Everyday Talk and the Conversational Patterns of the Soap Opera

The soap opera has been explored from many different angles. This article examines the relationship between one of the general characteristics of the genre, the fact that there is far more talk than action, and the ways people actually talk in the soap. The article uses Bakhtin’s concept of speech genre as its source of inspiration and as an analytical tool that has the potential to be used in respect to many other genres that, in various ways, are constituted in talk.