A Socio-pragmatic Study of Impolite Expressions in American Action Movie "Home of the Brave 2006"

Abstract

This study investigates impoliteness theory from a sociopragmatic perspective in two American Action movies, namely “Home of the Brave (2006)” and “The Kill Team (2019)”. It is conducted for filling a gap that the impoliteness strategies have not yet been explored from a sociopragmatic perspective in American action movies. The study aims at; investigating the most frequent use of impoliteness strategies in American action movies, finding out how characters’ use of impoliteness is affected by social power and solidarity and investigating the functions of impoliteness strategies used by the characters in these movies. To achieve these objectives the researcher adopted Culpeper’s (1996, 2011) models in identifying the types of impoliteness strategies and their functions, whereas Brown and Gilman’s (1960) theoretical framework of power and solidarity was used to investigate the extent to which power and solidarity influence characters’ use of impoliteness strategies.The researcher implemented a qualitative content analysis in analyzing every impolite situation extracted from the data of the two movies. The data were utterances employed by the characters of each movie. The findings of this study are clarified as follows. First, four of the impoliteness strategies proposed by Culpeper (1996) were used by the characters of each movie. They were bald on record impoliteness strategy, positive impoliteness strategy, negative impoliteness strategy and sarcasm or mock politeness strategy. Positive impoliteness strategy was the most frequent strategy used by the characters. Meanwhile, withhold politeness was not used by any character of the movie.Regarding the social variables ‘power and solidarity’ the results of the analysis revealed that impoliteness is increased among equal power interlocutors, as (10) times which formed a percentage of (66.7%) of the impoliteness strategies were used by the characters who were equal in power to their addressees. And that (4) occurrences of the impoliteness strategies were used by powerful characters which formed (26.7 %) percent. Finally, the analysis showed that only (1) strategy, i.e. (6.6%) percent of the total strategies, used by the characters who were less powerful than the addressees. In terms of solidarity, (11) times which comprised (73.3%) of the impoliteness strategies were used by solidary interlocutors, and (4) times of the impoliteness strategies which formed a percentage of (26.7%), were used by non-solidary interlocutors.Finally, regarding the function of impoliteness, all the functions were used by the characters. The 'affective function' was the most frequently used function among the others with (8) occurrences which formed a percentage of (53.4%). Followed by the 'entertainment function' which was used (4) times or (26.7 %) percent. Finally, the 'coercive function' took the last position with only (3) occurrences with a percentage of (20%) of the total number of the impolite strategies used in the data analyzed.