[Linganth] "other"/"authentic" languages in film

[Patrick, Peter L]

Paul, Hal,
thanks for suggestions for thinking about this. From another angle
I approach this in my course on African Diaspora Englishes, for both
AAVE and British AfroCaribbean English (BrACE), by looking at issues of
Ethnicity & Authenticity, Identity & Racism, in vernacular speaking
across
racial boundaries by white and other speakers.

We look at Hewitt 1986 on white teens' use of Creole in London, and
Rampton
1995 on more general crossing in a Home Counties school (which includes
approximation of Punjabi, Creole and Stylised Asian English);

Sweetland 2002, Cutler 1999 and Jacobs-Huey 1997, on white production
and
black perception of AAVE by white (VAAC, but non-ASD, in John Baugh's
terms) speakers;
and Ronkin & Karn 1999, on white mis- (or should it be, dis-
?)appropriation of
AAVE norms for racist discourse online, in the wake of the Ebonics
storm, among others.

I haven't added to this list lately (Sweetland 2002, the latest, is the
published version of
a paper Julie did for me as an undergrad), and would be happy to get
other suggestions for it.
(In the past I have also used Mary Bucholtz's work, and Renee Blake's
Stanford PhD study of
white and black Barbadian Creole speakers.)
	Films which raise these issues include White Man's Burden, Eight
Mile, Barbershop
and the Warren Beatty film I can't remember just now - Bulworth? - where
he plays
a Senate candidate having a cultural breakdown and ends up doing some
very funny
bad (meaning 'bad', not 'good'!) rapping. Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor,
Chris Rock
and other African American comedians, all construct white speech in
comedy routines.
Again, suggestions welcomed...

	-peter p-

Peter L Patrick
Dept of Language and Linguistics
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK

E:  patrickp at essex.ac.uk
Ph:  +44 (0) 1206 87.2088
Web: privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-linganth at ats.rochester.edu
> [mailto:owner-linganth at ats.rochester.edu] On Behalf Of Harold
> F. Schiffman
> Sent: 20 October 2004 21:45
> To: Paul B. Garrett
> Cc: linganth at cc.rochester.edu
> Subject: Re: [Linganth] "other"/"authentic" languages in film
>
>
> Paul,
>
> I have a page on this issue on my course website "Language
> and Popular culture" that might give him some ideas:
>
> http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/popcult/handouts/authentic.html
> I'm dealing in this course with use of language (foreign,
> non-standard,
> etc.) in the media; I also have some images, and some links
> to film clips. I know that Dances with Wolves, e.g., though
> the use of Lakota  appears to be "authentic", is a case where
> my brother (who has worked with the
> Lakota) tells me that they were very disappointed when DWW
> came out, and found that their language samples were
> translated into English into inappropriate ways...
>
> Hal Schiffman
>
> On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Paul B. Garrett wrote:
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > In my seminar on Language Contact, I have a student from a
> > Communications & Theater/Mass Media background who is interested in
> > examining the use of "other" and "authentic" languages in film.
> > "Dances with Wolves," "Schindler's List," and "The Passion of the
> > Christ" would be some recent examples; he'd also be interested in
> > cases where authenticity is not exactly the issue, e.g. the use of
> > Klingon in Star Trek movies, Esperanto in "Incubus," etc.
> (Yes, he's
> > well aware that "authenticity" is a highly fraught issue, and that
> > some of these films are way off the mark in any case.)
> >
> > To my mind, one authority on this sort of thing is Harald
> Haarman; and
> > I've pointed him in a few other directions to encourage him to
> > problematize the whole matter and put it into broader perspective,
> > e.g. Jane Hill on Mock Spanish, Basso on Western Apache
> imitations of
> > the Whiteman, and Hall on phone-sex workers.  But I have a nagging
> > feeling that there are some fairly obvious things that I'm not
> > thinking of.  Can anyone else offer suggestions?  (Post either
> > privately to me or to the list, as you see fit.)
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Paul
> >
> >
> >
>