Get fulltext from our e-platform

Decoding Movie Language through Multi-Dimensional Analysis and the Grammar of Graphics
This book offers a comprehensive and refined account of movie discourse through the application of Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) to the American Movie Corpus, a collection of authentic, verified movie dialog transcriptions. Expanding on previous MDA-based research, it broadens both the scope of data and the methodological framework by integrating the Grammar of Graphics to facilitate the interpretation of linguistic findings. The study addresses the longstanding debate on the authenticity of scripted dialog, demonstrating the textual and linguistic proximity between movie language and spontaneous conversation. It includes genre-based and diachronic analyses, offering a rigorous, data-driven perspective on movie language as both a linguistic resource and a tool for teaching spoken grammar. Bridging corpus linguistics, applied linguistics, and media studies, the book provides valuable insights for scholars, educators, and learners interested in spoken language, ELT, and telecinematic discourse, while contributing a novel, visualized approach to empirical language analysis.
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 124] 2025. vii, 329 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 29 August 2025
Published online on 29 August 2025
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements and dedication | pp. vii–viii
- Introduction | pp. 1–5
- Chapter 1. Foundations and refinements in movie discourse studies | pp. 6–37
- Chapter 2. Study design: Hypotheses, techniques, and data selection | pp. 38–48
- Chapter 3. MDA 1 and graphic visualizations of text types | pp. 49–97
- Chapter 4. MDA 2 and graphic visualizations of variables | pp. 98–199
- Chapter 5. MDA 3 and graphic visualizations of linguistic features | pp. 200–239
- Chapter 6. Validation of the scientific hypotheses | pp. 240–251
- Chapter 7. Concluding remarks | pp. 252–261
- References | pp. 262–267
- Appendices
- Appendix 1. Tags and weights of Dimension 1 linguistic features | p. 270
- Appendix 2. Comprehensive analysis of Dimension 1 mean scores and weighted linguistic features in individual movies | pp. 271–274
- Appendix 3. Tags and weights of Dimension 2 linguistic features | p. 275
- Appendix 4. Comprehensive analysis of Dimension 2 mean scores and weighted linguistic features in individual movies | pp. 276–277
- Appendix 5. Tags and weights of Dimension 3 linguistic features | p. 278
- Appendix 6. Comprehensive analysis of Dimension 3 mean scores and weighted linguistic features in individual movies | pp. 279–280
- Appendix 7. Tags and weights of Dimension 4 linguistic features | p. 281
- Appendix 8. Comprehensive analysis of Dimension 4 mean scores and weighted linguistic features in individual movies | pp. 282–283
- Appendix 9. Tags and weights of Dimension 5 linguistic features | p. 284
- Appendix 10. Comprehensive analysis of Dimension 5 mean scores and weighted linguistic features in individual movies | pp. 285–286
- Appendix 11. Ggplot2 codes for Figures 1 to 94 | pp. 287–327
- Index | p. 329