‘Rare but there’: On subtleties and saliencies of (pseudo-)archaisms in Game of Thrones scripted dialogues

AbstractThis paper is going to carve out to what extent the use of morpho-syntactical as well as lexico-conceptual archaisms is frequent or salient in the Game of Thrones series dialogue transcripts and what kind of (pseudo-)archaisms the screenplay writers were working with in order to add a ‘pseudo-medieval feel’ to the discourse on screen. By making use of the corpus tool Sketch Engine, I shall demonstrate that archaisms and particularly pseudo-archaisms in Game of Thrones may not be particularly frequent token-wise, but are highly salient, despite their presence being subtle and impalpable. Their function as pseudo-medieval landmarks, however, will be shown to be cohesive throughout the scripted dialogues in the Game of Thrones series.