Professional vs. Fan Cultural Criticism: Qualitative Analysis of Semantics and Normativity in Evaluation of Films
Abstract
The article deals with the reconstruction and comparison of language games played by professional film critics and film fans evaluating film works. As part of this reconstruction, I focus on a pragma-linguistic analysis of semantics and normativity of evaluative judgments, which is methodically based on the analysis of relevant written reviews and semi-structured interviews with reviewers.
My research shows that professional film critics and fans play essentially the same language game of the art lover, in which evaluative judgements rely on the speaker's personal taste. The most striking difference between the language games of both types of respondents lies in the reflexive work with the emotions they experience while watching a movie, namely in a different relationship between film critics'/fans' emotional experience and their evaluation.