Choose one or two scenes in a feature film/a TV serial that you like. Do two of the following tasks:
1.Try to identify the language functions used in the conversation.
2.Try to analyze the communicative competence of the interlocutors from the following perspectives (grammatical competence, discourse competence, strategic competence, sociolinguistic competence)
3.Try to analyse the conversations from the following aspects:
a) attention getting
b) topic nomination
c) topic development (clarification, shifting, avoidance and interpretation)
d) Topic termination
4. Try to analyze the conversation in terms of Gricean maxims (quantity, quality, relevance, manner )
Please do not forget to illustrate your comments by giving relevant examples.
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The name of the film that ı will analyze is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". this film is the one ı ve recently watched. the film was really successfull in showing the culture clash between greeks and americans.the conversiation that ı will is between the father and his daughters. the communication is to transmit information. the children tell a word and the father explains their origin as greek. the father is obsessed with being greek.
ReplyDeleteas the speakers of the conversation are greek they have an accent of greek. they strees on "r" sound. however it was quite understandable. the accent they have was not a handicap to get the meaning. grammatically the sentences they utter generally right. actually it was better then an American. throught the conversation the father's intonation was cahnging. when he wants to emphasize a word he was speaking up. and also he was obsessed with the glass cleaner windex. whenever he uses this word he speaks up to gain attention. as a wholeness of the conversation, it was all about the words being greek origin. while changig the topic he was introducing in a way relating the new one with being greek or anything which is greek.as for the Gricean maxims; throughtout the conversation everything was related to each other. things talked are quite connected. ıf we omit a sentence from the dialogue there will be some meaning loss. there was nothhing unnecessary. as for quantity and quality maxims he was talking little quite long while explaining the words' origin. ın his gestures and facial expressions he was reflecting that he was quite pleased to be greek and explain to talk about the words being greek origin.
I chose as a film “American History X.” In this film most of the time characters were talking informal language, and using swearing. Even in the calm environment they used swearing as it was normal conversation. I think, it was something from their sociolinguistic competences or sociocultural rules of their language. Sometimes they were using verbal and non verbal conversation as well, which was very interesting that it was understandable when one person was scared and happy.
ReplyDeleteAlso there were not so many grammatical usages of the language among the plain people; for example, Past/Past Perfect usage; however, I can’t say it for people whose rank is higher than the normal people’s one.
For example, speech of the Mr. Sweeney and the teacher of Daniel, they were using Present and Past Perfect very well.
Teacher of Daniel: Arguing for Hitler…..as a civil rights hero.
Mr. Sweeney: You've got to draw the line. On any book that related to the struggle for civil rights... in plain English.
Or the speech or conversation of young people
1) Derek’s friend: Hey, listen. Did you pull some shit in school today?
Daniel: Just the usual.
Derek’s friend: This kid is awesome as hell.
Here I can give an example of strategic competence Derek used by repeating and persuading his action through repeating:
2) Derek: Decent hard-working Americans like my dad... are getting rubbed out by social parasites.
Journalist: Parasites?
Derek: Blacks, browns, yellow, whatever.
Journalist: I don't understand. You think maybe your father's murder was race- related?
Derek: Yeah, it's race-related. Every problem in this country is race-related.
In this example we can say that he gain attention with his strategic competence by repeating his topic of “race related” and sociolinguistic competence; i.e. with non verbal actions by crying out all those stuff. By saying all those things he also were interpreting that he is becoming the racist and clarify that he will be fighting for his co-called rights.
In the first and in the second conversations we can see that the people are direct and talking without any ambiguity and obscurity which shows the maxim of manner.
But we also can say that in the second conversation there are maxims of quantity, as well, for Derek, but for us as a watcher the quantity is flouting, and maxims of relevance and quality are occurring because there should not be any relevance with black, brown and yellow people and also there no truth about faulting those people.