A Pragmatic Analysis of Gendered Speech Acts and Politeness Strategies in Judges’ Feedback on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes1141Keywords:
Britain’s Got Talent, communication process, humour, politeness strategies, pragmatic variation, public performance, reality television, tv judgesAbstract
This study provides a pragmatic analysis of the gendered speech acts and politeness strategies that the judges of Britain's Got Talent employ in their commentary. The study aims to examine how male and female judges differ in their linguistic choices, including directives, expressives, and politeness strategies, within the evaluative context of talent performances broadcast on TV. Using Searle's typology of speech acts and Brown and Levinson's politeness theory, this study uses a qualitative method with discourse analysis to look at general patterns and specific reactions to typical performances. The corpus consists of typed verbal responses from five of the episodes that were released between 2020 and 2024 (Seasons 14–17) that result in a rich but narrow sample. The study bridges a gap in the pragmatic approaches to reality television research, addressing the understudied areas of gender, evaluation, and discourse. It points out the role played by gender in determining the modus operandi of communication even in comparable positions and comparable contexts. Evidence indicates that female judges frequently make use of expressive acts and positive politeness, while male judges utilize directives, bald-on-record tactics, and humour as mitigation. The differences exist in reactions to the same performance, too.
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