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The Representation of Crime and Criminals in the TV Series Sherlock and Elementary: A Corpus Study

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Crime, Deviance and Popular Culture

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture ((PSCMC))

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Abstract

The study examines two contemporary crime television series based on the Sherlock Holmes detective stories, namely the British Sherlock and the US Elementary, in order to investigate the representation of crime and criminals through the language of TV shows. Combining two types of linguistic analysis, corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, the author quantitatively and qualitatively examines the language of crime in the two series, focusing on the types of crimes and criminals as well as the gender of criminals and victims. The chapter also explores patterns and ideologies that are shaped by media and communicated through language. It shows that the two series follow gender stereotypes in the representation of criminals and address contemporary aspects of crime in their stories such as terrorism and organised crime.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Both TV shows have consistently received positive reviews throughout their run (see: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8985109/Sherlock-BBC-One-review.html and https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jan/17/elementary-box-set-review). BBC Sherlock won several Emmy Awards in years 2014 and 2016 and CBS Elementary has been nominated several times for Prism Award since its release. A list of awards and nominations for each TV show can be found at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1475582/awards and https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2191671/awards

  2. 2.

    See: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9017545/Sherlock-finale-another-ratings-triumph.html and http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/1/post-super-bowl-elementary-delivers-20-8-million-viewers-7-8-rating-in-adults-18-49/167956/

  3. 3.

    More information at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1475582/?ref_=ttawd_awd_tt and https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2191671/?ref_=nv_sr_1

  4. 4.

    More information at: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/sherlock/ and https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/elementary

  5. 5.

    Available at: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/

  6. 6.

    Sinclair (1991, p. 21) describes as ‘clean text’ transcriptions that keep non-linguistic information to a minimum.

  7. 7.

    Available from: http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software

  8. 8.

    More information about BNC and BNC Baby at: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

  9. 9.

    Most of the words listed in the table, as can be seen, express the malegender (sir, mister, brother, guy, man). However, we should bear in mind that each list offers an example of keyword salience of each corpus in total, while the study focuses on the crime language of each corpus and not on the gender construction of the two TV shows in general.

  10. 10.

    Cluster is defined as any group of words in sequence (Baker et al., 2006, p. 34).

  11. 11.

    As Macintyre (1997) points out, the character of Professor Moriarty was based on a real criminal of the Victorian underworld, Adam Worth, who was nicknamed ‘The Napoleon of the criminal world’ or ‘The Napoleon of Crime’.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Dionysis Goutsos, professor of text linguistics in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, for his patient guidance, continuous encouragement, precious suggestions and insightful comments on this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Archontoula Menti

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  1. Archontoula Menti
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Correspondence to Archontoula Menti .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Law, Criminal Justice & Computing, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK

    Dimitris Akrivos

  2. School of Law, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

    Alexandros K. Antoniou

Appendix

Appendix

List of Sherlock and Elementary episodes

Sherlock

Elementary

S01E01—A Study in Pink

S01E07—One Way to Get Off

S02E09—On the Line

S01E02—The Blind Banker

S01E09—You Do It to Yourself

S02E17—Ears to You

S01E03—The Great Game

S01E12—M.

S02E23—Art in the Blood

S02E01—A Scandal in Belgravia

S01E14—The Deductionist

S03E02—The Five Orange Pipz

S02E02—The Hounds of Baskerville

S01E20—Dead Man’s Switch

S03E11—The Illustrious Client

S02E03—The Reichenbach Fall

S02E01—Step Nine

S03E12—The One That Got Away

S03E01—The Empty Hearse

S02E06—An Unnatural Arrangement

S03E20—A Stitch in Time

S03E02—The Sign of Three

S02E07—The Marchioness

S04E13—A Study in Charlotte

S03E03—His Last Vow

S02E08—Blood Is Thicker

S04E16—Hounded

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Menti, A. (2019). The Representation of Crime and Criminals in the TV Series Sherlock and Elementary: A Corpus Study. In: Akrivos, D., Antoniou, A.K. (eds) Crime, Deviance and Popular Culture. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04912-6_3

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