Corpus linguistics and television series: A personal reflection

This article presents a personal reflection which addresses the reciprocal influence between object and disciplines by focusing on corpus linguistic analysis of television series. From initial studies in the early 2000 onwards, this has emerged as a vibrant area of research. More precisely, this article considers the influence of television series on my own work as a corpus linguist and how this interest in television narratives has changed both the data and methods that have informed my research. In other words, I turn the gaze upon my own disciplinary work by trying to make explicit how television series have opened up new horizons and encouraged the use of concepts from different disciplines within linguistics and beyond. The article touches upon the multimodality of television narratives, the different perspectives from which television series can be fruitfully approached (e.g. production/creation, product, consumption/reception), and how these aspects have resulted in triangulating different data and methods beyond corpus linguistics. In so doing, I also discuss the extent to which television series as an object have transformed (corpus) linguistics as discipline, and briefly consider the benefits and limitations of corpus linguistic studies.