A Network Text Analysis of David Ayer's 'Fury'

Australian International Academic Centre PTY, LTD. 11 Souter Crescent, Footscray VIC, Australia 3011. Tel: +61-3-9028-6880; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/alls/index

Y

10

Network Analysis; Content Analysis; Semantics; Fiction; Films; Film Study; Scripts; Literary Genres; Expectation; Word Frequency; World History; War; Coding; Morphemes

2203-4714

Network Text Analysis (NTA) involves the creation of networks of words and/or concepts from linguistic data. Its key insight is that the position of words and concepts in a text network provides vital clues to the central and underlying themes of the text as a whole. Recent research has relied on inductive approaches to identify these themes. In this study we demonstrate a deductive approach that we apply to the screenplay of the 2014 World War II-era film "Fury." Specifically, we first use genre expectations theory to establish prior expectations as to the key themes associated with war films. We then empirically test whether words and concepts associated with the most influentially-positioned nodes are consistent with themes common to the war-film genre. As predicted, we find that words and concepts associated with the least constrained nodes in the text network were significantly more likely to be associated with the war, action, and biography genres and significantly less likely to be associated with the mystery, science-fiction, fantasy, and film-noir genres.

As Provided

29

2017

EJ1127472