In this book, Monika Bednarek addresses the need for a systematic analysis of television discourse and characterization within linguistics and media studies.¿She presents both corpus stylistics and 'manual' analysis of linguistic and multimodal features of fictional television. The first part focuses on communicative context, multimodality, genre, audience and scripted television dialogue while the second part focuses on televisual characterization, introducing and illustrating the novel concept of 'expressive character identity.' Aside from the study of television dialogue, which informs it throughout, this book is a contribution to studying characterization, to narrative analysis and to corpus stylistics.¿With its combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, the book represents a wealth of exploratory, innovative and challenging perspectives, and is a key contribution to the analysis of television dialogue and character identity.¿The volume will be of interest to researchers and students in linguistics, stylistics and media/television studies, as well as to corpus linguists and communication theorists. The book will be a useful resource for lecturers teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in media discourse and related areas.