Most Frequently Used Vocabulary in Selected English Drama Movie Scripts

Abstract

Understanding words in motion pictures is a rewarding pathway for audience of cultural-based media and entertainment. The study aimed to investigate the most frequently used vocabulary in selected English drama movie scripts. It sought to find out the most frequently occurred part of speech and to probe the frequency of occurrences of each content words in the movie scripts. Five English drama movie scripts were chosen purposively as sources of the corpora. Applying the Antconc program software developed by Anthony, a total of 108 content words were noted and categorized for corpora analysis. There were 38 verbs, 28 adverbs, 24 nouns and 18 adjectives noted as commonly used vocabulary from the movie scripts. Among the verb types, have (366), can (276) and know (232) emerged as the most frequently occurred action words with a total frequency of 3,142 occurrences. In the case of adverbs, here (237), out (178), and about (163) came out as the most frequently used words with a total occurrence of 1,598. Nouns, on the other hand, have 1,574 occurrences with time (134), tree (133), and going (127) as the most frequently used name words. Adjective was found to be the least frequently occurred content word with 752 occurrences to include right (146), old (54), and only (53) as the top three frequently used noun modifiers. In conclusion, verb outnumbered the other three content words due to drama’s nature of involving the characters into action; and ‘have’ came out as the most frequently used verb because drama scenes imply possessions and obligations.