Contrastive Analysis of English and Japanese Request Scenes between Original Films and Remakes

Abstract

This research is an investigation into the relationships between factors defining the context of each scene and behavior signaling for a request, making a contrastive analysis between two film remakes and theiroriginal films – the Japanese-original version of Shall We Dance? (2005) and the Hollywood-original version Ghost (2011) –.Focusing on urgency, obligation, cost, vertical distance, and intimacy, it is confirmed that urgency greatly affects request expressions both in Japanese and English. In Japanese, vertical distance and intimacy arereally important and higher status and intimate relations can result in avoidance of care in choosing of polite expressions, followed by obligation, when it is not a matter of great urgency, but in English, obligation andcost take precedence over relations between speaker and addressee.