The Language of Fictional Television: Drama and Identity

Description

With cases studies used throughout to help illustrate the more general points, this is an analysis of the most important characteristics of television dialogue, with a focus on fictional television. The book illustrates how we can fruitfully and systematically analyse the language of television.

Monika Bednarek is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Sydney, Australia.

'Monika Bednarek's careful quantitative eye looks around unusual corners for a corpus linguist. Her book The Language of Fictional Television offers a distinctive, linguistic approach to analyzing popular culture, but draws productively on stylistics, cultural studies, media studies and sociological frameworks. This book provides a model for linguists who want to combine corpus evidence with 'big picture' questions, like how characterisation and identity works, and how ideologies are naturalized - and might be challenged - both in and out of fiction. The material can be adapted for teaching materials in senior undergraduate and postgraduate classes: for example, the chapter on how vegetarians and vegetarian foods are construed, and how this is involved in character development in the 'dramedy' Gilmore Girls, makes an excellent platform for teaching language and ideology.' -- Alison Moore, Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics, University of Wollongong & Honorary Research Associate, Centre for Language in Social Life, Macquarie University, Australia 'Bednarek's volume is a welcome corpus-assisted contribution to the study of television from which scholars and students of linguistics, media and cultural studies will much benefit. Informative, clear and subtle it is a very pleasant read for the corpus neophyte and for the corpus linguist alike.' -- Dr Roberta Piazza,University of Sussex, UK, in Applied Linguistics Throughout the book, arguments are presented with great clarity and meticulous signposting... The Language of Fictional Television can be recommended to both students and researchers interested in television studies, and in the intersections between linguistics on the one hand and cultural, film and media on the other. -- Anglistik vo. 22.2 September 2011