Over the last two decades, the study of discourse in film and television has become one of the most promising research avenues in stylistics and pragmatics due to the dazzling variety of source material and the huge pragmatic range within it. Meanwhile, with the advent of streaming and the box set, film and television themselves are becoming separated by an increasingly blurred line. This volume closes a long-standing gap in stylistics research, bringing together a book-level pragmastylistic showcase. It presents current developments from the field from two complementary perspectives, looking stylistically at the discourse in film and the discourse of and around film. This latter phrase comes to mean the approaches which try to account for the pragmatic effects induced by cinematography. This might be the camera work or the lighting, or the mise en scène or montage. The volume takes a multimodal approach, looking at word, movement and gesture, in keeping with modern stylistics. The volume shows how pragmatic themes and methods are adapted and applied to films, including speech acts, (im)politeness, implicature and context. In this way, it provides systematic insights into how meanings are displayed, enhanced, suppressed and negotiated in both film and televisual arts.

This book discusses transformations in the construction of culinary taste, lifestyle and class through cookbook language style in post-socialist Slovenia. Using a critical discourse studies approach it demonstrates how the representation of culinary advice in standard and celebrity cookbooks has changed in recent decades as a result of general social transformations such as postmodernity and globalization. It argues that compared to the standard cookbooks, where nutritionist ideology is at the forefront, the celebrity cookbooks reflect the conversational, hybrid nature of the genre, through which they promote global foodie discourse, while at the same time localizing the global trends to the Slovene context. The book lays at the intersection of discourse analysis, sociology, food, cultural, communication and media studies and (post-) socialism and should be of interest to those interested in celebrities, food media, socialism and post-socialism, cookbooks, globalization and discourse change.

This collection highlights the interplay between language and liminal places and spaces in building distinct narratives of selfhood. The book uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine linguistic and social phenomena in places shaped by displacement and social inequality. The book also looks at chronotopes, the Bakhtinian-inspired concept of the interconnectedness of time and space in identity. The volume demonstrates how studying liminal places and spaces can offer unique insights into how people construct language and selfhood in these spaces, making this key reading for researchers in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, geography, and linguistic anthropology.

This book explores the moral and representational issues associated with engaging young people with popular media depictions of death and dying. Emotionally charged depictions of death play an important role in contemporary media directed toward teen and young adult audiences. Across creative works as diverse as interactive digital games, graphic novels, short form serial narratives, television and films, young people gain opportunities to engage with representations of death. In some cases, representations of death, dying, and the decision to end one’s own life have been subject to public outcry and criticism related to its perceived potential impact on impressionable audiences. Death in/as entertainment can also be fleeting, commonplace and used for humour making it trivial. The chapters in this volume particularly consider the types of engagement made possible through different contemporary creative mediums and the ways in which they might distinctively capture or arouse thoughts and feelings on the end and loss of a human life. Death as Entertainment will appeal to researchers and students interested in new media and its cultural and psychological impact. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Mortality.

The high-pressured, fast-paced environment of television production leaves little time for producers to reflect on how the potentialities of texts and images will be interpreted outside of the immediate broadcast imperatives. This volume brings together the producers and analysts of television in a formal and productive way.

Television Criticism, Third Edition by Victoria O'Donnell provides a foundational approach to the nature of television criticism. Rhetorical studies, cultural studies, representation, narrative theories, and postmodernism are introduced for greater understanding and appreciation of the critical perspectives on television with in-depth methods of criticism. Illustrated with contemporary examples, this updated Third Edition includes a new, extensive sample critical analysis of The Big Bang Theory and reflects recent changes in the ways television is viewed across multiple devices and the impact of the Internet on television.

Featuring scholarly perspectives from around the globe and drawing on a legacy of television studies, but with an eye toward the future, this authoritative collection examines both the thoroughly global nature of television and the multiple and varied experiences that constitute television in the twenty-first century. Companion chapters include original essays by some of the leading scholars of television studies as well as emerging voices engaging television on six continents, offering readers a truly global range of perspectives. The volume features multidisciplinary analyses that offer models and guides for the study of global television, with approaches focused on the theories, audiences, content, culture, and institutions of television. A wide array of examples and case studies engage the transforming practices, technologies, systems, and texts constituing television around the world today, providing readers with a contemporary and multi-faceted perspective. In this volume, editor Shawn Shimpach has brought together an essential guide to understanding television in the world today, how it works and what it means – perfect for students, scholars, and anyone else interested in television, global media studies, and beyond.

While other studies have examined the history of cable television regulation, none has fully explained why the FCC struggled to develop regulations during its formative years. In this study, Michael Zarkin helps fill this gap by providing such an explanation through an application of organizational learning theory. Zarkin argues that in order for the FCC to formulate regulations for a brand-new communications medium, it first needed develop and effectively utilize the capacity to gather and analyze policy-relevant knowledge. By the 1970s, conditions were ripe for this to happen, and the FCC was able to more effectively revise its cable television policies. This book elaborates and applies an organizational learning framework that contributes to our understanding of how regulatory agencies operate. By employing a broad range of published and unpublished primary sources, the book also succeeds in providing a more detailed and penetrating study of cable television than previous endeavors. Rather than simply summarizing and critiquing policy decisions, the book paints a picture of the people, ideas, and politics that shaped cable television regulation during these formative years. The FCC and the Politics of Cable TV Regulation, 1952-1980 will be of interest to scholars who study regulatory agencies, the policy process, and communications law and policy.

In 2004, roughly 25 makeover-themed reality shows aired on U.S. television. By 2009, there were more than 250, from What Not to Wear and The Biggest Loser to Dog Whisperer and Pimp My Ride. In Makeover TV, Brenda R. Weber argues that whether depicting transformations of bodies, trucks, finances, relationships, kids, or homes, makeover shows posit a self achievable only in the transition from the “Before-body”—the overweight figure, the decrepit jalopy, the cluttered home—to the “After-body,” one filled with confidence, coded with celebrity, and imbued with a renewed faith in the powers of meritocracy. The rationales and tactics invoked to achieve the After-body vary widely, from the patriotic to the market-based, and from talk therapy to feminist empowerment. The genre is unified by its contradictions: to uncover your “true self,” you must be reinvented; to be empowered, you must surrender to experts; to be special, you must look and act like everyone else. Based on her analysis of more than 2,500 hours of makeover TV, Weber argues that the much-desired After-body speaks to and makes legible broader cultural narratives about selfhood, citizenship, celebrity, and Americanness. Although makeovers are directed at both male and female viewers, their gendered logic requires that feminized subjects submit to the controlling expertise wielded by authorities. The genre does not tolerate ambiguity. Conventional (middle-class, white, ethnically anonymous, heterosexual) femininity is the goal of makeovers for women. When subjects are male, makeovers often compensate for perceived challenges to masculine independence by offering men narrative options for resistance or control. Foregoing a binary model of power and subjugation, Weber provides an account of makeover television that is as appreciative as it is critical. She reveals the makeover show as a rich and complicated text that expresses cultural desires and fears through narratives of selfhood.