The Discourse of Italian Cinema and Beyond: Let Cinema Speak (Advances in Stylistics)

Roberta Piazza's book is a linguistic investigation of the dialogue of Italian cinema covering a selection of films from the 1950s to the present day. It looks at how speech is dealt with in studies of the cinema and tackles the lack of engagement with dialogue in film studies. It explores the representation of discourse in cinema -- the way particular manifestations of verbal interaction are reproduced in film. Whereas 'representation' generally refers to the language used in texts to assign meaning to a group and its social practices, here discourse representation more directly refers to the relationship between real-life and cinematic discourse. Piazza analyses how fictional dialogue reinterprets authentic interaction in order to construe particular meanings. Beginning by exploring the relationship between discourse and genre, the second half of the book takes a topic-based approach and reflects on the themes of narrative and identity. The analysis carried out takes on board the multi-semiotic and multimodal components of film discourse. The book uses also uses concepts and methodologies from pragmatics, conversation analysis and discourse analysis. MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict Contents 8 Acknowledgements 11 Chapter One: Background and introduction 12 1.1 Background and aims of the study 12 1.2 Relevance of dialogue in the context of a film 18 1.3 The organization of the study and core notions 26 1.4 Organization of the study 31 Chapter Two: ‘If you could say it with words, there’d be no reason to paint’. The verbal–visual interrelation in cinema 38 2.1 Introduction 38 2.2 Methodology for the investigation of the verbal–visual interaction 39 2.3 The categories of anticipation, post-hoc commentary and conflictuality 45 2.4 A final reflection on the verbal–visual relationship 54 Chapter Three: Methodology of the study: the focus on the representation of conflict in film 56 3.1 Introduction. General aims of the study 56 3.2 The verbal dimension. Conflict as the lens for the analysis of film dialogue 58 3.3 The visual dimension 63 3.4 The data 67 3.5 The methodological framework for the study of conflict in film 69 3.6 Conclusion 74 Chapter Four: Confrontational discourse in comedy and the disengagement of dramatic talk 76 4.1 Introduction 76 4.2 The tool kit for the analysis of conflict in comedy and melodrama 77 4.3 Questions of film genre and the definition of the corpus 78 4.4 The analysis of film dialogue. Verbal confrontation in Italian comedy 80 4.5 The analysis of conflict talk in melodrama 96 4.6 Discussion of the results and concluding remarks 109 Chapter Five: Spaghetti and American Westerns: textual conflict between opposing masculinities 116 5.1 Introduction 116 5.2 The Italian and American Westerns 118 5.3 Irony as the expression of verbal conflict in Westerns 121 5.4 The linguistic scholarship on irony 125 5.5 Analysis: the cowboys’ use of irony 130 5.6 Beyond words: multimodality 147 5.7 Discussion of the results and conclusion 156 Chapter Six: The struggle for narrative autonomy in Antonioni’s When Love Fails 160 6.1 Introduction 160 6.2 The background of the study of Antonioni’s film 161 6.3 Contextualization of the study and methodology 163 6.4 The film 167 6.5 Verbal–visual analysis 168 6.6 Final discussion and conclusion 192 Chapter Seven: Conflict of shifting identities in Mohsen Melliti’s Me, the Other 194 7.1 Introduction. The director and the film 194 7.2 The discourse of identity 195 7.3 Performing identities: from plurality to duality in Me, the Other 199 7.4 Conclusion 223 Chapter Eight: Concluding remarks 226 Notes 238 References and filmography 246 Index 264 A 264 B 264 C 265 D 265 E 266 F 266 G 267 H 267 I 267 J 268 K 268 L 268 M 268 N 269 O 269 P 269 Q 270 R 270 S 270 T 271 U 272 V 272 W 272 Z 272 Includes a linguistic investigation of the dialogue of Italian cinema, using concepts and methodologies from pragmatics, conversation analysis and discourse analysis. This book is a linguistic investigation of the dialogue of Italian cinema covering a selection of films from the 1950s onwards. Annotation Linguistic investigation of the dialogue of Italian cinema, using concepts and methodologies from pragmatics, conversation analysis and discourse analysis