The pragmatic functions of tu and lei in films: Converging patterns of address across translated and original Italian dialogue

Abstract

Address pronouns are strategies employed to position participants and express interpersonal meanings in real-life communication and on-screen. They straddle two areas of typological contrast as languages differ in terms of presence/absence of grammatical address and subject obligatoriness. In Italian, a binary distinction is established between the informal T-pronoun tu and the formal V-pronoun lei, while English lacks a T/V distinction. Concurrently, whereas English is an obligatory subject language, subject pronouns are as a rule optional in Italian. As no research has tackled the pragmatics of expressed address pronouns in film dialogue and audiovisual translation from English, the study investigates the occurrence of tu and lei in a corpus of original and dubbed Italian films and their discoursal and interpersonal functions. These were found to include shift of focus of attention, turn management, contrast, conflict, politeness and character's identification, variably associated with each address pronoun. The qualitative and quantitative analyses reveal noticeable convergence between translated and original dialogue, with dubbing reflecting the pragmatic expressiveness of domestic Italian films, while showing no shining through of the source language. Address pronouns play a crucial role in Italian film language, adding pragmatic weight to characters’ turns and enriching the dialogue intradiagetically and extradiagetically.