by Monika Bednarek
What linguistic awareness do viewers have about the dialogue they encounter while watching fictional, English-language television series? This is a question I asked in my 2018 book with regards to speakers of English as a foreign language. Part of this corpus linguistic study of television dialogue included a questionnaire with almost 600 German university students about their consumption of English-language TV series. Since then, I have often wondered whether results would be different if we surveyed viewers who speak English as a first language. To find out, I undertook an informal study with a small Australian student cohort (in early 2020), using a similar questionnaire.
Like the German cohort, the questionnaire for the Australian respondents targeted those with a limited background in linguistics, namely students enrolled in an ‘introduction to linguistics’ class. Also similar to the prior study, the questionnaire was optional, anonymous, and distributed in the students’ first language. The questions were originally created in German (for the German cohort) but I translated these into English for the Australian cohort.[i] Differences between the two questionnaires include that the German version was distributed to students in class as a print questionnaire, while the Australian version was an online questionnaire distributed to students via an e-platform.
While the German study included a large number of students (almost 600) from seven different universities, only 25 students from one university participated in the questionnaire for this informal Australian study.[ii] Of these students, 22 stated that they watched fictional US American TV series ‘sometimes’ (n=10), ‘frequently’ (n=7) or ‘very frequently’ (n=5); only three said that they watched such series ‘rarely’ (n=1) or ‘never’ (n=2).
Two of the relevant questionnaire items about TV dialogue were closed items, where students were provided with options on a scale, from which they had to choose one. Two additional items offered the students space for elaboration, with items including a comment function (Figure 1).
Because of the affordances of the online platform that was used, the Likert scale design was slightly different across the two questionnaires (Figure 2 shows the German version, while the English version can be seen in Figure 1).
I’ll first compare the results for item 4. Figure 3 shows that a higher proportion of the Australian students describe being aware of the scripted nature of TV dialogue compared to the German students.
Next, I’ll consider the results for item 5: ‘The language spoken by TV characters in such series is similar to the language spoken by ‘real’ speakers’. Figure 4 illustrates that the answer chosen by most German respondents is ‘agree’ (46% of responses, with another 4% ‘strongly agree’), while the answer chosen by most Australian respondents is ‘disagree’ (52% of responses, with another 4% ‘strongly disagree’). However, a good amount of Australian responses also selected ‘agree’ (36% of responses). It is also apparent that many of the German respondents are unsure (35% of responses for ‘neither agree nor disagree’, compared to only 8% of the Australian respondents).
This uncertainty among the German students is also apparent in their answers to item 6 (Figure 5), where 54% selected ‘unsure/don’t know’, with 32% of the Australian respondents also selecting this choice. Further, a much larger proportion of Australian students selected ‘yes’ (68% of responses), compared to the German cohort (38% of responses). This aligns with the results for the previous questionnaire item.
Finally, let’s look at the most common responses that students provided for items 6 and 7, where they could choose to provide answers. The Australian responses most often related to the ‘fluency’ of TV dialogue, for example that it has fewer interruptions, errors, hesitations, and fillers, less overlap, and so on. The second most common response for the Australians concerned humour or word play, followed by vocabulary or choice of words. A large number of German responses also related to ‘fluency’, similar to the Australian responses. However, the German cohort commented more frequently on the intelligibility/comprehensibility of the dialogue, stating in some way that TV dialogue is clear, intelligible/comprehensible, with a more controlled (slower, less relaxed) or extreme/exaggerated pronunciation/stress. This was almost as common as comments on ‘fluency’. In contrast, the Australian responses only infrequently mentioned ‘tone/articulation/inflection’ (‘articulation’; ‘inflection can be exaggerated’; ‘tone is often forced and sounds scripted’; Overall would be peculiar [exaggerated, artificial, projected?] inflection’). In addition, many of the German responses stated that colloquial/informal/everyday language or slang was common in TV dialogue, while only a few Australian comments related to formality or informality (‘informal’; ‘formal speech’; the audience might use slang’; ‘sometimes the formality they speak with’). Dialects or accents were also more commonly mentioned in the responses by the German cohort. Overall, the German students listed a much wider range of language resources, but this is possibly an effect of the much larger cohort size.
Together, the quantitative and qualitative results from this small, informal study suggest that L1-speakers of Australian English may experience a higher awareness of the scriptedness of English-language TV dialogue and of linguistic differences to unscripted language than (German) speakers of English as a foreign language. And, conversely, that they are seemingly less aware than the German viewers of issues to do with intelligibility/comprehensibility and informality. These results do seem to align with common-sense expectations: Presumably, L1-speakers of Australian English would have fewer comprehension difficulties and fewer issues with informal language, even if another variety of English (American English) is concerned. At the same time, their in-depth immersion in everyday, unscripted conversation might lead them to a higher awareness of scripted aspects and differences to television dialogue.
Importantly, these results only apply to the 25 Australian students who chose to participate in the questionnaire and are hence at the most indicative of potential trends. It would be interesting to replicate the study with i) a larger number of L1-speakers of Australian English, ii) L1-speakers of other varieties of English, iii) other speakers of English as a foreign language (eg Pavesi & Ghia 2020), iv) other cohorts (e.g. multilingual).
References
Bednarek, M. 2018. Language and Television Series. A Linguistic Approach to TV Dialogue. Cambridge University Press.
Pavesi, M. & E. Ghia 2020. Informal Contact with English. A Case Study of Italian Postgraduate Students. Edizioni ETS.
[i] The German version of the questionnaire is available in Bednarek (2018: 257-258). Not all items were identical in both questionnaires, although this blog post focusses on those that were. For example, the German students were asked about the usefulness of TV series for learning English. The Australian students were asked about which TV series they loved or watched the most.
[ii] The majority of these students were First Year students (n=15) and were undertaking a Linguistics major (n=17). Eight students were in second year, and one student each was in third and fourth year. Regarding the students who did not list Linguistics as one of their majors, these either listed no major or a different major. Except for one diploma student, all students were undertaking various Bachelor degrees, mostly the Bachelor of Arts. My assumption is that all students self-identify as speakers of Australian English as a first language, because the questionnaire instructions included the following statement: ‘If Australian English is not your first language, you are asked not to participate in this study, since the interest of this study is in speakers of Australian English as a first language.’