Linguistic Anthropology DVDs?

[Barbara Johnstone]

Do You Speak American? is a recent (first broadcast in 2006) film available
on DVD, with an extensive website that includes some good classroom
materials.  It's a sort of sequel to the Story of English series.  It's not
as good as American Tongues, in my opinion, but some parts are very good.
It's about the US (mainly, with a few references to Canada) but not
exclusively about English.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/

Barbara

_________________
Barbara Johnstone
Professor of Rhetoric and Linguistics
Editor, LANGUAGE IN SOCIETY
Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890 USA

bj4 at andrew.cmu.edu
412.268.6447 office phone/voicemail, 412.268.7989 fax
http://english.cmu.edu/people/faculty/homepages/johnstone/default.html
__________________________


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-linganth at ats.rochester.edu
[mailto:owner-linganth at ats.rochester.edu] On Behalf Of Alexander King
Sent: Saturday, May 13, 2006 12:52 PM
To: enkerli at gmail.com; linganth at cc.rochester.edu
Subject: Re: [Linganth] Linguistic Anthropology DVDs?

I'm surprised that TTU doesn't have The Story of English series. It 
is old (made late 1980s?), but very well done with great footage from 
around the world. I have used the 4th volume (VHS cassettes) in class 
(don't remember the name exactly, something like "new Englishes- 
pidgins and creoles", which has great examples from Africa (Kriol), 
PNG (Tok Pisin), and Jamaica (Creole). Don't know if it's on DVD.

For feature films, I think Memento provides a fascinating 
presentation on the American (Anglophone?) fallacy of "facts" as 
autonomous, independent "things" which one could establish and the 
engrave in stone (or tatoo on one's body). I've never tried using it 
in class, however. Could be risky. The only way this would work would 
be to view the entire film.

-Alex

At 12:01 pm -0400 13/5/06, Alexandre Enkerli wrote:
>Colleagues,
>
>Somewhat surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be a list of relevant 
>DVDs in the linganth archives. People have talked about movie 
>moments, which can be great for regular classroom use, but how about 
>more extensive movies dealing specifically with linguistic topics?
>An interesting, though old, language movie is /American Tongues/. It 
>doesn't seem to be out on DVD but it's a real classic. Some people 
>talk about Melyn Bragg's /Adventure of English/ which sounds 
>well-made and entertaining. But what about movies about linguistic 
>diversity worldwide? Or some other language topics?
>Texas Tech has a list of movies on languages and linguistics which 
>does include American Tongues and Adventure of English:
>http://library.ttu.edu/ul/subjects/humanities/english/language_videos.php
>This list seems to have interesting items but it'd be useful to have 
>colleagues talk about their experiences showing some of these.
>
>Thanks in advance for your input!
>
>Alexandre Enkerli, lecturer
>Department of Anthropology
>Tufts University


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