When we watch and listen to actors speaking lines that have been written by someone else-a common experience if we watch any television at all-the illusion of "people talking" is strong. These characters are people like us, but they are also different, products of a dramatic imagination, and the talk they exchange is not quite like ours. Television Dramatic Dialogue examines, from an applied sociolinguistic perspective, and with reference to television, the particular kind of "artificial" talk that we know as dialogue: onscreen/on-mike talk delivered by characters as part of dramatic storytelling in a range of fictional and nonfictional TV genres. As well as trying to identify the place which this kind of language occupies in sociolinguistic space, Richardson seeks to understand the conditions of its production by screenwriters and the conditions of its reception by audiences, offering two case studies, one British (Life on Mars) and one American (House).

Explores contemporary US television dialogue - the on-screen language that viewers worldwide encounter as they watch popular television series.

When we watch and listen to actors speaking lines that have been written by someone else-a common experience if we watch any television at all-the illusion of "people talking" is strong. These characters are people like us, but they are also different, products of a dramatic imagination, and the talk they exchange is not quite like ours.Television Dramatic Dialogue examines, from an applied sociolinguistic perspective, and with reference to television, the particular kind of "artificial" talk that we know as dialogue: onscreen/on-mike talk delivered by characters as part of dramatic storytelling in a range of fictional and nonfictional TV genres. As well as trying to identify the place which this kind of language occupies in sociolinguistic space, Richardson seeks to understand the conditions of its production by screenwriters and the conditions of its reception by audiences, offering two case studies, one British (Life on Mars) and one American (House).

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."

As entertaining as it is enlightening, Creating Dialogue for TV: Screenwriters Talk Television presents interviews with five Hollywood professionals who talk about all things related to dialogue – from naturalistic style to the building of characters to swearing and dialect. Screenwriters/showrunners David Mandel (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep), Jane Espenson (Buffy, Battlestar Galactica, Once Upon a Time), Robert Berens (Supernatural), Sheila Lawrence (Gilmore Girls, Ugly Betty, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel), and Doris Egan (Tru Calling, House, Reign) field a linguist’s inquiries about the craft of writing dialogue. This book is for anyone who has ever wondered what creative processes and attitudes lie behind the words they encounter when tuning into their favourite television show. It provides direct insights into Hollywood writers’ knowledge and opinions of how language is used in television narratives, and in doing so shows how language awareness, attitudes and the craft of using words are utilised to create popular TV series. The book will appeal to students and teachers in screenwriting, creative writing and linguistics as well as lay readers.

The Book of Dialogue is an invaluable resource for writers and students of narrative seeking to master the art of effective dialogue. The book will teach you how to use dialogue to lay the groundwork for events in a story, to balance dialogue with other story elements, to dramatize events through dialogue, and to strategically break up dialogue with other vital elements of your story in order to capture and hold a reader’s or viewer’s interest in the overall arc of the narrative. Writers will find Turco’s classic an essential reference for crafting dialogue. Using dialogue to teach dialogue, Turco’s chapters focus on narration, diction, speech, and genre dialogue. Through the Socratic dialogue method—invented by Plato in his dialogues outlining the teachings of Socrates—Turco provides an effective tool to teach effective discourse. He notes, “Plato wrote lies in order to tell the truth. That’s what a fiction writer does and has always done.” Now it’s your turn.

"The Targeting Media series breaks down each media form into its components and provides sample texts, information on the structure and feature of each text type and structured teaching units. Each text type is given comprehensive coverage with a clear descriptive overview followed by interesting lessons for students in middle high school."--P. [4].