Film and Language(s)

the Ambiguous and the Misunderstanding as the Foundation of Human Communication in Being There, by Hal Ashby

Abstract

Considering all its elements, cinema is perhaps the most complete artistic form of communication since it simultaneously encapsulates visual, musical, and linguistic components. Hal Ashby’s film, Being there, precisely addresses this linguistic dimension by asking: to which extent are our linguistic interactions grounded upon misunderstandings? The film, based on the novel of the same title by Jerzy Kosiński, is grounded in a diegetic structure that addresses issues of misinterpretation in verbal language and the role of phenomena such as polysemy and metaphor in these misunderstandings and various linguistic interactions. This text attempts to analyze, by following the character of Chance (the gardener) and his interactions with the remaining characters, especially on a linguistic level, how the film introduces the relationship of personal cognitive frameworks that construct us as human individuals and how these are expressed by the verbal language, especially by the metaphorical process. Finally, the study examined how utterly unequal and misleading frameworks may still work in parallel universes of interpretation.