The Language of Television »

The Intertext series has been specifically designed to meet the needs of contemporary English Language Studies. Working with Texts: A Core Introduction to Language Analysis (2nd edn 2000) is the foundation text, which is complemented by a range of 'satellite' titles. These provide students with hands-on practical experience of textual analysis through special topics and can be used individually or in conjunction with Working with Texts.
Aimed at A-Level beginning undergraduate students, The Language of Television:
* provides an extensive history of British television
* explores a range of genres, from breakfast news to soap operas and 'reality TV'
* analyses television scheduling and listings
* includes extracts from scripts of popular television programmes: Queer as Folk and The Royle Family
* includes a substantial glossary.

Acknowledgements
Unit One: What is television?
The history of British television * Aspects of production, texts and audiences * The textual landscape of television *Television as a domestic medium * Television as storyteller
Unit Two: Signs and signification
Signification * Semiotic analysis * Visual signification * Connotation * Metaphor and metonymy * Meaning in television texts
Unit Three: Forms of television
Genres * Television genres * Repetition and originality in genres * Intertextuality, hybridity and new generic forms * New generic forms * Structures and conventions in television genres * Television as a generic medium * Dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings * Social readers
Unit Four: Live talk
Television and spoken language
The voices of television * Speaking on television * Conversation * Spoken language varieties on television
Unit Five: Represented talk
Defining represented talk * Represented talk and narrative purpose * Scripted conversation as real conversation * Cultural realism and genre realism * Production practices and realism * Women's represented talk * Gossip * Soap operas and gossip
Unit Six: Discourse and television texts
Defining discourse * Discourse as ways of speaking * Unity, exclusion and production * Dominant discourses * Media discourses about AIDS * Subject-positions * Discourses of gender and sexuality on TV: some examples
Glossary
Bibliography