Screen Adaptation of Henry James’s Novel What Maisie Knew: Amateur Film Discourse as a Subtype of Institutional Film Discourse

Abstract

Amateur film discourse is a new special subtype of discourse that has not yet been subjected to scientific research. Its participants have no special cinema education: they discuss the film industry based on their own life experience, ideas, and values. This work was part of the contemporary anthropocentric paradigm, where language comes to the fore as the most important property of human beings. The article identifies the genre of amateur film discourse using online Russian comments to the screen adaptation of Henry James’s What Maisie Knew (1897), directed by S. McGehee and D. Siegel (2012). The methods of comparison and discourse analysis revealed sincerity in the way the commentors evaluated their impressions. The commentors seemed focused on the plot and the action. The discourse was highly emotional and colloquial, filled with aposiopesis and rhetorical questions.

Keywords

• film
• film review
• film discourse
• amateur film discourse
• emotionality
• henry james
• what maisie knew