This article discusses expressivity (emotion, attitude, ideology) in televisual characterization. Drawing on views from professional practice (scriptwriting handbooks), media/television studies and stylistics, it first provides an overview of televisual characterization before arguing for the usefulness of considering expressive meanings in its analysis. The article then introduces linguistic and paralinguistic expressive resources, and a model for analysing expressive character identity is briefly described which aims to combine semiotic and cognitive (Culpeper, 2001) aspects as well as micro-, meso- and macro-levels of analysis. Expressive identity is also discussed with respect to dynamics, stability, individual and social identity. Quantitative and qualitative linguistic studies of characterization are also considered. The aim of the article is to contribute to research on expressivity in stylistics and to provide a springboard for future research on televisual characterization.
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