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The Language of Fictional Television
Also available from Continuum

Evaluation in Media Discourse, Monika Bednarek

New Discourse on Language, Monika Bednarek and J. R. Martin (eds)
 The Language of
Fictional Television
Drama and Identity

Monika Bednarek
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038

www.continuumbooks.com

© Monika Bednarek 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Monika Bednarek has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4411-5585-6 (hardcover)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bednarek, Monika, 1977-
The language of fictional television: drama and identity / Monika Bednarek.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4411-5585-6
1. Television broadcasting--Language. 2. Television serials--United States.
3. Television serials–Great Britain. 4. Mass media and language.
5. English language–Usage. I. Title.

PN1992.8.L35B43 2010
302.23’45–dc22 2009048036

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group
D’oh (Homer Simpson)
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

Acknowledgements viii

1. Introduction 1

Part I Fictional Television: Dialogue and Drama

2. Analysing Television 7
3. The Genre of Dramedy and its Audience 28
4. Television Dialogue 61

Part II Fictional Television: Character Identity

5. Dialogue and Character Identity 97
6. Expressive Character Identity and Emotive Interjections 118
7. The Multimodal Performance 143
8. Expressive Character Identity and Ideology: Shared Attitudes 180
9. Conclusion 228

Appendices 233
Notes to Appendices 258
References 260
Indices
General Index 279
Index of Television Programmes 284
 Acknowledgements

The research described in this book was supported by a number of people and
institutions, and I would like to express my thanks to them here. First, much
of the research for this book was undertaken at the University of Technology,
Sydney (UTS) on a Chancellor’s Post-doctoral Research Fellowship, and I am
very grateful to the university for their generosity. I also wish to thank the Faculty
of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS, in particular Education and Journalism, for
their support throughout my time there, and Alastair Pennycook for valuable
academic advice, discussion and support on draft material. I also appreciate
Tim Gooding letting me audit his class on scriptwriting for television at UTS,
and for discussing aspects of professional practice with me.
Theo van Leeuwen, Michele Zappavigna, Naomi Knight and Sophie Reissner
kindly agreed to read individual draft chapters, and their advice has been
much appreciated. Needless to say, all remaining mistakes are mine. Helen
Caple read and commented upon the whole manuscript and also provided
the detailed illustrations used in Chapter 7 – it could not have been done
without her.
Important inspiration also came from discussions at the University of Sydney
initiated by Jim Martin on identity and interpersonal meaning, and it was also
very helpful to have had the opportunity to present parts of my research at
research seminars and conferences in Australia and Canada, which provided
important feedback from the audiences. Thanks also go to the linguists who
answered my query on LinguistList regarding existing linguistic research on
popular culture.
I also wish to say thanks to Gurdeep Mattu for commissioning the book and
the staff at Continuum for their editorial support. I am grateful too to Bettina
Fischer-Starcke for bibliographical advice and for access to parts of her PhD
thesis, and to Claudia Bubel for allowing me to reproduce a figure from her
PhD thesis in this book. I would also like to thank Mark Assad for help with
the corpus design as well as Abigail Brown for help with statistics and Michele
Zappavigna for technical advice and other helpful suggestions.
Last, but certainly not least, I wish to thank my partner, my friends, and
my family for the assistance, support and encouragement they have provided
throughout.
 Chapter 1

Introduction

1 Introducing The Language of Fictional Television

In this book I analyse the language of fictional television series, in particular,
how it differs from ‘naturally occurring’ language, and how it is used to create
drama and identity (of characters). By way of introducing some of the topics
of this book, consider example (1), a scene from an episode from The Simpsons
(FOX, 1989–):

[Homer has been subject to intense, negative media coverage after allegedly groping
baby-sitter Ashley Grant and being accused of sexual harassment, although in fact he
was just reaching for a piece of candy. For a detailed plot summary see http://www.
imdb.com/title/tt0701109/plotsummary. After watching this media coverage Homer is
feeling very dejected. (underlining indicates emphasis)]

(1)
Homer: Aw, I need a hug.
[Lisa and Bart only hug him after a pause]
How come you guys hesitated?
Lisa: Sorry, Dad, we do believe in you, we really do.
Bart: It’s just hard not to listen to TV: it’s spent so much more
time raising us than you have.
Homer: Oh, maybe TV is right. TV’s always right! [Homer walks
upstairs]
[Bart and Lisa hug the TV]
Homer: [from upstairs] Are you hugging the TV?
Bart/Lisa: No . . . [They kiss the TV]
(The Simpsons, 6.09, Homer Badman, 27/11/1994)

We can look at this scene with respect to several issues: First, we can consider
the points that are being made about our relation to television through the
use of metafictional comments, and through Lisa’s and Bart’s non-verbal beha-
viour: ‘it’s hard not to listen to TV’, ‘it’s spent so much more time raising us
2 The Language of Fictional Television

than you have’, ‘TV’s always right’, ‘are you hugging the TV?’, Bart and Lisa
hugging and kissing the TV. These are (humorous) points about the role of
television in promoting certain truths, representations or ideologies, in being
what Hartley calls a ‘transmodern teacher’ (Hermes 2005: 12). The points
also relate to the affective responses we have with respect to television and its
contents – theorized for instance with respect to ‘parasocial interaction’
(Giles 2002) and pleasure (Fiske 1994).
Another way in which we can look at this Simpsons scene is as an extract
from a television series itself, and we can explore this with respect to scripted
dialogue and its similarity/difference to ‘real’ language. We can also consider
its communicative context such as its process of production, or its relation to
the audience, its relation to other genres of fictional television (both animated
and non-animated), how characters such as Lisa, Bart and Homer are con-
strued through dialogue, or how audiences are attracted to buying The Simpsons
DVDs. Issues concerning the communicative context of fictional television,
its audience, its genres and especially its construal of characters (hence the
subtitle of this book: Drama and Identity) are in fact some of the questions that
inform this book.
So how hard is it not to listen to TV? And should we listen to it (e.g. analyse
it) at all? This book argues that it is time to take television dialogue seriously
and to incorporate its many forms and genres in the linguistic enterprise as a
whole, that is, to analyse not just news broadcasts, political interviews or real-
ity TV shows, but also the diverse genres of fictional television. My interest in
this book is particularly in the genre of ‘dramedy’ – a hybrid genre that com-
bines elements of comedy and drama (hence the subtitle of this book: Drama
and Identity) – though many points will be relevant to other fictional television
genres.
More generally, this book studies television from a linguistic perspective.
Drawing on the genre of dramedy and using case studies, it provides an
introduction to the linguistic analysis of fictional television series, their
dialogue and their characters.
The research framework is

zmulti-methodological in that it tries to combine both quantitative and

qualitative linguistic analysis and both ‘manual’ and computational
(corpus) analysis;
zmulti-theoretical in that it tries to incorporate insights from corpus linguist-
ics, pragmatics, multimodal research, and stylistics;
zinter-disciplinary in that it tries to take into account to some extent insights
from media/television/film/cultural studies while being firmly rooted
within linguistics.

For students and researchers in media studies, it may be useful to note that
my approach in this book is what media/communication studies calls ‘textual
 Introduction 3

analysis’, combining elements of narrative analysis (with a focus on charac-

ters), discourse analysis (with a focus on language), conversation analysis
(with a focus on spoken interactions, albeit scripted), and critical analysis
(investigating ideology) (see Weerakkody 2008: chapter 14). From the perspect-
ive of linguistics, it is perhaps best called a ‘corpus-based discourse analysis’
(Baker 2006: 6) of television dialogue, as the book makes use both of
computational corpus analysis (automatic analysis of large datasets/corpora)
and close reading (manual analysis of individual texts). These methodologies
will be introduced in more detail in individual chapters as relevant.

2 Structure of this Book

The Language of Fictional Television is divided into two parts. Part I, Fictional
Television: Dialogue and Drama (Chapters 2–4) is about the analysis of fic-
tional television in terms of its communicative context, genre, audience and
dialogue. Part II Fictional Television: Character Identity (Chapters 5–8) con-
cerns the construal of televisual characters through dialogue and other
semiotic resources. The focus of Part II on characterization was chosen
because of the paucity of research on characterization and television dialogue,
with few serious attempts to model characterization in both linguistics and
media studies.
Chapter 2 deals with characteristics of fictional television, in particular
television series. Its different sections explore the rationale behind the ana-
lysis of television and the significance of television in our lives, important tele-
vision forms and genres, and communicative aspects of television series: their
communicative context, their inherent multimodality, their adherence to the
code of realism, and the general nature of television characters. Chapter 3
applies the concepts set up in Chapter 2 to the analysis of an exemplar of one
of the prevalent contemporary TV genres – the hybrid ‘dramedy’, which has
elements of ‘soap drama’ and comedy, and which is seriously under-researched
in television studies. It also includes an analysis of the language of DVD advert-
ising discourse used to attract an audience to buying DVDs of fictional televi-
sion series. Chapter 4 considers features and functions of television dialogue
and explores differences between dialogue in dramedy and naturally occur-
ring conversation. Chapter 5 uses corpus linguistic methodology to investigate
differences in the language of ‘dramedy characters’; Chapter 6 introduces
the concept of ‘expressive’ character identity and features a corpus analysis
of emotive interjections; Chapter 7 provides an in-depth analysis of the multi-
modal construal of expressive character identities in one scene; and Chapter 8
explores expressive character identity in terms of ideology and shared
attitudes. Chapter 9 concludes the book with some final remarks.1
Throughout the book, the main points about fictional television series
will be mostly illustrated through case studies of a particular contemporary
4 The Language of Fictional Television

popular US American television series, the dramedy Gilmore Girls (Warner

Brothers, 2000–2007), that has had a global impact. It is worth noting that
there is a tradition of focusing on one cultural product or author both in
media studies, with individual monographs and edited volumes (Akass &
McCabe 2004, McCabe & Akass 2006, Allen 2007) on television series such as
CSI (CBS, 2000–), Desperate Housewives (Touchstone Television/ABC, 2004–),
Sex and the City (HBO, 1998–2004) and in Stylistics, with research on indi-
vidual authors such as Dickens (Mahlberg 2007) or Austen (Fischer-Starcke
2007). Most linguistic research (Rey 2001, Bubel 2006, Bubel & Spitz 2006,
Quaglio 2008, 2009, Stokoe 2008) also addresses a particular television
series only, whether this is Star Trek (NBC/Paramount, 1966–1969, 1987–1994,
1993–1999), Sex and the City, Ally McBeal (FOX, 1997–2002) or Friends (NBC,
1994–2004). In the context of this book, this focus on one series has the clear
advantage that it allows us to elaborate extensively on the background and
context of a series in which the linguistic analyses of its dialogue are embed-
ded; it means that the analyses are coherent throughout, and we can see how
the different analyses can illuminate various aspects of a television series.
However, reference will also be made to my own and other linguists’ analyses of
Golden Girls (NBC, 1985–1992), Dawson’s Creek (Warner Brothers, 1998–2003),
Friends and Lost (ABC, 2004–), and I will frequently refer to other fictional
television programmes and try to generalize to them. That is, the case studies
of Gilmore Girls are employed for illustrative purposes only, demonstrating
analytical frameworks and methodologies, and findings are related to other
television series as much as possible. The television programmes that will be
mentioned in this book are a mixture of contemporary (at the time of writing,
for example, Lost), ‘classic’ (e.g. Golden Girls) and ‘cult’ (e.g. Friends, Sex and the
City) series, mainly from the United States. The majority of these are available
as DVD box sets and reruns of most of the classic and cult series are broadcast
by cable television networks in the United States or can be viewed online.

Note
1
A note on the use of notes in this book: The majority of the notes are used
simply to direct the reader to further studies or research on discussed topics, or
to point to alternative linguistic frameworks/methodologies that can be used
in the analysis. This information has been delegated to the notes, so as to not
‘break the flow’ of reading. At other times, the notes will give information on
methodological or terminological issues.
 Part I

Fictional Television: Dialogue

and Drama
This page intentionally left blank
 Chapter 2

Analysing Television

Chapter 2 begins with describing some of the motivations behind analysing

television before giving an introduction to some of the important aspects
of fictional television: its forms and genres, its communicative context, the
various modes/modalities it combines, the code of realism and the nature of
televisual characters.

1 Why Television?

Pennycook (2007) comments on the widespread tendency to dismiss popular

culture, which, as he says,

has a long history: from a culturally conservative point of view, popular music
and entertainment are the shallow interests of a populace devoid of an inter-
est in higher culture; from a more leftist point of view, popular culture is
mass culture, soporific entertainment to passify [sic] the people . . . . I argue
by contrast that there are social, cultural, political, aesthetic, philosophical
and educational grounds for seeing popular culture in more complex terms.
(Pennycook 2007: 13)

As part of popular culture, television also has a long tradition of being attacked,
and with other popular cultural products has been cast ‘as the degraded, the
illegal, or the immoral’ (Fiske 1994: 243) despite the ‘empowering pleasures’
(Fiske 1994: 254) it has to offer. The analysis of ‘popular’ fictional televi-
sion series of the kind studied in this book may thus need some justification.
Without offering an exhaustive discussion, some key points will be made below
as to why we should study television, especially fictional television.
First, the very ‘popularity’ of television entails a huge influence of it in our
daily lives, as ‘we spend more time viewing television programmes than on any
other leisure pursuit, including going to the cinema, listening to CDs or even
playing computer games’ (Marshall & Werndly 2002: 8). Undoubtedly, televi-
sion is a popular and important global medium that we engage with socially
8 The Language of Fictional Television

on an everyday basis: ‘there is an argument in terms of scale – if popular cul-

ture is indeed so popular, and, moreover, closely bound up with English and
globalization, we would be foolish to ignore it or to reduce it to dismissive
comments about “pop culture” or “mass culture” ’ (Pennycook 2007: 81).
In cultural and media studies products of popular culture, including televi-
sion series, have been studied precisely because of this ‘popularity’, and the
argument for taking popular culture seriously ‘is an argument that would
not be necessary for a cultural studies audience’ (Pennycook 2007: 13). Lacey
(1998) states: ‘From a Media Studies perspective all media artifacts are wor-
thy of investigation, particularly if they are popular. They are worthy of study
because they have much to teach us about how societies are organized and how
societies create meaning’ (Lacey 1998: 84).
Indeed, the popularity of and our engagement with television is not just
limited to viewing television programmes. Not only do we watch television,
we also talk about it and even use it to negotiate our identities. Even those
of us who (say they) do not watch television use that very claim to construe
an aspect of their identity. Undoubtedly, we negotiate our identities partially
through how much television or what television programmes we watch (e.g.
in Australia World News Australia on SBS vs. Today Tonight on Seven; e.g. in the
United States The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS vs. Fox News Watch on Fox).
People frequently watch television together and/or talk to each other about
it, both at home, among friends and at the workplace. As ‘uses and gratificat-
ion theory’ argues, television fulfils needs for social interaction, relationship
and identity building, by helping viewers both to bond with characters, to
talk to others about television series and to compare our own identity with
those of televisual characters (Selby & Cowdery 1995: 186). For instance, it has
been suggested that television programmes, like other products of popular
culture, have a crucial part to play in consumers’ making sense of everyday
reality, constructing identity and constructing desires (Pennycook 2007: 81,
de Kloet & van Zoonen 2007: 337). To elaborate briefly on one of these aspects,
Hermes (2005), drawing on Mepham (1990) and Hartley (1999), argues that
television works as a transmodern teacher, telling stories ‘to which people can
turn in their efforts to answer questions which invariably spring up through
their lives. What is possible for me, who can I be, what can my life consist of,
how can I bring this about? What is it like to be someone else, to be particular
kinds of other people, how does it come about that people can be like
that?’ (Mepham 1990: 60, quoted in Hermes 2005: 12). From his personal
experience, the British novelist Nick Hornby writes:

I spent as much time watching telly and films when I was a kid as I did
lying around reading books. I think it’s crazy that writers are only allowed to
say that certain books have influenced them. I’m of a generation where that
has not happened and, yes, there are writers that influenced me very much
 Analysing Television 9

but the formative experiences of childhood were cinematic or television.

(Totaro 2009)

Philosopher Mark Rowlands also alludes to this in the title of his book Everything
I Know I Learned from TV: Philosophy for the Unrepentant Couch Potato, and Critical
Discourse Analyst Ruth Wodak argues that fictional television series such as
The West Wing (NBC, 1999–2006) offer

a specific perspective (event model) on how ‘politics is done’ for the American
lay audience (and because the series has been dubbed in many languages,
for a much bigger global audience). In other words it offers a model of how
all of us are supposed to believe politics is done! (Wodak 2009: 22)

A brief note in this context (of the importance of television) on new media:
While some people may argue that television is ‘old’ media, and while it may
face increasing challenges from the new media, ‘free-to-air television can
deliver one thing that nothing else can – millions of people, in the same place,
at the same time’ (Idato 2009: 3). Further, television content often ‘migrates’
from television to other platforms. As Australia’s Channel Ten chief program-
mer David Mott puts it, ‘So the ability to put the content out there [on other
platforms] where they [people] want to see it is fantastic. But at the end of
the day, the content has to start somewhere, and globally it is still driven by
television’ (quoted in Idato 2009: 3). Fictional television plays a big role in this
context, with DVD box sets available to buy of many past and current series,
and with the possibility to download individual episodes from platforms such
as iTunes.
The significance of television in our lives is further shown by the level of
academic attention it has attracted (outside linguistics) as evidenced by the
existence of over 3000 articles on television studies in journals since 1995
(Allen 2004: 11). With respect to the interdisciplinary field of television stud-
ies (Allen 2004) and the more general field of media studies (Miller 2009), the
main focus has been on television institutions, ownership/control, technolo-
gies of television, effects of television/audience research, global and local con-
texts of television, television and the new media, television genres, television
production and reception, television narratives, and television and ideology/
representation/content (e.g. gender, race, age), with methodologies ranging
from textual (image/semiotic/structural) analysis to content analysis and
ethnographic surveys (Selby & Cowdery 1995, Burton 2000, Allen & Hill 2004).
In contrast, television dialogue is a neglected topic in linguistic research
in line with a general tendency where ‘the language of popular culture has
been largely overlooked in applied linguistics and TESOL’ (Pennycook
2007: 9). As shown by the variety of topics investigated in media/television
studies there are many aspects that a linguistic analysis of television dialogue
10 The Language of Fictional Television

could focus on systematically, such as humour/comedy/pleasure, genre

analysis or television narratives, with the emphasis in this book on some of the
more neglected aspects of fictional television series – the genre of ‘dramedy’
(a comedy/drama hybrid), dialogue and the televisual character.
As a matter of fact, there are also good reasons for focusing on fictional
television series in particular, which we can briefly consider now. First, the
importance of fictional television becomes clear when we look at audience
figures. For instance, considering broadcast (rather than cable) TV usage in
the United States for the week of 20 April 2009 (Monday through Sunday)
figures show that six fictional television series (CSI [CBS, 2000–], Criminal
Minds [CBS, 2005–], Grey’s Anatomy [ABC, 2005–], Desperate Housewives
[Touchstone Television/ABC, 2004–], The Mentalist [CBS, 2008–], NCIS 9P-
Special [CBS, 2003–]) feature in the top ten (the top four broadcasts are
different versions of American Idol [FOX, 2002– ] and Dancing with the Stars
[ABC, 2005– ]), with viewers ranging from 14.6 millions to 12.6 million (www.
nielsenmedia.com). In Australia the currently most watched weekly television
drama (Packed to the Rafters [Seven Network, Australia, 2008– ]) has 2 million
viewers (Idato 2009). In Britain, serial fictional television programmes such as
Coronation Street [ITV, UK, 1960–] and Eastenders [BBC, UK, 1985–] repeatedly
feature prominently among the weekly top ten programmes (www.barb.co.uk/
report/weeklyTopProgrammes?, figures accessed for 4–10 May 2009; compare
also the figures for 1992 reported in Selby & Cowdery 1995: 77).
Second, it is worth noting that the dialogue featured in fictional televi-
sion series can have a significant influence on learners of English in non-
English speaking countries, who may buy the DVDs and watch the original
versions. For such learners, ‘television programmes and films may be one of
the best opportunities to hear a foreign language spoken. This also means
that film [and TV, M.B.] language becomes an influential model for advanced
learners of English’ (Mittmann 2006: 575). From an ESL perspective, Quaglio
(2008) also argues for an analysis and use of television dialogue in the English
language classroom. Broadening this argument, the language shown on
television may also have an impact on native speakers, for example the bor-
rowing by speakers in the United Kingdom of particular expressions from
television series (Coupland 2007). As part of the mass media, television helps
to shape the ‘sociolinguistic environment’ (Coupland 2007: 185). Scripted
television language may also have an influence on other languages when it is
dubbed into these languages (Mittmann 2006, Díaz-Cintas 2009).
Third, fictional television series also engage audiences in particular
ways. Creeber notes that ‘in terms of hours alone the series and serial can
produce a breadth of vision, a narrative scope and can capture an audience’s
involvement in a way equalled by few contemporary media’ (Creeber 2004: 4).
It is television series in particular that feature active fan involvement (Mittell
2004: 177). As Roman also points out, ‘[t]elevision programs and characters
 Analysing Television 11

have a unique ability to become an intimate part of a household and fam-

ily’ (Roman 2005: 130, see also Esslin 2002: 42). In fact, audiences interact
with television series and characters in diverse ways, ranging from being con-
sumers to being fans, cultists, enthusiasts (de Kloet & van Zoonen 2007, citing
Abercrombie & Longhurst 1998) and ranging from (wishful or not) identifi-
cation with a character to affinity/liking and parasocial interaction (Cohen
1999, Giles 2002).
While there are hence a number of reasons for exploring fictional televi-
sion, the decision to start this exploration with English-speaking culture (this
book mentions mainly programmes from Australia, the United Kingdom and
especially the United States), and to focus on American series is supported by
the fact that television is becoming more and more globalized. The United
States is a forerunner in its development: ‘All of the main television formats –
news, soaps, drama, game shows and advertising – were invented in America’
(Machin & van Leeuwen 2007: 12). This is one reason why I have chosen a
US American television series (Gilmore Girls [Warner Brothers, 2000–2007],
cf. Chapter 3) as a particular focus in this book. American popular culture is
a truly global phenomenon in the twenty-first century, with America supply-
ing most of the world’s entertainment (Olson 2004: 115). It ‘has become the
popular culture of the world at large. American television is thus more than a
purely local phenomenon. It fascinates – and in some instances frightens – the
whole world’ (Esslin 2002: xv). At the same time, my perspective as a ‘stranger’
or ‘outsider’ to American language and culture (as someone who grew up in
Germany and currently lives in Australia) will hopefully allow me to perceive
interesting cultural points about a television series that someone all too-
familiar with the culture may not notice. Regarding the point of nationality,
global television in fact transcends national identity and is a major source for
construing cultural identities (Barker & Galasiński 2001: 8), affiliation and
bonding. As Hermes puts it, ‘In everyday life, our allegiances and feelings of
belonging often relate more easily and directly to (global) popular culture
than to issues of national or local governance’ (Hermes 2005: 1).

2 Television Forms and Genres

Sections 2 and 3 introduce some analytical concepts that can be used in the
analysis of fictional television and that will be applied to a particular series in
Chapter 3. This section explores television forms and genres, before Section 3
deals with the communicative context of fictional television.
Distinguishing between different forms and genres is a common way of
differentiating television broadcasts, allowing us to group television broadcasts
together in certain categories. While there are many different forms/genres of
television in general, such as documentary, talk show, news broadcast, reality
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