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Stereotyped Dialects in Animated Children's Films

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Stereotyped Dialects in Animated Children's Films Discrimination in a Land Far, Far Away – Stereotyped Dialects in Animated Children’s Films Masterarbeit im Ein-Fach-Masterstudiengang English and American Literatures, Cultures and Media der Philosophischen Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel vorgelegt von Lynn Reinacher Erstgutachterin: Prof. Dr. Lieselotte Anderwald Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Huck Kiel im Mai 2016 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1 2. Linguistic Stereotyping and Its Purpose in Media ........................................................ 3 2.2. Linguistic Stereotypes in Media ................................................................................ 5 2.3. Linguistic Stereotypes and Ideologies ....................................................................... 9 3. Stereotypes of British and American Varieties ............................................................ 10 3.1. Standard Varieties and Why They Are Problematic ................................................ 10 3.2. American Varieties .................................................................................................. 14 3.2.1. *SAE ................................................................................................................ 14 3.2.2. Southern American English ............................................................................. 15 3.2.3. AAE ................................................................................................................. 17 3.2.4. New York City English ................................................................................... 19 3.3. British Varieties ....................................................................................................... 20 3.3.1. *RP .................................................................................................................. 20 3.3.2. Scottish English ............................................................................................... 22 3.4. Foreign Accents in English ...................................................................................... 24 3.4.1. Hispanic English .............................................................................................. 24 3.4.2. Slavic/Eastern European Accent...................................................................... 26 3.4.3. Scandinavian Accent ....................................................................................... 27 4. Past Studies ..................................................................................................................... 27 5. The Current Study ......................................................................................................... 29 5.1. Corpus Selection ...................................................................................................... 29 5.2. Methodology ............................................................................................................ 32 5.2.1. Geographical and Temporal Setting ................................................................ 32 5.2.2. Characters ........................................................................................................ 32 5.2.3. Analysis and Discussion Format ..................................................................... 33 6. Analysis and Discussion ................................................................................................. 33 6.1. Using Language Variety to Put the Story on the Map ............................................. 34 6.2. The Sound of Antagonism ....................................................................................... 36 6.2.1. *RP and the Legacy of the “British Villain” ................................................... 39 6.2.2. Speech Impairments as a Marker of Linguistic and Social ‘Disorder’ ............ 41 6.3. Foreign Accents that Sound So Familiar ................................................................. 42 6.3.1. The Scandalous Scandinavian ......................................................................... 42 6.3.2. The “Latin Lover” Conquers Hearts, and Spain .............................................. 45 6.3.3. The Pan-Slavic, Pan-“Bad Guy” ..................................................................... 48 6.4. Depicting Native Speakers of “Non-Standard” English .......................................... 50 6.4.1. Scottish English – Vikings, Scotsmen, and a Brave Princess .......................... 50 6.4.2. New York City Speech – The Working-Class Dialect .................................... 53 6.4.3. Southern American English – A Spectrum of Good and Evil ......................... 54 6.4.4. AAE – The Approximated and Appropriated Dialect ..................................... 57 6.5. Other trends ............................................................................................................. 59 6.5.1. Love and Family Sound Like…Homogeneity ................................................. 59 6.5.2. Changes over Time (from pre-2010 to the current study) ............................... 63 6.5.3. SLI as Shown through the Depiction of Aliens ............................................... 66 7. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 68 8. Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 77 9. Deutsche Zusammenfassung .......................................................................................... 83 List of Figures Figure 1 – Geographical Setting Overall ....................................................................... 34 Figure 2 – Geographical Setting in Films by Disney .................................................... 35 Figure 3 – Geographical Setting in Films by DreamWorks .......................................... 35 Figure 4 – Language Varieties in the Films – Broad Overview .................................... 35 Figure 5 – A Comparison to Lippi-Green’s Study ........................................................ 63 List of Tables Table 1 - Features of *SAE .......................................................................................... 14 Table 2 - Vowel Pronunciation of *SAE and *RP ........................................................ 15 Table 3 - Features of Southern American English in Film and Literature .................... 17 Table 4 - Features of Mock AA(V)E ............................................................................. 18 Table 5 - Features of stereotypical New York City speech ........................................... 20 Table 6 - Features of Stage Scottish .............................................................................. 23 Table 7 - Corpus selection ............................................................................................. 31 “A child is helpless in choosing what is to be engraved on his mind during the formative years. The awesome responsibility is assumed, for better or worse, by us adults.” – Walt Disney, founder of The Walt Disney Company (Smith 2001: n.p.) “And you could say to me, will a four or five year old really understand that? And I’d say to you, well, they’re smarter than we sometimes give them credit for.” – Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation (Moorhead 2016: n.p.) 1. Introduction Storytelling is an integral part of human community, “a basic human vehicle for gaining and imparting knowledge” (Griffin 2009, 258). According to Rosina Lippi- Green storytelling and thereby storytellers have a crucial role in a child’s life (cf. Lippi-Green 22012: 101). Storytelling, as it can be deduced from the word itself, consists of the story and the act of a speaker passing said story on to an audience. It is this act of telling that has changed dramatically with the rise of technology. A narrative can now, since the rise of mass media, be passed from one entity to a large audience including both sound and imagery. Giroux and Pollock argue that because children are constantly learning, more so than adults, they are “one of the primary targets of the corporate-mediated teaching apparatus that engages in public pedagogy” (Giroux and Pollock 22010: 6). “Public pedagogy”, in other words, is the active attempt to shape values as well as experiences (cf. Giroux and Pollock 22010: 6). As primary producer of successful children’s movies, the Walt Disney Company is thus also one of the most powerful storytellers in America. As a result, Disney and other companies like it have vast influence “on socialization and the development of identity – for both self and other” (Lippi-Green 22012: 126). Elizabeth Freeman therefore calls children’s films “portable professors” (Freeman 2005: 85). With entertainment systems not only at movie theatres but at home and even in cars, the reach of these new storytellers is virtually all-encompassing with potentially constant access. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the average American child spends about seven hours a day on entertainment media such as television, computers, or tablets (cf. “Media and Children” 2015: n.p.) – arguably a larger portion of time in the waking life of an American child than spent on any one other activity. It is often wrongly assumed that animated children’s films need no further investigation since they are made
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