Corpus Analysis of the Language of Film and Television

In the 1980s and 1990s, corpus analysis of movie and television language was not widely pursued, as linguists questioned its representativeness of the language of conversation. However, perceptions have shifted since the early 21st century, in part due to corpus-based analysis based on the multi-dimensional framework. The pervasive presence of movies and television in daily life highlights the value of studying screen verbal language. This area of study offers insights into how scriptwriters and production teams craft a simplified yet plausible version of natural conversation. This entry focuses on corpus studies employing multi-dimensional analysis (MD analysis) in the context of movie and television language. MD analysis is advantageous for its capacity to simultaneously assess over a hundred linguistic variables across numerous texts. Furthermore, it facilitates comprehensive comparisons between the linguistic features of screen dialogues and other registers, such as natural conversation, prepared speeches, and official documents. The entry provides a historical overview of MD analysis studies in this field, introduces the fundamentals of the MD framework, and discusses the observed similarities and differences between screen and natural conversation. It also explores the functional characteristics of movie and television language, including its application in English as a foreign language classroom.