Language and Manipulation in House of Cards

Sandrine   Sorlin

Language and Manipulation in House of Cards

A Pragma-Stylistic Perspective

ISBN 978-1-137-55847-3 ISBN 978-1-137-55848-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55848-0

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Sandrine   Sorlin Aix Marseille univ, LERMA, Aix-en-Provence Institut Universitaire de France, France

To Christophe, Alexandre & Louisa

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I would like to thank a number of people who have been infl uential and inspiring. My deep belief and interest in stylistics is indebted to the French Société de Stylistique Anglaise (SSA), successively chaired, since I joined it, by Wilfrid Rotgé, Monique de Mattia-Viviès and Manuel Jobert. I also address warm thanks to the proponents of research in stylistics through its international organization, Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), where I have met stimulating colleagues and friends (Lesley Jeff ries, Rocío Montoro, Dan McIntyre and Michael Toolan, to name but a few). Paul Simpson deserves very special thanks for his kind-ness and encouragement. Although they do not know this, some of their research has given me the impetus to explore other areas of knowledge—like the TV series in this book—which is beyond my traditional fi eld of expertise (literary stylistics). Th anks to them, I have realized how much stylistics is marked by its ability to ‘hyphenate’ with other areas of lan-guage study; the pragma- stylistic approach of this book testifi es to the aggregating capacity of the fi eld.

I also would like to thank warmly the scholars who have discussed some aspects of ‘seductive’ discourse in a seminar programme I launched at Aix-Marseille University in 2015 and 2016, in particular, at the time writing, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Jim O’Driscoll and Michael Burke.

Acknowledgements

viii Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), which has funded this research, and to our helpful fi nancial manager at Aix- Marseille University, Julie Bugeau.

I will not forget the kindness of my editors and editorial assistants at every stage of the publishing process, in particular Rebecca Brennan and Chloe Fitzsimmons at Palgrave Macmillan.

Lastly, every book is a family thing. I greatly appreciate the help pro-vided by Pierre, my brother-in-law, in alerting me to all the (political) series I might be interested in. Th e idea of writing this book owes much to the discussions that succeeded the viewing of the series with Christophe, my partner, whose unfailing support and deep insights are valuable to me beyond words. Th e irreplaceable smiles of our little boy, Alexandre, also helped me see this project through. His sister, Louisa, was born in the middle of the writing of this book. I hope they did not hear too much about Frank Underwood’s diabolical manipulative strategies. Hopefully this volume will teach them one day how to resist dark manipulation and to enjoy its lighter aesthetic side.

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Contents

1 Power & (Fictional) Politics 1 Th e Original Novel and the ‘Fictionalization’ of Politics 3 A Pragma-Stylistic Approach 10 Manipulation: Defi nitions and Th eories 14 Th eoretical Frameworks 21 Book Structure 24 References 27

2 Macrostructure and Linguistic Characterization 33 House of Cards as a Modern Tale 33

Revisiting Greimas’s Actantial Model 33 Pragmatics and Ideology 38 From a Narrative Framework to a Model of Pragmatic

Interaction 42 Th e (Anti-)Hero’s ‘Expressive Identity’ 48

Power Relations in the Chain of Being 48 Spatiotemporal Metaphors 52 Visual and Textual Grammar 58

References 63

x Contents

3 Concealing, Distorting and Creating Reality 65 A Postmodern Political Series: Th e Era of 

(Meta)Communication 65 Creating News: Media and Politics 65 Controlling Public Opinion 70 Impression Management 75

Fabricating Possible Worlds 78 Manipulating Pragmatic Inferences 78 Re-Naming and Euphemizing 88

References 103

4 Manipulative Moves: Between Persuasion and Coercion 107 Towards a Pragma-Rhetorical Th eory of Manipulation 107

A ‘Manipulative Principle’? 107 Th e Parasitic Nature of Manipulation 112

Manipulating Persuasion: Argumentative and Cognitive Views 117

Negotiating 117 Constraining Interpretative Eff ects 121

A Continuum Between Manipulation and Coercion 128 Paternalistic Manipulativeness 129 Coercive Power and Degree of Optionality 131 Manipulative Th reats 134

References 138

5 Th e Art of Winning Over through Face- Work: Success and Failure 143 Hybrid Face Acts: Th e Polite Impoliteness of 

Cajoling Discourse 143 Provoking vs Seducing 153

Provocation: Crushing Face Claims and ‘Sociality Rights’ 153

Contents xi

‘Seduce Him. Give Him Your Heart. Cut It Out and Put It in His Fucking Hands’ 157

Manipulation Seen Th rough 165 Fake Pos-Politeness Exposed 165 Dismissed Seduction and Fake Teasing 176

Face Sensitivities in the Underwood Couple 180 References 188

6 Aesthetic Manipulation 193 Keys to the Success of House of Cards 193

Suspense, Surprises and Shakespearian Echoes 193 Th e Power of the Second-Person Address 201

Th e Cognitive and Stylistic Manipulation of the Viewer 208 A Rhetoric of Certainty 208 Rooting for the Anti-Hero 216

References 224

7 Concluding Remarks: Reciprocation and (Im)Politeness 229 Behind-the-Scenes Politics: Interdependency

and Constraints 229 Th e Debt/Credit Equation 229 Media Infl uence 234

Manipulative (Im)Politeness 237 A Cross-Disciplinary Approach 237 Towards a Less Irenic Philosophy of Language 242

References 245

Appendix 249

Index 251

xiii

Fig. 2.1 Greimas’s (1986: 180) mythical actantial model 34 Fig. 2.2 Greimas’s actantial model revised 36 Fig. 2.3 Ideological and pragmatic ascription 40 Fig. 2.4 Lecercle (1999)’s ALTER structure 47 Fig. 2.5 A bidirectional narrative transactional pattern (House of

Cards, 1.13) 60 Fig. 2.6 A transactional reactional process (House of Cards, 2.16) 61 Fig. 4.1 Th e four maxims composing the Cooperative Principle

(from Grice, 1991: 26–7) 108 Fig. 4.2 Th e four maxims composing the Manipulative Principle 109 Fig. 4.3 Th e manipulative spectrum 128 Fig. 5.1 From Leech (2014: 91), ‘the component maxims of the

General Strategy of Politeness’ 144 Fig. 5.2 Greimas’s narrative subtypes on the manipulation continuum 153 Fig. 6.1 From Dynel (2011c: 1663): ‘Participants in a fi lm interaction

(in one turn) on two levels of communication’ 203 Fig. 7.1 Correlation of the persuasion–manipulation–coercion

continuum with the (im)politeness framework 239 Fig. 7.2 Th e manipulation–politeness continuum 241

List of Figures