Communication in the Netflix Series 'BoJack Horseman' from a Pragmatic Point of View

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2021 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: 2,3, University of Paderborn (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: This Bachelor Thesis combines insights from Pragmatics, Media and Communication Studies, and Popular Culture. The thesis analyses in how far Bojack Horseman, protagonist in the Netflix series 'Bojack Horseman', fulfills politeness principles and felicity conditions to communicate successfully with different interlocutors. It effectively illustrates how Bojack's communication evolves throughout the seasons. The paper begins by briefly defining some relevant concepts that are essential for the understanding of the series 'BoJack Horseman' as well as the linguistic analysis of it. After this, some previous research on the series in focus is outlined to give an insight into possible research areas for this series and the relevance of the series in general. Subsequently, the working hypothesis presumes the approximate outcome of the analysis. As a last part of the Background/Theory Chapter, the different pragmatic theories which build the basis for the analysis are displayed and discussed in detail. As a first step of the analysis part, the data at hand, as well as the conducted methodology, are presented. Next, BoJack's communication with his closest friends is analysed, based on the explicated theories, to then move on to discuss his communication in public. The results of the analysis are presented during 3.2 and 3.3. Nonetheless, an overview of the results is given in 3.4. To finish the research, the discussion and conclusion part delivers an overview of all findings and their implications for linguistics as well as other areas, which are also discussed broadly.