A Pragmatic Study of the Student-Teacher Relationship in the Dangerous Minds

Abstract

Impoliteness, which is significantly studied within the field of pragmatics, is a negative attitude towards particular types of behaviours as it always presumes to have emotional concerns for at least one participant who has caused it. This study is an attempt to examine verbal/nonverbal impoliteness in the Dangerous Minds movie where school interaction is examined and the status of the teacher is revealed. The study also aims to investigate the different types of impoliteness strategies used in the selected scenes and to find out whether the status of the speaker has anything to do with the types of impoliteness. To do so, Culpeper’s (2005) model of impoliteness is used so as to examine the types and functions of impoliteness in the five selected scenes. The study has come to the conclusion that the positive impoliteness is the most prominent among the other type of impoliteness through which the affective function is revealed.