Thematic and Lexical Repetition in a Contemporary Screenplay

Starling Hunter,Susan Smith

doi:10.4236/ojml.2013.31002

Abstract

Several works on film theory and screenwriting practice take up the question of repetition within narrative. However, few if any, have articulated theories about the relationship between the repetition of the words that comprise the screenplay itself and repetition of the themes that lend coherence to the narrative. In this study we address this gap in the screenwriting and film literature. Specifically, we analyze repetition of words and themes in the screenplay of Sunshine Cleaning, a critically-acclaimed independent film. Based on our survey of the literature, we expect and we find several varieties of repetition among words associated with the major themes in Sunshine Cleaning. This repetition includes but is not limited to polyptoton (words formed by inflections, declensions, and conjugations of a common stem), homonymy, paregmenon (words sharing a common derivation), and compounding (words formed by combining two or more words). We further expect and find that the repetition of words linked to themes is extensive and found in the large majority of the scenes of the screenplay. Finally, we expect and find that words associated with the themes are repeated far more frequently than in a random sample of screenplays contained within the Corpus of Contemporary American English. We conclude the paper with a discussion of our study’s implications for the art and craft of screenwriting.

Highlights

Repetition within narrative has been considered in a wide variety of contexts including early American cinema (Auerbach, 2000), contemporary action films (Higgins, 2008), experimental feminist film (Smith, 2008), adapted screenplays (Turner, 1977), soap operas (Nochimson, 1997), westerns (Browne, 1975), dramas (Sadkin, 1974), documentaries (Robson, 1983), horror films (Briefel, 2009) and the boxing genre (Grindon, 1996)
Drawing from research on the narrative structure of folklore and of screenplays, as well as the conceptual vocabulary of classical rhetoric, we develop three propositions concerning the repetition of themes and of words associated with them
In order to find themes in short-stories, Toolan (2008) compared the “prominent repetition” of keywords with their base rates in a reference corpus. This technique is very common in corpus linguistics and in the burgeoning sub-field of corpus stylistics (Hoover, 2002) but as of yet, it has not been applied to the analysis of screenplays

Summary

Introduction

Academic studies of the role of repetition within narrative are numerous, encompassing countless cultures and language groups, written and oral traditions, literary and linguistic genres. Drawing from research on the narrative structure of folklore and of screenplays, as well as the conceptual vocabulary of classical rhetoric, we develop three propositions concerning the repetition of themes and of words associated with them. Dramatic visualization: “The representing of an object or character with abundance of descriptive detail, or the mimetic rendering of gestures and dialogue in such a way as to make the given scene ‘visual’ or imaginatively present to an audience.” Another of Pinault’s definitions of thematic patterning is “the distribution of recurrent concepts and moralistic motifs among the various incidents and frames of a story” 2) employs “story-pattern” or “thematic-pattern” analysis, a method that “abstracts a group of essential and frequently recurring elements from a narrative and formulates them in a meaningful sequence of configuration.” His analysis of one Japanese folktale, The Listening Hood, describes what he calls a “typical example of oral narrative” because it demonstrates repetition on many distinct levels. Doing so reconstructs an important family tie and brings a newfound measure of fulfillment in their personal lives

Methodology

Findings

Conclusion