Emily in Paris is a Netflix series depicting the life of a young American woman who moves to Paris to become employed in a leading marketing firm. The central communication problems arise when Emily talks to French colleagues without knowing their primary discourse language or mother tongue. The film raises the importance of acquiring a language while working abroad to eliminate conflicts and adapt effectively to communication tools.
When producers reflect on the tendencies of people living abroad, they usually recognize cultural barriers and the use of language as significant disrupting agents. Even though Emily in Paris is shot in Paris, characters usually communicate in English to build effective communication with the central female character. Still, Sylvia, her boss, prefers to blame Emily for not knowing French, signaling ineffective and offensive communication. Despite all these efforts to ease communication problems, Emily still feels marginalized due to her inability to speak French.
Since Emily is an expatriate moving to a foreign country, her role in evaluating communication in this TV series is tremendous. The fact that her French friends use English, demonstrating a deep concern for Emily rather than her surrounding group’s communication ease, applies to speech accommodation theory (Floyd, 2020). According to it, speakers prefer using the language of a minority to adjust to their communication needs, as Emily needs to understand the people surrounding her in France. Although Emily does not change her communication style to adapt to her interlocutors, her colleagues demonstrate a slower pace and emphasize essential terms while talking in French to ensure that Emily understands their speech. Therefore, Emily affects how others interact with her, providing an example of speech accommodation theory.
Meanwhile, the protagonist learns French to attune her language with her partners, demonstrating her development of communication skills. Although she uses online translators in the first series to engage with people initially, she later learns common phrases to ensure that she interacts with French people who do not know English. As a listener, she primarily relies on critical listening while communicating with her colleagues but utilizes an empathetic style with her love partners and friends (Floyd, 2020). For example, Mindy, an expatriate who also moves to France, shares her problems with Emily, forcing her to develop receptive listening with empathetic concern for her friends. Emily’s new friends and acquaintances help her to overcome listening barriers and develop communication skills.
More importantly, Emily develops negative politeness strategies, a practical communication skill to convey something without interfering with the hearer’s liberty of action. It signals her adapting reactively since she applies negative politeness while communicating with her authoritative bosses and apologizing for her inability to speak French fluently (Nurlayli & Widyastuti, 2022). It occurs due to her first meeting with Sylvia, who forces Emily to feel guilty about her use of language. Hence, negative politeness regarding Emily’s language skills indicates her reactive adaptation.
This negative politeness illustrates that Emily is subjected to cultural discrimination based on ignorance and selfishness, as her bosses view Emily as the globally dominant cultural representative. However, the protagonist develops the third culture since she ensures that all involved parties benefit from communication. While interacting with partners, she adopts certain features of their culture, such as discourse phrases, and inserts them into her speech as an example of a fusion of both languages. Fortunately, Emily eliminates all prejudices about her and presents herself as a dedicated professional.
To conclude, Emily in Paris portrays how difficult it is for expatriates to overcome linguistic barriers and cultural shock. Although the series is full of controversial trends about the linguistic dominance of English in France, it hints at the idea that all foreigners should better learn the state language to resolve communication problems. Finally, Emily managed to step out of her comfort zone and become an effective communicator.
References
Floyd, K. (2020). Chapter 7: Listening. Interpersonal Communication (pp. 215–245). McGraw-Hill Education.
Nurlayli, R., & Widyastuti, W. (2022). Negative politeness strategies used by American girl in TV series Emily in Paris. Journal of English Studies, 3(1), 85–98. Web.