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8 March/mis Mawrth 2023: Charlotte Rosenow

8 March/mis Mawrth (Week 7 of Term): Charlotte Rosenow, RWTH Aachen University

Title: A diachronic perspective on the linguistic representation of queer characters on scripted North American television shows: Terms of queer in-group identity in the TV Corpus

Keywords: corpus linguistics, language in film and television, queer studies, diachronic study

Abstract: A diachronic perspective on the linguistic representation of queer characters on scripted North American television shows: Terms of queer in-group identity in the TV Corpus
Due to the carefully planned, practiced, and edited nature of television scripts, their use of language can be assumed to be purposeful and self-aware to a very high degree (Marshall and Werndly 2002, 78). As such, “TV dialogue” (in the sense of Bednarek 2018, 7) can be assumed to allow us to understand “how language used in television texts connects to a world outside the text.” (Marshall and Werndly 2002, 94) With this presumed “culture–media dialectic, where TV dialogue both constructs and reflects cultures and their ideologies” (Bednarek 2018, 3), the question arises of if and how real life socio-political changes may be mirrored in TV dialogue.
Meanwhile, the influence that behaviours witnessed on TV may have on the behaviours and opinions of a viewer has been well documented (e.g. Bandura and Walters 1977). Moreover, recent studies have found indications that this may be especially true with regards to the representation of marginalized groups on television, both in terms of self-image, as well as in terms of their perception by the general public (e.g. Pugh 2018, Battles and Hilton-Morrow 2002). As such, this ongoing thesis project investigates the linguistic representation of queer characters on scripted television from a diachronic perspective, using a corpus-based methodology, and utilizing statements of in-group membership as its point of departure. A statement of in-group membership is, in the context of this project, understood as an utterance indicating/identifying someone (or something) as belonging to the queer community.
This talk in particular will report on the findings of stage 1 of my analysis, focusing specifically on terms of queer in-group identity in the TV Corpus (“The TV Corpus” n.d.) and investigating potential diachronic changes in the usages of these terms in an effort to better understand the interplay between North American TV dialogue, its representation of queer characters and the queer community, and real-world socio-political change.

References

Bandura, Albert, and Richard H. Walters. 1977. Social Learning Theory. Vol. 1. Englewood cliffs Prentice Hall.
Battles, Kathleen, and Wendy Hilton-Morrow. 2002. “Gay Characters in Conventional Spaces: Will and Grace and the Situation Comedy Genre.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (1): 87–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180216553.
Bednarek, Monika. 2018. Language and Television Series: A Linguistic Approach to TV Dialogue. The Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series. Cambridge ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Marshall, Jill, and Angela Werndly. 2002. The Language of Television. Intertext. London ; New York: Routledge.
Pugh, Tison. 2018. The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
“The TV Corpus.” n.d. English-Corpora.org. Accessed October 10, 2021. https://www.englishcorpora.org/tv/.

This seminar will be hybrid although Charlie will be present and we encourage in-person attendance in Room 3.62 of the John Percival Building. To join online click here.