The Traitor Psycholinguistic Archetype

Abstract

Film studies have recently begun to employ Jung’s concept of archetypes prototypical characters which play the role of blueprint in constructing clear-cut characters. New typologies of archetype characters appear to reflect the changes in the constantly developing world of literature, theater, film, comics and other forms of entertainment. Among those, there is the classification of forty-five master characters by V. Schmidt , which is the basis for defining the character’s archetype in the present article. The aim of the research is to identify the elements of the psycholinguistic image of Justin Hammer in the superhero film Iron Man 2 based on the Marvel Comics and directed by Jon Favreau (2010). The task consists of three stages, namely identification of the psychological characteristics of the character, subsequent determination of Hammer’s archetype and definition of speech elements that reveal the character’s psychological image. This paper explores 92 Hammer’s turns of dialogues in the film. According to V. Schmidt’s classification, Hammer belongs to the Traitor archetype, which is a villainous representation of the Businessman archetype.