A Pragmatic Analysis of Politeness Strategies in the Film ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’

This study examines how characters use politeness to navigate social interactions and manage face through language in the film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Using Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory (1987), the research fills a gap in film discourse analysis where politeness is often overlooked despite its narrative importance. An analysis of 24 purposively sampled film conversations was used in this qualitative study. Human coding and content analysis sorted each conversation utterance by the most common politeness strategy. Off-Record politeness was the most common, followed by Negative and Bald-on-Record. Positive politeness was the least common. These methods show the film's characters' emotions, power, and relationships. The study shows that politeness strategies layer character and tension into film dialogue, supporting politeness theory in media text analysis. This study also suggests ways for screenwriters and teachers to improve dialogue characterisation and authenticity. Future work may expand insight into gesture, intonation, cross-genre analysis, and phrase analysis to better understand genre specifics and pragmatics in cinematic discourse. Overall, this study contributes to pragmatics and film studies and shows how language shapes viewer perspectives and character behaviour.

Politeness strategies, Film Discourse Analysis

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