[Ads-l] TV series of some relevance (on terrorism and dialect variation)

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed Aug 2 01:49:51 UTC 2017


(Apologies for cross-posting if there’s anyone besides me on both the Forensic Linguistics list and ads-l.)

The Discovery Channel, available on some U.S. cable networks, is running a miniseries on the capture of the Unabomber, focusing on how FBI profiler Jim Fitzgerald solved the case using forensic linguistic tools.  (Fitzgerald posts periodically to the forensic linguistics list, but I had no idea he was the one who in essence was responsible for catching the Unabomber.). The series is described in the links below, 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/arts/television/will-shark-lovers-love-unabomber-asking-for-a-cable-network.html

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/television/fbi-profilers-philly-accent-plays-part-in-unabomber-miniseries-20170731.html

As the URL for the second link indicates, this piece also touches on a dialectologically relevant aspect of the series.  

Bonus:  The Times review contains this addition to our nominalized adjectives file, participial division; the speaker quoted is the president of the Discovery Channel.

“Discovery wasn’t a big player in scripted,” Mr. Ross said in a telephone interview. “Our goal was to diversify the kind of storytelling we do.”

Yup, “in scripted”.

LH 

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list