“Sometimes I get the devil in me”: Characterisation, (Im)Politeness and Heteroglossia in Mike Leigh’s Career Girls

This paper investigates the multimodal pragmatic dimension of Mike Leigh’s film Career Girls (1997), focusing on how cinematic discourse – the interaction of verbal, visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic modes – shapes the characterisation of Annie and Hannah across their student years and adult lives (mid-1980s to mid-1990s). The study examines the film’s capacity to ‘do things’ with/without words due to its multi-layered infrastructure. Specifically, it addresses three interconnected aspects: 1) the stylistic portrayal of the two protagonists; 2) the strategies of (im) politeness framing their relationship, highlighted by Hannah’s violent reactions and Annie’s fragile behaviour; and 3) the general heteroglossic atmosphere created by expressive modes like regional accents (Yorkshire, Cockney), music (The Cure refrains), juvenile outfits, and body language. Using the official screenplay as the main data source, the analysis employs an interdisciplinary approach combining pragmatics and multimodality to inspect the film’s multiple layers of meaning.