Linguistically Significant Films

Tue May 24 19:44:56 UTC 2005

Please note that the author's name is Suzette HADEN Elgin.

William O. Beeman
Professor, Anthropology; and Theatre, Speech and Dance
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Tel: (401) 863-3251
Academic Papers and Vita: http://www.williambeeman.com
Blog and current Op-ed pieces--Culture and International Affairs http://www.wbeeman.com
(2004-2005 Visiting Professor, Cultural and Social Anthropology,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305)

My latest book: The "Great Satan" vs. The "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other. (Praeger/Greenwood).
More information at: http://www.greenwood.com/books/BookDetail.asp?sku=C8214

________________________________

From: owner-lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu on behalf of Aurolyn Luykx
Sent: Tue 5/24/2005 10:40 AM
To: lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Subject: Re: Linguistically Significant Films

Hi Hal,
I wondered if you might like to make a list of
linguistically significant fiction also! A favorite of
mine is linguist/science fiction author Suzette Haydn
Elgin's "Native Tongue" (and its sequel "The Judas
Rose").
Aurolyn

--- "Harold F. Schiffman"
<haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:

> Forwarded from: LINGUIST List 16.1639
>
>
> Mon May 23 2005
>
> Sum: Linguistically Significant Films
>
> Editor for this issue: Maria Moreno-Rollins
> <marialinguistlist.org>
>
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Message 1: Linguistically Significant Films
> Date: 17-May-2005
> From: Michael Barrie <mike.barrieutoronto.ca>
> Subject: Linguistically Significant Films
>
>
> I have received such a large number of replies to my
> query on
> linguistically significant films that I have
> categorized them as shown
> below. Thank-you to all who replied. I have also
> incorporated the results
> of the earlier list (
>
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/linguist/issues/7/7-1708.html
> ) so as to create
> one large master list. If a film fits into more than
> one category, it is
> listed in all relevant categories. Many films were
> mentioned merely
> because of the language the film is in. For example,
> Atanarjuat was
> offered because the enitre film is in Inuktitut.
> Clearly, I cannot list
> every film that happens to be in some language or
> other, but films in
> Inuktitut are few and far between, so I created a
> category ''Films in
> uncommonly screened languages''. Some people gave
> lots of information
> about the film in question...others a very brief
> mention. The information
> compiled below reflects this. If anyone wants more
> information on a
> particular film, I suggest going to
> http://www.imdb.com to find out more.
> Finally, I have decided to edit out extremely
> little. Thus a film's
> inclusion on this list may seem dubious to some;
> however, I leave that for
> the reader to decide.
>
> 0. Other sources
>
> Sum: Films and Documentaries on Endangered Languages
> http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1562.html
>
> Website for a course on Language and Popular Culture
> (contains link to
> film resources)
>
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/popcult/syllabus.html
>
> 1. Fiction
>
> 1.1 Interesting characters/careers related to
> linguistics
>
> Chan is Missing (directed by Wayne Wang), 1982 has a
> sociolinguist
> character based loosely on Deborah Tannen.
>
> There's a ''star Trek TNG episode with a deaf
> character who uses telepathy
> with 3 different people who ''interpret'' for him.
> When they all die, Data
> learns ASL in record time.
>
> C.J.Cherryh's ''Foreigner'' series, the fate of two
> species depends on a
> translator/diplomat. Bilingualism and a solid grasp
> of grammar play an
> important role in this series.
>
> Nell 1994 Michael Apted. A young girl has grown up
> in isolation with her
> mother, who is speechless as the result of a stroke.
> After the death of
> the
> mother, she is forced to encounter the outside
> world, where a cold-hearted
> psyhologist is more interested in studying the
> language-deprived Nell than
> in helping her. Starring Jodie Foster.
>
> Clear & Present Danger (1994) - forensic linguistics
>
> The Fugitive (1993) - forensic linguistics & speech
> recognition
>
> Ball of Fire 1941 Howard Hawks. A lexicographer
> (Gary Cooper) realising
> that the slang section of his dictionary is outdated
> visits a nightclub in
> order to update it. It turns out that the nightclub
> singer is engaged to a
> gangster on the run from the police.
>
> The exorcist 1973 William Friedkin. This horror
> classic features linguists
> from the Georgetown University linguistics
> department decoding a message
> from the devil by playing a tape backwards. In
> reverse, the devil
> apparently speaks standard American English.
>
> Barwy ochronne (Camouflage) 1977 Krzysztof Zanussi.
> A Polish film in which
> the action revolves around a linguistics summer
> school.
>
> Iceman 1984 Fred Schepisi. A neandertal man is found
> frozen into ice, is
> defrosted, and found to be alive and kicking. His
> guttural growls are
> deciphered by an ''MIT linguist'', aided by a
> ''Pitch-Stress Meter''.
>
> 1.2 Interesting/unlikely/bizarre linguistic
> phenomena
>
> There's a ''star Trek TNG episode with a deaf
> character who uses telepathy
> with 3 different people who ''interpret'' for him.
> When they all die, Data
> learns ASL in record time.
>
> ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'',has the concept
> of the Babelfish,
> which goes in your ear and ''translates'' - book, TV
> series, radio series,
> and film.
>
> Lost in Translation (2004) - linguistic contact
>
> _Kukushka_ (_The Cuckoo_) (2002), directed by
> Aleksandr Rogozhkin. It's
> about three people, a Finn, a Saami, & a Russian,
> thrown together during
> WWII with no lingua franca among them
>
> Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - wordplay
> abounds and is sometimes
> anactual game on screen
>
> Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. 1999.
> Director/Writer: Jim Jarmusch.
> (French/English miscommunication)
>
> ''Nirgendwo in Afrika'' (Nowhere in Africa). It has
> nice illustrations of
> bilingualism/multilingualism, code-switching, and
> child L2 acquisition.
>
> A movie with Alan Arkin called Slums of Beverly
> Hills has a made-up
> language, game language, used by the two female
> leads.
>
> My Cousin Vinny in intro classes. Working class NY
> ''lawyer'' [Joe Pesci]
> defends his road tripping cousin in a court of law
> in Georgia. Famous for
> the expression ''the two yoots (youths)''. Dialects
> in contact, you could
> call it.
>
> Sneakers 1992 Phil Alden Robinson. The film is about
> cryptography, but
> also
> features an intriguing use of speaker
> identification. Cast includes Robert
> Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd and River
> Phoenix.
>
> ===(taken from posting on Language Endagerment)
> Endangered Languages, language endangerment or
> revitalization. I am aware
> of two such productions: ''Vanishing Voices'' on
> Chulym (Turkic) by
> American PBS and ''De lste lden fan in taal'' (''The
> last sounds of a
> language'') by Frisian Television, also on Siberian
> lgs, I believe.
> ===(
> http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1441.html )
>
> El Norte. 1983. director: Gregory Nava.
> (English, Spanish, and Maya used by Guatemalan
> immigrants exhibit the
> sociolinguistic complexity of their predicament)
>
> 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.)
>
> Princess Caraboo. 1994. director: Michael Austin.
> (language creation)
>
> Nell (1994) - woman grows up with impoverished
> language and is then found
> and taught
>
> Birth of a Nation (1982; 1997) - lip reading
>
> Look who's Talking (1989) - very early language
> acquisition
>
> Name of the Rose (2003) - code switching
>
> Love Actually (2003) - Advanced L2 acquisition in 1
> week
>
> Born to Be Wild 1995 John Gray. One of the two main
> characters is a
> gorilla
> named Katie who is being taught sign language.
>
> 2001 (1968) - HAL understands Natural Language
>
> The Private life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) - parasol
> code language
>
> Stargate. 1994. director: Roland
> Emmerich.(historical linguistics, Ancient
> Egyptian?)
>
> Pygmalion/My Fair Lady 1937 /38/64 various. George
> Bernhard Shaw's
> Pygmalion is familiar to most people.
>
> The phonetician Henry Higgins (played by Leslie
> Howard in the 1938
> version), one of the two main characters, is
> modelled on real-life
> linguist
> Henry Sweet. The Dutch film version came in 1937,
> followed by an English
> one the year after. The musical version ''My Fair
> Lady'' was filmed in
> 1964
> with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza.
>
> The Miracle Worker 1962 Arthur Penn. Depicts Helen
> Keller's acquisition of
> tactile sign language.
>
> L'enfant Sauvage (The Wild Child) 1969 Francois
> Truffaut. The true story
> about Victor, the language-deprived child found in
> south-western France in
> the late 18th century.
>
> Jeder fr sich und Gott gegen alle (The Enigma of
> Kaspar Hauser) 1974
> Werner Herzog. Based on the true story of the boy
> found in Nuremberg in
> the
> early 19th century. Kaspar Hauser is known as one of
> the few feral
> children
> who actually did learn to speak.
>
> Grand Illusion. 1937. director: Jean Renoir.
> (use of French, German, and English as a marker of
> social standing among
> WWI prisoners of war)
>
> The Jennie Project 2001 Gary Nadeau. Two
> anthropologists adopt a chimp,
> raise it with their own children, and teach it
> American Sign Language.
>
> Windtalkers 2002 John Woo. A dramatised version of
> the actual use of
> Navaho
> as a secret radio code during
>
> World War II Pacific operations. Starring Nicholas
> Cage.
>
> Enemy Mine. 1985. director: Wolfgang Petersen.
> (sci-fi film with alien language acquisition)
>
> Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. 1985. director: George
> Miller.
> (includes a creole spoken by children)
>
> Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.
> 1984.
> director: Hugh Hudson. (ape-man acquires language in
> record time)
>
> Bladerunner. 1982. director: Ridley Scott.
> (evidence of a futuristic linguafranca)
>
> Star Trek:TNG ''Darmok'' episode 102. 1991.
> (alien language based upon metaphor and analogy)
>
> Quest for Fire. 1981. director: Jean-Jacques Annaud.
> (early human language)
>
> A Great Wall. 1986. director: Peter Wang.
> (cross-cultural communication in China)
>
> A Clockwork Orange. 1971. director: Stanley Kubrick.
> (language change)
>
> 1.3 Films in Uncommonly screened languages or many
> languages
>
> ''Beyond Silence'', a German film that contains DGS
> (German Sign Language)
>
> Atanarjuat - Film in Inuktitut about the lives of
> the Inuit before
> European
> contact.
>
> Lord of the Rings - it is said that Tolkien created
> Middle Earth just to
> explore and create new languages
>
> Land of the Lost TV series - learning the fictional
> Paku language
>
> Night on Earth. 1991. Director/Writer: Jim Jarmusch.
> (episodes in English,
> German Pidgin English, French, Italian, and Finnish)
>
> Kill Bill. Vol 1/2. 2003/2004. Director: Quentin
> Tarantino. (The Bride
> speaks English, Japanese, and Chinese [Mandarin and
> a bit of Cantonese -
> The use of Cantonese in the film is to parody the
> low-budget kung-fu films
> from Hong Kong])
>
> ''Nu Shu: A Hidden Langauge of Women in China''. It
> is about a secret
> writing system used only by women in the Hunan
> province. Here is a link to
> a distributor if you want to add that info. to your
> list. The distributor
> has three other films that they categorize under
> ''language/linguistics''
> if you do a search.
>
> I haven't seen any of them and so can't say whether
> or not they are mainly
> about language or not.
> http://www.wmm.com/catalog/pages/c473.htm
>
> Time of the Gypsies Dom za vesanje (1988) Directed
> by Emir Kusturica.
> Bosnia This may be the only movie ever to be shown
> with subtitles in every
> country it ever played in. A bit melodramatic, but I
> would be hard pressed
> to find another movie where all the characters spoke
> Romani.
> http://imdb.com/title/tt0097223
>
> The Missing (2003) (in which characters speak a
> dialect of Apache)
>
http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/12/16/native.speakers.ap/
>
> The Interpreter features a made-up African language
> based on Shone and
> Swahili, created by an African linguist in London.
>
> Daughters of the Dust. 1992. director: Julie Dash.
> (film with lots of
> Gullah, spoken on Dafauskie Island on the Georgia
> coast.)
>
> The Last of the Mohicans (1992) - now extinct
> [Iroquoian] language spoken
>
> The Passion of Christ (2004) - dead languages
>
> Trainspotting - endangered language and rude words
>
> 4 weddings & a funeral (1994) - sign language
>
> Dances with Wolves (with Kevin Kostner) - film about
> a European explorer
> who learns Dakota.
>
> 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)
>
> Black Robe. 1991. director: Bruce Beresford.
> (Algonquian language in the
> 17th or 18th century)
>
> The Harder they Come. 1973. director: Perry Henzell.
> (lots of Jamaican
> creole)
>
> Picture Bride. 1994. director: Kayo Hatta.
> (dialogue mostly Hawaiian plantation pidgin. some
> discussion of
> lexical differences)
>
> 1.4 Accents and Idiolectal phenomena
>
> Lord of the Rings trilogy for overall language
> design - but particularly
> for the Gollum character's
>
> language variety - hobbitses etc.
>
> Renee Zellweger in the Bridget Jones films
>
> Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors
>
> Kate Winslet in Holy Smoke (brilliant Australian
> accent)
>
> Annette Bening in Being Julia (stunning 30's RP
> accent).
>
> Mary Poppins (1964) - bad cockney
>
> 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)
>
> Singing in the Rain. 1952. director: Gene Kelly,
> Stanley Donen.
> (dialect modification and phonetics)
>
> Riff Raff (1990) directed by Ken Loach. UK This film
> about a group of
> construction workers features working class
> dialects. What was significant
> about the film is that it had English language
> subtitles for English
> speaking audiences.
> http://imdb.com/title/tt0100491/.
>
> Six Degrees of Separation (1993) directed by Fred
> Schepisis. US A
> retelling
> of Pygmalion in a contemporary NYC setting. Worth
> noticing for the
> foregrounding of class and language.
> http://imdb.com/title/tt0108149
>
> Road Scholar (1993) directed by Roger Weisberg. US
> Poet and NPR
> commentator
> takes a road trip across the US shortly after
> getting his driver's license
> after being a pedestrian for twenty years. Language
> and region are
> foregrounded. Also features some American language
> and culture.
> http://imdb.com/title/tt0107974
>
> My Cousin Vinnie turns on a linguistic phenomenon.
> In New York speech, a
> sarcastic statement can be made in a flat intonation
> ''yeah, I'm the bank
> robber'' (read: ''yeah, I'm the bank robber, like
> the pope is Hindu'') but
> is interpreted unsarcastically, in this movie (by
> non-New Yorkers, perhaps
> unfamiliar with this style) as a confession. It's a
> great example of
> regional differences (or simply how intonation can
> be ambiguous, and lead
> to opposite claims, like the sentence ''I can't
> recommend her highly
> enough'' (from Fromkin Rodman &Hyams).
>
> ''THE APOSTLE'' starring Charles Duvall: Samples of
> revival preaching
> register in deep South (Texas, Louisiana) as well as
> very authentic
> samples
> of deep South SWVE and AAVE. Also, ''Bullsworth'' a
> White politician
> trying to act and ''sound'' Black an attempt to
> curry Black votes.
>
> Code 46, with Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. All
> the characters speak in
> this language that is mostly English but freely
> code-switches with Spanish
> (primarily), French, Arabic and Chinese.
>
> 'Black and White', a 'based on a true story'
> Australian flim featuring a
> storyline where the defence argues that a
> 'confession' presented to the
> court in Standard Autralian English shouldn't be
> admitted as it was highly
> unlikely that this was an accurate representaion of
> what the Aborignial
> defendant could have produced. It even features the
> linguist Strehlow (big
> name in early Australian linguistics, and
> anthropology) as an expert
> witness. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299547/
>
> South Park, The Movie (1997) - Canadian diphthong
> (monopthongised);
> sociolinguistics of taboo words
>
> A Thousand Clowns 1965 Fred Coe. Includes a dialect
> identification
> Wunderkind (''Upper East Side, but you spent a
> couple of years in
> Chicago'').
>
> Conceiving Ada 1997 Lynn Hershman-Leeson. A computer
> genius manages to
> communicate with the dead, and reaches Ada Lovelace,
> a forerunner of sorts
> for computational linguistics.
>
> 1.5 Other (humour, etc)
>
> Monty Python: Life of Brian. John Cleese as Roman
> Officer explains Latin
> grammar.
>
> Carry on X-ing (varied)- double entendre
>
> Trainspotting - endangered language and rude words
>
> Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) - no speech, all song
>
> Star Trek films (1993;1996, etc) - linguist (Mark
> Okrand) hired to create
> Klingon
>
> Being John Malkovich (1999) - one word language
>
> South Park, The Movie (1997) - Canadian diphthong
> (monopthongised);
> sociolinguistics of taboo words
>
> The Private life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) - parasol
> code language
>
> Robinson Crusoe on Mars. 1964. director: Byron
> Haskin.(language teaching
> to
> an alien)
>
> The Statue 1971 Rodney Amateau. British linguist
> wins the Nobel prize for
> having invented a universal
>
> language (how come there is no such prize in real
> life?). His wife is
> commisioned to sculpt a statue of him, but she makes
> it more endowed than
> her linguist husband actually is.
>
> Het Dak van de Walvis (On Top of the Whale) 1982
> Raoul Ruiz. Parody of
> much
> of western academia. A group of field linguists set
> out to study an exotic
> language which consists only of one single word,
> which therefore means
> everything.
>
> Sherman's March 1986 Ross McElwee. Features the
> hippie linguist Winnie,
> from whose mouth we have the following memorable
> quote: ''I've told you
> that for a very long time, I've believed that the
> only important things in
> life are linguistics and sex. So it's easy to see
> how one would get
> involved with a linguistics professor''.
>
> Stargate 1994 Roland Emmerich. American soldiers
> (led by Kurt Russell) and
> an Egyptologist are transported to a far-away planet
> from where they have
> difficulties getting home. Fortunately, a thorough
> knowledge of
> hieroglyphics proves useful.
>
> 1.6 Novels
>
> _Babel 17_, Sameul Delaney An alien race plans a
> takeover of humanity via
> corrupting language. Linguist hero must discover the
> plot. (Delaney's
> _Neveryona_ books also have some interesting stuff
> on how language,
> metaphor and symbolism might develop in early
> civilisation.)
>
> _The Embedding_, Ian Watson Linguist hero is
> exploring language embedding
> processes. Aliens make contact with Earth,
> communicate using the
> principles
> of Universal Grammar and propose trade of
> information,involving finding
> unusual thought-language processes. (Actually a
> highly ironic and bleak
> tale.)
>
> _Snowcrash_, Neal Stephenson A language-is-a-virus
> theme, set in a
> cyberpunk future where computer viruses invade the
> mind.
>
> _The Dispossessed_, Ursula Le Guin Set in twin
> worlds with contrasting
> societies, one a carefully balanced, austere
> egalitarian collective, the
> other a rigid, extravagant, hierarchical oligarchy,
> with languages
> reflecting/reflected by the social organisation. (Le
> Guin's _Earthsea_
> books are also interesting, using the
> language-is-power theme for the
> world's language of magic, i.e.
> knowingsomething's/someone's true name
> gives one power over it/them.)
>
> _Feersum Endjinn_, Iain M. Banks Partly first-person
> narrative written in
> `fonetik' style, supposedly portraying the
> character's particular mode of
> thought, a sort of see-things-as-they-are idea.
>
> _Out of the Silent Planet_, C.S. Lewis The
> inhabitants of Mars cannot
> conceive of unjust or immoral acts, and our hero has
> to explain these
> human
> concepts to them in their own language which lacks
> terms for them.
>
> _Startide Rising_, David Brin (And probably other
> novels set in the same
> universe: the Uplift series). A Universe with many
> races and languages
> (including a dozen or so artificial lingue franche)
> where humans have made
> dolphins intelligent, with their own language. They
> speak in Haiku.
>
> _The Man-Kzin Wars_ series, Larry Niven Warrior race
> of anthropomorphic
> tigers speaks language reflecting their ethos ( la
> Klingon).
>
> _Genetic Soldier_, George Turner A shipload of
> scientists from the
> near-future returns, due to relativity, to a more
> distant-future
> post-holocaust Earth where English has evolved -
> linguist co-hero bridges
> the gap.
>
> 1984, George Orwell - Government attempts to control
> thought by
> manipulating language. By making language simpler,
> the idea is that people
> will be less creative.
>
> Atlantis: the lost empire 2001 Gary Trousdale & Kirk
> Wise. Disney
> animation
> in which a decipherer of ancient languages is
> crucial to the finding of
> the
> lost continent. Michael J. Fox does the linguist's
> voice.
>
> Conceiving Ada 1997 Lynn Hershman-Leeson. A computer
> genius manages to
> communicate with the dead, and reaches Ada Lovelace,
> a forerunner of sorts
> for computational linguistics.
>
> 2. Documentaries
>
> 2.1 Films on Language in general
>
> Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media
> 1992 Mark Achbar & Peter
> Wintonick. Yes, this documentary about the man
> himself actually was shown
> at the cinemas. As the title suggests, though, it is
> more concerned with
> Chomsky's political side than with linguistics. Ten
> years later followed
> Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times,
> directed by John Junkerman.
>
> 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)
>
> The Singer's Voice. 1993. By Joan Wall and Robert
> Caldwell.
> Dallas TX: Pst... Inc.
>
> The Secret of the Wild Child. 1994. director: Linda
> Garmon.
> (NOVA documentary about Genie)
>
> Signs of the Apes, Songs of the Whales. 1988.
> director: Linda
> Harrar. (Nova documentary about animal language)
>
> 2.2 Films on English
>
> PBS production of ''The Story of English''
>
> American Tongues. 1987.
> By Andrew Kolker and Louis Alvarez. NY: Center for
> New American
> Media.
>
> 2.3 Films on other languages
>
> Stepping Razor Red X. 1992. director: Nicholas
> Campbell.
> (documentary with Jamaican Creole)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

 "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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