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TABLE 6.3 NORMATIVE VS.VALUE-FREE STATEMENTS: PROPORTIONAL (%) AND
ABSOLUTE NUMBER
American Sitcom Domestic Sitcom
Referential Normative 40.3% 70.6%
Statements 44 89
Value-free 59.6% 29.3%
65 37
Meta-linguistic Normative 46.5% 79.8%
Statements 47 83
Value-free 53.4% 20.1%
54 21

I like several characters in De Kollega’s, but some of them really bother me.
And then there is that typical disease of many Flemish actors, who try to
speak perfect Dutch, but will never succeed in speaking it naturally. Then I
prefer the use of specific dialects as some characters do. And this can be
very, very funny. (interview 28B)

Such explicit personal judgements were also abundantly present in the referen-
tial statements on the domestic programme (70.6 percent). This may not be
surprising: opinions about the indigenous programme were more connected with
personal experiences and sometimes even ideologically loaded. Such a view was
clearly expressed in the interview with a 58-year old technical designer:

I had that experience too. In those days, bosses used to be men with little
intellectual capacity. They had been working their own way up. Then, when
they became the boss, they became arrogant, like real arrivists. Then they
took measures that cannot be labelled as clever, skilful or socially justified ...
(interview 22B)

In the case of the American programme there was an overall ratio of (roughly)
1:1 in relation to the value orientation of the statements, somewhat in favour of
value-free statements (59.6 percent for referential statements and 53.4 percent for
meta-linguistic ones). Respondents spoke quite fluently about several aspects of
the US programme and their experiences of it, but they did not feel so strongly
the need to take an explicit personal view on most items. It seemed that the
recipients were strongly led by the narrative thread in the US programme,
retelling and interpreting the story in a mixed normative/value-free way. [...]

Bringing the ‘Moments’ Together

The use of different reception-inspired methods proves to be fruitful when the
different moments of the reception process are related. It is in this interplay of
moments that the dynamic complexity of receiving a text is manifested.