When the language of smoking says it all: a semiotic-psychoanalytic decoding of the American film <i>Golda</i>

Abstract Smoking is a social behaviour practised for several external (social) and internal (psychological) reasons. This paper examines the complex practice of smoking and its relationship with linguistic interaction, and psychological causes/responses by interpreting the act of smoking in Golda , the American film about the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the 6th of October War between Egypt and Israel in 1973. The study utilises Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar as an analytical tool amalgamated with Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory as a theoretical framework. This model is utilised to semiotically and psychologically deconstruct the scenes, including any act (or any indicator) of smoking in the film. Throughout the analysis, the communicative and the psychological patterning were examined to observe: (1) Golda’s linguistic and communicative behaviour, (2) the accompanying smoking behaviour, and (3) the psychological response during Golda’s communicative act. The analysis highlighted that Golda (interactant) communicated (via the language of smoking, or one of its indicators) with other characters (participants) in light of the internal (psychological) and external (social) contexts that led to Golda’s goal of declaring Israel to be a state (message). This study, thus, concluded that smoking is, indeed, a language that can accept the typical linguistic and dramatic analyses as verbal language and can be used as a coping mechanism.