Analyzing Film Discourse: Methodological Focus on Character Identity and Communication, Slides of Communication

Download Analyzing Film Discourse: Methodological Focus on Character Identity and Communication and more Slides Communication in PDF only on Docsity! Brno Studies in English Volume 37, No. 1, 2011 ISSN 0524-6881 DOI: 10.5817/BSE2011-1-3 Marta Dynel Stranger than Fiction? A Few Methodological Notes on Linguistic Research in Film Discourse Abstract This theoretical essay addresses a number of methodological problems perti- nent to linguistic research on film discourse. First of all, attention is paid to the interdependence between contemporary film discourse and everyday language, with a view to dispersing doubts about the former’s legitimacy in language stud- ies. Also, the discussion captures the interface between a character’s identity portrayal and the target audience’s socio-cultural background and expectations. Another objective is to elaborate a model of film discourse’s twofold layering, viz. the fictional layer and the film crew’s layer; and two communicative levels, namely the characters’ level and the viewer’s level, on which meanings are com- municated and inferred by the viewer, who is conceptualised as the recipient. Additionally, the notion of recipient design will be endorsed in order to demon- strate that meanings are purposefully communicated to, and thus gleaned by, the viewer. Several postulates are propounded concerning the viewer’s understand- ing and appreciation of film discourse. Key words Communicative level; film discourse; identity construction/representation; lay- ering; recipient; recipient design 1. Film discourse The term film discourse (or film talk) is here used in reference to fictional charac- ters’ communication in feature films, as well as in series and serials (even though, technically speaking, the two are not films). Characters’ discourse is comprised of verbalisations, coupled with non-verbal communication (NVC), which can be defined in a broad sense and in a narrow sense. 42 MArTA DyNEl “While in broad definitions NVC includes any kind of non-verbal messages (or non-verbal signs) proper to informative processes, more narrow defini- tions restrict it to non-language (or better non-linguistic) phenomena that are interrelated – often in an intricate way – with verbal language and can be found in interactive or communicative processes.” (Payrató 2009: 164) Here the broad view is advocated, on the understanding that body language, such as gestures and facial expression, together with vocalics, both captured by the narrow definition, is a significant subtype of NVC. Even in the broad sense, NVC should not be mistaken for visual communication pivoted on cinematographic techniques, affecting the way interactions are presented on the screen. Film discourse is here viewed as conflating monologues, dialogues, i.e. dy- adic interactions, and polylogues, i.e. exchanges held by more than two par- ticipants, similar to those found in everyday talk (cf. Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1997, 2004). However, as Chovanec (2011) rightly indicates, whilst in common par- lance the term “dialogue” refers to dyadic conversations, i.e. conversations held by two people, in accordance with the Greek etymology (“dia-”, i.e. “across”, and “legein”, i.e. “speak”), it pertains to talk held by two or more participants. While etymologically unfounded, the understanding of dialogue as synonymous with dyadic conversation is widespread both in dictionary definitions and in the literature of the topic, which is why it is also supported here. A distinction is then drawn between dialogues and polylogues, the latter capturing conversations of more than two people. The adoption of this terminology also necessitates the re- jection of the common term “film dialogue” used in reference to two or more film characters’ verbal interactions. For the sake of terminological clarity, a distinction is here drawn between film dialogue and film polylogue. Film discourse is not to be mistaken for cinematic discourse, which conflates an array of cinematographic techniques, which are studied primarily outside lin- guistics. Nonetheless, film discourse, as perceived by the viewer, is the collabo- rative work of the whole film crew, here dubbed the collective sender. Film talk, as listened to (and watched) by the viewer, is affected by the whole gamut of cinematographic techniques, the result of collective sender’s work, embracing among others: the scriptwriter, the director, camera operators, actors, picture and sound editors. Therefore, there are numerous factors, such as the quality of shots, camera angle or editing, which contribute to the communicative effect the crew promotes for the viewer’s benefit. Authors (Kozloff 2000, Richardson 2010) of rare monographs on film dia- logue (a term not supported here, inasmuch as it may suggest dyadic interactions only) lament the prevalent bias in film studies in favour of visually communicat- ed meanings, which results in the underestimation of film language in scholarly linguistic works. Despite the elapsing time, the literature on the nature of film discourse is still scarce (e.g. Kozloff 2000; Culpeper 2001; Bubel 2006, 2008; Bubel and Spitz 2008; Quaglio 2008, 2009; Richardson 2010; Dynel 2010a, 2010b, 2011d, 2011e). The majority of scholarship on cinema falls outside lin- 45StRANGER tHAN FiCtiON? have a tendency towards producing particular speech act types. Other authors (Cooper 1981, Short 1981/1989, Bennison 1993) recruit the Gricean account to dissect the workings of characters’ utterances couched in implicatures emerging from maxim flouts. it is also hardly surprising that linguists should have recourse to fictional dialogues and polylogues as data to illustrate contemporary communi- cative practices, presupposing or even arguing in favour of the similarity between real and fictional language use (e.g. Goffman 1974; tannen 1984; McHoul 1987; Carter and Simpson 1989; Herman 1995, tannen and Lakoff 1994, Hopper and Le Baron 1999; Weatherall 1996; Emmison and Goldman 1996; Georgakopoulou 2000; Rose 2001; Bubel and Spitz 2008; Bubel 2006, 2008). Nonetheless, in fairness to critics who harbour doubts as regards the com- parability between film discourse and everyday language, a provision must be made that research questions need to be chosen with care. irrespective of the points of resemblance they share with everyday talk, verbal interactions in films (representing a variety of genres) may display features which will not normally be found in the former, at least not to the same degree. For instance, based on a comparative corpus study, Quaglio (2009) adduces evidence that the discourse of a sitcom, “Friends”, bears numerous similarities to naturally occurring conversa- tions. However, several differences are observed as well, with film talk being less vague, suffused with linguistic markers of emotionality and informativeness, but presenting lesser narrativity. these differences can be attributed, most likely, to constraints on interaction types and topics (Quaglio 2009). While minor differences may pass unnoticed from the vantage point of a regu- lar film viewer, they may be crucial for some language studies. For instance, mispronunciations, overlaps or self-corrections with which real-life discourse is replete will be scarce in films (Richardson 2010), so that the viewer’s understand- ing is not impeded or even precluded. Nota bene, if a given role or interaction demands this, such communicative obstacles will obviously be found in film dis- course, serving as a testament to skills and expertise of the scriptwriter, the actor and the director. It is worth noting that many memorable portrayals in the his- tory of cinema are those of characters with retardation and speech impediments, Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of Arnie Grape in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” or tom Hanks’s role of the eponymous Forrest Gump being just two examples. in addition, film genres may exhibit communicative tendencies which are not commonplace in non-fictional discourse. For instance, comedies abound in rep- artee and contests of wit (cf. Kozloff 2000), which do occur in everyday con- versations, albeit with lower frequency. Consequently, it would be ill-advised to conduct sociolinguistic quantitative humour research on the basis of fictional discourse. Needless to say, no such problems arise when examples quoted from films illustrate postulates of a non-sociological nature, e.g. semantic, cognitive or pragmatic ones (e.g. see Dynel 2009, 2010a, 2010b), or when film dialogues and polylogues are analysed as film discourse, without any hypothesis being ad- vanced concerning real language use (e.g. Bubel 2006, 2008; Bubel and Spitz 2008). 46 MArTA DyNEl Potential lack of full similarity to real-life discourse may also emerge from the fact that fictional conversations must be available and comprehensible to viewers, which is why all requisite information must be sneaked into interactions (Richardson 2010), even if interlocutors might not need to communicate such meanings to one another. Nevertheless, this goal can be attained cleverly, so that characters’ utterances do not sound artificial or stilted. Scripted utterances need to sound plausible in characters’ mouths, as viewers should engage in the plot and, for the duration of the screening, suspend the presumption that utterances are authored by parties different from the ones that produce them within the fictional reality. Phoney language use should not be mistaken for deliberate violation of communicative patterns by characters (as designed by scriptwriters), a case in point being Dr House’s unprecedented abrasiveness and impoliteness towards his patients and co-workers, untypical of any professional, which can be explained as being oriented towards entertaining the general audience. Viewers can take a character’s communicative patterns in their stride and never question them. Al- though displaying their own quirks and idiosyncrasies, characters normally come across as being plausible if they are coherently portrayed, e.g. via their consistent idiolects. 3. Identity construction of characters Apart from supplying plot themes, film dialogues and polylogues serve a variety of functions (cf. Kozloff 2000). Most importantly, they help construct character identities and relations, which are (whether or not consciously) duly generated by lay viewers and which can be studied by language researchers (cf. Culpeper 2001, 2002; Bubel 2006, 2008; Bubel and Spitz 2008; Dynel 2010a, 2011d). Character- isation, representation or identity construction, whether in literary works (so far most abundantly described), plays or films, can be defined as a complex account of an individual’s utterances, actions, wants, beliefs, etc. (Downes 1988). Numer- ous studies representing diversified theoretical approaches have been devoted to the problem of identity construction, whether of real people or fictional charac- ters, most frequently literary (e.g. Garvey 1978; Phelan 1979; Margolin 1983, 1996; Schwarz 1989; Fokkema 1991; Scholes and Kellogg 1966; Walcutt 1966; Palmer 2002; Semino 2002; Antaki and Widdicombe 1998; turner and Oakes 1989; Palmer 2004; Bucholtz and Hall 2005; Martin and White 2005). Support is here given to the humanising approach, rather than the de-human- ising approach, to a character’s identity construction known in literature studies (cf. Culpeper 2001). Admittedly, the former perspective should be assumed in linguistic research, because it capitalises on knowledge from psychology, sociol- ogy, as well as linguistic research on human communication, affording profound insight into characterisation strategies. The fundamental premise of this approach is that recipients “recognise, understand and appreciate fictional characters inso- far as their appearances, actions and speech reflect or refer to those of persons in 47StRANGER tHAN FiCtiON? real life” (Mead 1990: 442). Needless to say, image management lies at the heart of all human encounters, with language playing a crucial role in it. in everyday communication, interactants deploy image politics and develop opinions of one another on the basis of their linguistic communicative patterns. “language is an intrinsic component of personality. linguistic style is an outgrowth of psychological style, and a diagnostic of it as well. We assume that the way people talk tells us the truth about them.” (Lakoff 1990: 257) the same appears to be pertinent to film discourse, where “the linguistic organisation of a text will predetermine to a certain degree the kind of ‘picture’ one may compose of a protagonist. therefore the particular forms by which this is achieved need to be studied in detail. (van Peer 1989: 9) Although fictional characters may be representatives of classic dramatic roles (e.g. Propp 1968, Greimas 1966/1983, Frye 1957), they are primarily portrayed as being “real people”, i.e. prototypical members of social categories (Culpeper 2001). Among other issues, contemporary films need to respond to social changes in order to capture prevalent representations of human social types known to an audience, simultaneously helping to define them (Dow 1996). the appreciation of fictional characters (whether in a literary work or in film discourse), their ac- tions, motives and utterances is conducted according to top-down and bottom-up processes. All incoming stimuli about an individual are processed in the light of each interpreter’s real-life experiences and background knowledge of the real world and the fictional world (Culler 1975, toolan 1988, Emmott 1997, Culpeper 2001). Repetitive patterns in people’s verbal and nonverbal expression lead to stereotypes or simply prevailing means of communication, which foster expecta- tions as to how people communicate, e.g. depending on their gender and social background. these default conventions should be mirrored in contemporary film discourse to promote viewers’ perception of reality on the screen. therefore, the language of popular culture texts may also reinforce stereotypical beliefs and attitudes (Berger 1992). On the other hand, media discourse, even if fictional, can affect the shape of the contemporary culture, sometimes introducing societal trends, initially foreign to viewers, i.e. society members, who duly incorporate promoted social schemata into their construction of self and others (cf. Hedley 2002). A shiny example is Carrie Bradshaw, a character from “Sex and the City”, who appears have broken the mould and become the epitome of a commodity post-feminist, (regrettably) serving as a role model for many a European woman. in essence, media identity construction both reflects and shapes the viewer’s understanding of social categories (Gauntlett 2002, Bignell 2002) implemented by dint of verbal and nonverbal techniques, manifesting themselves in how char- acters communicate with one another. It is perhaps not so much the plot (which 50 MArTA DyNEl of the inter-character level, yet having been earlier modified by the collective sender via cinematographic techniques within sublayers. the collective sender controls characters’ interactions before and when they take place (determining the form and content of conversations, which are created by the scriptwriter and rendered by actors under the director’s supervision) and after they have been per- formed, (determining how the interactions are shown thanks to picture and sound editing, for instance). Meanings gleaned by audiences are constructed both by actors who verbalise the lines written by scriptwriters under the director’s super- vision and by means of an array of cinematographic ploys, which can be viewed as what Clark and Van Der Wege (2001) dub mimetic props, i.e. devices which facilitate imagining the story world. the multimodal film discourse is engen- dered by a wide variety of cinematographic techniques (e.g. Mulvey 1975, Katz 1991), for example with the sound editing and camera movements manipulating the recipient’s perception of interactions. From the perspective of linguistic stud- ies, to which the present paper subscribes, the most vital is the discourse overtly produced by fictional interactants but actually materialsed by the film crew. the characters’ level displays interactional patterns of participation typical of ordinary conversations. Each utterance/turn partaking in an interaction is pro- duced by the speaker and directed towards the addressee, and optionally heard by a third party and/or overheard by unratified participants all the three being hearers (listeners) on the characters’ level (see Dynel 2010a, 2011e). On the second communicative level, meanings emerging from film discourse are communicated to the audience. Although viewers witness conversations car- ried out by unknowing fictional conversationalists, i.e. characters, their partic- ipation is planned within the collective sender’s layer, determining in various respects how these unknowing characters interact on the screen. to reformulate, characters’ interactions interpreted by recipients are the products of the whole film production team, who are aware of recipients, and convey meanings espe- cially for their benefit. On the other hand, it can hardly be argued that recipients consciously interact with the collective sender. Unless they are metarecipients, viewers willingly forget about the real production layer and become preoccupied with characters’ communication. From recipients’ vantage point, actors merge with the characters they perform, i.e. interactants who live in the make-believe reality of the film and who come over as being the actual authors of the words produced. Concerning the two communicative levels, it emerges that meanings commu- nicated between characters “become messages about the characters at the level of discourse which pertains between author and reader/audience” (Short 1989: 146). Participating in all encounters shown on the screen, the audience usually enjoy greater knowledge than each character in isolation and/or are presented with facts to which the latter are oblivious. inasmuch as recipients usually have broader knowledge about the characters in various interactions, their interpretation of dia- logues and polylogues may differ from fictional conversationalists’ inferences. In other words, the recipient may regard a character or his/her words differently 51StRANGER tHAN FiCtiON? when compared to a particular hearer at the characters’ level, which creates a mis- match between the inference made by the addressee or third party (cf. Dynel 2010a, 2010b) and that made by the recipient. On the other hand, the viewer may make an additional inferential effort to apprehend meanings generated at the inter-character level and their interpersonal ramifications. For instance, in “Atonement” characters’ reciprocal evaluations are divergent from the opinions the viewer holds of them. Secretly sweet on, and jealous of, Robbie, who has an affair with her sister (Cecilia), the teenage Briony falsely accuses the young man of rape and casts a blight on him. As a result, he is stigmatised and hapless for the rest of his life. Whereas the recipient regards Briony as a deceitful spoilt brat, and Robbie as an innocent scapegoat, the whole family (perhaps except for Cecilia) seems to perceive her sister as a trustworthy witness and Robbie as a wayward miscreant. robbie, on the other hand, must deem Briony as a silly, mendacious child. Although a viewer can conjecture respective characters’ opinions of one another, it is only at the end of the film that he/she can comprehend Briony’s qualms and the pangs of conscience she has experienced over the years. Needless to say, speakers in films can hardly address recipients. it is very rarely the case that an actor on the screen addresses an utterance to the viewer, even if notable exceptions of “breaking the fourth wall” can be found. For in- stance, in “JCVC”, featuring Jean Claude Van Damme performing himself, at some point, the character leaves the fictional scene and addresses the audience in a non-fictional monologue. On the other hand, in “Funny Games” or “High Fidelity” protagonists produce asides to the viewer, not abandoning their fictional roles, but acknowledging the audience’s presence. On the other hand, viewers do not contribute verbally to fictional conversa- tional interchanges (cf. Short 1981/1989). Mass media communication, on the whole, is one-way communication (Morris and Ogan 1996, Jucker 2003), with audience’s participation being restricted to recipientship. in this respect, viewers are then ratified participants who can be compared to Duncan’s (1974) perma- nent auditors, i.e. participants who never claim the speaking turn. this, however, does not mean that viewers are passive. Verbally passive though they may be, recipients are otherwise active participants, with film discourse being open to their interpretation (cf. Hobson 1982; Duranti 1986; Morley 1980, 1994). On the whole, audiences actively access the medium, interact with producers of the media product, while the latter also probe audiences’ interests and interpretations. Jucker (2003) dubs these levels of interaction “interactivity”, “interaction” and “feedback”, respectively. 5. Recipient design and recipient’s inferential processes Each utterance, together with its media rendition, is the collective sender’s product directed at the higher-order hearer, viz. the recipient, who duly conducts complex inferential processes on the basis of the information provided and his/ 52 MArTA DyNEl her background knowledge. Although viewers may not have full awareness of characters’ lives and do not have full insight into their personalities (Bubel 2008), all relevant information must be available to them so that they can make all necessary inferences, as intended by the collective sender. this is because film reality is forged for, and thus by nature available to, viewers. For instance, as earlier argued, recipients have a broader perspective and more extensive knowledge than each character, partaking in all interactions presented. if any interactions or specific meanings are covert from recipients’ perspective, this will be because of an underpinning goal on the collective sender’s part, such as springing a surprise on viewers or generating suspense. All this is encompassed by the concept of recipient design. A similar concept is known in literature as audience design (Bell 1984, 1991, Clark and Carlson 1982) or overhearer’s de- sign (Bubel 2008), which account for particular communicative strategies ad- justed to the needs of listeners to a chosen discourse type. For example, Bell (1984, 1991) proposes an audience design for news media, according to which speakers adjust their speech styles to match the audience’s needs. Adjusting pro- cedures are commensurate with the degree the speaker recognises and ratifies the audience, in the context of a number of sociolinguistic variables, inclusive of pronunciation patterns. Sacks et al. (1974) are, admittedly, the first authors to have developed the notion in reference to how meanings are constructed for hearers in everyday conversations. “By ‘recipient design’ we refer to a multitude of respects in which the talk by a party of a conversation is constructed or designed in ways which display an orientation or sensitivity to the particular other(s) who are the co-partic- ipants […] with regard to word selection, topic selection, admissibility, and ordering of options, sequences and obligations for starting and terminating conversations.” (Sacks et al. 1974: 727) Here, the proposal is transported to another level, with the viewer being the recip- ient, who must be capable of inferring meanings conveyed on the screen. Recipi- ent design is here understood as a set of discursive (as well as cinematographic) techniques enabling the target viewer’s interpretative processes and arrival at meanings, in accordance with the collective sender’s plan. the latter’s choice of strategies, and effects consequent upon them, are dependent on the presupposed target audience. For instance, European highbrow dramas, available to restricted audience, will necessitate complex inferences, while cartoons directed to young audiences must be less cognitively demanding and more entertaining. Nota bene, too easy an inferential path (typical of low-quality films) frequently leads the viewer to a conclusion that conversations are wooden or that the portrayal of characters is lacking in psychological depth. An understanding of interactions and interactants involves an interface be- tween the media product and viewers’ prior knowledge, which affects their per- ception of the cues provided (Culpeper 2001, 2002). the role of recipients is to 55StRANGER tHAN FiCtiON? gent meanings. Nonetheless, a major question arises as to whether the recipient does appreciate consciously the rhetorical strategies employed by interlocutors (and actually by the scriptwriter) or the whole gamut of cinematographic tech- niques. More likely, the recipient conducts interpretative processing of film dis- course intuitively, familiar with recurrent patterns typical of film genres (Hedges 1991). Appreciation processes will thus frequently proceed automatically, below the viewer’s awareness threshold, unless inferences are cognitively demanding, as in the case of crime stories or highbrow films. As already suggested, apprecia- tion processes are determined by the nature of a film, as well as idiosyncratic per- ceptions of viewers, who may display varied intellectual capacity and expertise. Admittedly, while some meanings are available to wide audiences, generating other meanings may be more effortful, to the extent of their being elusive. An ex- ample here is the output of Quentin tarantino, whose films can be read differently depending on the viewer’s expertise. Oblivious to his recurrent ploys, a viewer may watch “Kill Bill” or “Deathproof”, without appreciating the richness of sub- versive allusions to earlier films and other artefacts of popular culture. Because of this, the films may appear rather superficial or devoid of much sense to some, while being regarded as ingenious by those in the know. It could be argued that since the appreciation of cinematographic and discur- sive techniques shows gradability, the distinction between the recipient and the metarecipient is blurry. Nevertheless, a lay recipient watches a film primarily for pleasure and entertainment (but may simultaneously appreciate the means by which certain effects are promoted). the extreme case of sensitivity to mimetic vehicles is that of the metarecipient, who concentrates not (or at least not only) on imagination but on appreciation processes, and consciously analyses chosen aspects of film discourse with a view to understanding its workings. For instance, recognising visual techniques by which a given effect is fostered frequently en- tails expertise in cinematography. it is, in all likelihood, not the case that all view- ers will appreciate that some meaning is conveyed by, for example, a close-up. However, they will infer, or even take for granted, a particular character’s sincer- ity, consequent upon the application of this cinematic ploy. Similarly, decoding verbal messages does not normally demand pondering on the rhetorical figures which promote them. the meanings should simply be grasped, even if with ad- ditional cognitive effort. On the other hand, a metarecipient’s scholarly investiga- tion into film discourse necessitates paying heed to chosen aspects of verbalisa- tions, their form, functions and mechanisms (e.g. pragmatic or cognitive). Finally, it should be borne in mind that there may be variability in viewers’ ne- gotiated readings of film discourse, depending on their social and historical back- ground (Neale 1977, Hall 1980, Morley 1980, Hobson 1982, Ang 1985, Palmer 1986, Fiske 1986). this will be relevant perhaps not so much in the case of basic understanding of utterances or the plot, which should be equivocal by design (otherwise resulting in miscomprehension/lack of comprehension), but as regards the construction of global ideological meanings. Those may indeed be depend- ent on viewers’ experience, knowledge or prejudices, as well as their intellectual 56 MArTA DyNEl capacity. this is the case of audiences’ construing, for instance, gendered identity conceptualisations. Admittedly, the selfsame problems will emerge in the case of everyday interactions. Dow (1996: 3) rightly perceives the single vs. collective decoding problem, arguing that film interpretation is “always the product of socially situated persons who make arguments that are enabled but also limited by their experiences and perspectives. However, there is no such thing as the totally isolated, individualistic, idiosyncratic reading of a text.” (Dow 1996: 3) in essence, target recipients of a given film read texts in a similar manner, pro- totypically coinciding with the collective sender’s intention. Admittedly, in most language studies, an ideal picture of communication will be taken into account, with viewers’ misinterpretations being marginalised. 6. Summary The article aimed to shed light on a number of methodological issues germane to linguistic research on film discourse. A statement was ventured that, its peculiar features notwithstanding, film discourse bears similarity to real discourse and lends itself to linguistic investigation. Language studies may draw on film dis- course with a view to validating theoretical models or demonstrating the work- ings of fictional communication. Moreover, it was suggested that characters’ identity construction research may subscribe to linguistic studies. On the whole, collective senders normally do their utmost to guarantee that fictional characters, with their fictional idiolects and identities, should not come over as untenable. Secondly, attention was devoted to the inherently twofold fictional and non- fictional layering of film discourse, as well as two communicative levels: the level of characters, reminiscent of everyday interactions, and the level at which the global media product is directed to the recipient. The latter appreciates it by willingly pretending that he/she is watching and listening to real interactions. Diversified methods of creating this illusion can be appreciated by the metare- cipient, i.e. the informed recipient. Essentially, dialogues and polylogues develop in such a way as to allow the audience to appreciate the messages, characters and relationships between them, as envisaged by the collective sender. Film discourse deserves to be extensively investigated by linguists. Fictional discourse is not strange and should not be treated as if it were. Notes 1 technically, scripted conversation may also embrace discourse types which are not fictional per se, such as the discourse of entertainment tV programmes, which are scripted even if 57StRANGER tHAN FiCtiON? interlocutors can paraphrase the scripted text or entwine spontaneous utterances with it. 2 Not all characters must be fictional per se, a case in point being historical figures. However, their portrayal in films is largely fictional, albeit plausible, especially in terms of the utterances they produce, which is of central attention here. References Ang, ien (1985) Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. london: Methuen, Antaki, Charles and Sue Widdicombe (1998) Identitites in Talk. london: Sage. Aumont, Jacquesm Alain Bergala, Michel Marie and Marc Vernet (1992) Aesthetics of Film, trans- lated by Richard Neupert. Austin: University of texas Press. Bell, Allan (1984) ‘Language style as audience design’. Language and Society 13, 145–204. Bell, Allan (1991) The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell. Bennison, Neil (1993) ‘Discourse analysis, pragmatics, and the dramatic character: tom Stoppard’s Professional Foul’. Language and Literature 2, 79–99. Berger, Arthur (1992) Popular Culture Genres: Theories and Texts. london: Sage, Berliner, todd (1999) ‘Hollywood movie dialogue and the ‘real realism’ of John Cassavetes’. Film Quarterly 52, 2–16. Bignell, Jonathan (2002) Media Semiotics: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bordwell, David and Kristin thompson (1979) Film Art. Madison: McGraw-Hill. Boxer, Diana (2002) Applying Sociolinguistics: Domains of Face-to-Face Interaction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Bubel, Claudia (2006) The linguistic construction of character relations in TV drama: doing friend- ship in Sex and the City. Unpublished PhD thesis. Saarbrucken: Universitat des Saarlandes. Bubel, Claudia (2008) ‘Film audiences as overhearers’. Journal of Pragmatics 40, 55–71. Bubel, Claudia and Alice Spitz (2006) ‘One of the last vestiges of gender bias: the characterization of women through the telling of dirty jokes in Ally McBeal’. Humor 19, 71–104. Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall (2005) ‘identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach’. Discourse Studies 7, 584–614. Burger, Harald (1984) Sprache der Massenmedien. Berlin: de Gruyter. Burger, Harald (1991) Das Gesprach in den Massenmedien. Berlin: de Gruyter. Carter Ronald and Paul Simpson (1979) Language, Discourse, and Literature. london: routledge. Chothia, Jean (1978) Forging a Language: A Study of Plays of Eugene O’Neill. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. Chovanec, Jan (2011) ‘Humour in quasi-conversations: Constructing fun in online sports journal- ism’. in: Dynel, Marta (ed.) The Pragmatics of Humour across Discourse Domains, 243–264. Clark, Herbert (1996) Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, Herbert and thomas Carlson (1982) ‘Hearers and speech acts’. Language 58, 332–372. Clark, Herbert and Catherine R. Marshall (1981) ‘Definite reference and mutual knowledge’. in: Joshi, A.K., B. Webber, and i. Sag (eds.) Elements of Discourse Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 10–63. Clark, Herbert and Edward Schaefer (1987) ‘Concealing one’s meaning from overhearers’. Journal of Memory and Language 26, 209–225. Clark, Herbert and Edward Schaefer (1992) ‘Dealing with overhearers’. in: Clark, Herbert (ed.) Arenas of Language Use. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 248–273. Clark, Herbert and Mija Van Der Wege (2001) ‘imagination in discourse’ in: Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton (eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell, 772–786. Cooper, Marilyn (1981) ‘impoliteness, convention and the taming of the shrew’. Poetics 10, 1–14. 60 MArTA DyNEl Martin, James and Peter White (2005) The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. london: Palgrave. McHoul, Alec (1987) ‘An initial investigation of the usability of fictional conversation for doing conversational analysis’. Semiotica 67, 83–104. Mead, Gerald (1990) ‘the representation of fictional character’. Style 24, 440–452. Monaco, James (1981) How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, Multimedia: Language, History, Theory. Oxford University Press. Morley, David (1980) The Nationwide Audience: Structure and Decoding. London: British Film Institute. Morley, David (1994) ‘Active audience theory: Pendulums and pitfalls’. in: Levy, Mark R. and Michael Gurevitch (eds.) Defining Media Studies: Reflections on the Future of the Field. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 255–261. Morris, Merrill and Christine Ogan (1996) ‘the internet as a mass medium’. Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication 1.4 (http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol1/issue4/morris.html). Mulvey, Laura (1975) ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’. Screen 16/3, 6–18. reprinted in: Kaplan, A.E. (ed.) (2000) Feminism and Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 34–47. Neale, Stephen (1977) ‘Propaganda’. Screen 18, 9–40. Newcomb, Horace and Paul Hirsch (1987) ‘television as a cultural forum’. in: Newcomb, Horace (ed.) Television: The critical view, 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 453–470. O’Keeffe, Anne (2006) Investigating Media Discourse. london: routledge. Palmer, Patricia (1986) The Lively Audience: A Study of Children around the TV Set. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Palmer, Alan (2002) ‘the construction of fictional minds’. Narrative 10.1, 28–46. Palmer, Alan (2004) Fictional Minds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Payrató, luis (2009) ‘Non-verbal communication’. in: Verschueren, Jeff and Jan-Ola Östman (eds.) Key Notions for Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 163–194. Phelan, James (1979) Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpreta- tion of Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pratt, Mary (1977) Towards a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Propp, Vladimir (1968) Morphology of the Folktale, 2nd ed, translated by L. Scott. Austin: Univer- sity of texas Press. Quaglio, Paulo (2008) ‘television dialogue and natural conversation: Linguistic similarities and functional differences.’ in: Ädel, Annelie and Randi Reppen (eds.) Corpora and Discourse: The Challenges of Different Settings. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 189–210. Quaglio, Paulo (2009) Television Dialogue: The Sitcom Friends vs. Natural Conversation. Amster- dam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Richardson, Kay (2010) Television Dramatic Dialogue. A Sociolinguistic Study. New York: Oxford. Rose, Kenneth (2001) ‘Compliments and compliment responses in film: implications for pragmat- ics research and language teaching’. International Review of Applied Linguistics 39, 309–326. Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson (1974) ‘A simplest systematics for the or- ganisation of turn-taking for conversation’. Language 50, 696–735. Scannell, Paddy (1991) ‘introduction: the relevance of talk’. in: Scannell, Paddy (ed.) Broadcast Talk. Sage, london, 1–13. Schegloff, Emanuel (1988) ‘Goffman and the analysis of conversation’. in: Drew, Paul and Anthony Wotton (eds.) Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order, Oxford: Polity Press, 89–135. Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg (1966) ‘Character in narrative’. in: Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg (eds.) The Nature of Narrative. London: Oxford University Press, 160–206. Schwarz, Daniel (1989) ‘Character and characterization: An inquiry’. The Journal of Narrative Technique 19(1), 85–105. Semino, Elena (2002) ‘A Cognitive stylistic approach to mind style in narrative fiction’. in: Sem- ino, Elena and Jonathan Culpeper (eds.) Cognitive Stylistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 95–122. 61StRANGER tHAN FiCtiON? Short, Mick (1981) ‘Discourse analysis and the analysis of drama’. Applied Linguistics 2, 180–202. Reprinted in: Carter, Ronald and Paul Simpson (eds.) (1989) Language, Discourse, and Litera- ture. Unwin Hyman Ltd, 137–168. Short, Mick (1994) ‘Discourse analysis and drama’. in: Asher, R.E. (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Lan- guage and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon, 949–952. Short, Mick (2007) ‘How to make a drama out of a speech act: the speech act of apology in the film A Fish Called Wanda’. in: Hoover, David L. and Sharon Lattig (eds.) Stylistics: Retrospect and Prospect. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 169–189. Simpson, Paul (1998) ‘Odd talk: Studying discourses of incongruity’. in: Culpeper, Jonathan, Mick Short and Peter Verdonk (eds.) Exploring the Language of Drama: From Text to Context. lon- don: routledge, 34–53. Stalnaker, Robert (1978) ‘Assertion’. in: Cole, Peter (ed.) Syntax and Semantics: Pragmatics, Ny: Academic Press, 315–332. Stam, robert (2000) Film Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, tannen, Deborah (1984) Conversational Style. Analyzing Talk among Friends. Norwood, NJ: New- bury House. tannen, Deborah and Robin Lakoff (1994) ‘Conversational strategy and metastrategy in a prag- matic theory: the example of scenes from a marriage’. in: tannen, Deborah (ed.) Gender and Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 137–173. toolan, Michael (1988) Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction. london: routledge. turner John and Penelope Oakes (1989) ‘Self-categorization theory and social influence’. in: Pau- lus, Paul (ed.) The Psychology of Group Influence. Hillsdale, N. J.: Erlbaum, 233–275. van Peer, Willie (1989) The Taming of the Text: Explorations in Language, Literature and Culture. london: routledge. Walcutt, Charles Child (1966) Man’s Changing Mask: Modes and Methods of Characterization in Fiction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Walton, Kendall (1990) Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Weatherall, Ann (1996) ‘Language about women and men: An example from popular culture’. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 15, 59–75. Marta Dynel is an assistant professor in the Department of Pragmatics in the institute of English at the University of Łódź. She has published internationally in linguistic journals and volumes. Her research interests are primarily in pragmatic, cognitive and sociolinguistic mechanisms of humour, neo-Gricean studies, (im)politeness, as well as in the methodology of film discourse analysis, nota- bly the pragmatics of interaction. Address: Dr Marta Dynel, University of Łódź, Department of Pragmatics, institute of English, Al. Kościuszki 65, 90-514 Łódź, Poland. [email: marta.dynel@yahoo.com]