Jan Černík, Martina Benešová, Daniel Faltýnek

Palacký University, Czech Republic

The Evolution of Film Dialogue 1931–2023: Quantitative Insights into the Speech
Patterns of Film Characters

This paper explores the evolution of film dialogue from 1931 to 2023, utilizing quantitative linguistic analysis to uncover shifts in speech patterns among film characters. Building on the work of scholars like Sarah Kozloff, Paolo Braga, and Warren Buckland, the study extends dialogue research by focusing on how these patterns not only reveal aspects of screenwriters, genres and characters but also offer insights into audience preferences. By analyzing a sample of 58 commercially successful films, the research identifies trends such as the decreasing words per minute spoken by characters, the steady lexical density of film dialogues, and the diversification of character types since the 1990s. These findings suggest that while the complexity of expression in film dialogue has remained consistent, audience preferences have shifted toward films with more characters who speak less, reflecting changes in narrative structures and the psychological engagement of viewers.