CREATIVITY IN FILM TAGLINES: EXTRALINGUISTIC, TEXTUAL AND LINGUSTIC ANALYSIS
CREATIVITY IN FILM TAGLINES: EXTRALINGUISTIC, TEXTUAL AND LINGUSTIC ANALYSIS

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with taglines associated with US Academy Award winning films and nominees in the period between 1990 and 2018. The list of taglines was compiled based on the database of winners and nominees in the category of Best Picture over the past 29 years. Preceded by a theoretical – linguistic and cinematic – discussion of taglines as memorable dramatic phrases and advertising devices whose aim is to attract audiences by echoing the tone and essence of the films they represent (e.g. “The List is Life.” from Schindler’s List, or “Trapped. Hunted. Surrounded. Survive”, from Dunkirk), the selected taglines are classified based on extralinguistic and textual factors, and mechanisms of linguistic creativity at the phonological, graphemic-orthographic, lexico-semantic and syntactic levels and sublevels. It is expected that exploiting noun phrases or simple memorable sentences containing elements of language creativity, achieved by wordplay, figures of speech and/or phonological means, and aided by various socio-cultural references, will prove to be the most frequent and productive formula for forming a successful tagline. The methodology employed in this research is qualitative – the analysis is carried out by means of discussing and exemplifying various patterns of film tagline formation at the aforementioned extralinguistic, textual and linguistic levels.

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