,,CDA and The Place That Sends You Mad" by Katharine Pusch

Table of contents

I. Introduction

II.

Material and motivation

II.A

Why did I choose an Asterix movie?

II.B

Summary of `The Place That Sends You Mad′

III.

Bureaucracy in `The Place That Sends You Mad′

III. A

Information exchange with clients

III. B

Information exchange inside the institution

III.C

Role behaviour in bureaucratic discourse

IV. Conclusion

V. Bibliography

VI. Picture

credits

Appendix

I.

Transliteration of the movie "The Twelve Tasks of Asterix",

part "The Place That Sends You Mad"

II. Declaration

II

,,CDA and The Place That Sends You Mad" by Katharine Pusch

I. INTRODUCTION

During the seminar "Critical Discourse Analysis: Text and Discourse" there were

various fields of application mentioned. Bureaucracy was a very interesting one, as

it is nearly an everyday necessity, especially living in Germany. The use of

bureaucratic language does not only occur in institutional contexts, but "

may enter

and take over the discourse practices of other domains

"1, e.g. the correspondence

in business companies. Since all citizens can tell their own story of a bureaucratic

incident and therefore can relate to such problems, the movie-scene analyzed is a

well remembered one.

The thesis in hand will first give an overview about the material and present a

summary of the noted movie-scene to afford a basis for the following analysis. That

will concern the information exchange with clients and inside the institution, as well

as the role behaviour in bureaucratic discourse. At last, it closes with some final

words and the credits.

II. MATERIAL AND MOTIVATION

An Asterix movie is providing the base material for the following analysis. The

tales of the brave Gauls that resist Caesar′s soldiers are very popular with children

and adults; in the form of comics and movies. The heroes are clever Asterix and

strong Obelix, with small Dogmatix at his side and other loveable characters of the

village. The Romans are their crazy and mostly ridiculous besiegers. Though they

surpass the small village in military force level and arms, it exceeds their abilities to

finally win over the Gauls.

In the movie "The Twelve Tasks of Asterix" there are several tasks to be

performed, one of them taking place in `The Place That Sends You Mad′. Although

exaggerated, there are prime examples for bureaucracy in language detectable.

This scene causes amusement and remains in peoples memories, maybe it is

even thought of as the first contact with overly bureaucratic procedures. Most of

the clerks seen in the movie are "

very busy

"2 although they occupy themselves

with knitting, chatting, napping or even swinging. It is an overstated image of real

1 See Sarangi / Slembrouck (1996), p. 34.

2 See line 92, 175 (all indications of lines refer to the transliteration in the appendix).

III

,,CDA and The Place That Sends You Mad" by Katharine Pusch

bureaucrats doing things a client can not see to be important at that time or are

even obviously time-wasting.

This chapter offers a short description of the preliminary events leading the

Gauls to the bureaucratic institution and the motivation to write about their task.

Moreover there is a summary of the events occurring inside the plain multi-storey

building.

II.A WHY DID I CHOOSE AN ASTERIX MOVIE?

The movie "The Twelve Tasks of Asterix" is related to the heroic saga of

Heracles, as mentioned by Julius Caesar in the beginning of the movie3. The

Emperor asks the Gauls to perform twelve tasks in order to proof if they are gods,

as some of his subordinates seem to believe, or mere mortals. If the Gauls

succeed, they will become rulers of the Roman Empire; but if they fail, they will be

Caesars slaves. Asterix and Obelix are chosen to try and save their village once

again. This time not by beating up Roman soldiers, but by using their combined

strength and cunning to win the bet.

After they fulfilled different athletic tasks, overcame some temptations and

survived the Lair of the Beast, the eighth task of Asterix and Obelix is to obtain

Permit A38 in the Place That Sends You Mad. It is an ironic approach to the

domain of bureaucracy and there are some clichés demonstrated. Bureaucracy is

described as an invincible system that is equally hard to deal with as with a

Heraclic task. During our group-presentation of "CDA and Bureaucracy" we

showed this very scene to our fellow students. Since they could relate to it, it

occurred to me to further analyse the material4. Though a short summary follows, I

suggest to watch the scene again or to listen to it while reading the transliteration.

II.B SUMMARY OF `THE PLACE THAT SENDS YOU MAD′

After they survived the Lair of the Beast, Asterix and Obelix meet with Caius

Tiddlus, a small Roman that Caesar send along with them to check they complete

every task. They watch the mad people of the town and ask about their curious

3 See on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4cjo7EKVHo (unfortunately the German version).

4 Given that this movie does not refer to one of the comic books of the Asterix serial, I transliterated

the scene. See the appendix.

IV