بررسی نقش دیالوگ در شخصیت‌پردازی ضدقهرمان در فیلم «داستان عامه‌پسند» بر اساس نظریۀ گفتمان و قدرت میشل فوکو

This article examines the role of dialogue in shaping the identity of anti-heroes in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), drawing on Michel Foucault's theories of discourse and power. The study aims to investigate language as a discursive mechanism for the representation of domination, resistance, ethics, and identity reconstruction in characters such as Jules Winnfield, Marsellus Wallace, and Mia Wallace — characters who navigate morally ambiguous boundaries, challenge power positions through their dialogue, and construct alternative identities in the process. This approach aligns with Foucault's conceptualization of language as a field of discursive confrontation and a dynamic site for both the exercise of and resistance to power relations.
Prior scholarship on Tarantino's cinema has predominantly focused on stylistic elements, intertextual references, or macro-level narrative analysis, with comparatively little attention paid to the micro-level linguistic agency of dialogue and its constitutive role in the reconstitution of subjectivity. Addressing this gap in the literature, the present study employs a qualitative approach and discourse analysis to examine the dialogues of the three principal characters within the framework of Foucauldian theoretical indices. In doing so, it treats dialogue not merely as a narrative device but as a contested field in which power is simultaneously exercised, negotiated, and challenged.
The findings demonstrate that dialogue in this film functions actively in the production of meaning, the consolidation of discursive order, and the creation of spaces of resistance. Jules Winnfield, through language, undergoes a discursive transition from domination to moral reflection and ethical self-reconstitution. Marsellus Wallace, by contrast, reinforces disciplinary order through threat, intimidation, and the systematic redefinition of the other's identity. Mia Wallace, meanwhile, deploys irony, strategic silence, and persistent interrogation to challenge prevailing gender norms and destabilize the dominant patriarchal discourse from within. Taken together, these distinct discursive patterns reveal that power in this film operates not in a fixed or centralized form but in plural, relational, and situational configurations mediated through language. Dialogue, as the primary site of this plurality, simultaneously reproduces dominant discursive order and generates the very conditions for its rupture and transformation.
By integrating Foucauldian theory with film studies, this article offers an interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of character construction in postmodern cinema, one that lends itself to extension toward comparative and critical analyses across film discourse and gender studies.