Browsing by Subject "soap opera"

This paper examines how Jonathan Culpeper’s theoretical framework on impoliteness, based on the concept of face and face wants and Brown and Levinson’s previous politeness framework, can be applied to analysing fictional discourse in a TV soap opera. The research material consists of 21 episodes of Emmerdale aired originally on the British ITV channel between 26 June and 13 November 2018 and transcribed by the author of this thesis. Emmerdale was selected as the subject because this long-running series is very popular in the United Kingdom and it is a typical example of drama or soap opera which is primarily based on discourse between the characters. The use of impoliteness is examined in the interactions of three selected characters that often use impolite or even insulting language. The data consists of face-to-face discourse (dyads) between the main characters and other characters in the series. The dyads are classified as close or distant relationships depending on whether the other interactant is a friend or family member, or an outsider. The method is quantitative as well as qualitative. In addition to sarcasm, six types of impoliteness are selected as focus areas (insult, condescension, criticism, threat, silencer, dismissal). The focus is on the linguistic form of utterances, and non-verbal and paralinguistic features are largely excluded. In addition to calculating the occurrence of the mentioned types of impoliteness in the dialogues, it is assessed whether there are differences in the use of impolite utterances between the selected characters or between close and distant relationships. The results show that in terms of the percentage of impolite utterances, the analysed characters can be considered equally impolite and all characters were more impolite in distant than in close relationships. One of the characters was notably more impolite in close relationships than the other two. There were also some differences between the types of impoliteness the characters used to express impoliteness.