Article published in:
Telecinematic Discourse: Approaches to the language of films and television seriesEdited by Roberta Piazza, Monika Bednarek and Fabio Rossi
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 211] 2011
► pp. 105–123
Chapter 6. Emotion and empathy in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas
A case study of the “funny guy” scene
Derek Bousfield | University of Central Lancashire, UK
Dan McIntyre | University of Huddersfield, UK
This chapter examines how the emotion fear is generated through the linguistic, paralinguistic and kinesic actions of multiple characters in the “funny guy” scene from Martin Scorsese’s 1990 film Goodfellas. The scene in question takes place in The Bamboo Lounge restaurant-bar and features Tommy, a mafioso, relating a humorous story to his compatriots. Henry, a friend of Tommy’s, laughs and compliments Tommy on his story. Tommy reacts surprisingly badly to this and begins to behave in a threatening manner. Henry displays a number of traits that suggest he is frightened by Tommy’s outburst and afraid of what it might lead to. We use insights from im/politeness theory, theories of characterisation and work on multimodal stylistics in order to account for how we recognise Henry’s fear in this scene. We claim that the interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic elements is essential for conveying Henry’s fear and invoking this emotion in the viewing audience. Our analysis reveals the necessity of analysing both the linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of film, and we propose this as a methodological necessity for future work in Film Studies, Cultural Studies and some branches of Stylistics.
Published online: 20 July 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.211.08bou
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.211.08bou
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Bousfield, Derek & Dan McIntyre
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