Watching in Tongues: Multilingualism on American Television in the 21st Century

Watching in Tongues: Multilingualism on American Television in the 21st Century
Author: James G. Mitchell
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1648890083

This book explores ideas and issues related to second language (L2) speakers and L2 use as portrayed on American television. It examines many examples of television depictions of L2 speakers and L2 use collected in the first decades of the 21st century. The book is divided into four three-chapter sections. “Humor and Homicide” looks at two aspects of the inclusion of L2 speakers and L2 use on television: L2 use or speakers depicted to create humor in various ways, especially through miscommunication or misunderstanding, and L2 knowledge used to solve crimes in the detective/police procedural genre. The section describes the reasons behind these phenomena, how they work, and the messages they convey to viewers. “Language Learning” explores how both adult and child language acquisition is represented and misrepresented on American television, with analysis of realistic vs. non-realistic depictions. “Subtitles and Stereotypes” explores the ways in which L2 speakers are often negatively depicted on television, their portrayal based on stereotypes. This work specifically investigates the role that subtitles play in leading viewers to such conclusions, employing the idea of language subordination, a process that devalues non-standard language while validating the norms and beliefs of the dominant group. Also considered are ways in which stereotypes are sometimes used to undermine negative perspectives on L2 speakers. “Language Attitudes and Mediation” evaluates depictions of second languages used as tools of mediation in both historical and satirical terms as well as the feelings these portrayals engender in viewers. In short, this work asks questions that have not previously been posed about L2 use on television, and it provides answers that not only shed light on issues of the representation of language learning and language use, but also constitute a lens through which American society as a whole might be understood.

Language and Characterisation in Television Series

Language and Characterisation in Television Series
Author: Monika Bednarek
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2023-03-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027254664

This book explores how language is used to create characters in fictional television series. To do so, it draws on multiple case studies from the United States and Australia. Brought together in this book for the first time, these case studies constitute more than the sum of their parts. They highlight different aspects of televisual characterisation and showcase the use of different data, methods, and approaches in its analysis. Uniquely, the book takes a mixed-method approach and will thus not only appeal to corpus linguists but also researchers in sociolinguistics, stylistics, and pragmatics. All corpus linguistic techniques are clearly introduced and explained, and the book is thus accessible to both experienced researchers as well as novice researchers and students. It will be essential reading in linguistics, literature, stylistics, and media/television studies.

English as a Global Language

English as a Global Language
Author: David Crystal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2012-03-29
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1107611806

Written in a detailed and fascinating manner, this book is ideal for general readers interested in the English language.

Beyond the Mother Tongue

Beyond the Mother Tongue
Author: Yasemin Yildiz
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2012
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0823241300

Monolingualism-the idea that having just one language is the norm is only a recent invention, dating to late-eighteenth-century Europe. Yet it has become a dominant, if overlooked, structuring principle of modernity. According to this monolingual paradigm, individuals are imagined to be able to think and feel properly only in one language, while multiple languages are seen as a threat to the cohesion of individuals and communities, institutions and disciplines. As a result of this view, writing in anything but one's "mother tongue" has come to be seen as an aberration.

Western Japaneseness: Intercultural Translations of Japan in Western Media

Western Japaneseness: Intercultural Translations of Japan in Western Media
Author: Frank Jacob
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1648891543

Our images of non-Western cultures are often based on stereotypes that are replicated over the years. These stereotypes often appear in popular media and are responsible for a pre-set image of otherness. The present book investigates these processes and the media representation of otherness, especially as an artificial construct based on stereotypes and their repetition, in the case of Japan. 'Western Japaneseness' thereby illustrates how the Western image of Japan in popular media is rather a construct that, in a way, replicated itself, instead of a more serious encounter with a foreign and different cultural context. This book will be of great value to students and academics who hold interest in media studies, Japanese studies, and cultural studies. It will also appeal to a broader audience with interests in Japan more generally.

Analyzing Multimodality in Specialized Discourse Settings

Analyzing Multimodality in Specialized Discourse Settings
Author: Veronica Bonsignori
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2022-03-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1648893996

Contemporary society has witnessed radical changes in the field of communications in terms of how messages and meanings are disseminated. Digitalization and the Internet have signalled an exponential rise in the circulation of multimodal texts in which different semiotic resources are orchestrated together to construct meaning in all areas of social life, across languages and cultures, and in diverse specialized discourse domains. This has foregrounded the need to examine the semiotic functions, affordances, and issues at stake in a range of multimodal discourse forms, while simultaneously highlighting the importance of critical multimodal literacy in audiences and learners. This volume develops and extends pioneering research on the intersection between multimodality and specialized discourse. Eight newly commissioned studies offer innovative perspectives on multimodal research methodologies and applications in a variety of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) contexts for practitioners and scholars alike. The volume offers a glimpse at future directions in this dynamic and ever-evolving area of investigation focusing on the synergy between verbal and non-verbal modes of communication in the digital age. Each chapter explores an original area of application: academic, economic, scientific, marketing, legal, medical, political, and tourism. The contributors approach multimodality from a range of theoretical and methodological viewpoints including synchronic and diachronic corpus-based and corpus-aided studies, critical discourse analysis, and systemic functional linguistics. Analytical tools such as multimodal (critical) discourse analysis, multimodal transcription, and multimodal annotation software capable of representing the interplay of different semiotic modes - speech, intonation, direction of gaze, facial expressions, gesturing, and spatial positioning of interlocutors - are employed. The diversity of research strands contained in the volume illustrates just some of the vast areas of multimodal knowledge dissemination that are still unmapped. As a cornerstone of communication, multimodality needs exploring in all its facets. These contributions aim to further that cause.

Multilingualism

Multilingualism
Author: John C. Maher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2017
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198724993

John C. Maher explains why societies everywhere have become more multilingual, despite the disappearance of hundreds of the world languages. He considers our notion of language as national or cultural identities, and discusses why nations cluster and survive around particular languages even as some territories pursue autonomy or nationhood.

Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries

Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries
Author: Aneta Pavlenko
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1847690874

In the past two decades, post-Soviet countries have emerged as a contested linguistic space, where disagreements over language and education policies have led to demonstrations, military conflicts and even secession. This collection offers an up-to-date comparative analysis of language and education policies and practices in post-Soviet countries.

The Multilingual Apple

The Multilingual Apple
Author: Ofelia García
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2002
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9783110172812

This book will be of special interest to the general reader concerned with the issue of language in the United States, as well as the language specialist and sociolinguist. It has been written to inform those wishing to learn more about the role that languages other than English have had, and continue to have, in the life of the most important United States city, New York. At the same time this volume makes an important contribution to the scholarly literature on urban multilingualism and the sociology of language. The book contains chapters on languages of ethnolinguistic groups who arrived early in New York and which have been somewhat silenced (Irish, German, Yiddish), the languages of groups who made early contributions and continue to be heard in the city (Italian, Greek , Spanish, Hebrew), and languages which are acquiring an important voice in the city today (Chinese, Indian languages, English creoles, Haitian Creole).

Language and Development in Africa

Language and Development in Africa
Author: Ekkehard Wolff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2016-05-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107088550

This volume explores the central role of language across all aspects of public and private life in Africa.