'What the hell is wrong with you?' A corpus perspective on evaluation and emotion in contemporary American pop culture

Abstract

In this chapter I take a corpus linguistic perspective on the language of evaluation and emotion working with a 1.5 million word corpus of American TV dialogue (from the TV series Gilmore Girls). I am interested in occurrences of evaluative and emotional phrases such as the following;1 y? LORELAI: Really. RORY: I don't believe this! Oh my God, I'm going to Chilton! 2 ce things were dirty . RORY: It's 7:16. LO RELAI: Oh my God, I wa s gonna wear my 3 ok this morning. Goo d morning, Jackson. S OOKIE: Oh my God, toda y was Rory's 4 s working. The phone is ringing.) LORELAI : Hey. Oh my God, you have good 5 s in my office if yo u'd like to see them. RORY: Oh my God, I to tally would. 6 is that? LANE: 12 calories. RORY: Here LANE: Oh my God bles s you! LANE: Man, 7 sit down. RORY: No I can't sit down. I'm too -- Oh my God, He k issed me! (Mrs. 8 Rich has this amazin g hair. RORY: Really? LANE: Oh my God, it's so perfect. It's 9 . (Emily takes a bit e and makes a face.) EMILY: Oh my God, it's horrible! What 10 ought we were meeti ng at Luke's. RORY: W e were? Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I 1 >LUKE: What the hell is going on? 2 >LUKE: What the hell is he terrified of? 3 CHRIS: What the hell are you doing here w ith my daughter? 4 LOGAN: What the hell is wrong with you? 5 >LUKE: What the hell is wrong with them? Why can't they just le t the bozo in 6 isbee! What the hell has gotten into you? LUKE: I told Rory we were e 7 RELAI: What the hell is that? 8 YPSY : What the hell are you doing here? 9 >LUKE: What the hell are we doing in a st eam room?