Abstract
Dialogues in a TV series (especially in sitcoms) represent the main interaction among characters. Dialogues may exhibit concentration, with some characters dominating, or showing instead a choral action, where all characters contribute equally to the conversation. The degree of concentration represents a distinctive feature (a signature) of the TV series. In this paper, we advocate the use of a concentration index (the Hirschman–Herfindahl Index) to examine dominance phenomena in TV series and apply it to the Big Bang Theory TV series. The use of the concentration index allows us to reveal a declining trend in dialogue concentration as well as the decline of some characters and the emergence of others. We find the decline in dominance to be highly correlated with a decline in popularity. A stronger concentration is present for episodes (i.e. by analysing concentration of episodes rather than speaking lines), where the number of characters that dominate episodes is quite small.
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