Construction of FTAs in the fictional world of Gilmore Girls Master's Thesis Tuire Oittinen University of Jyväskylä Department of Languages English October 2010 JYVÄSKYLÄN YLIOPISTO Tiedekunta – Faculty Laitos – Department Humanistinen tiedekunta Kielten laitos Tekijä – Author Tuire Oittinen Työn nimi – Title Construction of FTAs in the fictional world of Gilmore Girls Oppiaine – Subject Työn laji – Level Englanti Pro gradu -tutkielma Aika – Month and year Sivumäärä – Number of pages Lokakuu 2010 80 Tiivistelmä – Abstract Tutkielmassa tarkastellaan amerikkalaista televisiosarjaa Gilmoren tytöt (engl. Gilmore Girls), joka kuvaa yksinhuoltajaäidin ja tämän tyttären elämää idyllisessä pikkukaupungissa. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on tarkastella strategista vuorovaikutusta sarjan henkilöhahmojen kesken keskittyen pääsääntöisesti Brownin ja Levinsonin kohteliaisuusteoriaan sekä Gilmore- ismeinä tunnettuihin puhekielen viittauksiin. Tutkimuskysymyksen asettelu on kaksiosainen: 1. Kuinka Gilmore-ismit vaikuttavat strategiseen kanssakäymiseen ja kuinka ne ilmenevät kohteliaisuusteorian yhteydessä, ja 2. Miten hyvin Gilmore-ismejä pystytään kuvaamaan pragmatiikan keinoin. Tutkimuksen pohjana ovat pragmatiikan peruskäsitteet sekä kohteliaisuuden tarkastelu. Päämetodina käytetään Brownin ja Levinsonin teorian soveltamista sarjan englanninkielisten ilmausten ja Gilmore-ismien analysoimiseen. Tutkimuksessa pyritään vertaamaan puhujan verbaalista viestiä sen motiiviin ja vaikutukseen kuulijassa, ja näin ollen todistamaan että Gilmore-ismit ovat tärkeä osa kohteliaisuuden edistämistä keskustelussa. Huomiota kiinnitetään myös osittain Culpeperin epäkohteliaisuusteoriaan, joka nähdään kohteliaisuusteorian luonnollisena jatkeena. Päätuloksista voidaan päätellä, että Gilmore-ismejä käytetään tarkoituksellisesti edistämään kohteliaisuutta ja joskus myös epäkohteliaisuutta. Niiden luonne ja vaikutusaste vaihtelevat puhujan motiivin ja käytetyn kohteliaisuusstrategian mukaan siten, että ne useimmiten joko vahvistavat tai heikentävät ilmauksen tarkoitusta. Asiasanat – Keywords Gilmore-isms, pragmatics, politeness, face-threatening acts, fictional dialogues Säilytyspaikka – Depository Kielten laitos Muita tietoja – Additional information TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 4 2 PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE ............................................................................................ 6 2.1 Basic concepts and principles ..................................................................................................... 6 2.2 From speech acts to pragmatic acts ............................................................................................ 9 2.3 Inference and implicatures ........................................................................................................ 11 3 POLITENESS AS A MODE OF STRATEGIC INTERACTION .......................................... 14 3.1 Defining linguistic politeness ................................................................................................... 14 3.2 The concept of face and facework ............................................................................................ 17 3.3 Politeness theory of Brown and Levinson ................................................................................ 18 3.3.1 Bald-on-record politeness .................................................................................................. 21 3.3.2 Positive politeness .............................................................................................................. 22 3.3.3 Negative politeness ............................................................................................................ 24 3.3.4 Off-record politeness .......................................................................................................... 28 3.3.5 Withholding FTAs vs. unwanted perlocutions ................................................................... 30 4 PRAGMATICS OF FICTIONAL DIALOGUES ..................................................................... 32 4.1 Literary pragmatics ................................................................................................................... 32 4.2 FTAs in drama and popular fiction ........................................................................................... 34 5 SET-UP OF THE PRESENT STUDY ....................................................................................... 35 5.1 Gilmore Girls and Gilmore-isms .............................................................................................. 36 5.2 Orientation of the study ............................................................................................................ 38 5.3 Data and methods ..................................................................................................................... 39 6 (IM)POLITENESS IN "GILMORE STYLE" ........................................................................... 41 6.1 Bald-on-record politeness ......................................................................................................... 42 6.2 Positive politeness .................................................................................................................... 47 6.2.1 Claim common ground ....................................................................................................... 47 6.2.2 Convey that S&H are cooperators ...................................................................................... 50 6.2.3 Fulfill H's want ................................................................................................................... 53 6.3 Negative politeness ................................................................................................................... 54 6.3.1 Be direct, don't presume/assume and don't coerce H ......................................................... 54 6.3.2 Communicate S's want to not impinge on H ...................................................................... 56 6.3.3 Redress other wants of H ................................................................................................... 59 6.4 Off-record politeness ................................................................................................................ 60 6.4.1 Invite conversational implicatures ..................................................................................... 60 6.4.2 Be vague or ambiguous ...................................................................................................... 64 6.5 Impoliteness .............................................................................................................................. 65 7 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .......................................................................................... 71 7.1 Strategies of politeness – about the occurrence and nature of Gilmore-isms ........................... 72 7.2 Reconsidering pragmatics and politeness in fiction ................................................................. 75 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................ 78 4 1 INTRODUCTION As the part of linguistics that focuses on the reasoning behind utterances, pragmatics aims at finding out the difference between what is said and what is meant. Moreover, it investigates how verbal messages are constructed intentionally as convenient entities to serve a particular function in conversation. Within the prospect politeness is seen as something to contribute to the meaningful interaction, since it is often used knowingly in order to affect the way one is being perceived by others. In general, politeness is a universally studied phenomenon, yet only little has been done for its exploration in fictional settings. It is a basic assumption of any human communication that participants of conversation have the want or need to be polite. In pragmatic contexts politeness is considered a strategy by which to achieve conversational goals, and one of the most prominent theories is that of Brown and Levinson (1987). Within the model people are expected to make an effort to maintain harmonious relations and protect the face of other by using different kinds of on-record and off-record strategies. The aim of the present study is to review how it can be used as the basis of investigating the dialogues of the television series Gilmore Girls. The main idea is to be able to identify its characteristics within the series by thus making an extensive connection between fiction and real-life speech events. Gilmore Girls is a television series beyond comparison due to its fast-paced dialogues and descriptive language use. Even though it belongs to the genre of drama/comedy, it is not like any other show broadcast in the United States during the twenty-first century. In fact, what has made it famous is not only the fascinating set of colorful characters but their witty repartees. The interaction is so cleverly fabricated that it challenges the viewer to constant vigilance: references to history, literature and pop culture are embedded into conversations non-stop so that one is really forced to interpret their additional meanings. Thus far Gilmore Girls has been an unexplored object of linguistic research. What makes it particularly interesting is its ambiguously