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@PHDTHESIS{Rosenow:1020394,
author = {Rosenow, Charlotte Maria},
othercontributors = {Neumann, Stella and Niehr, Thomas},
title = {“{Q}ueer strange, or queer gay?" : a diachronic
mixed-method perspective on linguistic representations of
queerness in scripted {N}orth {A}merican television shows},
school = {Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen},
type = {Dissertation},
address = {Aachen},
publisher = {RWTH Aachen University},
reportid = {RWTH-2025-08959},
pages = {1 Online-Ressource : Illustrationen},
year = {2025},
note = {Veröffentlicht auf dem Publikationsserver der RWTH Aachen
University 2026; Dissertation, Rheinisch-Westfälische
Technische Hochschule Aachen, 2025},
abstract = {Due to the carefully planned, practiced, and edited nature
of scripted television shows, 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 sociopolitical 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 long been documented (e.g., Bandura 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). Accordingly, this thesis project investigates
linguistic representations of the queer community in
scripted North American television shows in the TV Corpus
(Davies 2021) from a diachronic perspective and using a
mixed-method approach in two stages. Both stages feature
elements of qualitative and quantitative analysis, so as to
“provide a systematic analytical framework and empirical
data for talking about the expression of ideology through
dialogue in episodic television” (Bednarek 2015, 227).
This project thus aims to account for some of the great
complexity inherent to the phenomenon of queer
“representation” (in the sense of Hall 1997, 1) in TV
language. Stage 1 is comprised of a large-scale diachronic
analysis of selected current terms for queer identities in
the TV Corpus via quantitative frequency measures,
collocates, and extensive manual annotation for semantic
meaning that “applies a rather deductive methodology in
selecting specific words which are relevant for analysis,
but also offers concordance lines as a basis for further
(qualitative) interpretation” (Wodak and Meyer 2009, 30).
Taking into account the interplay between alternative
meanings of the selected terms and whether they are, for
instance, “regularly used in contexts of good news or bad
news or judgement” (Tognini-Bonelli 2001, 111), this stage
offers a bird’s eye view on how certain terms for queer
identities are used in scripted TV dialogue across time.
Stage 2, on the other hand, is focused on a more
fine-grained comparison of the linguistic behaviours and the
construction (e.g., Bednarek 2010) of prominent queer and
non-queer characters. For this stage, a total of 60 episode
transcripts from six shows contained in the TV Corpus were
extracted and annotated with speaker information using the
UAM CorpusTool (O’Donnell 2008). Said episodes were then
examined further using both quantitative measures and a
qualitative analysis aiming to understand “the conditions
of the speakers’ [or characters’] experience as located
within structures of power” (Leap 2015, 661). As such,
these analyses take complementary perspectives in an
in-depth comparison of the language use and power conditions
of queer and non-queer characters both within the same show,
as well as across shows, TV genres, and different times of
production. Taken together, the two stages thus aim to
provide insight into the complex interplay between scripted
TV dialogue, its ways of representing selected queer
identities in general (Stage 1), individual queer characters
and their power conditions in particular (Stage 2), and
real-world sociopolitical change. As such, this thesis also
argues for an understanding of queer representation that is
more nuanced than a binary distinction of “represented”
vs. “not represented”, as such a more simplistic view
cannot account for the whole range of ways in which the
queer community may be represented on TV, as has also been
noted by Baker (2005, 225).},
cin = {793810},
ddc = {400},
cid = {$I:(DE-82)793810_20140620$},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)11},
doi = {10.18154/RWTH-2025-08959},
url = {https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/1020394},
}
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