An Analysis of the Film Mona Lisa Smile Through the Concept of ‘Perspective’: Focusing on Conflict

This paper analyzes characters’ linguistic choices in scenes of conflicts in the film Mona Lisa Smile (Newell, 2003). Most films have conflicts playing a crucial role in tension and engagement with the plot, which makes those scenes of particular importance for use of films as teaching materials. The conflict scenes were classified according to the main cause of the conflict and analyzed in terms of the concept of perspective in cognitive linguistics. The relevant characters argued about the same extra-linguistic situations from different viewpoints. The results showed that when the conflict was high, characters used the same syntactic patterns. At a moderate level of conflict, they used similar but not identical patterns. At a low level of conflict, they exchanged synonymous lexical items but did not use syntactic strategies. When characters wanted to change their strategy of attack, syntactic resemblance was not observed; instead, information structure was used. Old information was raised and new information followed. As new information appeared later, salience became high and interplays of emotions between characters were intensified. This study suggests a new approach to analyzing discourses in films-that is, to guide students to notice and learn linguistic elements while immersing themselves in the film’s storyline.