Unveiling Lexical Characteristics in Diverse Movie Genres through a Corpus-based Study
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Abstract
This study investigates the vocabulary characteristics across eight movie genres, using a corpus of 2,318 movie scripts comprising 20,765,616 tokens. The research examines lexical profiling, lexical level, lexical variation, lexical density, and CEFR level of the vocabulary used in the movie corpus. The analysis reveals that romance movies have the highest percentage of General Service List (GSL) vocabulary at 87.62%, while action movies use the most Academic Wor d List (AWL) vocabulary at 1.31%. Animated movies exhibit the greatest proportion of Outside Word List (OWL) at 14.64%. Drama movies show the highest frequency of high-frequency words (95.51%), whereas animated movies utilise more medium- and low-frequency words, as well as off-list words. Horror movies demonstrate the greatest average lexical variation (16.88%), while animated movies demonstrate the highest lexical density, with content words accounting for 52.23% of the total vocabulary. In terms of CEFR levels, romance movies contain the most A1–A2 level vocabulary (94.09%), while action movies lead in B1-level words (1.68%). Animated movies display the highest percentage of B2, C1, and C2 level words. The study highlights the potential of movies as effective tools for vocabulary development, emphasising that genre selection should be aligned with specific language learning objectives to maximise vocabulary acquisition and enhance overall language proficiency.
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