Changing Media Landscapes, Innovative Female Characters: Julie’s Politeness Strategies in ABC’s Desperate Housewives

VIRDIS, DANIELA FRANCESCA

2011-01-01

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Abstract

Contrary to clumsy Susan Mayer, an illustrator of children’s books in the American TV series Desperate Housewives (2004-present), produced by ABC, her fourteen-year-old daughter Julie is typified by the positively value-laden personality traits of sound judgement, good common sense and intelligence: the verbal and non-verbal behaviours of the two figures actually invert the standard schemata which outline the psychological roles of daughter and mother and their social relationship. The author consequently studies Julie’s interactional behaviour towards her mother Susan in the pilot show (2004) by applying the theoretical frameworks of politeness/impoliteness, conversation analysis and feminist television studies; to be more exact, the author investigates the discursive deviations from the socioculturally accepted norms of the daughter-mother relationship. Linguistic analysis reveals that the girl’s conversational style is characterised by skilfully complying with or breaking the Leechian (1983) Politeness principle and maxims, an interactional skill which turns the daughter’s connection with her mother into a friend-friend relationship based on solidarity and on positive politeness.