RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

TOPIC:
LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED TITLES OF HORROR FILMS AND ITS
IMPACT ON AUDIENCE

SUBMITTED TO:
SIR RASHID MEHMOOD

SUBMITTED BY:
AQSA BATOOL
HINA JAHANGIR
MAIDA ZAHOOR
BS ENGLISH 4C
(EVENING)

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MODERN LANGUAGES, ISLAMABAD

ABSTRACT:
With the increase in film production, the genre of horror films is now of great importance among
audience. It is getting the attention of people and becoming popular among them. As for every
film its attraction lies in its title, therefore horror films, definitely, have something in its titles.
The present study dissects the titles of horror films linguistically and analyzed the words’
categories, and also it attempts to over look the impact of it on audience. The linguistic analysis
of titles was done qualitatively and data collected through analyzing samples, and the samples
were selected through random sampling. The collected data shows that titles of horror film are
influential because of adjectives and determiners used in it and they display the story to audience
and produces sense of fear in them. The findings of the study recommend that the title of horror
film should be comprised of the words that possess fearing elements to attract the audience’s
attention.

INTRODUCTION:
The word “horror” derives from the Greek phryke (meaning “shudder”) and describes the
physical manifestations of shivering, shuddering, and piloerection. It is basically a spontaneous
response to shocking visual aids. Horror can be of two types: a genuine horror and a art horror.
Genuine Horror is real and is naturally created in human to make them afraid because it is
advantageous to their survival. It includes fear arising from attack and that fear motivated an
individual to fight or flee. While an Art Horror describes the imagined horror found in horror
films. Horror film is a film that aims to elicit fear for the purpose of entertainment in the viewer.
Horror is a genre of literature, film, and television that is meant to scare, shock and even repulse
audience. This genre is based on fear. The core aim of the horror film is to evoke the sense of
fear in the audience through frightening images, settings, scenes, themes, and situation. In horror
films story and characters are just as important as mood and atmosphere. As title is story’s first
impression, so it has also some importance. Title plays an important role in understanding the
film and are often the first piece of information that a viewer is given. Every film needs a title
and it gives audience reason to see it.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:

As title is the essential part of any film and a good title is reflective in itself. In Horror films title
plays very important role in grasping the attention of audience. So it is useful to conduct research
to find out how through different titles of different films one can guess the intensity of dread
content inside the film through the words used in the title.

RESEARCH QUESTION:
What kind of words use in the title of horror films?
What are the frequent themes presented by the titles of different horror films?
To which extent title of film depicts horridness in it?
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE:
To analyze the title of horror film and to understand the underlined meaning.
To comprehend dread and fear from the title of horror film.

LITERATURE REVIEW:
The horror film is a global icon of creativity, entertainment and thrill. The origin of the horror
film is, in fact, inspired by extensions from the genre of literature. It was from gothic literature
where the first horror films found its inspiration. The horror genre, was popular in books and
theatre at the time, and it were not long before the world of film delved into this intriguing genre.
The term “horror” as in regard to films, were not really used until the 1930’s. The first real sign
of a motion picture resembling the horror genre was “Spook Tale” created by The Lumiere
Brothers in 1895. However, considered to be the first horror film ever is “The Manor of the
Devil” (Melies, 1896), it involved the common codes and conventions of horror films including
bats, a hunted castle, and the devil, play by George Melies himself. However, the very beginning
of the horror is connected with the works of English authors, who followed and developed the
gothic tradition. They created characters that became archetypes for the genre of horror (monster,
vampire etc.).
Salient horror films of the 1920s were the start of the era of horror movies. From “The Cabinet
of Dr Caligari” (Wiene, 1920) to the terror of the first vampire movie Nosferatu (F.W.Muranu,
1922), black and white short silent films made a path for the horror genre in years to come. Other
films like “Frankenstein” (1910) were also huge foundation marks that triggered year and years
of remark and similar movies to come. These were the films to move on from the books and first
hand experiences where people used to get their fear from.
In order to create horror in the film and to evoke emotions of the audience film maker uses
different techniques. For example, different types of horror lighting- uplighting, silhouette,
spotlighting, underexposure, harsh light, prominent and projected shadows, shooting through
objects- can distort images to create mystery, tension, and suspense. Sometimes film maker set
films in isolated locations such as cabins, forests, mountains, abandoned ships and houses. These
lonely locations give tense atmosphere and arose the feeling of uneasiness that no one can help
them in these isolated places. Similarly, sound designers use different sound effects such as
animal cries, high pitched squeal and infrasound in order to create fear and distress in the
audience and to make visualizing part of the scene more horrifying. Paranormal Activity used
infrasounds perfectly with the 20-Hz frequency placed in specific moments wherein the scene
showed oscillating fans or doorways in order to play with the audience's senses . Other famous
techniques of horror film includes: jumpscares, mirrors and reflections, fluctuating mise-en-
scene, tight framing, over extended scenes, subliminal imagery, and irregular movements
(Bernard, 2017).
Beside these techniques, title of a film play a significant role in marketing and understanding of a
film. An effective title can convey a theme or tone before even audience begin to watch a film.
RESEARCH METHOD:
The purpose of this study is to analyze the horror film’s titles by deeply examining the words
used in it and to evaluate the effect of these words on audience. This study used the Qualitative
method of research and the research design is exploratory in nature. The qualitative approach
was applied to gather, analyze and interpret the data.

DATA COLLECTION:
To answer the research questions, the data was collected from various sources including:
websites, previous studies and other related articles and blogs. The population of this study
comprised of 26 Hollywood horror films of different eras. However, for the convenience, we had
selected out of these only 13 film’s titles as sample through random sampling in which every
film got equal probability of being selected.

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION:

In order to determine how words that are used in the sample titles of horror films make sense of
horror, the data was analyzed according to the meaning and categories of words. These
characteristics of words, was analyzed in order to identify specific indicators for themes based on
the words used in these titles. In other words, the purpose of title analysis is to attempt to
understand how words make sense of horror and how they indicate themes.
The analysis started by separating the words used in each title. Then we placed those words in
different categories: noun, adjective, verb, interjection and determiners. Out of 13 film’s titles,
12 titles had nouns, 7 had adjectives, 1 title had verb, 1 had interjection, and 10 titles had
determiners. By deeply examining all these words in the titles, it was cleared that mostly the
adjectives had the leading impact on the rest of the words, especially on nouns. For example,
adjectives used in the sample titles were: Dark, Quiet, Wolf, Black, Paranormal, Bad, and Evil.
The meaning of all these adjectives used in the titles of horror films, symbolizes the evil, mystery
or fear. These words indicate that there is something dreadful in the film. The audience gets the
first impression of the horror inside the film through the adjective used in the title because it
creates emotion of fear and alarm inside their mind and gives them the first glance of dread.
The second category found through the analysis of these words was Determiners. A determiner is
a word which is used at the beginning of a noun group to indicate, for example, which thing we
are referring to or whether we are referring to one thing or several. Determiners include
articles (a, an, the), cardinal numbers (one, two, three...) and ordinal numbers (first, second,
third...), demonstratives (this, that, these, those), partitives (some of, piece of, and
others), quantifiers (most, all, and others), difference words (other, another), and possessive
determiners (my, his, her, its, our…) (Nordquist, 2018). So here almost in every title of a horror
film the determiner was present. The presence of determiners in the title of selected horror films
specified the main noun and also showed emphasis which makes it clear to the audience that the
story of film revolves around this main subject i-e noun.
Furthermore, through the pragmatic analysis of the words used in the selected titles of horror
films, it was assumed that the most frequent themes presented by the words were theme of fear,
uneasiness, fright, loneliness, panic and terror. For example, “The Quiet Place” invokes the
emotion of fear and loneliness in audience, whereas “It Follows” awaken the sense of uneasiness
and panic in the audience.

CONCLUSION:
This study explored out what kind of words mostly used in the title of horror films and what are
the frequently presented themes. This research took a qualitative approach to find out what kind
of words create an effect of horror in the titles and how the audience get influenced by these
words. It clarifies that the words have power and it can easily mould one state of emotion of the
audience into another. As the main purpose of horror films is to activate sense of fear in the
audience, so the very first step took by the filmmaker for this purpose is to make the title very
influential. Because title of horror film is the first introduction of film for the viewer so it should
contain words having the elements of fear which invokes the sense of fright in audience.
Moreover, careful selection of words for the title of horror films intensifies its horrorness and
also it appears more interesting for the audience in first go.

REFERENCES:
1910 (Director). [Motion Picture].

Bernard, J. (2017). Techniques Horror Movies use to scare you.

F.W.Muranu (Director). (1922). [Motion Picture].

Melies, G. (Director). (1896). [Motion Picture].

Nordquist, R. (2018, august 31). Thought.Co.

Wiene, R. (Director). (1920). [Motion Picture].