Pragmatics and Cinematic Discourse
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Richard Janney,
Richard W. Janney is Professor emeritus of modern linguistics at the University of Munich. Earlier he held positions at the University of Frankfurt and the University of Cologne and was co-editor of the
Journal of Pragmatics 1990-2005. His research focuses mainly on emotive pragmatic aspects of multimodal discourse: words and gestures in speech, verbal and visual interplay in the new media, and more recently, audiovisual positioning in cinematic narration.
Abstract
This article introduces what I will call �cinematic discourse� as a potential candidate for pragmatic analysis. Cinematic discourse, as defined here, is not language use in film (dramatic dialogue, fictional conversation, scripted interaction) but the audiovisual discourse of film narration itself: the discourse of mise-en-scene, cinematography, montage, and sound design used by filmmakers in narrating cinematic stories. Cinematic discourse is filmmakers' main expressive vehicle and primary form of communication with, and influence over, film viewers. The article describes how staging, camera work, editing, and other conventional cinematic depictive practices are used to capture attention, shape perspectives, guide perceptions, and steer viewers' inferences about the unfolding narrative. The first half of the article describes different modes of cinematic depiction and their metapragmatic functions; the second discusses issues of cinematic focalization and attention, film co-text as context, cinematic pragmatic acts, audiovisual inferences, film deixis, and camera discourse roles. The goal of the article is to broadly outline some features of cinematic discourse that warrant attention in media pragmatics and to point out challenges that would have to be met in the future in developing pragmatic approaches to investigating these.
About the author
Richard W. Janney is Professor emeritus of modern linguistics at the University of Munich. Earlier he held positions at the University of Frankfurt and the University of Cologne and was co-editor of the Journal of Pragmatics 1990-2005. His research focuses mainly on emotive pragmatic aspects of multimodal discourse: words and gestures in speech, verbal and visual interplay in the new media, and more recently, audiovisual positioning in cinematic narration.
©[2012] by De Gruyter Mouton Berlin
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Editorial
- Austin on Meaning and Use
- The Emergence of Intentional Meaning: A Different Twist on Pragmatic Linguistic Action
- Cognitive Pragmatics Ways into Discourse Analysis: the Case of Discursive Presuppostions
- Establishing Diganostic Criteria: The Role of Clinical Pragmatics
- Pragmatics and Cinematic Discourse
- A Brief Revisit to the Apaches, the Igbos, the Akan and the Finns: Thoughts on the Pragmatics of Silence and the Maxim of Quantity
- Intercultural aspects of the speech act of promising from a relevance theoretic point of view
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Editorial
- Austin on Meaning and Use
- The Emergence of Intentional Meaning: A Different Twist on Pragmatic Linguistic Action
- Cognitive Pragmatics Ways into Discourse Analysis: the Case of Discursive Presuppostions
- Establishing Diganostic Criteria: The Role of Clinical Pragmatics
- Pragmatics and Cinematic Discourse
- A Brief Revisit to the Apaches, the Igbos, the Akan and the Finns: Thoughts on the Pragmatics of Silence and the Maxim of Quantity
- Intercultural aspects of the speech act of promising from a relevance theoretic point of view
