Frame Shifting as a Mechanism of the Comic: A Comparative Analysis of English- and Russian-Language Film Discourse of the 21st Century

Abstract

The study addresses the verbal signals of mismatch between two frames activated within a minimal discourse fragment of film dialogue: register shifts, evaluative-aggressive nomination, the dynamics of anthroponyms, and violation of logical-scenario coherence. Frame shifting is understood as a cognitive-pragmatic operation in which a verbal signal compels the recipient to replace an activated frame with another, producing a mismatch between the expected and the actual interpretation that is processed as comic. The unit of analysis is such a fragment: an utterance, a micro-dialogue or a scene. The material is the film dialogue of four feature films: two tragicomedies form the core corpus, two further films supply supporting examples. The methods applied are frame, cognitive-pragmatic and contextual-interpretative analysis, the comparative method and elements of multimodal analysis. A four-step identification procedure has been developed: segmentation of the material, detection of incongruities, reconstruction of the source and substituting frames with localisation of the verbal signal, and establishment of the relation between the verbal and the non-verbal. Both corpora are described through a single set of five parameters. The novelty lies in describing frame shifting, for the first time, on comparative material from two linguocultures as a single cognitive mechanism with differing linguistic realisation. Four types are distinguished: frame shifting in the narrow sense, evaluative-aggressive frame shifting, frame scaling, and violation of logical-scenario coherence. The cognitive procedure proves identical in both linguocultures; the difference is concentrated in its linguistic means. English-language film dialogue builds the shift on register mismatch while retaining a normative lexical layer and keeps evaluation within an institutional frame; Russian-language film dialogue relies on low colloquial and obscene vocabulary, anthroponymic framing and the recasting of tragic themes in everyday terms. The verbal signal steadily prevails over the non-verbal. The results are applicable in courses of general linguistics, linguoculturology and translation studies.