Communicative and linguistic features of reality show interactions: A case study of Love Island UK

Reality television is a rapidly evolving format of TV pop culture and has become a resounding commercial success. This study examines one season of the reality show Love Island UK, first from the perspective of the communicative context, looking at direct/indirect, synchronous/ asynchronous, explicit/implicit, performed/natural, as well as private/ public aspects of communication between the contestants, audiences, and producers. It also considers the language of interactions in order to determine whether the complexity of the communicative context of the show is reflected in the linguistic features of the contestants' speech. The study combines quantitative and qualitative analyses of keywords, concordance lines, and n-grams. It demonstrates the specificity of language and style in reality show exchanges, which, even though appearing natural, have significant departures from natural unprepared speech. It highlights the potential of corpus studies not only for the linguistic analysis of telecinematic material, but also for studies of the language of such hybrid genres as reality shows, which have become an intrinsic part of modern pop culture.