Communicating to attain forgiveness can be a difficult task. In the case of Bonnie in the CBS television show “Mom”, she is not ready to forgive her estranged mother who wants to return into her life. I will be analyzing the scene when Bonnie first meets her mother, Shirley in the cafe with her daughter Christy and the initial confusion and anger she experiences. Through the use of code switching, and hurtful language, Bonnie illustrates her lack of empathy towards her mother 's return, she also displays her anger through the nonverbal cues of vocalization and emblems demonstrating that apologies don’t heal childhood trauma. When Bonnie first walks into the cafe she is unaware of what her mother looks like, assuming that one of the elderly
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Her mother’s lack of presence has clearly left a withstanding mark on Bonnie. Hurtful language is described as “words or expressions that are considered inappropriate, pretentious, damaging, mean, sarcastic or offensive to others” (cite)The first example of this is when Bonnie mistakes an old woman for her mother and aggressively tells her that she has “finally crawled out of her hole” and that she hopes that she dies a “slow and painful death”. While these hurtful statements are not intended for the poor woman that she mistakes for her mother, the usage of them illustrates the anger that Bonnie has towards Shirley for leaving her. She states the trauma of bouncing around from foster homes at the age of four and how her mother promised to come back but never did. In order to understand why her mother left her, Bonnie asks questions, but as an example of bad communication, Bonnie uses hurtful language in her questions such as “Why the hell did you do that?”, words that are considered inappropriate to say to your mother and generally aggressive. Bonnie employs this tactic because she seeks explanation for her mother 's actions. Throughout this scene it can also be seen in Bonnie’s body language that she has a defensive guard up, thus she uses this language to set up an emotional barrier so that she doesn 't get hurt again. Bonnie does not use this language when talking to her daughter Christy, which clears up the idea that Bonnie is just a rude person, she carefully uses hurtful language to communicate with Shirley to display her discontent with her behavior, and it has the purpose of her not accepting Shirley’s
Her mother’s lack of presence has clearly left a withstanding mark on Bonnie. Hurtful language is described as “words or expressions that are considered inappropriate, pretentious, damaging, mean, sarcastic or offensive to others” (cite)The first example of this is when Bonnie mistakes an old woman for her mother and aggressively tells her that she has “finally crawled out of her hole” and that she hopes that she dies a “slow and painful death”. While these hurtful statements are not intended for the poor woman that she mistakes for her mother, the usage of them illustrates the anger that Bonnie has towards Shirley for leaving her. She states the trauma of bouncing around from foster homes at the age of four and how her mother promised to come back but never did. In order to understand why her mother left her, Bonnie asks questions, but as an example of bad communication, Bonnie uses hurtful language in her questions such as “Why the hell did you do that?”, words that are considered inappropriate to say to your mother and generally aggressive. Bonnie employs this tactic because she seeks explanation for her mother 's actions. Throughout this scene it can also be seen in Bonnie’s body language that she has a defensive guard up, thus she uses this language to set up an emotional barrier so that she doesn 't get hurt again. Bonnie does not use this language when talking to her daughter Christy, which clears up the idea that Bonnie is just a rude person, she carefully uses hurtful language to communicate with Shirley to display her discontent with her behavior, and it has the purpose of her not accepting Shirley’s