Can Drama Teach us How to Speak English?

There are many ways of promoting good social relations. In order to do this, human beings, during the past few decades, have invented many ways to influence interactions between them. Media, in this case, promote it through soap operas or ‘telenovelas’. Many Filipinos today find great pleasure from watching these telenovelas as they evoke real-life emotions and socio-political sentiments.

Although these forms of entertainment almost resemble real life situations as some authors might claim, they do not capture the real essence of human interaction in terms of actual utterances or gestures that could promote good social relations.

In Dr. Leonisa Mojica’s study on Face-Threatening Acts (2003), she referred to Brown and Levinson’sFace-Approach Theory (1999) to promote benevolent social relations in the hope that it could be used to “develop social awareness not only among couples, but also among prospective husbands and wives” (Mojica, 2003).

Interactions, in this case, between telenovela couples who attempt to minimize the use of “face-threatening acts,” are aware of how real-life couples are careful not to impede their partner’s freedom of action. Thus, face-threatening acts are only used to “spice-up” certain scenes in the telenovela because:

for an actress to be a success she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.” – Ethel Barrymore, quoted in George Jean Nathan’s The Theater in the Fifties.

However, questions have been raised as to whether the “face-threatening act” theory is as universally applicable as Brown and Levinson had hoped.

According to Zdeneck Salzmann (2004), “the examples given by Brown and Levinson (1987) are ‘isolated utterances' or gestures, divorced from the discourse (context) which they are embedded, and the author’s theory is therefore a list of devices rather than strategies to be used in concrete situations” (Salzmann, 2004).

The FTAs that Mojica (2003) discussed in her study, therefore, do not really capture the essence of actual social relations among human beings, since, telenovelas are mere “representations” of actual life, hence, the dialogue inherent in such works are scripted to perfection.

There is no doubt that soap operas “resemble real life… reflect, like a thick mirror, the realities of its society” (Jimenez-David, 2002), but they do not take into account actual utterances and realities of domestic disputes that occur between couples. 

Mojica even admits the restrictions of taping actual utterances: “…can entail more difficulties and limitations” (Mojica,2003:121).

Meanwhile, Mojica (2003), through her study, also advocates different politeness strategies to reduce face-threatening acts among couples. Apologies, for instance, according to Mojica (2003), “is an appropriate negative politeness strategy (that) makes one loses face.” Hence, gestures and bodily expressions, acting as “cushions”, can suppress impeding threats to “face” or personal dignity.[i]

However, politeness, in any given context, can vary from society to society and from one language to another because all members of many societies expect consideration, courtesy, and tact, from each other regardless of age, gender, or position (Salzmann, 2004).[ii]

In sum, Mojica’s study on FTAs generates a worthy discussion on promoting social relations in order to preserve the basic unit of contemporary society.

However, any attempt to unlock the secrets of maintaining good social relations, especially between couples, should consider the importance of speech in actual life because speech is an essential lubricant of a distinct society.*