Abstract
Carter (2004) theorises creativity in everyday talk into two main categories: pattern-reforming and pattern-forming. This chapter extends the discussion on pattern-forming creativity appeared in popular TV drama House M.D., with an attempt to demonstrate how statistical devices such as t-score and MI value may be used to facilitate the extraction of this type of linguistic creativity. The extraction is facilitated by 2-word concgrams, mutual information (MI) and t-score, which are generated from the TV drama’s dialogue corpus. The t-scores and MI values of 2-word concgrams from a total of 67 episodes are analysed through a quantitative approach. It is found that t-score and MI value of 2-word concgrams can be used to locate pattern-forming creativity, and their cut-offs can effectively double the percentage yield of pattern-forming creativity. This chapter proposes several ways to improve efficiency in the extraction of pattern-forming creativity and provides statistical evidence for the relationship between pattern-forming creativity and MI and t-score.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
ABC Medianet. (2004, November 23). ABC Medianet. Retrieved November 26, 2017, from https://web.archive.org/web/20081221172650/http://abcmedianet.com/web/dnr/dispDNR.aspx?id=112304_07.
Barnbrook, G. (1996). Language and computers: A practical Introduction to the computer analysis of language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Bednarek, M. (2010). The language of fictional television: Drama and identity. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Bignell, J., & Lacey, S. (Eds.). (2005). Popular television drama: Critical perspectives. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Bordwell, D., & Thompson, K. (1990/2008). Film art: An introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Carter, R. (2016, Aug 23). Creativity in everyday language. Retrieved January 5, 2018, from OpenLearn—Open University: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/language-and-creativity/content-section-2.2.
Carter, R. (2004). Language and creativity: The art of common talk. London: Routledge.
Cascio, T., & Martin, L. L. (Eds.). (2011). House and psychology: Humanity Is overrated. Wiley.
Cheng, W., Greaves, C., & Warren, M. (2006). From n-gram to skipgram to concgram. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 11(4), 411–433.
Church, K., & Hanks, P. (1990). Word association norms, mutual information and lexicography. Computational Linguistics, 16(1), 22–29.
Clinic_duty. (2007, October 2). House MD—4.01 Alone—House Transcripts. Retrieved November 28, 2017, from https://clinic-duty.livejournal.com/21422.html.
Clyman, J. (2009, June 22). Inside the yherapy TV show you need to watch. Retrieved April 20, 2013, from Psychology Today: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reel-therapy/200906/inside-the-therapy-tv-show-you-need-watch.
Goodier, B. C., & Arrington, M. I. (2007). Physicians, patients, and medical dialogue in the NYPD Blue prostate cancer story. Journal of Medical Humanities, 28(1), 45–58.
Greaves, C. (2009, February 5). ConcGram 1.0: A phraseological search engine—user manual. Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Gries, S. T. (2015). Some current quantitative problems in corpus linguistics and a sketch of some solutions. Language and Linguistics, 16(1), 93–117.
Gries, S. T., & Stefanowitsch, A. (2004). Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based perspective on ‘alternations’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 9(4), 97–129.
Guinness World Record News. (2012, May 22). Record-holding TV show ‘House’ comes to an end. Retrieved November 23, 2015, from Guinness World Records: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2012/5/record-holding-tv-show-house-comes-to-an-end-42046/.
Hockley, L., & Gardner, L. (Eds.). (2011). House: The wounded healer on television: Jungian and post-jungian reflections. Hove: Routledge.
Holtz, A. (2011). House M.D. vs. reality: Fact and fiction in the hit television series. Berkley Trade.
Holtz, A. (2006). The medical science of House M.D. New York: Berkley Boulevard.
Hunston, S. (2002). Corpora in applied linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jackman, I., & Laurie, H. (2010). House, M.D.: The official guide to the hit medical drama. New York: It Books.
Jacoby, H., & Irwin, W. (Eds.). (2008). House and Philosophy: Everybody lies. Hoboken: Wiley.
Jamieson, D. (2011, September). Does TV accurately portray psychology? Retrieved April 20, 2013, from American Psychology Association: http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/09/psychology-shows.aspx.
Law, L. (2015). House M.D. Corpus analysis: A linguistic intervention of contemporary American English. ASIALEX 2015: The 9th International Conference of Asian Association of Lexicography (pp. 230–249). Hong Kong: ASIALEX.
Law, L. (2019). Creativity and television drama: A corpus-based multimodal analysis of pattern-reforming creativity in House M.D. Corpora, 14 (2), 135–171.
Law, L. (2020). Creativity and multimodality: An analytical framework for creativity in multimodal texts (AFCMT). Linguistics and Human Sciences, 14 (1–2), 36–69.
Li, Q., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Moral creativity and creative morality. In S. Moran, D. Cropley, & J. Kaufman (Eds.), The ethics of creativity (pp. 75–91). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
McEnery, T., Xiao, R., & Tono, Y. (2006). Corpus-based language studies: An advanced resource book. New York: Routledge.
Olson, C. (2010, April 30). Digital convergence episode 15: Gale Tattersall—Cinematographer, director of Photography for FOX’s House MD. Retrieved May 3, 2013, from Digital Film.tv: http://digitalfilm.tv/digital-convergence-episode-15-gale-tattersall-cinematographer-director-of-photography-for-foxs-house-md.
Richardson, K. (2010). Television dramatic dialogue: A sociolinguistic study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sanders, L. (2009). Every patient tells a story: Medical mysteries and the art of diagnosis. Kindle.
Seidman, R. (2008, February 5). Broadcast Nielsen Ratings w/e Feb 3: Fox Breaks Records. Retrieved from TV by the Numbers Zap2it.com: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2008/02/05/broadcast-nielsen-ratings-we-feb-3fox-breaks-records/2559/.
Slate, L. (2006, April 17). Hugh Laurie and cast make a house call. Retrieved July 7, 2014, from Academy of Television Arts & Sciences: http://web.archive.org/web/20131227083156/http://www.emmys.tv/events/2009/hugh-laurie-and-cast-make-house-call.
Stubbs, M. (1995). Collocations and semantic profiles: On the cause of the trouble with quantitative methods. Functions of Language, 2(1), 23–55.
Tannen, D. (1989/2007). Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
TV By The Numbers. (2012, May 22). Monday Final Ratings: ‘DWTS’, ‘AGT’, and ‘House’ Retrospective Adjusted Up; ‘Clash of the Commercials’ Adjusted Down. Retrieved November 26, 2017, from TV By The Numbers by zap2it.com: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/sdsdskdh279882992z1/Monday-final-ratings-dwts-agt-and-house-retrospective-adjusted-up-clash-of-the-commercials-adjusted-down/135303/.
Vo, T. A., & Carter, R. (2010). What can a corpus tell us about creativity? In A. O’Keeffe & M. McCarthy (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics (pp. 302–315). Abingdon: Routledge.
Werts, D. (2009, January 29). Fox’s medical marvel stays on top. Retrieved July 8, 2014, from Variety: http://variety.com/2009/scene/news/fox-s-medical-marvel-stays-on-top-1117999278/.
Whitbourne, S. K. (2012, March 10). We’re not psychologists but we play them on television. Retrieved April 20, 2013, from Psychology Today: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201203/we-re-not-psychologists-we-play-them-television.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Law, L. (2020). Creativity and Television Drama: A t-Score and MI Value Cut-off Analysis of Pattern-forming Creativity in House M.D.. In: Yang, B., Li, W. (eds) Corpus-based Approaches to Grammar, Media and Health Discourses. The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4771-3_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4771-3_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-4770-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-4771-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)