Ling Flicks

Wed Sep 15 21:01:25 UTC 2004

Here's the list I have, about half from CHILDES contributors and half from 
me and my students.  It's a mix of fiction and non-fiction, so pick what 
you like.  (The list started with a request to CHILDES members for fiction 
films.)  I don't have all the dates and directors/publishers, sorry. Enjoy!

·       The Human Language Series . 1995. Director: Gene Searchinger. NY: 
Ways of Knowing. Part 1. Discovering Human Language Part 2. Acquiring Human 
Language Part 3. The Human Language Evolves (general linguistics and 
linguistic theory)
·       In Search of the First Language. PBS-Nova series (historical 
linguistics)
·       American Tongues. 1987. By Andrew Kolker and Louis Alvarez. NY: 
Center for New American Media. (American dialects)
·       The Story of English, parts 1-9.  1986.  By Robert McCrum, William 
Cran, and Robert MacNeil.  PBS series, with accompanying book.  (traces 
spread and variation of English, including Black English and creoles.)
·       The Singer's Voice. 1993. By Joan Wall and Robert Caldwell. Dallas 
TX: Pst... Inc. (the vocal tract and articulatory phonetics)
·       A Baby's World. 1994. Discovery Communications, Inc. (learner 
language, language learning, bilingualism)
·       Language.  1988.  PBS series on "The Mind."  (a wonderful mix of 
animal systems, child language, Sign language, brain experiments, language 
diversity, and the Whorfian hypothesis.)
·       Baby Talk.  1991?  PBS-Nova series (Chomsky, Bruner, Gleason, 
Slobin, et al. on child language acquisition; in American or  British version.)
·       The Brain.  1991?  PBS-Nova series (normal and aphasic brain 
functioning)
·       How the Mind Works.  2000.  Into the Classroom series.  (Steven 
Pinker lecture at Harvard.)
·       Child Language.  1999.  Produced by ? Gilliam et al.  (CD on Case 
Studies in Communication Sciences & Disorders.)
·       The Secret of the Wild Child. 1994. Director: Linda Garmon. (NOVA 
documentary about Genie)
·       L'enfant Sauvage. 1970. Director: Francois Truffaut. subtitled. 
(wild child language deprivation)
·       Nell. 1994. Director: Michael Apted. (language deprivation in a child)
·       Signs of the Apes, Songs of the Whales. 1988. Director: Linda 
Harrar. (Nova documentary about animal language)
·       Can Chimps Talk?  1994.  (another Nova documentary, about Kanzi, a 
bonobo chimp)
·       Crosstalk. 1979?  (John Gumperz on miscommunication problems of new 
immigrants in Great Britain)
·       Dick Cavett Show. 1975?  (series of four shows, on Black English, 
usage norms, and political language, with Smitherman, Sledd, Safire, and Simon)
·       Exploring Language. 1990?  (Univ. of Pittsburgh series, 2 parts: 
Communities of Speech, and Men, Women, and Language)
·       He Said, She Said.  1991.  PBS.  (interview with Deborah Tannen)
·       Schoolhouse Rock.  1991.  PBS?  (complete cartoon series for kids 
on grammar)
·       Daughters of the Dust. 1992. Director: Julie Dash. (film with lots 
of Gullah, spoken on Dafauskie Island on the Georgia coast.)
·       Pygmalion. 1938. Director: Anthony Asquith. (film adaptation of G. 
B. Shaw play about phonetician's relationship with dialect modification)
·       My Fair Lady. 1964. Director: George Cukor. (musical version of 
Pygmalion)
·       Ball of Fire. 1941. Director: Howard Hawks. (a professor researches 
local slang terms)
·       Stargate. 1994. Director: Roland Emmerich. (historical linguistics, 
Ancient Egyptian?)
·       Time Machine.  2003.  Director:  ?  (new adaptation of H.G. Wells' 
novel, with futuristic English in the ruins of New York)
·       Grand Illusion. 1937. Director: Jean Renoir. (use of French, 
German, and English as a marker of social standing among WWI prisoners of war)
·       El Norte. 1983. Director: Gregory Nava. (English, Spanish, and Maya 
used by Guatemalan immigrants exhibit the sociolinguistic complexity of 
their predicament)
·       Children of a Lesser God. 1986. Director: Randa Haines. (ASL and 
lip reading)
·       The Gods Must be Crazy. 1981. Director: Jamie Uys. (language with 
clicks)
·       Singing in the Rain. 1952. Director: Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen. 
(dialect modification and phonetics)
·       The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez. 1982. Director: Robert M. Young. 
(languages in contact issue. It shows how the mistranslation of a word by 
an interpreter causes a man to be sent to jail.)
·       Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. 1985. Director: George Miller. 
(includes a creole spoken by children)
·       The Miracle Worker. 1962. Director: Arthur Penn. (Helen Keller's 
acquisition of sign language)
·       Robinson Crusoe on Mars. 1964. Director: Byron Haskin. (language 
teaching to an alien)
·       The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser ("Jeder fur sich und Gott gegen alle") 
1974. Director: Werner Herzog. (language deprivation)
·       Black Robe. 1991. Director: Bruce Beresford. (Algonquian language 
in the 17th or 18th century)
·       Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. 1984. Director: 
Hugh Hudson. (ape-man acquires language in record time)
·       Iceman. 1984. Director: Fred Schepisi. (linguistic decoding of 
Neanderthal language)
·       Blade Runner. 1982. Director: Ridley Scott. (evidence of a 
futuristic lingua franca)
·       Enemy Mine. 1985. Director: Wolfgang Petersen. (sci-fi film with 
alien language acquisition)
·       Star Trek:TNG "Darmok" episode 102. 1991. (alien language based 
upon metaphor and analogy)
·       Star  Wars: I-V. (alien language of Yoda and others)
·       Lord of the Rings: I-III. (Tolkien's artificial languages)
·       Quest for Fire. 1981. Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud. (early human 
language)
·       A Great Wall. 1986. Director: Peter Wang. (cross-cultural 
communication in China)
·       The Harder They Come. 1973. Director: Perry Henzell. ( lots of 
Jamaican creole)
·       A Clockwork Orange. 1971. Director: Stanley Kubrick. (lexical 
innovations)
·       Princess Caraboo. 1994. Director: Michael Austin. ("Polynesian" 
language in England)
·       Picture Bride. 1994. Director: Kayo Hatta. (dialogue mostly 
Hawaiian plantation pidgin. some discussion of lexical differences)
·       Stepping Razor Red X. 1992. Director: Nicholas Campbell. 
(documentary with Jamaican Creole)

We've also collected a number of short (10-20 minute) clips from "20/20," 
"Dateline," etc., on the Phonological Atlas (with Labov), linguistic 
profiling (with John Baugh), gendered language (with Tannen), effects of a 
hemispherectomy, etc.   Please reciprocate with additions and corrections 
of your own!

Beverly Olson Flanigan
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Ohio University
Athens, OH  45701
1-740-593-4568
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/

At 07:58 PM 9/14/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>Colleagues,
>
>An ex-student of mine has asked for a bibliography of good linguistic
>films. Neither LSA nor CAL seems to have such a list. Anybody know of
>one?
>
>Dennis
>--
>Dennis R. Preston
>University Distinguished Professor of Linguistics
>Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages
>A-740 Wells Hall
>Michigan State University
>East Lansing, MI 48824
>Phone: (517) 432-3099
>Fax: (517) 432-2736
>preston at msu.edu