Vague words in Law in Order: Special Victims Unit

Auteurs

  • Jonnathas Vieira Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
  • Paula Lança Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Résumé

TV series have been a source of input for English language learners, especially the ones interested in real language use. There are studies that show how close to real life some TV shows are (ORFANO, 2010). For this study a corpus of a TV series - Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) - was compiled. This corpus is composed of 6 episodes (44.400 words). The analysis considered that every Law and Order episode carries investigation and court scenes. The main point of this investigation is to analyze the use of vague words such as any, anything, anyone, anybody, anyway, and anywhere in the TV show. An analysis of the episodes showed that these words occurred 139 times with a frequency distribution that varied in the investigation and court scenes. The results may reveal that more formal contexts, represented in the TV series by the court scenes, do not favor the use of vague language. In such argumentative contexts speakers tend to be more precise.

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Publiée

2014-06-30

Numéro

Vol. 7 (2014): Revele: Revista Virtual dos Estudantes de Letras

Rubrique

Estudos Linguísticos

Licence

O autor de submissão à revista Revele, caso a submissão seja aceita para publicação, cede os direitos autorais à editora da revista (Faculdade de Letras da UFMG). A responsabilidade do conteúdo dos artigos é exclusiva dos autores. É proibida a submissão integral ou parcial do texto já publicado na revista a qualquer outro periódico.