AV tools for teaching intro to ling anth (esp. films, youtubes, etc)

[Dominika Baran]

Hi Alejandro,

I second the films mentioned already like "American Tongues", "Do You Speak American?" and "The Linguists." There is also a film about Hawai's Creole English called "Pidgin: The Voice of Hawai'i," which deals with a lot of topics like identity, language ideology, education, and can also be itself read as an interesting text - my students for example found the use of humor in it problematic. 

I have also used comedy clips, along the lines of Russell Peters, including Margaret Cho ('Margaret Cho talks about race'), Anjelah Johnson ('the nail salon'), and Daniel Tosh ('the white man'), to discuss issues of ethnicity, race, crossing, authenticity, mock language, and performance.  

Children's programming is great too, and undergraduates seem to like it a lot. Currently a lot of US children's programming is tries to incorporate a second language - usually Spanish, but there is also Chinese in 'Ni Hao, Kai Lan.' Spanish shows up in interesting ways for example in 'The Good Night Show' on Sprout channel and in 'The Dragon Tales' (and of course in Dora). 

Best,

Dominika

On Dec 12, 2011, at 10:20 AM, Alejandro Paz wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm teaching a second-year introduction to ling anth for the first time. The sister courses in socio-cultural here use a great deal of AV material, along with the lectures and tutorial discussions. I'd be very grateful for any recommendations for useful movies, youtube clips, and the like that others have found useful to teach ling anth topics. For example, I have found the comedian Russell Peters is useful for introducing students to ethnicity and race with language. There's a youtube clip from one of his shows on "cultural names" that works well.
> 
> I have a feeling that this has been asked before, and if so, feel free to point me to the archived discussion. If not, I'm happy to collate the answers that I get into a blog post or the like.
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> Alejandro
> 
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------- Alejandro Paz Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Humanities University of Toronto Scarborough Graduate Depts of Anthropology and Linguistics University of Toronto -----------------------------------------------------

Dominika M. Baran
Duke University 
dominika.baran at duke.edu