Autore: Pasquali, Emma
Titolo: “I’m not comfortable with that”: Multimodal Impoliteness and Otherness in «Resident Alien» (2021)
Periodico: Textus
Anno: 2026 - Fascicolo: 1 - Pagina iniziale: 71 - Pagina finale: 94

This contribution investigates the narrative and visual construction of (im) politeness in the pilot episode of the TV series Resident Alien (2021). The study focuses on the extraterrestrial protagonist, Hah Re, examining how his interactions with human characters – specifically the mayor and police officers – reveal his difficulty in adhering to human behavioural codes. The analysis demonstrates that humour and social deviance emerge from the interplay of verbal and nonverbal cues, with non-verbal elements often dominating audience perception. Selected scenes are multimodally transcribed (Baldry and Thibault 2006) and analysed using visual grammar (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) and emotion categorisation (Ekman and Friesen 1984). (Im)politeness strategies are categorised via Brown and Levinson (1987) and Culpeper (1996, 2005), with reception interpreted through Locher and Watts’s (2005) concept of relational work. This multimodal approach highlights how Face Threatening Acts, mismatched gestures, gaze, and camera perspective jointly construct the alien’s deviance and generate humour.




SICI: 1824-3967(2026)1<71:&NCWTM>2.0.ZU;2-U
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.7370/120111
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.7370/120111

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