AV materials

[Leighton C Peterson]

I've used the following readily available independent documentaries with great success in intro to ling anth:

SPEAKING IN TONGUES -  follows four diverse kids on a journey to become bilingual in Bay Area public school immersion classes (Mandarin/Spanish). Challenges students to rethink language ideologies, English Only, education policy, and the role of language in globalization.  Deftly handles race, class, and immigrant communities as well, challenging who can/does speak what language.  Students really like this.

TATOOED UNDER FIRE - character-driven portrait of Iraq-bound and returning US soldiers as they go under the tattoo needle: openly professing their pride, sharing their secrets and confessing their fears. I use it to engage students with semiotics and for stories/narratives, and they love it for many reasons.  The tattoos cross lines of gender, class, and political affinity revealing the personal narratives and semiotics of war.

I agree with previous posts on WE STILL LIVE HERE exploring Wampanoag linguistic revitalization, which is the only widely distributed film on US Native communities directly engaging language in an accessible way.  (I like this much better than the Canadian series "Finding Our Talk"; I have a review of the film in American Indian Quarterly).

A clip from the narrative film BIG FISH also works well with Bauman's tall tales/expressive lying.

lcp