The Pragmatics of Disagreement on Screen: Faulty Interactions? Yasmina Reza & Roman Polanski's 2011 Carnage as a Case Study
Résumé
Naturally-occurring conversations have been described as a collaborative activity between two or more participants. Grice’s central tenet is the cooperative principle, which holds that every participant in a conversation participates in the conversational exchange as is required “by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange” (26) and in keeping with the stage at which the participation occurs. A distinction should certainly be made then between cooperation, which has too often been (mis)understood as meaning “being benevolent to the other person” (Jobert 2010, my translation), and coordination. Thinking of conversational exchanges on the basis of coordination does not suggest that co-participants in a conversation have to agree in advance to follow a set of predetermined rules though. Conversations are “joint actions” in which co-participants work together towards the building of common ground, and expressing opposing views can be part of the “joint action” that a conversation is.
That said, disagreement in naturally-occurring conversations is often treated as potentially detrimental to speakers’ relationships, whether inherently face-threatening (Brown and Levinson 1987) or fundamentally impolite (Leech 1983). This talk will take Reza and Polanski’s 2011 movie Carnage as a case study to analyze the pragmatics of disagreement on the screen. The whole movie indeed consists in interactions about a fight between two children, its potential cause, its consequences and the follow-up action that should be taken. The disagreements between the various characters are more and more foregrounded, to the point that conflict emerges, which begs the questions: are disagreements instances of faulty interactions that are necessarily rapport-challenging (Spencer-Oatey)? Are the disagreeing parties no longer cooperating or partaking in the “joint actions” that conversations are? What type of rapport-management with the audience is involved by these disagreements on the screen?