A Corpus-based Study On Linguistic Features Of English Subtitles Of American Sitcoms

With the enlargement of exchange of culture in China, more and more English original sound sitcoms and movies have been introduced into our country and widely used in the English teaching and learning. Compared with traditional teaching methods, English original track performs better in improving the learners' enthusiasm and motivating their initiative in language learning, since it merges multiple information transmission mediators, i.e. subtitles, sound and image. Further more, it also reinforces the language learning effect through providing various sense stimulations for the learners. The American sitcoms have benefit a lot of English learners by the sitcoms' standard American accent, idiomatic slang expressions and vivid revelation of American people's social customs and lifestyles. As one of the closest forms of art to our daily life, sitcoms pursue not only the realness of art, but also the authenticity of life.The purpose of this thesis is to analyze some important linguistic features of Modern American Sitcoms Subtitles (MASS) and compare with those of American spoken English and written English through computational methods. English subtitles of American sitcoms have gained preference of the Chinese audience and increasing people realize their importance in English learning. The investigation of the similarities and differences among American sitcom language, American spoken English and American written English is of great significance in subtitle-based English teaching and learning.Three corpora BROWN (American written English), ASE (American Spoken English) and MASS (Modern American Sitcoms Subtitles) are employed in this thesis, which contain about 450,000, 480,000 and 940,000 words respectively. The MASS is divided into two sub-categories according to sitcoms' content for the convenience of the analysis, one is MASS-L with about 475,000 words, which refers to the sitcoms mainly about daily life, and the other one is MASS-P with about 465,000 words, which involves in professional fields.With the aid of computer program of FoxPro and SPSS, a comparative stylistic study among the three corpora is undertaken quantitatively and qualitatively on graphological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic levels. The findings indicate that some common features are shared by MASS-L and ASE on graphological, lexical and syntactic levels. But significant differences exist between MASS-L and BROWN on the four levels. Besides, there are also some differences between MASS-P and MASS-L, since MASS-P combines the characteristics of American spoken English and American written English. This tentative research will provide some statistical basis, helpful material and useful examples for English teaching and learning.