The sitcom Friends aired on NBC from September 22, 1994-May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons (2023, Friends Central). The cast included Jennifer Aniston (Rachel), Courteney Cox (Monica), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Matt LeBlanc (Joey), Matthew Perry (Chandler) and David Schwimmer (Ross). Our group project comprised five members: Madelyn, Luis, Damon, myself and Liz. We wanted to know more about the social network between friends and more about the dialogue in the individual scripts, specifically Season 1.
Through text analysis, its possible to see the level of vocabulary of the show’s writers. Do they use complex sentence structure? Do they use unique words and so on. There are multiple pieces of software that will analyze text. Ben Blatt, Slate contributor and author of Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve says that, “writers have a singular voice they will not or cannot change” (2017, Blatt).
Who interacted with who? Who interacted with that person more frequently than others? What text appeared more regularly?
To better answer those questions from the scripted dialogue between the six characters of Friends, finding a corpus (data) compatible with the text analysis tool Antconc was necessary. Antconc is a free downloadable software that analyzes corpora for text analysis. The software sorts through data, and through different settings within the software, the user can help reveal patterns in the canon of text. Voyant Tools is another analysis tool used in our analysis. Like Antconc, Voyant offers a free download but is visually more appealing than Antconc.
In this project, converting the corpus to .txt was the first order of business. Between the 5 group members, we divided up the Screenplay scripts here:
Madelyn would conduct the network analysis of the relationships between characters. The rest of the group would analyze each character’s text to decipher any patterns within. I was assigned Chandler and Monica.
Who is Monica?
Courtney Cox portrays Monica Geller, the younger sister of Ross Geller, in Friends. She is known as the “mother-hen” of the group (2023, Friends Central). Monica is a Sous-chef and is best friends with Rachel Greene. Her apartment is across from Joey and Chandler’s. She is a very tidy person, almost to the point of obsessive-compulsive.
Who is Chandler?
Chandler Bing is one of three male characters on the show. He uses wit and sarcasm as defense mechanisms; therefore, his dialogue has to be complex, right? So I wanted to find out what words were used most frequently by Chandler.
Using Google Docs and a series of spreadsheet data entries, I was ready to start using the tools for better analysis. Initially, I wanted to get an overview of the texts. It was Voyant that offered me the best option—the Word Cloud.
Monica’s word cloud using 95 of the most used terms in her dialogue from Season 1.
Chandler’s word cloud using 95 of the most used terms in her dialogue from Season 1.
The word ‘oh’ really shows through the word clouds. It’s where I started. It was a similarity. Maybe other patterns would emerge around the word ‘oh’?
Who interacts with Monica and Chandler frequently?
Antconc, while not as visually appealing as Voyant, has its own superpowers by revealing patterns between the character’s dialogue, like what character name Chandler and Monica mention the most. We don’t see the future romance between the two characters yet.
Antconc displays Monica’s mentions of other characters on the show. It seems almost to easy to know that Rachel, Monica’s best friend is the most frequently used in her dialogue with a Frequency of 41 and NormRange of .625.
Antconc makes it is accessible to see the frequency with which Chandler mentions other characters. For example, in the first episode, Joey tells Rachel he and Chandler live together across from Monica. This fact possibly explains one instance why Chandler references Joey most frequently with the highest Frequency of 21 and NormRange of 0.583.
‘oh God’ is used a lot
The Voyant illustration of Chandler’s most related word to ‘oh’ above led to an exploration through Antconc of both corporas and the findings using both pieces of software agree in their findings.
The Voyant illustration of Chandler’s most related word to ‘oh’ above led to an exploration through Antconc and the findings using both pieces of software agree with each other.
Collocating-words, which are words statistically likely to appear together (2022, Anthony) in Antconc. The word “God” is located near our most popular word “oh” for Chandler.
Using the KWIC readings in the dialogue in Antconc showed that Monica Geller uses the “oh” word in Season 1 next to the two words “my” and “God” frequently. There is one gosh in there. Is that ad lib dialogue or are we again presented with the writers including the phrase “oh my God” with intent?
Summary
*spoiler alert*
If you followed the show and have seen the entire series, you know that Chandler Bing and Monica Geller marry and fall in love. However, you wouldn’t say that by the text from the dialogue of Season 1. Monica references her best friend Rachel most, while Chandler greatly references Joey. ‘Oh’ is used more frequently than any other word. Both characters use the word next to or within three words before ‘God.’ Some form of ‘oh God’ or ‘oh my God’ is used frequently.
References
Anthony, L. (2022). AntConc (Version 4.2.0) [Computer Software]. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University. Available from https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software
Blatt, B. (2017, August 17). Can You Identify an Author By How Often They Use the Word “The”? Slate Magazine. Retrieved May 7, 2023, from https://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/08/17/identifying_an_author_s_prose_can_be_as_simple_as_counting_how_much_they.html
Friends Central (2023) https://friends.fandom.com/wiki/Friends_Wiki
Sinclair, Stéfan and Geoffrey Rockwell, 2016. Voyant Tools.