Analysing the Inner Structure of Episodes in House, M.D. through Network Analysis

Abstract

Dialogues in TV series are crucial as they drive the narrative, revealing character motivations and relationships while enhancing the emotional depth of the story, keeping viewers engaged and invested in the unfolding plot. Their structure (i.e., the network resulting from the interaction of characters) may reveal some stylistic signature of the series. In this paper, we investigate the presence of regularities in the patterns observed in dialogue structures. For that purpose, we consider the series House, M.D. which is one of the most widely followed medical drama TV series. The results show a large prevalence of the star structure, where a character acts as the main speaker and, in turn, talks to one of the other speakers involved in the scene.

Keywords

TV series; medical dramas; House, M.D.; episode structure; network analysis.