Movies are using more violent language including 'murderous verbs'

If you’ve ever felt that modern movies seem to resonate with a chorus of ominous verbs that echo through scenes of action, drama, and suspense, you’re not alone.

A recent study confirms an increase in the use of violent language and disturbing phrases in film dialogues over the past half-century, shedding light on how our cinematic landscape has shifted over time.

Remarkably, this trend is not limited to crime movies but seems to creep into all genres, and subtly infiltrates even the most unexpected narratives.

Increase in “murderous verbs”

The researchers embarked on a quest to unravel the mystery of this unsettling trend, driven by a desire to understand how language shapes our perception of violence in cinema.

The team used a large database of more than 160,000 movie subtitles, spanning five decades from 1970 to 2020, and meticulously analyzed and quantified the incidence of chilling words like “murder” and “kill” in the dialogues. Their findings revealed a startling linguistic evolution in the film industry.

“Killer words” across all films

According to study co-author Brad Bushman, the surge in these “killer words” has been unsurprisingly variable. Yet, there has been a noteworthy upward trajectory over the 50 years.

Interestingly, this trend isn’t confined to crime flicks. Characters in other genres of movies have also been upping their “kill-talk” game.

“Characters in noncrime movies are also talking more about killing and murdering today than they did 50 years ago. Not as much as characters in crime movies, and the increase hasn’t been as steep. But it is still happening. We found increases in violence cross all genres,” noted Bushman.

Gender dynamic of violent language

Authored by researchers at the University of Maryland and The Ohio State University, the study was published as a research letter in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. The findings offer new insights into the evolving dynamics of film dialogue.

The study revealed that the rise in the use of violent language was not gender-specific, demonstrating a broad shift in cinematic trends.

Study lead author Babak Fotouhi highlighted an intriguing aspect of the findings. While men typically delivered more violent dialogues, women also showed a discernable increase over time, reflecting a significant shift in character portrayal across genders.

Steady rise in violent language

Using the subtitle database from opensubtitles.org, the researchers sifted through 166,534 movies, extracting references to murderous actions with painstaking precision.

The team calculated the proportion of “killer verbs” – semantics rooted in words like “kill” and “murder” which capture the darker tones of cinematic language.

The analysis painted a grim picture of evolving dialogue trends: close to 7% of the movies spewed murderous verbs over the study period, indicating a steady rise in violent language on the silver screen.

The competitive edge of violence in film

Pennsylvania-based post-doctoral researcher Amir Tohidi emphasized the team’s focus on these ominous verbs to identify only the most severe forms of violence present in movie diologue, thus representing a conservative estimate.

“We focused exclusively on murderous verbs in our analysis to establish a lower bound in our reporting,” said Tohidi. “Including less extreme forms of violence would result in a higher overall count of violence.“

The researchers noted that if they had incorporated less aggressive forms of violence in the analysis, the overall count of violent dialogue would have skyrocketed.

“We designed this to be a conservative estimate,” said Fotouhi. “It is likely there was more violence in the movies than what we calculated in terms of the dialogue.”

This research, backed by an enormous dataset, highlights the escalation in cinematic reference to violence.

“Movies are trying to compete for the audience’s attention and research shows that violence is one of the elements that most effectively hooks audiences,” noted Fotouhi.

A call for mindful media consumption

Bushman weighed in with a cautionary note, suggesting that this unsettling trend may still be on an upward trajectory, with no clear peak in sight.

This observation highlights an urgent call to action: the need to promote greater media literacy and encourage mindful media consumption.

By equipping audiences – especially vulnerable groups like young viewers – with critical thinking skills, we can mitigate the potential impact of violent language on impressionable minds.

So, the next time you cozy up for a movie night, take a moment to reflect – our screens are brimming with more killer words than ever before, subtly shaping the narratives we consume.

The full study was published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

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