Beyond Directivity: Directives as Strategies of Domination in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler

This study investigates directives as linguistic strategies of domination in Henrik Ibsen's (1890) Hedda Gabler. The paper draws on two analytical approaches: first, speech act theory, specifically Searle's (1976) categorization of directive speech acts, to demonstrate how directives are pragmatically augmented to communicate specific purposes within interpersonal power relations rather than their ordinary perceived functions of commanding, requesting, and questioning; and second, the rapport management framework (Spencer-Oatey, 2002, 2005), which provides a basis for investigating how directive choices influence interpersonal relations and domination. The paper adopts a qualitative pragmatic approach to analyze selected conversational turns from the play and to show how directives are employed to negotiate unequal power relations and thus to exercise domination. The analytical focus is on four types of directives: imperatives, interrogatives, modal directives, and indirect/polite directives, to examine how these types of directives acquire manipulative force through contextual factors, including power relations and communicative intentions. Findings reveal that the four types of directives go beyond their ordinary grammatical function of directivity towards further pragmatic purposes of domination. That is, they are not only employed as speech acts expressing requests, obligations, or commands but also as context-sensitive resources for constructing and maintaining domination. The study concludes that probing the illocutionary force of directives offers useful insights into the linguistic representation of domination in dramatic discourse and beyond.