“That is the question”. Direct interrogatives in English film dialogue and dubbed Italian

Interpersonal language has been a privileged area of study in the exploration of both original and translated telecinematic discourse, which has often looked at the degree of naturalness with which given structures are reproduced in the two varieties and the way in which the delicate balance between diegesis and mimesis is shaped in the audiovisual text. Focussing on both original and dubbed film dialogue, the present study aims to investigate how the two varieties behave vis-à-vis the reproduction of a pervasive interpersonal phenomenon in spontaneous conversation: direct questions. Drawing on the Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue, the study will initially explore question usage in English film talk in comparison to spontaneous speech. Special attention will be allocated to typically conversational question forms and the different functions interrogatives take on in film dialogue. Subsequently, the focus will be shifted onto the dubbing of direct questions into Italian. The main issues of investigation will concern the prevailing trends observed in the reproduction of English question forms, both in quantitative terms (what is the amount of questions to be found in original and dubbed film talk?) and from a more qualitative perspective (which question types appear and prevail in the two varieties?).