dragnet's diminuitive dialog

Scripts for this show were terse. Look at dialog. 30% of the show consists of 1-2-3 word sentences or grunts !

When you watch tvee shows and hang around people that speak 3-4-5 word sentences --- guess what kind of speech habits and writing patterns you develop?

This data is iffy -- because i made an audio tape - and don't know where the periods and commas and semicolons and ellipses are. Still - it is probably pretty accurate since i made errors in 'both directions.'

Here is the analysis of one show.

6% 14% 10% 11% 12% 10% 19% 10% 5% 1%
30 72 54 58 61 50 100 54 27 14
1 word 2 words 3 words 4 words 5 words 6 words 7-9 words 10-13 words 14-17 words 18 + words

3300 words in 520 sentences -- 6.3 words / sentence
.

Here is the analysis of another show.

6% 8% 8% 13% 10% 10% 20% 14% 4% 4%
36 44 45 75 54 53 108 59 45 24
1 word 2 words 3 words 4 words 5 words 6 words 7-9 words 10-13 words 14-17 words 18 words

4050 words in 558 sentences -- 7.1 words / sentence
.

0 1 3 13 3 9 13 11 9 joe narrate - 62 sentences - 11%
6 10 5 10 6 6 17 12 10 joe dialog - 89 sentences - 16%
1 word 2 words 3 words 4 words 5 words 6 words 7-9 words 10-13 words 14-17 words


6 5 8 9 5 4 15 bill gannon - 55 sentences - 310 words
1 word 2 words 3 words 4 words 5 words 6 words 7 + words

5/12sn/96

I had always wondered about Dragnet scripts - but this article pushed me to actually do the accounting above.

adapted from PDK --- p 69 --- SEPTEMBER 1984
TV Talk Too Terse

IT WAS A DIRTY little job, but somebody had to do it, and Michael Lieberman of East Stroudsburg State College had the gumption to take it on. He analyzed the language of television (Journal of Reading, April 1983).

Lieberman studied scripts from the top-10 shows determined via the l979 Gallup Youth Poll.
The total lexicon of the shows involved was less than 4.000 words - closer to 3,000 if variant forms are not counted.

"It is likely that the lexicon of television programs is under 5,000 words - about the same size as that which a child enters school with," says Lieberman. Had Lieberman excluded "MASH," which was the highest- rated program in most categories, his figures would have dropped substantially.

Among the assorted facts Lieberman reports are the foilowing: MASH has the most words per minute (150). "Buck Rogers" and Little House on the Prairie" tie for the fewest (80).

The average length of a sentence in contemporary nonfiction is about 22 words and for fiction about 17 words.

The Dukes of Hazzard," which makes extensive use of voice-overs, had the longest average utterance - less than half that of written fiction.

No program had fewer than 72% simple sentences (Mork & Mindy); "Happy Days" had 80%, with a mean sentence length of 5.6 words, a median or five words, and a mode of three.

Of course, fans of playwright Harold Pinter or composer John Cage may argue that silence is no hindrance to profundity; admirers of E.B. White will certainly say that simplicity is the heart of clarity. Perhaps with these reservations in mind, Lieberman discusses ways in which changes in word order and such figures of speech as metaphor, simile, hyperbole, pun, and irony can add complexity. Buck Rogers" averages nine figures of speech in a script; "Little House on the Prairie, 10, and MASH, 68.

Lieherman notes that the allusions and puns in MASH often involve sophisticated references to sports, the arts, literature, and history.

Lieberman expresses concern about the impact of television on the complexity and richness of language - and, in turn, on the complexity and richness of thought. Better check your TV Guide to see which station has MASH in syndication, and keep those reruns coming. In the . . .
(rest of article missing)

5/12sn/96