Being There: Personality & Behaviour in the Context of Sociopragmatics

The main focus of this book lies in sociopragmatic aspects of behaviour of a socially challenged person, in this case the main character of the film titled Being There. Chance, a gardener, labelled by the society Chauncey Gardiner, is an illiterate, a-social individual who gains success by chance and his behaviour is therefore observed from various pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic viewpoints, particularly from the viewpoint of linguistic politeness. The theoretical part of the work presents these aspects which serve in its analytical part as a methodology for creation of a compact sociopragmatic portrait of Chauncey Gardiner, comparing his personality and behaviour to what is perceived to be the norm.