching and Language Corpora (pp.103–121). Masaryk University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Dynel, M.
    (2011) Stranger than fiction? A few methodological notes on linguistic research in film discourse. Brno Studies in English, 37(1), 41–61. 10.5817/BSE2011‑1‑3
     https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2011-1-3 [Google Scholar]
  28. Elliott, N. C.
    (2000) Rhoticity in the accents of American film actors: A sociolinguistic study. Voice and Speech Review, 1(1), 103–130. 10.1080/23268263.2000.10761390
     https://doi.org/10.1080/23268263.2000.10761390 [Google Scholar]
  29. Forchini, P.
    (2012) Movie Language Revisited: Evidence from Multi-dimensional Analysis and Corpora. Lang. 10.3726/978‑3‑0351‑0325‑0
     https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0351-0325-0 [Google Scholar]
  30. Guillot, M.-N.
    (2017) Subtitling and dubbing in telecinematic text. In M. A. Locher & A. H. Jucker (Eds.), Pragmatics of Fiction (pp.397–424). Mouton de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110431094‑013
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110431094-013 [Google Scholar]
  31. Heyd, T.
    (2010) How you guys doin? Staged orality and emerging plural address in the television series Friends . American Speech, 85(1), 33–66. 10.1215/00031283‑2010‑002
     https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2010-002 [Google Scholar]
  32. Hueth, A. C.
    (2019) Scriptwriting for Film, Television and New Media. Routledge. 10.4324/9780429461361
     https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429461361 [Google Scholar]
  33. Jones, C. , & Horák, T.
    (2014) Leave it out! The use of soap operas as models of spoken discourse in the ELT classroom. Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, 4(1), 1–14. clok.uclan.ac.uk/18668/
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Karamitroglou, F.
    (1998) A proposed set of subtitling standards in Europe. Translation Journal, 2(2). https://translationjournal.net/journal/04stndrd.htm
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Koplenig, A.
    (2019) Against statistical significance testing in corpus linguistics. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 15(2), 321–346. 10.1515/cllt‑2016‑0036
     https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2016-0036 [Google Scholar]
  36. Kozinski, R. A.
    (2011) Quantifying the emotional tone of James Bond films: An application of the Dictionary of Affect in Language. In R. Piazza , M. Bednarek , & F. Rossi (Eds.), Telecinematic Discourse: Approaches to the Language of Films and Television Series (pp.125–141). John Benjamins. 10.1075/pbns.211.09koz
     https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.211.09koz [Google Scholar]
  37. Kozloff, S.
    (2000) Overhearing Film Dialogue. University of California Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Levshina, N.
    (2017) Online film subtitles as a corpus: An n gram approach. Corpora, 12(3), 311–338. 10.3366/cor.2017.0123
     https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2017.0123 [Google Scholar]
  39. Lindsey, C.
    (2018) Questioning Netflix’s revolutionary impact: Changes in the business and consumption of television. In K. McDonald & D. Smith-Rowsey (Eds.), The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century (pp.173–184). Bloomsbury.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Lison, P. , & Tiedemann, J.
    (2016) OpenSubtitles2016: Extracting large parallel corpora from movie and TV subtitles. InProceedings of the 10th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2016). www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2016/pdf/947_Paper.pdf
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Lopez, Q. , & Bucholtz, M.
    (2017) “How my hair look?” Linguistic authenticity and racialized gender and sexuality on The Wire. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 6(1), 1–29. 10.1075/jls.6.1.01lop
     https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.6.1.01lop [Google Scholar]
  42. Lugea, J.
    (2019) The intralingual subtitling of The Wire: Changes of style and substance. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 12(1), 23–49. 10.1558/jalpp.24620
     https://doi.org/10.1558/jalpp.24620 [Google Scholar]
  43. Mair, C.
    (2006) Twentieth-century English: History, Variation and Standardization. Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511486951
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486951 [Google Scholar]
  44. Merriam-Webster
    Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Booyah. InMerriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary. RetrievedAugust 5, 2020, fromhttps://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/booyah
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Mittell, J.
    (2015) Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Mittmann, B.
    (2006) With a little help from Friends (and others): Lexico-pragmatic characteristics of original and dubbed film dialogue. In C. Houswitschka , G. Knappe , & A. Müller (Eds.), Proceedings: Anglistentag 2005, Bamberg (pp.573–585). WVT.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Piazza, R. , Bednarek, M. , & Rossi, F.
    (2011) Introduction. In R. Piazza , M. Bednarek , & F. Rossi (Eds.), Telecinematic Discourse: Approaches to the Language of Films and Television Series (pp.1–17). John Benjamins. 10.1075/pbns.211.02pia
     https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.211.02pia [Google Scholar]
  48. Quaglio, P.
    (2009) Television Dialogue: The Sitcom Friends vs. Natural Conversation. John Benjamins. 10.1075/scl.36
     https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.36 [Google Scholar]
  49. Quaglio, P. , & Biber, D.
    (2006) The grammar of conversation. In B. Aarts & A. McMahon (Eds.), The Handbook of English Linguistics (pp.692–723). Wiley-Blackwell. 10.1002/9780470753002.ch29
     https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470753002.ch29 [Google Scholar]
  50. Queen, R. M.
    (2015) Vox Popular: The Surprising Life of Language in the Media. Wiley-Blackwell.
     [Google Scholar]
  51. (2018) Working with performed language: Movies, television, and music. In C. Mallinson , B. Childs , & G. Van Herk (Eds.), Data Collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and Applications (pp.218–226). Routledge. 10.4324/9781315535258
     https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315535258 [Google Scholar]
  52. Rey, J. M.
    (2001) Changing gender roles in popular culture: Dialogue in Star Trek episodes from 1966 to 1993. In S. Conrad & D. Biber (Eds.), Variation in English: Multi-dimensional Studies (pp.138–156). Longman.
     [Google Scholar]
  53. Ronan, P.
    (forthcoming). Expressive much: The rise of a new expressive marker in American soap operas and beyond. In M. Krug , V. Werner , O. Schützler , & F. Vetter Eds. Perspectives on Contemporary English: Structure, Variation, Cognition. Lang.
     [Google Scholar]
  54. Rubinson, C. , & Mueller, J.
    (2016) Whatever happened to drama? A configurational-comparative analysis of genre trajectory in American cinema, 1946–2013. The Sociological Quarterly, 75(4), 597–627. 10.1111/tsq.12156
     https://doi.org/10.1111/tsq.12156 [Google Scholar]
  55. Schubert, C.
    (2017) Constructing the antihero: Linguistic characterisation in current American television series. Journal of Literary Semantics, 46(1), 25–46. 10.1515/jls‑2017‑0002
     https://doi.org/10.1515/jls-2017-0002 [Google Scholar]
  56. (2018) Verbal humor in crime drama television: A cognitive-linguistic approach to popular TV series. In V. Werner (Ed.), The Language of Pop Culture (pp.162–183). Routledge. 10.4324/9781315168210‑8
     https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315168210-8 [Google Scholar]
  57. Stokoe, E.
    (2008) Dispreferred actions and other interactional breaches as devices for occasioning audience laughter in television “sitcoms”. Social Semiotics, 18(3), 289–307. 10.1080/10350330802217071
     https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330802217071 [Google Scholar]
  58. Stuart-Smith, J. , Pryce, G. , Timmins, C. , & Gunter, B.
    (2013) Television can also be a factor in language change: Evidence from an urban dialect. Language, 89(3), 501–536. 10.1353/lan.2013.0041
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2013.0041 [Google Scholar]
  59. Tabacaru, S.
    (2019) A Multimodal Study of Sarcasm in Interactional Humor. Mouton de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110629446
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110629446 [Google Scholar]
  60. Tagliamonte, S. , & Roberts, C.
    (2005) So weird; so cool; so innovative: The use of intensifiers in the television series Friends. American Speech, 80(3), 280–300. 10.1215/00031283‑80‑3‑280
     https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-80-3-280 [Google Scholar]
  61. Tay, D.
    (2019) Time Series Analysis of Discourse: Method and Case Studies. Routledge. 10.4324/9780429505881
     https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429505881 [Google Scholar]
  62. Veirano, Pinto M.
    (2014) Dimensions of variation in North American movies. In T. Berber Sardinha & M. Veirano Pinto (Eds.), Multi-dimensional Analysis, 25 Years on: A Tribute to Douglas Biber (pp.109–146). John Benjamins. 10.1075/scl.60
     https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.60 [Google Scholar]
  63. Veirano Pinto, M.
    (2018) Variation in movies and television programs: The impact of corpus sampling. In V. Werner (Ed.), The Language of Pop Culture (pp.139–161). Routledge. 10.4324/9781315168210‑7
     https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315168210-7 [Google Scholar]
  64. Werner, V.
    (forthcoming). TV discourse, grammaticality, and language awareness. TESL-EJ, 24(3).
     [Google Scholar]
  65. Woods, A. , Fletcher, P. , & Hughes, A.
    (1986) Statistics in Language Studies. Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139165891
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139165891 [Google Scholar]
  66. Zago, R.
    (2016) From Originals to Remakes: Colloquiality in English Film Dialogue Over Time. Bonanno.
     [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.00036.wer
Loading
A diachronic perspective on telecinematic language
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 26, 38 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.00036.wer
/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.00036.wer
/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.00036.wer
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): diachronic study; pop culture; screenwriting; telecinematic discourse; time series analysis

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error