"Uh, I'm a pretty sick guy" : the dialogue of American Psycho in fiction and film

Čelhar, Aja (author), Kavalir, Monika (author)

This paper examines how dialogue in Bret Easton Ellis's novel American Psycho (1991) serves to project the identity of its controversial protagonist Patrick Bateman. A com- parison with the dialogue in Mary Harron's film adaptation (2000) further highlights the importance of dialogue for characterisation by analysing how changes in Bateman's conversational behaviour on screen result in a different interpretation of the character. A pragmastylistic analysis reveals that dialogues are characterised by a strong discrepancy between their form and their content. While Conversation Analysis exposes few irregu- larities in the turn-taking structure of the dialogues, a Gricean pragmatic analysis con- f irms the impression that the content of the dialogues is often vapid – the participants fail to establish a meaningful connection with one another through a cooperative exchange of information. Bateman tries to disrupt the vapid interaction by confessing ever more openly to his killing sprees in a desperate attempt to establish some genuine contact. However, as the dialogues maintain the semblance of conversation, his shocking con- fessions go completely unnoticed. A scene-based analysis of the film, complete with a multimodal transcript, provides an insight into how the reduction of Bateman's deviances significantly alters his characterisation.

• Language: English
• Keywords: characterisation, screen adaptation, conversation analysis, cooperative principle, criminal mind, telecinematic stylistics, Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 1-18
• Numbering: Vol. 245
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-181932
• UDC: 81'38:[821.111(73).09-31:791.221.6]
• ISSN on article: 0378-2166
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.05.007
• COBISS.SI-ID: 239277315
• Publication date in RUL: 20.04.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Journal of pragmatics
• Shortened title: J. pragmat.
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0378-2166
• COBISS.SI-ID: 25783040

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
• Description: A creative commons license that bans commercial use, but the users don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: karakterizacija, filmska priredba, analiza pogovora, sodelovalno načelo, zločinski um, tele-kinematografska stilistika, Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P6-0218
• Name: Teoretične in aplikativne raziskave jezikov: kontrastivni, sinhroni in diahroni vidiki