{"title":"Telecinematic stylistics: Language and style in fantasy TV series","authors":"Adrián Castro","doi":"10.1177/09639470231214673","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The language of written fantasy has been amply studied, with extensive research on authors such as JR Tolkien, Robert E Howard, or Aldous Huxley. The study of television language, on the other hand, is attracting increasing attention, even though the scope of such research often encompasses a single TV show rather than whole genres. Given the renewed interest in all things fantasy, this study seeks to analyze the language of fantasy TV series from a corpus-stylistic perspective to open new paths for linguistic inquiry. First, I depart from a theoretical distinction that relies on Mandala’s (2012) overview of the field and James and Mendlesohn’s (2012) definitions of fantasy as a genre; I consider some of the traits they associate with written fantasy and propose a taxonomy of the different types of fantasy worlds in television. On the basis of this, I design my own TV fantasy corpus by sampling three episodes from fifteen American fantasy TV shows (2011-2021) and compare it against Davies’ TV Corpus (2021). Using a corpus-based approach, I implement a POS (part-of-speech) and semantic analysis of the corpus and consider whether, and if so how, the language of fantasy in television reflects the same characteristics scholars have identified in written fantasy and general television discourse. In doing so, I aim to contribute to the understanding of the style of fantasy as a genre and assess whether fantasy TV series are characterized by particular linguistic features.","PeriodicalId":45849,"journal":{"name":"Language and Literature","volume":" 39","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language and Literature","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09639470231214673","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The language of written fantasy has been amply studied, with extensive research on authors such as JR Tolkien, Robert E Howard, or Aldous Huxley. The study of television language, on the other hand, is attracting increasing attention, even though the scope of such research often encompasses a single TV show rather than whole genres. Given the renewed interest in all things fantasy, this study seeks to analyze the language of fantasy TV series from a corpus-stylistic perspective to open new paths for linguistic inquiry. First, I depart from a theoretical distinction that relies on Mandala’s (2012) overview of the field and James and Mendlesohn’s (2012) definitions of fantasy as a genre; I consider some of the traits they associate with written fantasy and propose a taxonomy of the different types of fantasy worlds in television. On the basis of this, I design my own TV fantasy corpus by sampling three episodes from fifteen American fantasy TV shows (2011-2021) and compare it against Davies’ TV Corpus (2021). Using a corpus-based approach, I implement a POS (part-of-speech) and semantic analysis of the corpus and consider whether, and if so how, the language of fantasy in television reflects the same characteristics scholars have identified in written fantasy and general television discourse. In doing so, I aim to contribute to the understanding of the style of fantasy as a genre and assess whether fantasy TV series are characterized by particular linguistic features.
期刊介绍:
Language and Literature is an invaluable international peer-reviewed journal that covers the latest research in stylistics, defined as the study of style in literary and non-literary language. We publish theoretical, empirical and experimental research that aims to make a contribution to our understanding of style and its effects on readers. Topics covered by the journal include (but are not limited to) the following: the stylistic analysis of literary and non-literary texts, cognitive approaches to text comprehension, corpus and computational stylistics, the stylistic investigation of multimodal texts, pedagogical stylistics, the reading process, software development for stylistics, and real-world applications for stylistic analysis. We welcome articles that investigate the relationship between stylistics and other areas of linguistics, such as text linguistics, sociolinguistics and translation studies. We also encourage interdisciplinary submissions that explore the connections between stylistics and such cognate subjects and disciplines as psychology, literary studies, narratology, computer science and neuroscience. Language and Literature is essential reading for academics, teachers and students working in stylistics and related areas of language and literary studies.