1. INTRODUCTION
Hypothesis: What are the linguistic differences between British Soap operas and Australian
Soap operas, with a specific focus on Eastenders and Neighbours during a similar major
storyline?
I enjoy watching Soap operas in my spare time as they are entertaining and I like to keep up-
to-date with what storylines are occurring in both British and Australian Soap. I watch
Eastenders and Neighbours daily so I have sound knowledge of all of the characters and
plots. For my investigation I am going to select a few episodes from an exposed affair
storyline, produce transcripts to form my data and then analyse the transcripts. I aim to
investigate language and gender or power between characters involved in the storyline as I
am interested to see how male and female characters are portrayed through language in
both soaps.
I would certainly expect there to be many similarities and differences in the way both soaps
use language despite them both producing the same storyline. I predict both soaps will use a
similar range of vocabulary as different age ranges watch the soaps and therefore they are
unable use explicit or controversial language no matter how dramatic the storyline is.
However I also believe they will both try to use certain types of lexis in order to keep the
storyline going and entertain the audience. In addition, the culture and social norms in both
places are very diverse and so different characters will have different opinions on what is
going on. The lexis used will undoubtedly be different to some extent as the Australian
dialect isn’t the same as the British dialect. Furthermore, each character will have their own
idiolect in the soap, making their choice of words dissimilar to other characters in order to
stand out. With reference to the variables in my study, my investigation will be synchronic as
it focuses on language study in a specific context during same period of time.
Consequently I will be focusing a lot on lexis, semantics and discourse within the soap as well
as potentially looking at pragmatics and phonology. I will be looking to see how much
dialogue female characters are given compared to male characters and perhaps briefly look
into what types of role each character has and relate it to their gender.
The purpose of my investigation is exemplification as I will be providing examples of the way
language is used in language and gender within two different soaps. At the end of my
investigation I plan to reach objective conclusions so that if anyone repeated my study they
would find the same inferences.
I will be using language and gender theorists such as Robin Lakoff and Deborah Tannen to
support my investigation.