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Part of
Multimodal Im/politeness: Signed, spoken, written
Edited by Andreas H. Jucker, Iris Hübscher and Lucien Brown
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 333] 2023
► pp. 275–296

Chapter 10
Multimodality and subtitles

A focus on im/politeness in Japanese films with French subtitles through the example of some rituals

ORCID logo | Paris Nanterre University

This article examines, in a corpus of eight mainstream Japanese films with French subtitles, the forms of realization of certain im/polite Japanese multimodal behaviors (verbal rituals, kneeling, bowing, clothing, deferential vs casual attitude), and also the impact of the contextual environment on the choices made by the subtitlers. It shows the importance of multimodality for the non-Japanese spectator who, due to a non-overlap between the formulas of each language and/or in the absence of subtitles, can rely on these nonverbal and situational elements to re-establish the gap between the source language-culture and the target language-culture, to interpret the degree of deference that exists between the characters and/or to imagine the forms of realization of the asymmetry of the relationships.

Keywords: multimodality, im/politeness, Japanese films, French subtitles, rituals, aisatsu
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Multimodality and expression of im/politeness in Japanese
    • 2.1Ojigi (お辞儀) and aizuchi (相槌)
    • 2.2A brief historical review
  • 3.Subtitling
  • 4.Corpus and methodology
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1A meaningful contextual environment
    • 5.2Highly ritualized situations
    • 5.3Impact of clothing and behaviors
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 21 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.333.10cla
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