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ОглавлениеChapter 3 The verbal component of the audiovisual text
The foregoing chapters have reported how DTS stress the importance of analysing real data. In this study, real data are obtained from the CoPP, which includes English transcripts of scripted dialogue, and Spanish subtitles. Both types of text, like any instance of language production, occur in context and are never presented in isolation, as they constitute partial elements of the whole audiovisual text. Therefore, it seems not possible to single out specific linguistic features of the texts without taking the picture and complete soundtrack into account.
Thus, while the parallel corpus under study is restricted to verbal elements, this chapter is firstly concerned with their contextualisation within the broader audiovisual text, which is vital for the qualitative study of the series’ syntax and lexicon. It further aims to provide an overview of the main findings regarding the linguistic characterisation of TV dialogue and subtitling to date.
The narratological nature of film and television material paves the way for Television Studies to borrow terms and concepts from Literary Studies. Typically, this borrowing implies the updating and adaptation of definitions to meet the needs of the newer discipline. This is the case with the notion of text. As explained by Tous-Rovirosa (2008), Rastier (2001) made a case for the widening of the traditional notion of linguistic text to embrace both the traditional idea of text and the audiovisual and multimedial text, in which verbal and nonverbal information are ←21 | 22→conveyed via the visual and audio channels. As Bartoll (2015) points out, however, scarce specific literature has been available about the nature of the audiovisual text until recently. Among the works available, important contributions have been actually made from the perspective of AVT.
When defining audiovisual texts, emphasis has been recurrently placed on the interplay of semiotic codes as well as on the challenges that they pose for professional translators (Delabastita 1989; Chaume 2004a; Zabalbeascoa 2008a). Scholars in AVT have described an essentially binary conception of codes in the audiovisual text, grouped into ‘codes belonging to the image, and codes belonging to the sound (words, music and noise)’ (Díaz-Cintas 2001: 182).
Chaume (2003; 2004a), in turn, proposes a model for the communication process in AVT, by establishing two types of narrative in the audiovisual text, that is, visual and acoustic, the latter including verbal elements such as dialogue or monologue, as well as paralinguistic information. His model is further developed by Zabalbeascoa (2008a), who assigns four components to the audiovisual text: (a) words heard, (b) words read, (c) instrumental music and special sound effects, and (d) the moving images and photography. These components fall into a twofold categorisation, according to their channel of communication – audio or visual – and their type of sign – verbal or nonverbal – as shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Four components of the audiovisual text (from Zabalbeascoa 2008a: 24)
| Audio | Visual | |
| Verbal | Words heard | Words read |
| Non-verbal | Instrumental music + special sound effects | Moving images Photography |
A crucial point made in the literature is that both the verbal and the nonverbal narratives are perceived at the same time by audiences via the audio and the visual channels. In this sense, Bartoll (2012) contributes to the definition of audiovisual text by explicitly foregrounding the dynamism that exists between the various channels of communication. Zabalbeascoa ←22 | 23→(1997) explains that AVT works as a system of priorities and restrictions in the pursuit of balance between iconic and verbal language. In addition, it is a fact that only the linguistic code within the audiovisual text can be altered by the translator (Romero-Fresco 2009a, 2012), and Díaz-Cintas (2001: 182) concedes: ‘one could argue that the most relevant signs to the translation are the verbal ones’.
What follows from this debate is that each of the CoPP episodes can be considered an audiovisual text in itself while, at the same time, being partial segments of larger audiovisual texts, that is, the season to which they belong, and the series. The compiled corpus comprises the verbal component of the schema presented in Table 2. Specifically, it is composed of words heard (ST, English dialogue) and words read (TT, Spanish subtitles), acknowledging that ‘subtitles are only a part of the audiovisual programme’ (Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2007: 110). The fact that audiences being exposed to subtitled material are presented with a double verbal component, in the form of source soundtrack and translation, has led experts to speak of the vulnerability of subtitling due to its nature as an overt type of translation (Díaz-Cintas 2003; Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2007; Bartoll 2012, 2015).
It must be noted that, even though it is desirable for audiovisual translators to have access to the picture while performing their task, deadlines and work conditions can make it difficult for this to be the case (Chaume 2003; Díaz-Cintas 2003; Matamala 2005; Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2007; Bartoll 2012). Subsequent sections focus on the features that have been attributed to the verbal component of the audiovisual text to date.
3.2. Verbal language within the audiovisual text
Screenwriters are aware of the different components at stake in an audiovisual text. Professional writers and scholars do not seem to agree on the central or complementary role of verbal language within audiovisual texts; their insights sometimes being based on the medium or type of product in which they specialise. Thus, for example, Guardini (1998: 91) ←23 | 24→regards language expression as crucial in the film and television genre of drama, in the same way as Rosselló (1997) considers the verbal dimension of dramatic plays as central.
The centrality of the verbal is also acknowledged by Linden (2010) with regards to textbetont [text-oriented] audiovisual texts, that is, productions based on literary material such as novels or biographies, because these sources are exclusively verbal. Yet, cinema adaptations like The Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter saga, in which visual effects are exploited to a great extent, seem to put this idea into question.
In fact, some in the industry perceive the visual dimension as the most important in audiovisual productions. DiMaggio (1990: 11) argues that ‘[t];o write for television, you must think in pictures’, because television is a ‘visual art form’; a view shared by Díaz-Cintas (2008a: 3):
although, a priori, all dimensions could be thought to be equally important in terms of communication, the reality is that the visual-nonverbal, i.e. the image, seems to carry more weight than the word, at least in the production of most of the big blockbuster films touring the world […] Not surprisingly, we speak about the ‘viewer’ rather than the ‘reader’ or ‘hearer’ of films or other audiovisual programmes.
Images have been said to prevail over verbal language even in cases in which the audiovisual product derives from literary material, like Dexter (§4.3.1). In the case of this series, its creator, James Manos Jr (in Nickell 2008: online), sees verbal language as complementary: ‘My job as a screenwriter is to create emotions, feelings all through images, and any language used, is meant to complement that’. His view that language is (just) a tool whereby screenwriters build up a more complex story is shared by novelist John Irving (in Toscan 2012: 381) when he had to adapt his own novel The Cider House Rules for the large screen in 1999:
There is no (literary) language in a screenplay. (For me, dialogue doesn’t count as language.) What passes for language in a screenplay is rudimentary, like the directions for assembling a complicated children’s toy. The only aesthetic is to be clear … A screenplay, as a piece of writing, is merely the scaffolding for a building someone else is going to build … However many months I spend writing a screenplay, I never feel as if I’ve been writing at all. I’ve been constructing a story.
←24 | 25→
The important role of verbal language in story and character construction has been underlined by authors like Díaz-Cintas and Remael (2007: 49), who attribute three functions to film dialogue: ‘structuring, narrative-informative, and an interactional one’. Bednarek (2012: 122) points out that ‘dialogue conveys the emotional state of the speaker’ and even though it is not the only means, it is the most important to construct the character’s identity in audiovisual productions. For her part, Forchini (2012: 35) emphasises the crucial role of linguistic choice in films and TV productions to ‘relate enthralling stories, and to prevent the audience from losing track of the plot, which compromises the spontaneity of language’.
Probably because of the importance of language in story construction, numerous specialised courses and handbooks are available for people interested in improving their writing skills, containing tips and specific suggestions with regard to the verbal disposition of dialogue. Section 3.4.2 elaborates on this type of suggestions made by writers, with emphasis placed on the pursuit of dialogic naturalness, a widely shared goal in both screenwriting and subtitling.
3.3. Linguistic features of subtitling
The literature has emphasised the idea that there is a way of writing that is prototypical of translated texts. In order to characterise this type of language, experts of translation into the English language have compiled the Translational English Corpus in an attempt to detect traces of this style or way of writing that some call translationese (Tirkkonen-Condit 2003; Baroni and Bernardini 2006). Similar assumptions have been made about the resulting textual product of audiovisual translations. In this respect, Chaume (2004b: 854) talks of a ‘macrogenre of translations’, and opines that: ‘Within the macrogenre of Translations (with capital letters), audiovisual translations have already become a genre with specific characteristics, easily recognised by their addressees’. ←25 | 26→For the specific case of subtitling, Díaz-Cintas (2003: 280–281) proposes the term subtitlese to name what he more generally calls ‘subtitle discourse’.
The following section summarises the main ideas put forward in the literature about the key linguistic features of subtitling.
3.3.1. The hybrid nature of subtitling
Subtitling can be classified in accordance with a number of criteria, such as the following:
a) its intended target (general audiences, deaf and hard-of-hearing, language learners, children, etc.);
b) its author (professionals, fansubbers, activists);
c) the languages involved in the process (intralingual, interlingual);
d) the tools employed (software- or web-based subtitling);
e) the exhibition medium (TV, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, cinema, stage, internet);
f) the type of information conveyed (dialogue, onscreen written information);
g) their technical presentation (open or closed).
Karamitroglou (2000: 5) builds on several previous accounts of interlingual subtitling and proposes this synthetic definition:
The translation of the spoken (or written) source text of an audiovisual product into a written target text which is added onto the images of the original product, usually at the bottom of the screen.
His definition addresses three key aspects of subtitling: (a) code shift from one language into another (translation); (b) medium change from spoken to written; and (c) their prototypical position at the bottom of the screen. Luyken et al.’s (1991: 31) previous definition already included these three basic ideas, but additionally emphasised the ephemeral nature ←26 | 27→of subtitles on screen as well as the ubiquitous condensation involved in subtitling.
From the temporal and spatial perspectives, a subtitle should be on screen for a minimum of 1 second and a maximum of 6 (or 7) seconds, contain two lines at most, and each line should consist of a maximum of 37 to 42 characters, including spaces. Because of these technical constraints, subtitles show traces of translated, summarised and transcribed texts, as shown in Figure 1.
This tripartite conception of subtitles means that they are governed by norms at different levels. The idea that multiple factors influence the final design of subtitles is thoroughly developed in Karamitroglou (2000). Mattsson (2006) offers a simplification of Karamitroglou’s theoretical framework by applying it to the subtitling into Swedish of discourse markers and swearwords. On the one hand, she lists ‘norms of tradition, written language norms, norms of original literature, literary translation norms, and subtitling norms’ (ibid.: 6) as influencing the decision making process in subtitling. On the other, she elaborates on further factors to which the professional subtitler is exposed and have a strong impact in the subtitling process as well, such as working conditions and broadcasting companies’ policies.
←27 | 28→
3.3.2. Syntactic features of subtitling
Structural shifts affecting the syntax of translated texts is a phenomenon long taken into consideration in TS, with authors like Nida and Taber (1982/1969: 114) stating that ‘transfer normally involves a number of shifts in coordinate and subordinate patterns’. Subtitles have also been depicted as incorporating changes in syntactic structure, if contrasted with the ST. As regards textual disposition, it is normally proposed that each subtitle should correspond to one sentence and that segmentation should answer to the phrase distribution of the sentence (Karamitroglou 1998). Scholarly works such as Díaz-Cintas and Remael’s (2007: 172–180) summarise this idea as follows: ‘an ideal subtitle is a sentence long, with the clauses of which it consists placed on separate lines’.
Thus, in accordance with the literature, syntax strongly influences segmentation (§6.2) and general textual distribution in subtitling (one sentence, one subtitle). According to two further salient ideas about the syntax of subtitling, both assumed to be factors that foster readability, subtitles should be simple in terms of syntactic structure and they should not deviate greatly from the normative constituent order.
The idea of simplicity is connected to a number of linguistic aspects:
a) simple clauses of one verbal phrase are regarded as preferable to composed clauses (Díaz-Cintas 2003; Nagel et al. 2009);
b) verbal periphrases in the ST become simple tenses in the TT (Díaz-Cintas 2003; Díaz-Cintas and Remael 2007; Bartoll 2012);
c) coordination (parataxis) is more frequently used than subordination (hypotaxis) (Díaz-Cintas 2003);
d) theme/rheme manipulation can be observed (Díaz-Cintas 2003; Vayssière 2014);
e) subtitle discourse simplifies structure by avoiding repetition (Chaume 2004a; Bartoll 2012; Vayssière 2014);
f) cohesive elements may be simplified or suppressed (Chaume 2003, 2004b).
←28 | 29→
Another idea present in the literature is posited by Díaz-Cintas (2003: 284), who explains that subtitles stick to prescriptive norms of the target language, therefore showing correct syntax even in segments which show errors or inconsistencies in the ST. This idea is shared by Chaume (2004a), when he opines that syntactic variation and deviation from the norm could result in the confusion of the audience, and authors like Díaz-Cintas and Remael (2007) highlight the idea that subtitles that follow a standard syntactic order are easier to read, which is why they are preferred in professional practice.
Gottlieb (2008: 211) recalls the idea of subtitles being constrained by different systems of norms, among which the norms of ‘the rigid written language’ stand out:
[I];n any diagonal – and thus interlingual – subtitling, one must, on top of translating utterances from one language to another, transfer the dialog from one sub-code (the seemingly unruly spoken language) to another (the more rigid written language). If this shift was not performed, as a fundamental part of the subtitling process, the audience would be taken aback by reading the oddities of spoken discourse. But as the dialog is always re-coded on the way to the bottom of the screen, people only react if the other dimension of diagonal subtitling – the translation proper – seems imperfect.
A crucial thread seems to underlie these contributions: subtitles present unmarked syntactic structures, which makes them different from the ST, irrespective of the ST nature.
The analysis reported in Chapter 5 contrasts syntactic features of subtitling with syntactic features of the ST, as a comparison with the source dialogue is deemed indispensable when characterising the so-called neutralisation in subtitling (Arias-Badia 2015).
3.3.3. Lexical features of subtitling
The principle of simplicity in subtitling is a recurrent topic in the literature about the lexicon used in this translation practice. Scholars have stressed the idea that time and space constraints lead to content reduction ←29 | 30→in subtitling, which typically affects lexical selection in the form of omissions or of general shifts.
When it comes to ommissions, de Linde and Kay (1999: 29) claim that ‘the overriding demand to reduce the amount of dialogue means that many omissions have to be made on a selective basis’. In order to tease out the strategies that lead to reduction in subtitling, relevance theory, originally posited by Sperber and Wilson (1986), has been applied to subtitling in Slovene by Kovačič (1994), who concludes that adverbials are highly likely to be removed from subtitles. Yet, while the tendency towards omission and condensation has been the focus of many scholarly publications, Díaz-Cintas (2003: 285) states that, in Spain, professional subtitlers tend to ‘overtranslate’, thus implying that subtitles are also prone to make meanings from the ST more explicit in the TT, maybe resulting in the opposite effect of omission or condensation.
For Gottlieb (1998: 247) the need for changes affecting lexicon are due to a rather pragmatic-oriented approach in subtitling, in which ‘the speech act is always in focus; intentions and effects are more important than isolated lexical items’. In other words, subtitlers are expected to ‘prioritize the overall communicative intention of the utterance over the semantics of its individual lexical constituents’ (Pérez-González 2009: 15–16). The literature converges on the idea that this pragmatic-oriented approach to subtitling typically involves the use of standardised language (Arias-Badia 2015).
In the field, neutralisation was first contemplated in prescriptivist contributions made about translation strategies or procedures (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958; Nida 1964; Newmark 1988; Chesterman 1997). Later contributions, such as Lomheim’s (1999: 204), define neutralisation by explaining what it is not: ‘the opposite of Neutralisation is to retain the style, colour and spice’. The phenomenon has been described as prototypical of subtitling in works by Zaro (2001), Gottlieb (2002) Díaz-Cintas (2003), Perego (2005), Nagel et al. (2009) and Bartoll (2012), and has also been attributed to translated texts in general (Stewart 2000). The practice is understood as a simplification of the lexicon and of the registers or language varieties present in the TT, in which there tends to be a preference ←30 | 31→for high frequency lexicon (Gottlieb 1997; Díaz-Cintas 2003; Nagel et al. 2009) that materialises in a rather aseptic register. Nagel et al. (2009) claim that specific register varieties come across as disturbing elements for the audience and, hence, the need to neutralise them. In a similar vein, Deckert (2013: 188), who investigates the English-Polish subtitles of four documentary films from the point of view of Cognitive Linguistics, reaches the conclusion that the language of subtitles is ‘better-conventionalised’ than the one of the STs. The notions of neutralisation and conventionalised language are revisited in Chapter 8, in which Hanks’s (2013a) approach to corpus analysis is proposed as a methodological framework for the study of the lexicon of subtitles.
Finally, it is worth noting that lexical features of subtitling are generally adapted to the audience’s expectations (Díaz-Cintas 2003) and decisions are made on a product-oriented basis, for example, different criteria are adopted for the translation of children cartoons or specialised documentaries. One of the aims of this book is to ascertain whether they apply to the subtitling of police procedurals.
3.4. Subtitling scripted dialogue: The challenge of fictive orality
The CoPP contains the transcripts of TV dialogue exchanges (ST) and the translated subtitles of such scripted TV dialogue (TT). Both the ST and the TT are the result of a complex creation process involving medium conversion, consisting of the main phases shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Main phases in the CoPP’s ST and TT creation process
The ST has been written by resorting to the device of fictive orality, while the TT presumably tries to preserve this feature of the ST. Thus, both the ST and the TT may be said to lie at an intermediate point along the orality-writenness continuum, as theorised by Koch and Oesterreicher (1985, 1990).
←31 | 32→
3.4.1. The continuum between spoken and written language
According to Koch and Oesterreicher (1985, 1990), there are two types of language surging from the activation of a determinate medium (phonic, graphic) and conception (written, spoken), as shown in Table 3.
Table 3. Types of language according to Koch and Oesterreicher (1990)
| Medium | Conception | Type of language |
| Phonic | Spoken | Language of communicative immediacy |
| Graphic | Written | Language of distance |
This model of analysis has been reelaborated and updated by Brumme and Espunya (2012), who propose the following factors as decisive in the identification of genres along the continuum:
a) A cognitive factor, that is to say, spontaneity, as opposed to a high degree of reflection in written communication. There is normally some short-term planning and hardly any possibility to organise the spoken utterances.
←32 | 33→
b) A psychological factor, as the speakers do not want to explicitly plan or organise their contributions. There is a high degree of familiarity or closeness between the participants in face-to-face interaction, whereas in the situation of distance, the speakers do not normally know each other.
c) A social factor, namely, the private setting of the communicative event versus the public or formal setting of distance communication.
d) Dialogical character of communication and a maximum of cooperation among the participants.
e) Emotional involvement and affective contribution of the participants.
f) Incidence of evaluative attitudes towards the partner and the referent.
g) Subjective positioning towards the utterance.
h) Referential immediacy or context embeddedness (as opposed to the contextual dissociation of distance). Speakers can refer to the here and now of the situation and interaction.
i) Physical proximity or face-to-face interaction of partners (in contrast to the distance in space and time).
j) Knowledge shared by the interacting participants.
In Koch and Oesterreicher’s (1990) account of language, TV dialogue would belong to the language of communicative immediacy, whereas subtitles would appertain to the language of distance, based on their spoken or written conception, respectively. Nonetheless, the understanding of this classification as a continuum is helpful to explain that (a) TV dialogue, albeit spoken, is planned (script) and is therefore bound to portray features of the language of distance; and (b) since subtitles strive to portray the spoken, phonic material delivered by actors on screen, they also hold features of the language of communicative immediacy.
By conceptualising spoken and written language as part of a continuum, Biber (1988: 199) undertakes the multidimensional analysis of a range of spoken and written genres in English and demonstrates that:
←33 | 34→
there is no single, absolute difference between speech and writing in English; rather there are several dimensions of variation, and particular types of speech and writing are more or less similar with respect to each dimension.
Pons (2000: 196) also reaches the conclusion that, in Spanish, the differences between spoken and written language are superficial from the point of view of Textual Linguistics and authors report the existence of different degrees of spontaneity (Castellà 1992), registers (Payrató 1996) or intermediate genres (Briz 2001), which involve traces of spoken language in written language and vice versa.
In spite of these corpus-based proposals, there are features of language which are – or have traditionally been – prototypically attributed to spoken or to written language, basing the definition of spoken or written language on ‘maximally differentiated samples’ (Chafe 1982: 49), such as spontaneous conversation vs formal academic prose (Tannen 1982). For instance, Biber (1988: 5) repeatedly uses expressions such as ‘typically written’ or ‘typically spoken’ in his empirical analyses and notes that: ‘[t];he general view is that written language is structurally elaborated, complex, formal, and abstract, while spoken language is concrete, context-dependent, and structurally simple’.
This view informs Table 4, which offers a summary of language features prototypically attributed to spoken and written language. It should not be understood as a comprehensive summary, but rather as a guide of potentially interesting features that can be found in the analysis of television dialogue and subtitling. Whenever language features can be directly contrasted, they are shown in parallel in Table 4.
Table 4. Summary of features typically attributed to spoken and written language
| LANGUAGE MODE | ||
| Spoken (spontaneous) | Written (prepared) | Reference |
| Lexical features | ||
| certain idiomatic expressions | Briz (2001) | |
| jargon | Briz and Val. Es. Co. (2000) Briz (2001) | |
| • colloquial language • relaxed production | • strict rules • controlled style | Calsamiglia and Tusón (2007) Nagel et al. (2009) |
| shorter words | longer words | Drieman (1962) |
| marked by dialect, sociolect or idiolect | difficulty to portray nuances of language variation | Calsamiglia and Tusón (2007) Nagel et al. (2009) |
| (frequent) topic of conversation: daily routine | greater abstractness | DeVito (1967) Briz and Val. Es. Co. (2000) |
| • intensifiers • hedges | • fewer quantifiers • fewer hedges | DeVito (1967) Sanger (1998) Briz and Val. Es. Co. (2000) |
| lexical exploitation in everyday conversation: esp. metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole | creative use of the language (written literature) | Chafe (1982) Koch and Oesterreicher (1985) Briz and Val. Es. Co. (2000) Calsamiglia and Tusón (2007) Hanks (2013a) |
| • code-switching • language interference | Espuny (1998) Briz and Val. Es. Co. (2000) | |
| • lexical repetition • redundance | • no lexical repetition • no redundance | Freixa (1998) Sanger (1998) Briz (2001) Calsamiglia and Tusón (2007) |
| • (markers of) vagueness • non-explicitation | • lexical density • terminological density (scientific and technical texts) | Halliday (1985) Koch and Oesterreicher (1985) Gelpí (1998) Briz and Val. Es. Co. (2000) Calsamiglia and Tusón (2007) |
| • cues for personal narration (I’m like …) • expression of hesitation • fillers • reinforcers • appellation • tagging | Objectivity (impersonal, passive clauses / third person) | Koch and Oesterreicher (1985) Alcoba and de Luque (1998) Sanger (1998) Calsamiglia and Tusón (2007) |
| • reference to shared knowledge/deixis • personal deixis • trust in contextual comprehension | fewer words that refer to the speaker | DeVito (1967) Briz and Val. Es. Co. (2000) Calsamiglia and Tusón (2007) |
| Morphosyntactic features | ||
| more verbs | more nouns | more attributive adjectives Drieman (1962) Tannen (1982) Gelpí (1998) |
| high frequency of non-finite forms of the verb | Narbona (1989) | |
| • ellipsis of phonemes • word ellipsis | Mayoral (1990) Payrató (1996) Alcoba and de Luque (1998) Biber et al. (1999) Chaume (2004a) Nagel et al. (2009) | |
| • unconventional, improvised syntax • unfinished sentences • false starts • altered constituent order | embedded syntax | Koch and Oesterreicher (1985) Narbona (1989) Briz and Val. Es. Co. (2000) Briz (2001) Briz (2001) |
| parataxis | hypotaxis | Kroll (1977) Givón (1979) |
| emphatic use of conjunctions | Briz (2001) | |
| explanatory circle | Briz (2001) | |
| Textual organisation | ||
| • pragmatic markers • intonation/prosody • parcellation • pause • polyphony | • lexical cohesive elements • punctuation • clarity, order • titles and subtitles • segmentation according to topics and subtopics • visual presentation in accordance with topic progression | Briz (2001) Gili Gaya (1998/1943) Koch and Oesterreicher (1985) Sanger (1998) Tomàs i Pallejà (1998) Briz and Val. Es. Co. (2000) Calsamiglia and Tusón (2007) González (2012) |
As previously stated, these are features typically attributed to each medium of communication, that is, phonic or graphic. Whenever writers intentionally resort to the use of prototypical features of the spoken language when working on the graphic medium, the result is a text with traces of fictive orality, which is the case with scripted dialogue and subtitling.
←34 | 35→←35 | 36→←36 | 37→←37 | 38→
Goetsch (1985) was the first researcher to use the term fingierte Mündlichkeit [fictive orality]1 in his contributions. With this expression he was referring to linguistic manifestations of different nature, prototypically associated with spoken language, which could be found in literary texts. Before the coining of the term, the phenomenon had already been noted by other researchers, such as Tannen (1982: 14), who had defined creative writing as:
a genre which is necessarily written but which makes use of features associated with oral language because it depends for its effect on interpersonal involvement or the sense of identification between the writer or the characters and the reader.
Following Freunek (2007: 26), fictive orality, despite being closely linked to real everyday spoken language, should not be considered as a copy or perfect reproduction of the latter. Goetsch (1985) also shares this opinion when he claims that fictive orality responds to conscious writing strategies of specific authors. Thus, real practice must be taken as a reference by the literary or audiovisual creator. As explained by Sanger (1998: 48–49), ‘the convention is that, in even the most apparently realistic dialogue, most of the features of actual speech are tidied up’.
Brumme (2008) points out that the aim of fictive orality is to evoke realistic situations and authors use it as a device to provide their fictional characters, whether literary or audiovisual, with vivacity and plausibility. As stated by various authors, it contributes to the ‘illusion of verbal language’ (Nagel et al. 2009: 58), to an ‘illusion of authenticity’ (Brumme 2012: 13) or an ‘idealised colloquiality’ (Calsamiglia and Tusón 2007: 83, my translation). As Briz (2001: 20) points out, fictive orality frequently resorts to diatopic and diastratic marks in characters’ dialogue and takes the form of colloquial language, dialect, idiolect, and the like.
←38 | 39→
Television dialogue adheres to this literary trend and (typically) strives to deliver lifelike dialogues. In translating them, subtitles are also expected to hold traces of fictive orality.
3.4.2.1. Fictive orality in scripted dialogue
The transcripts of the CoPP consist of the words heard in the series, in accordance with the framework proposed by Zabalbeascoa (2008a) for the study of the audiovisual text (§3.1), and transcribe verbatim what the characters utter in the fictional world.
Traditionally, the literature on audiovisual products has mainly focused on visual elements and technical aspects such as editing, while words ‘tend to take more often than not a secondary, marginal position’ (Díaz-Cintas 2008a: 3). Baños (2009) draws attention to the fact that it is the discipline of Translation Studies that has mainly contributed to the description of the features of audiovisual discourse from a linguistic point of view, thanks to the works of scholars like Pavesi (2005) and Romero-Fresco (2009b, 2011). Outside TS, relevant studies are those produced by Quaglio (2009), Bednarek (2012) and Forchini (2012).
In her sociolinguistic essay of TV drama, Richardson (2010: 84) advocates ‘a combination of scholarly and professional frames of reference’ in the study of TV dialogue, since screenwriters are not necessarily aware of the linguistic strategies to which they resort to produce lifelike texts. For Lengsfield (2016), the author of a manual for screenwriting trainees, the goal is to make dialogue conversational, but Quaglio (2009: 10) notes that, frequently, professional tips simply ‘rely on native-speaker intuition’ and fail to provide ‘linguistic information regarding the features that characterize “conversational style”’.
From the professional, non-didactic point of view, screenwriters seem to base their approach to writing on the transgression of norms. In Nickell (2008: online), James Manos Jr, Dexter’s creator, states:
As a screenwriter, syntax and grammar are the least of our concerns, in fact, the general rule of thumb is the more literate, the less chance the movie will ever get made. So I had to whip out my old ‘Warriners’ on English grammar.
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This apparent disregard of language can be observed in academia, where prototypical features of orality in TV dialogue have been little researched (Guillot 2007). In recent years, the situation has improved and some empirical studies have elucidated that ‘the grammar of movie and face-to-face conversation does not differ’ (Forchini 2012: 120). Such argument is used by the scholar to revalorise the study of the language used in the movies, which Sinclair (2004b: 80) had regarded as ‘not likely to be representative of the general usage of conversation’. Forchini (ibid.) is not the only one to defend the postulate that movie language is not very different from real conversation. Authors like Spitz (2005: 532) claim that dialogue ‘closely resembles ordinary talk’ and Quaglio (2009: 140) concludes that there are ‘striking linguistic similarities’ between the dialogue used in the series Friends and naturally occurring conversation.
For other scholars, the extent to which the dialogue of audiovisual texts portrays naturalness and spontaneity is, necessarily, limited. Díaz-Cintas (2003) lists some of the strategies employed in TV dialogue to evoke orality, such as the use of unfinished sentences or unconventional syntax. The literature has referred to this as ‘selective naturalism’, defined by Davis (2008: 48, in Richardson 2010: 69) as:
the style of writing which attempts to faithfully imitate dialogue as we normally speak it, but, unnoticed, manages to omit all those passages – not only beginnings and endings but also all sorts of other uninteresting sections – which would add nothing to the production. For it is not enough merely to imitate life: scripts are not straight, one-for-one imitations of slabs of life. In selective naturalism they are crafted, moulded to appear as if they were.
Richardson (2010: 69) recuperates the notion of selective naturalism and argues that ‘[b];ecause of its representational character, television dialogue is different from both primary, face-to-face interaction and from media talk’. Bartoll (2012: 25, my translation) highlights the idea of limited resemblance to face-to-face conversation:
If we recorded a spontaneous conversation it would be very difficult not just to translate it, but also to understand it. […] Often, written film scripts include non-canonical elements to facilitate, precisely, naturalness. The fact that the audiovisual text has been previously prepared […] causes it to hold features of the language of distance, in spite of the fact that its intention is precisely the opposite one.
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To give the impression of spontaneity, a few brushes here and there seem to be enough. In their textbook on screenwriting, Wolff and Cox (1988: 56) consider that naturalness is limited in TV dialogue, and suggest the following to the reader: ‘[M];ake your words seem lifelike, but not so much that they impede the flow of meaning and the forward progression of the information you want to impart’. As described by Matamala (2008: 79), interjections are one of the linguistic devices used by sitcom writers to produce exchanges that are ‘agile, lively and colloquial’. And Mattsson (2009: 29) claims that the use of discourse particles can suffice, on occasions, to exemplify the differences between spontaneous conversation and film dialogue: ‘The overuse of discourse particles, which now and then is an element of authentic speech, does not exist in film dialogue unless there is reason for it to illustrate certain characteristics’. In the case of Catalan, Bartoll (2012) briefly describes some of the strategies activated to preserve the features of oral language in the subtitles.
Another aspect discussed in textbooks is the ephemeral nature of TV dialogue. McKee’s (1997: 389) suggestions on understandability and economy of language are similar to the advice given to professional subtitlers: ‘screen dialogue requires compression and economy. Screen dialogue must say the maximum in the fewest possible words. […] Remember, film is not a novel; dialogue is spoken and gone’. Trottier’s (1998
