Abstract

Finnish oral communication is often considered to be something of a minimalist exercise. A well-known expression of such communication is the so-called Proletariat Trilogy by the Finnish film-maker Aki Kaurismäki. This study presents an analysis of persuasive and argumentative dialogues in the manuscript to Shadows in Paradise. The approach is based on Searle’s speech acts, Grice’s conversational maxims, and Pragma-Dialectics. The result is a description of Finnish working-class everyday rhetoric as it is portrayed in the international breakthrough film of Kaurismäki.