This paper examines Pixar’s Coco (2017) to explore how cultural discourse can shape narrative causality in global animated films. To this end, rather than treating the “inciting incident” as a simple narrative trigger (Field, 2005), this study reframes it as an “intercultural critical incident” (Byram, 1997; Tripp, 1993), a moment where cultural worlds meet and clash, generating the moral and communicative tensions that propel the story forward. In Coco, this intercultural encounter takes the form of an intergenerational rupture with Miguel’s defiance of his family’s ban on music revealing deeper conflicts between ancestral memory, familial duty, and individual aspiration. Drawing on Carbaugh’s (2007) Cultural Discourse Analysis (CuDA), the study relies on screenplay analysis to uncover and describe recurrent linguistic motifs. These motifs frame Coco’s narrative structure as family-driven, emphasizing relational and intergenerational ethics over conventional action- or character-driven paradigms. More specifically, screenplay analysis reveals that Miguel’s conflict with his grandmother is more than a plot device; it acts as a communicative event that exposes tensions rooted in intergenerational memory, relational ethics, and self-expression. The film transforms narrative conflict into a process of cultural negotiation, in which reconciliation becomes possible through dialogue, song and shared remembrance. By reconceptualizing the inciting incident as both a narrative and cultural event, Coco reveals how intercultural discourse operates as the generative core of storytelling itself, signaling Disney’s commitment to narratives that imagine global ethics, familial interconnectedness, and the moral possibilities of cultural encounter.

Authors:
Angeliki Ypsilanti, Ionian University, Greece

About the Presenter(s)
Angeliki Ypsilanti is currently an EFL teacher in Secondary Education. She holds two B.A. degrees, one in English Language and Literature from the University of Athens and the other in Hispanic Language and Civilization Studies from the Hellenic Open University as well as an M.Ed. in TEFL/TEIL from the Hellenic Open University. She has also completed a doctorate in the humanities at Ionian University, specializing in cultural discourse and storytelling in global media.

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