Television dialogue : the sitcom Friends vs. natural conversation / Paulo Quaglio.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Quaglio, Paulo.

Series:

Studies in corpus linguistics ; v. 36.

Studies in corpus linguistics, 1388-0373 ; v. 36

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Friends (Television program).

Dialogue analysis.

Conversation analysis.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (182 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub. Co., c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book explores a virtually untapped, yet fascinating research area: television dialogue. It reports on a study comparing the language of the American situation comedy Friends to natural conversation. Transcripts of the television show and the American English conversation portion of the Longman Grammar Corpus provide the data for this corpus-based investigation, which combines Douglas Biber's multidimensional methodology with a frequency-based analysis of close to 100 linguistic features. As a natural offshoot of the research design, this study offers a comprehensive description of the most common linguistic features characterizing natural conversation. Illustrated with numerous dialogue extracts from Friends and conversation, topics such as vague, emotional, and informal language are discussed. This book will be an important resource not only for researchers and students specializing in discourse analysis, register variation, and corpus linguistics, but also anyone interested in conversational language and television dialogue.

Contents:

Television Dialogue

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Table of contents

List of tables

List of figures

Foreword to the book

Opening credits

1.1 Introduction: What this book is about

1.2 What this book is not about

1.3 Conversation studies

1.3.1 The discourse circumstances of conversation

1.4 Television studies

1.4.1 Television dialogue

1.5 Why study the language of Friends?

1.6 Summary

1.7 Overview of the book

Setting the stage

2.1 The show

2.2 The main characters

2.2.1 The individual characters

2.3 Summary

Behind the scenes

3.1 Introduction

3.2 The data

3.2.1 The Friends corpus: Composition

3.2.2 The Friends corpus: Settings and interactions

3.2.3 The Conversation Corpus: Composition

3.2.4 The American Conversation Subcorpus

3.2.5 The Conversation Corpus: Settings and Interactions

3.2.5.1 Casual Conversations

3.2.5.2 Task-Related, Service Encounters, and Casual Conversations

3.2.5.3 Texts with Phone conversations and casual conversations

3.2.5.4 Texts with work-related conversations

3.3 Settings and interactions: Friends versus conversation

3.4 Data Coding and concordancing

3.5 Norming

3.6 Statistical significance

3.7 Functional Differences

3.8 The choice of linguistic features

3.9 Summary

Take 1

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Multidimensional analysis: A brief introduction

4.3 Results of Biber's (1988) MD Analysis

4.4 The MD Analysis of Friends

4.5 Summary

Some you know I mean it's really urgh

5.1 Introduction

5.2 The linguistic expression of vagueness

5.2.1 Hedges, Vague Coordination Tags, and Nouns of Vague Reference

5.2.2 Discourse markers you know and I mean

5.2.3 Stance markers probably, perhaps, and maybe

5.2.4 Modal verbs might and could

5.2.5 Copular verbs seem and appear.

5.2.6 Utterance final so

5.3 Summary

I am just really really happy...

6.1 Introduction

6.2 The linguistic expression of emotion/emphatic content

6.2.1 Adverbial intensifiers

6.2.2 Discourse markers oh, wow and stance marker of course

6.2.3 Copular verbs look, feel, and sound

6.2.4 Emphatic do

6.2.5 All (+ adjective/gerund) and totally (emphatic agreement)

6.2.6 Lexical bundles I can't believe (+ complements) and thank you so much

6.2.7 Expletives and slang terms

6.2.8 Non-minimal Responses Sure, Wow, and Fine

6.3 Summary

I'm just hanging out. Y'know, having fun

7.1 Introduction

7.2 The Linguistic Expression of Informality

7.2.1 Expletives

7.2.2 Slang Terms

7.2.3 Vocatives (Familiarizers)

7.2.4 Informal greetings and leave-takings

7.2.5 Linguistic innovations

7.2.6 Semi-modals

7.2.7 Repeats

7.3 Summary

Once upon a time

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Narrative discourse

8.2.1 The linguistic expression of narrativeness

8.3 The discourse immediacy of Friends

8.4 Summary

That's a wrap

9.1 Linguistic similarities

9.2 Vague language

9.3 Emotional language

9.4 Informal language

9.5 Degrees of Narrativeness

9.6 Restrictions and/or influences of the televised medium

9.7 Implications and applications

9.8 Final remarks

References

Appendix

Name index

Subject index

The series Studies in Corpus Linguistics (SCL).

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [151]-155) and indexes.

ISBN:

9786612104992

9781282104990

1282104993

9789027290441

902729044X

OCLC:

320622795