Objective Analysis of Text: II. Using an Emotional Compass to Describe the Emotional Tone of Situation Comedies

Abstract

Transcripts for episodes from 9 situation comedies (roughly 27,000 words in total) were scored by the program TEXT.NLZ in terms of emotional tone. To promote ease of interpretation scores for the dimensions of pleasantness and activation were depicted as vectors in a normative emotional space. Both numerical and figural representations of the data indicated that the words used in situation comedies were pleasant and mildly active, with small differences occurring between comedies. The emotional characteristics of situation comedies stood out in comparison to those of several other texts depicted in the same emotional space.