Discourse Analysis of the movie Dumb and Dumber - Essay Example

Dis Analysis of the movie "Dumb and Dumber" Dumb and Dumber (1994) has been one of the famous American comedy films which features slapstick comedy and nauseate humor and the movie contributed to the launch of a triumphant career for its writers-cum-directors Farrelly Brothers. The film starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels has achieved a devoted cult following, and this well photographed and crisply paced movie has the kind of gutsy impulsiveness and naturalness, often lacking in contemporary comedies. Dumb and Dumber tells the story of Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels), two well-meaning, yet extremely stupid men, living together. This paper of ‘Discourse Analysis’ makes a reflective analysis of an extract from the movie, where Mary and Lloyd are the two interlocutors. An initial review of the discourse confirms that it is a highly planned and effectively organized dialogue. Although there are two apparent speakers in this dialogue (i.e. Mary and Lloyd), the utterances are all, in fact, constructed by one speaker which is the script writer making it a synthetically constructed conversation. However, the speech act of the conversation is well planned and rehearsed, which has a positive impact on the overall appeal of the dialogue. The original script of the conversation, however, incorporates the various aspects of conversational interactions such as adjacency pairs, turn taking, topic initiation and development, feedback and conversational openings and closings. To analyze the context of the discourse, Lloyd, a limo driver, is taking Mary to the airport and this is when the conversation takes place. It is one of the most essential ways in which people come together, exchange information and maintain social relations. Therefore, the setting of the discourse is very much natural to the normal contexts of dialogue and social relations. It is important to realize that the movie is categorized under the group of “humor” films, featuring slapstick comedy and nauseate humor. In fact, the hilarity or amusement of the comedy is expressed linguistically, in the choice of words of the funny man, Jim Carrey, who is playing the role of Lloyd. Throughout this whole exchange of words, Lloyd doesn’t say anything that has no linguistic value, so he is clearly able to produce grammatically correct sentence. Significantly, the only flaw that occurs in the conversation is that Lloyd is not able to select from all the correct expressions available to him to reflect the “illocutionary” force that is suitable most to this particular encounter. The opening sequence of this conversation was an interrogative utterance, which functions as a request for information just as much as initiation of conversation. The pragmatic malfunction of the question: “why you going to the airport? Flying somewhere?” is that it would be an obvious reason why people would go to the airport. The reply to this question was a rhetorical question which has a sarcastic connotation; it also serves the purpose of distancing the speaker from his interlocutor. There was another rhetorical used by Mary in the conversation, and this time it served the purpose of volunteering correct information: “aren’t ants quiet too?” Interestingly, Lloyd misses the implication of both questions and replies with a literal answer. Lloyd’s reply to the first rhetorical question by Mary further substantiates the irrelevance of the entire conversation concerning where Mary was going: “I saw your luggage. Then when I noticed the airline ticket, I put 2 and 2 together.” To a careful viewer, it becomes very evident that in the whole conversation Mary is not interested in evolving in the conversation. Thus, one notices that her answers are short and sharp, and she even skipped answering few questions as an invitation not to progress into the conversation. Under normal circumstances one would know that the speaker doesn’t wish to go further into the conversation. However, in our script, Lloyd keeps on conversing with persistence and long segments volunteering information that would eventually get Mary speaking. After few segments into the opening sequence the speaker introduces himself in the most conventional way: “name’s Christmas. Lloyd Christmas.” Mary says “I’m Mary”. This is a learnt response from Mary and in this case it is an unconscious behavior that, when one person introduces themselves, makes the hearer do the same as a sign of politeness. In other words, it is social protocol. Straight after introductions, there was a topic shift, and it was Lloyd who shifted the topic into “his real job”. Out of politeness Mary gives a “oh” that shows only slight interest, Lloyd makes use of this interest and goes into further details. “I’ve got worms” is a connotative way of saying something that is probably not true linguistically. Importantly, it makes sense only pragmatically. Although it looks like a statement, in reality it is not one. (Austin and Searle) In this utterance, Lloyd was actually informing Mary of his “shop’s name”. The response to this was a very formal “I beg your pardon?” Here, the misunderstanding occurred because the hearer took the meaning of this utterance literally. Lloyd keeps talking about his “job” and the information still does not make sense to the hearer. Therefore, the communication breaks. At this point, there have been two topic shifts – both introduced by Lloyd and both topics were about Lloyd himself. Topical interest to a wider discourse is evident in the dialogue. When Lloyd makes use of several ways of expressing his inner feelings, the hearer cuts short her replies in a single phrase or expression. Lloyd is passionate in expressing too much through his conversation: “Hit me with it! Just give it to me straight! I came a long way just to see you, Mary. The least you can do is level with me. What are my chances?” But the hearer makes it plain and straightforward through her apt reply which is very short: “Not good.” In short, there are various discourse features all through the discourse under analysis and the speakers explicitly reveal the intentions of the conversation. Read More