Subtitling stereotyped discourse in the crime TV series Dexter (2006) and Castle (2009)

Abstract

Recurrent communicative events in TV police procedurals, as dictated by genre conventions, lead to the use of recurrent, stereotypical language in these audiovisual products. This paper explores repeated lexicon and syntactic structures (text blocks) from corpse finding and initial forensic analysis, as well as from interrogation sequences in crime TV shows. It also reflects on the extent to which such repetition poses a challenge for subtitlers. The examples for analysis have been taken from the American TV shows Dexter (2006) and Castle (2009). The paper sheds light on how textual recurrence supports recognition of the genre and plot structures and helps to condense, up to a certain degree, the relevant elements of the message in the case of subtitling. As the genre under study is at the crossroads between fiction, specialised discourse and evocation of everyday conversation, this paper combines approaches from different research fields in order to use the most widespread concepts related to recurrence for the benefit of translation studies.