“That’s none of your business, Sy”
The pragmatics of vocatives in film dialogue
The present paper attempts to throw light on the utility of vocatives within the
twofold participation framework of film dialogue. This is done through a case
study investigating the pragmatic functions and positions of vocatives in the
famous films “Erin Brockovich”, “One Hour Photo”, and “Sliding Doors”. The
paper identifies various types of vocatives at the inter-character level, namely
summonses, relational vocatives, adversarial vocatives, emphatic vocatives, turn
management vocatives, mitigators, insults, badinage vocatives and vocatives validating
the addressee’s identity. It will be underlined that, at the inter-character
level, vocatives typically act as illocutionary force enhancing devices, and that,
in this respect, film dialogue makes the most of a tendency attested in naturallyoccurring
language, i.e. the preponderant use of vocatives to perform functions
which go far beyond the mere identification of the addressee. The functions and
positions of vocatives will be discussed in their implications for the recipient
design. In particular, it will be argued that vocatives facilitate viewers’ suspension
of disbelief, contribute to viewers’ involvement, foster the comprehensibility
of the plot, and signal crucial scenes.
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Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Ghia, Elisa
2019.
(Dis)aligning across different linguacultures: Pragmatic questions from original to dubbed film dialogue
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Multilingua 38:5
► pp. 583 ff.
ÖZER, Nuriye & Pınar İBE AKCAN
2022.
A Pragmatic Function-Position Analysis of Address Terms: Tendencies in Turkish.
Dil Eğitimi ve Araştırmaları Dergisi 8:2
► pp. 456 ff.
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