Contrasting Verbal Prominence and Network Centrality: A Typology of Dramatic Characters

This paper proposes a typology of dramatic characters based on different dimensions of prominence, conceptualizing it as a multidimensional and potentially divergent phenomenon. The study offers new perspectives on comparative drama analysis and character description through a contrastive analysis of count- and network-based metrics. While the number of words and the number of speech acts are commonly used measures of verbal prominence, betweenness centrality is chosen for its selectivity—assigning high values to only a small subset of characters—and because it differs most from the other two metrics, thereby supporting the contrastive approach. Using these metrics, key positions within the play’s communicative system such as main producers and main transmitters can be identified. The analysis distinguishes three main character groups: Dominant characters, who rank highly across all measures; Speakers, who are verbally prominent but structurally less central; and Connectors, who are structurally central but less verbally dominant. A case study of Shakespeare demonstrates the interpretative value of this typology. In a subsequent step, keyword analysis and the distribution of selected word categories are used to compare the linguistic profiles of Speakers and Connectors. The results show that their discursive patterns align with their structural roles, suggesting a systematic relationship between functional position and language in Shakespeare’s plays.