LyCE Estudios - Facultad de Filosofía y Letras - Universidad ...

LyCE Estudios 15 (2012)
42
existence of alternative positions by offering his own position as but one
possible alternative: You could say that Julie & Julia is the first Nora
Ephron movie that isn't a romantic comedy.
Our analysis of the Engagement choices in the authentic reviews reveals
that movie reviews are mostly dialogic texts in which the authors
acknowledge the possibility of multiple positions with respect to the
position they voice in their reviews. Some sections of the reviews are
less dialogic though, for instance Film Synopsis since it foregrounds
experiential information rather than evaluative meanings, but those
stages in which the author most critically expresses his / her assessment
of the movie resort to heteroglossic resources. The textual voice does
not express positions as taken for granted. This is so because of the
very nature and function of a response genre. Different responses to the
same object can be anticipated. The textual voice has to negotiate the
evaluation in such a way to convince the reader that the position
adopted in the review is at least reasonable. Interestingly, the most
frequent options seem to be those used to make concessions to then
counter and express the final evaluation. The lexico-grammatical
resources in concession are naturally concessive conjunctions and
connectives (‘though’, ‘yet’). The combination of concession and
countering allows the textual voice to create a space for the final
evaluation. This final evaluation, and therefore the recommendation, will
depend on what values are expressed, what positive aspects are
conceded and what aspects are found deficient. If what is conceded is a
positive aspect of the movie, then most likely the review will close with a
negative assessment, therefore the implied recommendation will be that
the movie is not a particularly worthwhile product. The following extract
illustrates this observation:
The explosions and gun battles and zero-gravity fist-fights
are all amazing, truly [concession], but it’s unclear what the
point is to all of them [countering]. Inception, though always
riveting [concession], isn’t always comprehensible
[countering].
On Inception | Thomas Leupp | Hollywood Review