Dominant and Submissive: Speech Act during BDSM Intimate in Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

Abstract

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) is a movie depicting the romantic relationship between Christian Grey, a billionaire, and Anastasia Steele, a literature student. Grey, who has a sexual disorder, spiced up the movie with many BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism, Masochism) scenes between him and Anastasia. This movie had shocked the public because of these scenes which were wrapped in an epic romance story. In this scene, the conversation between Grey and Anastasia, both when inviting and when performing BDSM, can be studied with Yule's (1996) speech act theory. By applying his theory, this descriptive qualitative research aims to reveal and classify the types of speech acts which appear in the dialog of the two main characters. The data taken from the movie is presented in textual form. The results revealed that Christian Grey, the Dominant, tends to perform directive speech acts, while Anastasia Steele, the submissive, tends to perform expressive speech acts. Thus, it signifies, how in a BDSM intimate, the dominant will satisfy his desires by acting bossy as he was being intimate with his sex slave. Contrary to the dominant, the submissive feels her desire is satisfied when someone acts aggressively towards her during sexual intimacy. These findings could help bridge the gap to research on the BDSM phenomenon, as well as be a reference for film script writers.