Power and Impoliteness in Hancock Action Movie

Abstract

This study examined the strategies employed by the main character in the Hancock movie named John Hancock to attack his interlocutors’ face, the way the recipients responded to his impoliteness, and how he used impoliteness to exercise his power. By using content analysis to draw inferences from utterances in the movie transcript, the study found that positive impoliteness is the most frequent strategy used by Hancock due to its abusive nature and withhold impoliteness is the least used due to its unlikeliness to damage the interlocutor’s face. Also, the study found that the recipients use all strategies to respond to Hancock’s impoliteness, except abrogation and dismissing. At the same time, apart from Hancock’s use of impoliteness to exercise power, such as to appear as superior, to get power over actions, and to dominate the conversation as Beebe (1995) noted, this study found that silence is also a way to exercise power to maintain control of undesired situations. The finding adds substantially to our understanding that silence as an impoliteness strategy might also serve the purpose of exercising power. This, of course, is open to debate and further research may verify or contradict this claim.

Impoliteness and Gender Differences in the Edge of Seventeen Movie

“…The strategy of impoliteness that is rarely found is withhold politeness. Similar to the research results of Pratama (2020) and Sani and Suhandoko (2020), withhold politeness is seldom used as it is an unlikely effective impoliteness strategy to threaten the face of others.…”

“…The second impoliteness strategy used by Nadine and her male interlocutors is the baldon record strategy to attack the interlocutor's face directly without any effort to minimize the face attacks. Bald on record generally occurs in situations where there is a clear power hierarchy, where a superordinate can subordinate others (Sani & Suhandoko, 2020).…”

“…Since its establishment, impoliteness theory has invited many researchers to examine it in various conversation settings and media, such as movies (see Benabdellah, 2018;Dhorifah, 2016;Pratama, 2020;Sani & Suhandoko, 2020). Dhorifah (2016), analyzing the impoliteness strategy in the Boyhood film, and Sani and Suhandoko (2020), analyzing the impoliteness strategy in the Hancock film, found a pattern of interaction between power and the use of impoliteness strategies used by the characters. They discovered that impoliteness is one of the means to show one's power over the interlocutors, and interestingly, the choice of impoliteness strategy may damage the interlocutor's face in different ways.…”

“…They discovered that impoliteness is one of the means to show one's power over the interlocutors, and interestingly, the choice of impoliteness strategy may damage the interlocutor's face in different ways. While Dhorifah (2016) and Sani and Suhandoko (2020) focused on how impoliteness strategy is used to exercise power, Benabdellah (2018), Pratama (2020), and Aydınoğlu (2013)examined how impoliteness strategies interplay with gender differences. Benabdellah (2018) analyzed the impoliteness strategies used by female protagonists in Disney films.…”