Formulaicity and pragmatics of contact-terminating means in cinematic vs. artistic discourse: A corpus study

In measuring “pragmatic authenticity” of cinematic discourse, researchers traditionally compare films of different genres with real-life talks. However, a recently growing tendency towards the colloquialization of the written language of literature (when it is becoming more speech-like) makes it relevant to compare cinematic discourse with other types of artistic discourse from a pragmatic point of view. Among various pragmatically relevant linguistic units, formulas are of special interest due to their colloquial character, recurrence and frequency in everyday conversations. The aim of the study is to identify formulaicity of contact-terminating means (CTM) in cinematic discourse and establish its pragmatic specificity in comparison with that in other types of artistic discourse. To do so, two sample corpora were used: a cinematic corpus compiled ad hoc which includes four British drama films (2000-2020) and the Written BNC2014, in which two subcorpora were applied: “Fiction” and “Written-to-be-Spoken”. The work with the first corpus (Case study-1) resulted in identifying CTM in films and establishing their relation to twelve pragmatic types (‘farewell’, ‘request’, ‘apology’, etc.). The CTM with the highest frequency of occurrence and distribution in the feature films are formulas of farewells. Based on the second corpus (Case study-2), the functioning of three formulas of farewells were explored in different types of artistic discourse in comparison with their use in the films. The corpus findings showed that, unlike films, in artistic discourse these formulas can have other (meta)communicative functions and are characterized by a low degree of variability. Overall, the present research makes a contribution to the development of pragmalinguistics of cinema and artistic communication by providing new data about the use of formulaic means in artistic (in particular, filmic) dialogues.