Language and Characterisation in Television Series

This book explores how language is used to create characters in fictional television series. To do so, it draws on multiple case studies from the United States and Australia. Brought together in this book for the first time, these case studies constitute more than the sum of their parts. They highlight different aspects of televisual characterisation and showcase the use of different data, methods, and approaches in its analysis. Uniquely, the book takes a mixed-method approach and will thus not only appeal to corpus linguists but also researchers in sociolinguistics, stylistics, and pragmatics. All corpus linguistic techniques are clearly introduced and explained, and the book is thus accessible to both experienced researchers as well as novice researchers and students. It will be essential reading in linguistics, literature, stylistics, and media/television studies.Winner of the Screenwriting Research Network 2023 Best Monograph award!

Jingyan Zhang, NingboTech University, in Journal of Pragmatics 212 (2023).:
Overall, this book is a thought-provoking and insightful read that adds to our understanding of how the media constructs, reinforces, and challenges social identities through language and characterization strategies. The author's use of corpus linguistics has helped to provide a rigorous and systematic analysis of the language used in popular television series, and her examination of different characterization strategies adds depth and nuances to our understanding of how these series construct and negotiate social identities. In addition, the style of the book is extremely reader-friendly without any obscure terminology or needlessly complicated diction. The book is highly recommended for scholars and students interested in media studies, linguistics, and cultural studies. As the use of audiovisual products, where different semiotic codes contribute to the construction of meaning, has proved to be a valuable tool in language teaching, this publication is also of vital importance for using films and television series for pragmatics and ESP teaching.