As mentioned above, Outnumbered is based on a script, which is not shown to the children, but which the adults read. This means that whilst the children undoubtedly improvise, it is not clear to what extent the adults do, particularly in scenes in which no children appear. That is the reason why I chose to only include conversations in which at least one child takes part in the analysis. Even though the adults may still use some memorised lines from the script in these instances, they are naturally forced to improvise, as well, when the children's utterances deviate from the script. I further restricted my selection to the first season, because when the children grew older, they started to read the script themselves. Tyger Drew-Honey, who plays …show more content…
16). Its underlying assumption is that it is vital how the conversation partners interpret each other's utterances, as this determines the construction of the following turns. Often this construction will give information about how the characters understood a previous turn. Subsequent turns thus disclose information about previous ones, which can be used when analysing that first turn (cf. Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008, p. 16). The analysis will be mostly on the character-level, although it has to be mentioned that the sitcoms involve two “communicative levels” (Brock, 2015 , p. 29). Aside from the communication between characters within the sitcom, there is the communication between the TV production crew, which include for example writers and actors, and the TV audience (cf. Brock, 2015 , p. 29). The latter is naturally always realized through the first one, which means that the two levels are not independent from each other. What the audience sees is always the interaction of characters, and only from this point is it possible to make assumptions about the directors' and actors'