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At the inagural lecture, from l to r: Professor Dan McIntyre, Professor Lesley Jeffries, Brendan Gunn and Assistant Editor Dr Jane Lugea 10 issues THE INAUGURAL BABEL LECTURE Babel celebrated the publication of its 10th issue with a special lecture by dialect coach Dr Brendan Gunn. Dominic Watt reports

icture the illusion that what we see has actors to approximate different Hollywood meaning and coherence in its Irish varieties; examples are glitterati, and the own fictive universe as well as in Pitt’s Shelta-peppered patter in concept of conceit the real world. Snatch, or Blanchett’s portrayal might not be far Brendan Gunn, ‘dialect coach of the journalist Veronica Guerin. behind. Among to the stars’, made this notion But Gunn’s dialect menu is by Pthe A-listers – if we believe the his jumping-off point for the no means confined to Ireland. tabloids – the tantrums, the first Babel Inaugural Lecture, During his talk he entreated capricious catering demands, which he gave as part of the the audience to try producing and the brattish abuse of sound- celebrations for Babel’s tenth phrases in a broad range of stage crew are almost part of issue. Gunn’s CV is impressive: accents of English – Received the job. It would be rarer to directors such as Ridley Scott, Pronunciation (RP), Cockney, call to mind an older sense of Roland Emmerich and Guy Glaswegian, Russian – guided ‘conceit’ as a thing conceived: a Ritchie seek his services to school by a mixture of narrow phonetic contrivance, an artifice, a ‘gaiety the likes of Juliette Binoche, transcriptions and a system of the imagination’, in Samuel Cate Blanchett, Robert de Niro, based on English spelling that he Johnson’s words. When we join Brad Pitt, and Mickey Rourke, uses when working with actors the audience of a film, TV show in how to feign English dialects who can’t, or won’t, master the or play, we become participants on screen. A native Ulsterman, International Phonetic Alphabet. in the conceit, buying into the Gunn specialises in helping

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Getting an accent off-pat “Inventiveness is also demanded of the successful may be counter-productive, though: as an actor, there is dialect coach: to play Baldwin IV of Jerusalem in little point trying to sound fully Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven – Baldwin being authentic if one’s audience can’t a man whose face was so ravaged by leprosy that he follow what’s being said. Gunn’s ‘mixing desk’ analogy gives a always wore a mask – Edward Norton was advised sense of how, when coaching by Gunn to talk with his thumb in his mouth. Given an actor, he makes adjustments that viewers cannot see Norton’s face, achieving on two opposing dimensions: one lever on the mixing desk is the right compromise here between plausibility and for general clarity, the other for intelligibility was absolutely paramount.” authenticity. The key thing is to ensure that the conceit remains unpunctured: the audience’s grasp of the plot or of the characters’ motives should not be sacrificed to linguistic purity. Avoiding caricature is always a concern, too. Gunn reports that actors trying out a new accent will often ‘overshoot’ the target by falling back on inaccurate stereotypes. Part of his job is to rein in the actor such that the final effect is plausible, yet issues unobtrusive. At times, depending 10 on the nature of the production in question, Gunn will give directors a choice of options. For instance, in Child 44, set in the postwar Soviet Union, the ‘Russian’ characters could all have been given RP accents. plausibility and intelligibility was but in no small measure it is They could alternatively have absolutely paramount. thanks to Gunn and the small used thick Slavic accents, replete Gunn’s parting message cadre of professional dialect with trilled /r/s and the darkest resonates among those of us who and dialogue coaches working of /l/s. Gunn proposed to take concern ourselves with the study in our entertainment industries the middle ground, by having the of language: when one stops to that the deceit involved in the characters speak in modified RP reflect upon it, it is astonishing creation of the conceit usually accents featuring raised vowels that a stream of air emanating goes undetected. ¶ (‘beg’ for ‘bag’, etc.) and subtle from the lungs, modified before rhoticity. Inventiveness is also it exits the head by organs whose Author Dominic Watt is Senior demanded of the successful principal functions are for Lecturer in Forensic Speech Science at the University of York. He has dialect coach: to voice Baldwin breathing and eating, can give published on phonetics, sociolinguistics, IV of Jerusalem in Ridley Scott’s rise to the limitless complexities forensic speech science, and language Kingdom of Heaven – Baldwin of meaning afforded to us by and identity studies, including the being a man whose face was so language. In conjuring up the books English Accents and Dialects ravaged by leprosy that he always illusory worlds of cinema, (2012, with Arthur Hughes and Peter wore a mask – Edward Norton television and theatre, the role Trudgill), Language and Identities (2010, with Carmen Llamas) and Language, was advised by Gunn to talk of speech and language cannot Borders and Identity (2014, with with his thumb in his mouth. be overestimated. You may Carmen Llamas). With Charles Boberg Given that viewers cannot see have to wait a long time after and John Nerbonne, he is editor of the Norton’s face, achieving the the movie has ended to see forthcoming Blackwell Handbook of right compromise here between their names among the credits, Dialectology (2015)..

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