‘Hello, we're outrageously punctual’: Front door rituals between friends in Australia and France

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of Australian and French social visits between friends from an interactional perspective. The study focuses on the first few exchanges that take place as the guests come face to face with their host and are ushered in across the threshold and shows similarities, but also significant differences, in the three main elements that are regularly used in these ‘crossing the threshold’ exchanges: greetings, miscellaneous comments (on setting, arrival time, etc), and laughter.

Communicative Rituals and Audiovisual Translation – Representation of Otherness in Film Subtitles

“…They give the impression that the greeting ritual is speedier and more matter of fact in the Australian corpus, with also a different overall tone. The findings echo observations from other studies by Béal, about responses to the question Did you have a good week-end (1992), for example, shown to elicit far more extended rejoinders in French than in Australian in work contexts (see also Béal 2010). These macro level differences in the overall structure of conversational routines find an echo at micro level in the linguistic design of speech acts (Béal 2010), for example.…”

“…The findings echo observations from other studies by Béal, about responses to the question Did you have a good week-end (1992), for example, shown to elicit far more extended rejoinders in French than in Australian in work contexts (see also Béal 2010). These macro level differences in the overall structure of conversational routines find an echo at micro level in the linguistic design of speech acts (Béal 2010), for example. Findings in these studies are quite broad overall, but still raise key questions: about the extent to which distinguishing features of standard conversational routines are observed in their (written-to-be-spoken) textual representations in film dialogues, and in their subtitles; and about the picture that is conveyed in both of verbal habits in source contexts and languages.…”

“…Dans une étude comparative de salutations dans les échanges entre amis en Australie et en France (Béal et Traverso 2010), les pratiques interactionnelles observées dans le corpus rassemblé présentent certes des points communs, mais aussi des spécificités verbales et nonverbales dont la récurrence est interprétée comme révélant un lien entre styles conversationnels et valeurs culturelles sous-jacentes.…”

“…In Béal and Traverso (2010)'s contrastive analysis of crossing-the-threshold exchanges from an interactional perspective, three main constitutive elements are identified: greetings, miscellaneous comments (e.g. about the setting, arrival time), laughter.…”

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RÉSUMÉDans une étude comparative de salutations dans les échanges entre amis en Australie et en France (Béal et Traverso 2010), les pratiques interactionnelles observées dans le corpus rassemblé présentent certes des points communs, mais aussi des spécificités verbales et nonverbales dont la récurrence est interprétée comme révélant un lien entre styles conversationnels et valeurs culturelles sous-jacentes.Comme le fait également la pragmatique comparée en général, cette conclusion soulève des questions de représentation pour l'audiovisuel et la traduction audiovisuelle: comment les routines conversationnelles sont-elles projetées dans les dialogues de film et dans leurs traductions par le biais du sous-titrage ou du doublage? Quel est l'impact de ces représentations sur les spectateurs?

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