Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to find out the kinds of pragmatic language
impairments realized by an autistic-savant main character in The Good Doctor film,
to describe the pragmatic language impairments realized by the character, and to
investigate why the linguistic impairments were realized in the way they were. The
descriptive qualitative method was used in this research. The data taken was from
the utterances and the behaviors of the autistic-savant character, Shaun Murphy,
from 18 episodes of season one of the film. There were 352 dialogues obtained
consisting of pragmatic language impairments, both verbal and non-verbal
language problems. The verbal language problems realized were violation of
maxims, literal interpretation, monologue, pronoun reversal, politeness difficulty,
pedantic speech, odd prosody, turn-taking violation, echolalia, and idiosyncratic use
of language. While the non-verbal language problems realized were limited use of
gesture, clumsy/gauche body language, limited facial expression, inappropriate
facial expression, and peculiar/stiff gaze. Pragmatic language impairments were
realized in the utterances and the behaviors. The linguistic impairments were
realized the way they were because of the lack of comprehension, inability to talk
based on context, difficulty at adjusting voice and tone, lack of mind reading skill,
having trouble at maintaining a conversation, and incapability to use non-verbal
language properly.
