Discourse Analysis on a Movie Scene - Essay Example

In this scene we meet Billy Beane asking “guys your still trying to replace Giambi. I told you we can’t do it. We can’t do it. Now what we might be able to do is recreate him. We create him in the adding field.” The situation is the Oakland Athletic offices during a roundtable meeting between him and a group of scouts. Billy, the speaker of this word, is chairing a meeting that is deliberating on the way forward for the team after losing some of its best players to other teams while still brainstorming on what to do to counter any adverse effects on their performance that might be prompted by the shoestring budget that they have been allocated.

The conversation and particularly the grammatical moods in this scene undergo a number of changes. A good example of this can be seen in this particular point of the conversation; Billy: Giambi's on-base percentage was .477.Damon's was .324. And Olmeda's was .291. Add that up and you get (He points to Peter.) Peter: You want me to speak? Billy: When I point at you, yes. Peter: Ten-nine Billy: Divided by three- Peter: Three-sixty-four. Billy: That's what we're looking for. And that's what we'll find.

Three players whose average OBP is - Peter: Three-sixty-four. . planation on how sabermetrics works in identifying new players appears very casual because according to him question on the same appears more or less like distraction, which is just an extension of the authority that he apply in his speech. Also, notice how the coherence and the flow of the discourse structure flows in this particular section. In fact, was it not for the unity of schema between the speakers, conversation breakdown would have been inevitable (Collins, 23).

However, as the conversation progresses we see him adapting a more positive politeness which is probably due to both his scant understanding of its working and also his own uncertainty on its effectiveness (Lewis, 16). In this regard we have Billy speaking to the scouts in a manner that suggests that they have nothing to lose even if the strategy fails to deliver expected results. This does not however dampen the scouts from raising a multitude of objections all of which are informed by very valid issues in the whole strategy, which explain why his calm and cool discourse begins showing signs of wearing out (Brown & Yule 41).

Just have a careful look at this change of tone and attitude in this piece; He puts the first strip up. It reads: JEREMY GIAMBI Billy: Jason's little brother Jeremy. Keough: Oh, god. Billy that’s trouble Poloni: Billy, if I may, he's had his problems on the field -- not to mention his problems off the field -- not to mention he's getting a little thick around the middle -- there's the stuff with the weed. He's at strip joints… Billy: His on-base percentage is all we're looking at now and he gets on base an awful lot for someone who only costs $285,000 a year.

(Money Ball, DVD) In this particular section Billy also come out as a smarts and intelligent person especially when