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The significance of analyzing speeches in films, focusing on the characters of the Narrator and Tyler Durden in Fight Club. The researcher discusses Speech Act Theory and its application to the film, highlighting the differences in speech acts used by the two characters. The document also touches upon the importance of understanding characters with Dissociative Identity Disorder and the impact of violence on film revenues.
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College of Graduate Studies English Department Speech Act Analysis of the Narrator and Tyler Durden in the Film Fight Club Prepared by Abdullah Abu Snaineh Supervised by Dr. Nimer Abuzahra This Thesis is Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of English in Applied Linguistics and the Teaching of English, College of Graduate Studies, Hebron University. 2020
I confirm that this paper was solely undertaken by me. Any quote, idea, concept, or any other piece of information that was developed by someone other than the author of this paper was duly referenced.
Acknowledgment By far, the Stylistics course is my favorite course in my 19 years of learning, and from there the idea of this paper sprang. To the professor of that course and my thesis supervisor Dr. Nimer Abuzahra, I must acknowledge my sincerest gratitude. I would also like to thank my instructors at Hebron University, colleagues at work, and my family and friends for giving me the support and guidance I need.
Table of Contents Chapter One 1.1 Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………….….. 8 1.2 Problem Statement ………………………………………………..……………………….... 16 1.3 Significance of the Study …………..……………………………………………………….. 17 1.4 Objectives of the Study ……………………………………………………………………... 18 1.5 Research Questions ………………...……………………………………………………….. 18 1.6 Limitations ………………………………………………………………………………….. 19 Chapter Two 2.1 Literature Review …………………………………………………………………………… 21 2.2 The Protagonist and Mental Illness …………………………………………………….…… 32 2.3 Dissociative Identity Disorder and Legal Issues ………………………………………….… 32 Chapter Three 3.1 Methodology ………………………………………………………………………………... 37 3.2 Indirect Speech Acts ………………………………………………………………………... 39 Chapter Four 4.1 Results and Discussion ………………………………………………………………….….. 42 4.2 Direction of Fit ……………………………………………………………………………… 58 Chapter Five
Chapter One: Introduction The first two rules of Fight Club are “you do not talk about Fight Club ” repeated twice. However, in this thesis, the researcher will break these rules since the Club is not only mentioned here, but thoroughly discussed too. Tyler Durden, one of the two founders of the Club set this rule, and repeats it too as the second rule of Fight Club to assert its importance. Despite that Tyler is described as ‘the coolest fictional character named Tyler’ by Dsimovic (2018 )written for Mandatory.com; yet it is not mandatory that we obey what he says. Fight Club is a film produced by 20th^ Century Fox which chose the American actor Brad Pitt to play the antagonist. The director, David Fincher chose the other two actors: Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter to play the unnamed Narrator and Marla Singer respectively. Cormier (2015) claims that Fincher chose Norton after his performance in The People Vs. Larry Flynt. However , I believe that Norton was suitable for the part after his brilliant performance in his debut film, Primal Fear ( 1996 ) , especially that he depicted a mentally ill young man. In truth, Norton was nominated for the Academy Award for best actor in a supporting role in 1997 for his part in the aforementioned film (IMDb). Despite Norton being already an Academy Award nominee when he signed to do the role of the Narrator in Fight Club , he still received only one seventh of the salary that Pitt received. Norton received 2.5 million dollars while Pitt was paid an astonishing amount of 17.5 million (Cormier, 2015). Being based on a novel, the adapted script went through several revisions by the director, the screenwriter, actors, and Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the novel (Ferklová, 2011). The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1999 before its theatrical release in the United States in the same year (Hunter & Singh, 2015). The film was convoluted with
Tyler understands that the Narrator is looking for a place other than a hotel to stay at. So, Tyler invites the Narrator over, and from this instance of mutual understanding between the two characters they start living in the same house, where they truly start Fight Club. According to Baktir, (2012); Dejica-Cartis & Simon (2015) Austin, the founder of Speech Act Theory, suggests that there are three parts of acts that are performed when a sentence is uttered. 1- Locutionary act: the actual performance of the speech. 2- Illocutionary act: the intended meaning of the locutionary act without naming it. 3- Perlocutionary act: the effect caused by the performance of the speech. An example of these parts is, for example, a goalkeeper in a football team tells his teammates, “I will not let the other team score!” This is a locutionary act which was performed to make a promise, an illocutionary act. The effect of this act on the goalkeeper’s teammates is the perlocutionary act, which is in this case, confidence. Analyzing one's idiolect, which is the individual’s unique use of language, is helpful in order to have an insight into the speaker's mentality as it gives the one who is analyzing the speeches a clear picture of the various backgrounds of the speaker's (Cardiff, Panicheva & Rosso, 2010; Heck, Jr., 2006). For example, in the film, the two characters have different backgrounds that are very distinct in nature. In truth, both characters can be seen as opposites: the Narrator as the reclusive and reluctant adult, and on the other hand, there is Tyler, the spontaneous figure but who has some method to his madness (Barnett, 2019; Nouhy, 2017; Stark, 2012). However, analyzing their speeches can make the task of defining the blurry lines that separate their characters more feasible.
Speech Act Analysis could be used in different ways in the realm of films. For instance, it could be used to analyze a character's speech through a film. In truth, the character whose speech acts are analyzed doesn't necessarily have to be the protagonist. And with this wider range of characters, primary or secondary, there is an abundance of choices that analysts could choose from to analyze. Therefore, research papers adopting Speech Act Theory as framework are likely to be conducted frequently. Moreover, the film under analysis could be an animated one. For instance, Isnawati, Anam, and Diana (2015) analyzed Shrek's speeches in the animated movie Shrek in the paper entitled Speech Acts Analysis of the Main Character in Shrek Movie Script. However, in the mentioned research, the analysis is conducted to reach a conclusion regarding the types of speech acts performed, nevertheless, in this paper, the analysis focuses on the speech act itself, and not the category or type it belongs to. Besides, the researcher has the choice to focus on the act itself and not the performer of that act. Researchers can also try to analyze speeches that express or have a certain effect on the listener. Istiqomah (2013) for instance, wrote a paper about analyzing anger in Speech Act Analysis of Anger in the Film Entitled Something the Lord Made. In this study, however, the analysis focuses on one character with multiple personalities in order to draw a line between the two personalities, or perhaps pinpoint some similarities between the host and his creation, the alter-ego. The Narrator is unreliable whose narrative doesn’t correspond in its entirety to what the audiences know that the narrator actually knows. Therefore, his credibility is questioned (Raj, 2015). Nonetheless, there are more than one type of unreliable narrators as Willian Riggan, as cited in (Raj, 2015) lists 5 types of unreliable narrators which are the Picaro, the Madman, the
novel which won an Oregon Book Award and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award. However, this critical acclaim didn't assure the novel good sales. Nevertheless, it was good enough to attract the attention of 20th^ Century Fox (Ferklová, 2011). The last two 20th Century Fox films to get a rating of 7.5 and higher on IMDb before Fight Club are: First, Office Space (1999) with a current rating of 7.7. The film tells the story of three coworkers who decide to rebel against their boss at the company they hate. The layout of Office Space is close to the Narrator’s own feelings toward his work and boss. The second film is the war action-drama film The Thin Red Line (1998) which stands at 7.8. The two films, the first with the theme of rebellion against one’s boss, and the second with its action scenes, share a lot with what the novel Fight Club promised to deliver to the big screen. Therefore, based on the latest successful films made by 20th^ Century Fox, the novel had the potential to become a critically acclaimed film in case of being adapted into one. The film stars Edward Norton as the unnamed Narrator, who refers to himself as Jack and is an office worker who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) which is a disorder that used to be known as multiple personality disorder. As its name suggests, it is a disorder that is characterized by the existence of more than one personality state that are distinct, and these personalities take control of an individual alternatively (Verhulst, 2017). The other star is Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden, the soapmaker, who is the Narrator's alter personality. Surprisingly, the film flopped at the domestic box office as it only gained 37 million against a budget of 63 million. Actually, the film gained in DVD and blu-ray sales more than it did at the box office in the U.S. with approximately 42 million, according to www.m.the-numbers.com. Nevertheless, after two decades of release, the film’s rating on IMDb
proves that viewers were not quite right not to fill theaters when the film was first released as it has an astonishing rating of 8.8 on the website, with only nine titles preceding it (IMDb). In truth, David Fincher was not the first choice to direct the film after the rights of the novel were bought by the executive producer Laura Ziskin for 10 thousand dollars (Sharf, 2019). The first director was David O. Russell who claimed he didn’t get the book (Raftery, 2018). However, the other David, Fincher that is, was the filmmaker destined to make Fight Club. The release of the film was a main factor of the novel’s success (Jacobsen, 2013) at least financially, however the film itself lasted for less than a month in the top ten at the box office. Although that, as Giroux, as cited in (Lindgren, 2011) the film discusses versatile topics that can be viewed differently by different people, still it failed to maintain a good position among the most grossing films for a long time. In truth, its revenues dropped almost 43% after only one week of debuting in first place despite that the number of theaters that played the movie slightly increased in the second week of the film's release (boxofficemojo.com). Even though it is very hard to expect how a film is going to perform at the domestic ticket sales before its release, there are factors or areas that can indicate the film's performance at the box office. According to Litman, as cited in (Pangarker & Smit, 2013). These areas are mainly, creativity, release pattern and date, and marketing. First, the story is based on a critically acclaimed novel which is assuring that the story is original and captivating. Besides, Anast, as cited in (Pangarker & Smit, 2013) claims that there is a positive correlation between film revenues and the violence it contains, which suits Fight Club. In truth, the two most profitable films in history are Avengers: Endgame (2019) and Avatar (2009) respectively, which are action films. As for the second area, release pattern that is, it is
it to their friends. Moreover, Thrillist Entertainment (2018) suggests that the studio pushing back the release date several times was a factor in an overall unsuccessful marketing plan for the film. Nonetheless, the high rating that the film stands at today proves that audiences sometimes do change their opinions. Although signs were promising that the film will be a hit at the box office since it is directed by a renowned director and starring three major Hollywood stars, reality showed that it was a flop. This suggests the difficulty of expecting the performance for an upcoming film when it comes to its ticket sales. According to (Albertson, Anderson & Shavlik, 2004) there was a noteworthy decline in the number of moviegoers between 1946 and 2002, a period in which Fight Club was released in. Moreover, even in this period of relatively smaller numbers of people going to movies, Fight Club didn't get a fair amount of viewers who could've filled theaters. It is true that many seats in the theaters where Fight Club was shown were left empty, but several articles were written on the film and on why it was a flop at the box office such as Box Office Flops That Were Great: ‘Fight Club’ by Nick Nunziata (2016) and 50 Box-Office Bombs That Are Actually Great by Thrillist Entertainment (2018). This fact suggests the near impossibility of accurately expecting and analyzing how a film will do when it is released. On the other hand however, with a suitable framework, speeches can be analyzed and interpreted fairly accurately. 1.2 Problem Statement It is plausible that movie goers, who are not well acquainted with psychology, might ask if we should expect that the manner of speech of a dissociative identity disorder (DID) patient to
differ from time to time depending on the personality taking over. Science answers this as that abnormalities in speaking, communication, and thought are all symptoms of dissociative disorder (Sar & Öztürk, 2009). Therefore, it is expected that a DID patient would talk in different ways depending on the personality taking over. Therefore, analyzing the speeches of the two characters will help identify many of their characteristics. 1.3 Significance of the Study The importance of this study comes mainly from the relative scarcity of speech analyses for characters in films as the majority of analyzed speeches are political or literary. Therefore, this analysis would be a valuable addition to the field of discourse analysis, especially analyses adopting Speech Act Theory as the main framework. More specific reasons that made the researcher choose the film instead of the novel were that films give viewers a place similar to a seat in a front row in a theater (Decherney, 2016) which in the researcher's opinion makes analyzing films a challenging task as to analyze something so close to reach a result that might not be clear to viewers. Besides, the novel is rather confusing when trying to figure out whether the homodiegetic Narrator is speaking with other people or himself. And since the research is concerned with identifying the addressee, as it is one of the three parts of Speech Act Theory, i.e. locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts, talking to oneself poses a problem in case readers are confused and therefore cannot identify if the Narrator is talking with himself or others for sure. This issue however is solved by reading the screenplay which shows exactly who and how each dialogue is spoken. Moreover, the reactions made by the actors will help the researcher interpret the associated speech to their
Summary: The introduction explores the pre-production, during production, and post-production stages of the film with highlight on casting. It also focuses on the issue of Fight Club , the novel, and how it was finally turned into a film. In addition, it studies the factors that might determine a film’s fate at the box office. Then, the introduction discusses the reasons that might be the cause of Fight Club’ s relative failure at the box office despite being one of the most renowned and highest rated films in history based on IMDb. Moreover, the introduction sheds light on the importance of words in reflecting the personality of people and how each idiolect, the language of the individual, could be a distinctive characteristic that distinguishes people. In addition, the introduction discusses the significance of words in films as the industry developed starting with silent films up to the time where sound was used in all films as the technology of sound recording also progressed through the years. The introduction also argues that the silent films couldn’t stand against the success of the films that used sound. The introduction describes Speech Act Theory, which is the theory adopted as a framework to analyze the speeches of the intended characters in the film to clear blurry lines that might hinder viewers from understanding the two characters under discussion accurately. Moreover, the introduction explains how viewers could understand the characters better if they analyzed their speeches particularly that the two characters are rare in films since one is a mentally ill adult who’s suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder and the other is the alter-ego of the patient. The disease is briefly introduced in the first chapter with relation to the narrative reliability of the Narrator.
