SAs and dramatic characterization

A number of scholars have applied SAT (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) to explain characters’ interaction in drama (Ohmann, 1971; Pratt, 1977; Short, 1981, 1996; Miller, 2001; Lowe, 1994; Levin, 1976). The studies have generally focused on how playwrights exploit a particular SA in order to achieve a particular dramatic effect. In stylistic analysis of dramatic text, SAT provides a means of explaining how ‘foregrounding effects’ (Jakobsen, 1960; Leech, 1969, 1985; see also 2.5.1) can be achieved in interactive talk through deviating from the conventional SA principles. In his study of the SA of apology in Charles Crichton’s A Fish Called Wanda (1988), Short (2007) demonstrates how the apology sequences in the film are foregrounded to humorous and amusing effect. The defective and differential operation of this SA brings out distinctive styles of apology, and therefore, establishes a contrast between the two male characters.

With regard to the interrelation of SA and personality traits, Palmers’ (2004) concept of ‘thought-action continuum’ (p. 212) highlights the direct link between verbal and physical action and presupposed mental state. At one end of the continuum, mental functioning is indicated by a speaker’s utterance, and at the other end, there is the readers’/viewers’ inference of the mental state or aspects of their personality from this represented action. For example, the inferred personality trait of a character who frequently orders or commands directly is different from that who frequently carries out such commands. As I discuss later in 3.3, in SAT, the thread that runs from utterance to mental state is defined by Searle (1969) as the ‘sincerity condition’ (S intends to do A), as a condition which divides the illocutionary classes and explicates the speaker’s intention. In fact, by allocating characters’ SAs to the respective illocutionary classes, the audience (as well as the viewer) can infer the characters’ mental state and/or attributes.

The types of SA on which a character incline or draw on reveal different aspects of characters, such as the social categories to which characters belong (see 2.5.3 for discussion on social categories), as each SA has specific ‘contextual implications’ for characterization (Culpeper, 2010:186). This means that the types of SA that characters tend to produce can be related to the amount of ‘power’ they have in relation to other people, as well as their objectives, personality and the social roles they exercise. Furthermore, shifts in types of SA that characters usually draw on, indicate a change in their character and interpersonal relationships and hence, contribute to character development. For example, in Shindo’s Onibaba (1964), the characters’ pragmalinguistic behaviour, particularly the types of SA performed by two main characters, negotiates such claim and demonstrates how specific SAs establish the character’s intention, power and their interpersonal relationships.

At the beginning of the film, the old woman, whose son is away at war, exercises great power over her daughter-in-law. They live together and, as a traditional stereotype of an old mother-in-law, she behaves in a bossy and domineering fashion. The old woman’s power and superiority can be inferred linguistically, e.g. through the (over)use of direct order, and visually, from the fact that she always walks in front of the young woman. One night, a young samurai (Hachi) shows up and reveals that he has deserted from the army and that Kichi (the son/husband) has been killed in the battle. After a while, the woman comes to mistrust her daughter-in-law, who has secretly coupled up with Hachi. She orders them directly not to be in touch with each other. The

old woman feels distressed as she finds out that they have secret night dates anyway. She thinks if her daughter-in-law leaves her for the young samurai, she will starve to death. So she softens the imposition of her order through demanding them, implying that she sees it as stronger than request, and weaker than the order, while she still tries to keep her moral sway over them. When the mother-in-law figures out that the couple is keeping up their stealth relationship, she starts to wear a facial mask she has taken from a slain samurai. The young woman discovers that it is her mother-in-law who appears as a demon to make her feel guilty about abandoning the old lady and encourage her to avoid the soldier. From this point, the old woman’s conversational behaviour changes and this time she asks the daughter-in-law to pull the irremovable mask from her face. At the end of the film, the old woman’s SA behaviour is characterized as begging, implying that the request is made from a completely powerless position.

At the beginning of the film, the salient aspect of the old woman’s speech is her frequent use of order with the force of a command, which portrays her up as a controlling, domineering figure. However, when she fails miserably to control her daughter-in-law’s love, which she thinks of as her destruction, her linguistic behaviour undergoes a dramatic change inferred evidently in her use of SAs, which can be perceived as her recoil. According to Short (2007), character contrast can be achieved by virtue of two characters being assigned contrasting SAs, such as question and answer, or order and carrying out or obeying the order (p. 169-170). Similarly, here the difference between the characters’ SAs discloses the aspects of both characters: the old woman as the performer of ordering and demanding SAs and finally begging, establishes her character (respectively) as controlling, bossy and authoritative, and, at the end of the film, a retroactive figure. The young woman, as the recipient of such directive SAs, is firstly construed as timid, cowardly and timorous. However, when she realizes that the demon is in-fact her mother-in-law, she establishes herself as an assertive and commanding figure. Such disparity between the characters’ SAs produces a contrastive effect in terms of their character’s personalities.

Furthermore, the variations of SAs throughout the film contribute to character development; as in the case of ‘round’ characters (Forster, 1987), the evolution of characters is marked by changes in characters’ speech acts during the course of the narrative. The shift in the old woman’s speech acts, ranging from ordering, demanding,

asking to begging, attests to such claim and implies the gradual unfolding of different aspects of her character as the film progresses.

Differences in the way SAs are realized by viewers/readers can produce the character contrasts (Short, 2007:169-171; Culpeper, 2010:189). For example, Lowe (1994) examines the different individual SAs in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1952) and argues how the same SA is perceived differently according to who is speaking. The white characters’ denial is accepted and accepted as evidence of their innocence at being involved in witchcraft. Yet, the very same SA used by the black character, Tituba, is interpreted as a confession by the accusers. In other words, due to the asymmetrical power relations, the white characters and the black character realize their illocutionary force (Austin, 1962) or the conversational intention(s) in completely different ways. Consequently, the black character is portrayed as the victim of the unequal power relations at work during the 17th century Salem witch trials, while the white characters can choose to deny the charge and maintain their innocence.

In addition to the various types of SA, investigating how characters perform their SAs reveals their intentions, the way they perceive interpersonal relationships, and the way they manage their social context. Culpeper (2010) argues that indirect SAs, depending on context, correlate with the perception of greater ‘politeness’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Pinker, 2010, 2011; Terkourafi, 2011). Regarding the relationship between interactants, the degree of politeness characters display in their interactions can be taken as evidence of different facets of their character, such as social adeptness, weakness, or ‘oiliness’ (Culpeper, 2010:186). Among the various explanations that have been proposed for the ‘universal phenomenon of indirectness’ (Desilla, 2012:31), ‘the desire to intensify the force of one’s message’ and ‘the desire to make one’s language more interesting and appealing’ (Thomas, 1995:142-146) are of particular relevance to film dialogue. The manifestations of linguistic indirectness, as well as indirect SAs, are particularly celebrated in romantic comedy, in which dialogues often create emotion and humour through what is only intimated but left unsaid (Kozloff, 2000:191-200). According to Desilla (2012:31), humour (e.g. wordplay) and figurative language (e.g. irony) can substantially increase the impact of the message and are extensively used to make the characters’ language more evocative, playful and enjoyable. Moreover, screenwriters have emphasized the crucial role of linguistic indirectness in the construal of the typical aspects of the genre of comedy and romance (p. 32).

In short, characters SAs can contribute to their creation and representation, and any change in the pattern of their SAs can indicate change and development in terms of their personality, disposition, intention and interpersonal relation. Furthermore, the types of SA, the way they are performed by characters and their realization in dramatic, as well as film text, cues viewers to make inference about the characters’ identity, their social and personal categories and their interpersonal relations.

As discussed in the introduction, the functions of a SA in film narrative are not only limited to characters and other types of SA are embedded in different levels of film discourse. According to RQ 4a, an inclusive SA analysis of narrative film, particularly when the focus is on character creation and comprehension, should be able to account for the functions of SA on various levels of film discourse. The rationale is that SAs performed on different levels can contribute to character creation and development, as they can emphasize or de-emphasize viewers’ impressions of their attributes. In fact, the information regarding film characters can also be conveyed by means of SAs performed on different levels of film discourse. Following the discussion on how SAs contribute to characterization, the next sections deal with the levels of SA and their function in characterization within film narrative.