A corpus stylistic study of the TV series script desperate housewives

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the style of a famous American television series of all-time Desperate Housewives through analysis of keywords found in its scripts via a comparison with a corpus of American television series broadcast during the time period similar to the target corpus. Based on the quantitative methods adopted for keyword extraction, a number of keywords were identified and later categorized into semantic groups. In this study, three major groups of keywords were examined qualitatively, namely the family and relationship group, the crime and mystery, group and the food and beverages group. These groups of keywords were argued to contribute to characterization of the four housewife protagonists, creation of several themes of the series and that of the comedy-drama genre, all of which account for the success and popularity of the series over decades.