SCHWEIZER ANGLISTISCHE ARBEITEN SWISS STUDIES IN ENGLISH

Lukas Bleichenbacher

Multilingualism in the Movies

Hollywood Characters and Their Language Choices

Schweizer Anglistische Arbeiten Swiss Studies in English

Begrndet von Bernhard Fehr Herausgegeben von Andreas Fischer (Zrich), Martin Heusser (Zrich), Jrg R. Schwyter (Lausanne), Werner Senn (Bern)

Band 135

Lukas Bleichenbacher

Multilingualism in the Movies

Hollywood Characters and Their Language Choices

Cover illustration: Lukas Bleichenbacher, Collage made from Pieter Brueghels The Tower of Babel and a photographic film Cover design: Martin Heusser, Zrich

This thesis was accepted as a doctoral dissertation by the Faculty of Arts of the University of Zurich in the summer semester 2007 on the recommendation of Prof. Dr. Andreas Fischer and Prof. Dr. Richard J. Watts. Published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Bibliographical information of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; for detailed bibliographical data please contact http://dnb.d-nb.de

2008 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH & Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 D-72070 Tbingen All rights, including the rights of publication, distribution and sales, as well as the right to translate, are reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means graphic, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, taping, or information and retrieval systems without written permission of the publisher. Internet: http://www.francke.de E-Mail: info@francke.de Printed and bound by Hubert & Co., Gttingen Printed in Germany ISSN 0080-7214 ISBN 978-3-7720-8270-2

To my parents

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people: First, the teachers who, over the years, made a few of the worlds languages less foreign to me, especially Georges Fausch, Ivo Stolz, and Viktor Yurovsky. My supervisor Andreas Fischer, for his helpful advice, and Richard J. Watts (University of Berne), for acting as a Second Reader of this work. Sarah Chevalier, for carefully reading earlier drafts of this book, and for many fascinating linguistic discussions. A number of expert speakers of specific languages, for their invaluable help with my transcriptions: Paris De Belder (Spanish), Lena Mader (Serbian), Dorota Smyk-Bhattacharjee (Polish), Julia Nasiakov (Czech), and especially Anna Bernold (Russian). Many more colleagues and friends who offered critical advice during different stages of this work, including Magorata Haadewicz-Grzelak, Martin Heusser, Sebastian Hoffmann, Arlette Huguenin Dumittan, Marta Inigo, Anja Janoschka, Ursina Kellerhals, Hans Martin Lehmann, Georges Ldi, Martin Mhlheim, Adrian Pabl, Thomas Schalow, and Gudrun Ziegler. The Swiss National Science Foundation for their generous financial support of this publication. My family, and especially my wife Amlia, for her patience in explaining to me some of the movies.

Contents

Introduction Plan of the book Multilingualism in the real world 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Societal and individual multilingualism Language variation and language contact Individual multilingualism 2.3 Language choice The communicative situation Code-switching Accommodation and language mode Multilingual discourse as a political strategy 2.4 Linguicism versus linguistic courtesy Linguicism Mock Spanish and linguistic racism Linguistic courtesy Multilingualism in fiction 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Formal aspects Contexts of literary production From elimination to presence: Mares taxonomy 3.3 Functional aspects Realism Social criticism Humor 3.4 Characterization and stereotyping Contrast Stereotyping 3.5 Linguicism in the movies The semiotic processes of linguistic differentiation Iconization Fractal recursivity Erasure

1 3 7 7 7 7 9 11 11 13 14 16 17 17 18 19 21 21 22 22 23 26 26 27 29 30 30 31 33 33 35 36 37

X 4 The Language Contact Movie Corpus 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Linguistic criteria Migration Tourism Crime and terrorism International conflicts 4.3 Generic criteria 4.4 Economic criteria 4.5 Chronological criteria 4.6 The replacement and presence sub-corpora Replacement strategies 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Elimination and signalization 5.3 Evocation Accents and code-switching Other forms of evocation 5.4 Partial presence Orders and background utterances Prayers and songs Linguistic landscape Unrealistic code-switching 5.5 Individual multilingualism 5.6 Conclusions Characterization 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Coding procedure Selecting the characters Sex and age Nationality/ethnicity and L1 Linguistic repertoire Occupation Narrative importance Narrative evaluation 6.3 Results Sex, L1, and linguistic repertoire Age, L1, and linguistic repertoire Occupation, L1, and linguistic repertoire

Contents

39 39 40 44 45 46 47 48 49 51 52 55 55 57 59 60 66 70 70 72 73 78 83 90 93 93 94 94 96 98 100 103 105 106 112 113 115 116

Contents

XI 118 119 120 121 124 125 130 132 135 144 147 147 148 149 153 158 164 166 169 173 174 178 181 183 190 191 193 202 208 211 214 219 223 223 234

Narrative importance, L1, and linguistic repertoire Narrative evaluation, L1, and linguistic repertoire Cross-genre differences Cross-textual differences 6.4 Representation of L2 use Interlanguage grammar and lexis Interlanguage pragmatics Impoliteness: beyond interlanguage Who uses interlanguage? 6.5 Summary and conclusion 7 Language choice 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Global patterns of language choice Linguistic profile of movie scenes Intertextual differences Setting and language choice Activity and language choice Mood and language choice Minor categories of language choice 7.3 Comprehensibility Subtitles Cognates and well-known expressions Incomprehensible dialogue Interpreting Conclusions 7.4 Code-switching Situational code-switching Metaphorical or marked code-switching Indexical code-switching Edited code-switching 7.5 Summary and conclusion Conclusions

Works Cited Bibliography Filmography

List of Tables

Table 1: Table 2: Table 3: Table 4: Table 5: Table 6: Table 7: Table 8: Table 9: Table 10: Table 11: Table 12: Table 13: Table 14: Table 15: Table 16: Table 17: Table 18: Table 19: Table 20: Table 21: Table 22: Table 23: Table 24: Table 25: Table 26: Table 27:

Matrix of four different communicative situations, based on Ldi and Py (2002: 160 f ) A taxonomy of multilingualism in fictional texts, based on Mare (2000a, 2000b, 2003) The language contact movie corpus List of movies with replacement of other languages James Bonds second languages in six movies List of movies with presence of other languages Sex and age of movie characters Nationality versus L1 of characters L1 and linguistic repertoires of characters Occupation of characters Narrative importance and sex of characters Narrative evaluation and importance of characters Number of positive and negative OL1 characters in all 16 movies L2 proficiency of multilingual movie characters Comparison of L2 proficiency of mixed-language protagonist couples Speaker turns by L1 of speakers and language(s) used Linguistic repertoires and languages used in movie scenes Average of turns in three categories of scenes Settings of movie scenes per country Local setting of movie scenes Main activity of movie scenes Mood of movie scenes Average number of turns in endolingual EL scenes and exolingual OL scenes Comprehensibility strategies in scenes with OL dialogue A French dialogue and its English subtitles in comparison Motivations for code-switching in scenes with multilingual dialogue Compared ranking of movies by positive characterization and amount of OL turns

List of Charts

Chart 1: Chart 2: Chart 3: Chart 4: Chart 5: Chart 6: Chart 7: Chart 8: Chart 9: Chart 10: Chart 11:

Sex, L1, and linguistic repertoire of characters Age, L1, and linguistic repertoire of characters Occupation, L1, and linguistic repertoire of characters Narrative importance, L1, and linguistic repertoire of characters Narrative evaluation, L1, and linguistic repertoire of characters Narrative evaluation of OL1 characters in comedies and noncomedies Scenes per movie and category of language choice Countries and categories of language choice Local settings and categories of language choice Main activities and categories of language choice Mood and categories of language choice

List of Figures

Figure 1: Figure 2: Figure 3: Figure 4: Figures 57: Figure 8: Figure 9: Figure 10: Figure 11: Figure 12: Figure 13: Figure 14: Figure 15: Figure 16:

Screenshot from Amadeus (1984) Screenshot from GoldenEye (1995) Screenshot from The World Is Not Enough (1999) Screenshot from The Pianist (2002) Screenshots from Schindlers List (1993) Screenshot from Licence to Kill (1989) Screenshot from The Peacemaker (1997) Screenshot from Just Married (2003) Screenshot from Sabrina (1995) Screenshot from Green Card (1990) Screenshot from French Kiss (1995) Screenshot from Braveheart (1995) Screenshot from Frantic (1988) Screenshot from Red Heat (1988)

Key to transcriptions of movie excerpts

Bold face Normal face (italic face in brackets) Small Caps

any dialogue in a language other than English any dialogue in English any comments on the scene transcribed subtitles

(inverted commas in brackets) my translation of dialogue where subtitles do not exist () excerpt is preceded or followed by more speaker turns within the scene overlapping parts of speaker turns characters quoting somebody in their turns incomprehensible part of turn in English or other language

[text in square brackets] text in inverted commas xxx or xxx

Frequently used abbreviations

EL EL1 IMDb L1 L2 OL OL1

English language English as a first language Internet Movie Database First language Second language Other language Other language as a first language

Chapter 1: Introduction

Conversation is important, but it is not the only thing that people listen to. (Rampton 1998: 311)

Switzerland often serves as the prototypical example of a country with a high degree of both societal and individual multilingualism. Four languages are declared as official by the Federal Constitution, and for generations, school language policy has ensured that everybody is taught at least basic comprehension skills in the two dominant languages, German and French. In recent years however, commentators have noticed a growing preference for many German speakers to learn English a language deemed more useful and prestigious rather than French, a phenomenon which is considered a threat to interethnic stability in the small multicultural country. The German speakers shifting allegiances are reflected, on the other side of the main language border, by negative attitudes towards German among many French speakers. A few years ago, an article in a Swiss newspaper reported that the reluctance of French-speaking pupils to learn German at school is partly rooted in cultural stereotypes transported by war movies: whenever teachers of German as a foreign language ask their beginner students which German words come to their mind spontaneously, Heil Hitler is always a sure bet (Bchi 2003). What this anecdote illustrates is that attitudes towards certain languages, or indeed towards multilingualism in general, can in part be informed by media representations even when the people who develop these attitudes have plenty of opportunities for real-life instances of language contact. Therefore, medial texts can be considered all the more relevant in cases where for the audience, they constitute the major or only form of contact with certain languages. Accordingly, they can influence the way in which we reflect on peoples multilingual practices as migrants, tourists, or simply second language learners. Clearly, these texts are well worth having a closer look at. The aim of this book is to outline a framework for the description and interpretation of how multilingual practices are represented in contemporary mainstream Hollywood movies. My approach consists of both qualitative and quantitative analyses of movie dialogues, informed by different linguistic theories of language choice, with special attention given to the fictional nature of my data. More specifically, my goal is to test a charge often levelled at Hollywood filmmakers, namely that Hollywood movies perpetuate patterns of negative stereotyping with regard to the use and the speakers of other

Chapter 1: Introduction

languages, thereby bolstering monolingual and anglocentric language ideologies. Examples of these accusations include Schiffmans (2001) statement that in the movies, people speaking foreign languages are up to no good, and Kozloff s (1999: 82) assertion that she is not convinced that contemporary filmmakers are more enlightened and held to higher standards of accuracy and sensitivity. My approach is based on the insight that social practices in general, and language in particular, are co-constructed by the media as one of many other sources of influence. This is especially true with respect to the myriad forms in which the English language is used on a daily basis, above all by the majority of its speakers for whom it is a second or foreign language. Graddol (1997: 7) designates the audio-visual media as a defining characteristic of Late Modern English, the latest of seven stages in the history of the English language. Hollywood movies have been one of many factors that have contributed to the spectacular spread of English worldwide (Crystal 2004: 16 f ), and in turn, the language used in movie dialogues has had an influence on at least some registers of contemporary English (McArthur 2002: 186; Cotter 2001: 430 f ), and on other languages as well (Graddol 1997: 46 f ). A survey called Europeans and Languages, commissioned by the European Union to estimate in which contexts people use the second languages they know, showed that the interviewees second most frequent context of second language use was watching movies and television after holidays, but even before language use at the workplace (European Commission 2001: 7). Linguistic studies of fictional conversations are relatively rare, and similarly, there has been a tendency for film scholars to devote little attention to dialogue analysis (see Kozloff 2002: 6 ff ) the reason being that many prefer the characters to talk as little as possible: [b]orn silent, the cinema continues to love silence (Carrire 1994: 31). Still, discourse analysts and sociolinguists have become increasingly aware of the importance of fictional representations of language use or rather, they have sought to reconsider the major focus of attention of their mother discipline, philology. Naturally, the aim cannot be to mistake texts such as movie dialogues for absolutely faithful representations of their real-life counterparts; they are too carefully polished, too rhythmically balanced, too self-consciously artful (Kozloff 2002: 25 f ). However, in Tannens (1994: 139) view, fictional conversations can indeed reveal unconsciously-adhered-to assumptions of how speakers conceive of verbal interaction in general. Likewise, Coupland (2004: 258) asserts that they can sometimes reveal social processes more clearly than lived reality, and Pabl (2004) understands them as prime sources for the study of language ideologies and linguistic stereotyping. In particular, Kozloff (2002:

Chapter 1: Introduction

26 f ) points out that much could be gained from dialogue analysis in the study of negative portrayals of minorities (linguistic or other). In her view, what commentators have
often overlooked is how much the speech patterns of the stereotyped character contribute to the viewers conception of his or her worth; the ways in which dialect, mispronunciation, and inarticulateness have been used to ridicule and stigmatize characters have often been neglected. Who gets to speak about what? Who is silenced? Who is interrupted? Dialogue is often the first place we should go to understand how film reflects social prejudices.

In this study, different languages lie at the focus of attention, rather than intralinguistic phenomena such as dialect or register variation. The increasing presence of multilingual discourse in medial texts can be seen from the ongoing scholarly interest reflected by publications such as Piller (2003), Busch (2004), or Kelly-Holmes (2005), and the findings of these studies are complemented by this book. Plan of the book Chapter 2 contains an introduction to the relevant scholarly findings on multilingualism in real life. There, I discuss the common distinction between societal and individual multilingualism, and offer an overview of sociolinguistic, pragmatic and psycholinguistic approaches to language choice. Special attention is paid to code-switching as a form of discourse used by multilingual individuals for a wide variety of reasons, including less directly obvious ones such as political agendas. In a final section, I situate my work within the recent tradition of critical sociolinguistics, where the denunciation of linguicism, defined as social practices that discriminate against specific language users, is a central aim. In chapter 3, the focus is on how multilingualism is represented in fictional texts, such as narrative prose, drama and the cinema. In my discussion of formal aspects, I introduce the distinction, based on a taxonomy proposed by Mare (2000a; 2000b; 2003), between movies where languages other than English are present in the dialogues, and those where these languages are replaced with English, as if in a translation. Then, I review accounts of the different functional aspects of multilingualism in fiction, such as realistic representation, social criticism, humor, and characterization. I will argue that while linguicist representations are by no means the common denominator of these functions, it is the domain of characterization where these are most likely to surface. In a final section, I propose a catalogue of features that characterize stereotypically linguicist representations in the movies. There,

Chapter 1: Introduction

my approach is informed by the three semiotic processes of linguistic differentiation (iconization, fractal recursivity and erasure) outlined by Irvine and Gal (2000). Chapter 4 presents the corpus of 28 language contact movies (listed in table 3, chapter 4 below) chosen for the analysis and discusses the criteria of their selection. The movies are all commercially successful mainstream English-language movies released between 1983 and 2004 with European or American settings. The stories narrated are reasonably realistic and prominently depict situations of language contact with characters who speak languages other than English. Typical genres include action thrillers, war movies, historical drama and intercultural comedies. Among the movies selected for analysis, I distinguish between two sub-corpora: 16 movies are characterized by the presence of other languages, whereas in twelve, the strategy of replacement is used. Replacement is the focus of chapter 5, where I discuss and exemplify Mares taxonomy in more detail. Replacement strategies differ in the extent to which the nature of the replaced languages are made obvious to the viewer who, in some cases, may even fail to appreciate that the strategy is used at all, and draw the false conclusion that the characters would really be speaking English. Special attention is given to the representation of different degrees of individual multilingualism, and in what way these can be made obvious even if one or more languages are replaced. In chapter 6, the discussion of individual multilingualism is extended to the sub-corpus of 16 movies with the presence of other languages. The chapter contains a quantitative study of 518 movie characters, all coded for relevant information, including sex, age, occupation, narrative role and evaluation, and their linguistic repertoire. One major question is whether being a multilingual individual makes a movie character more or less powerful, important, or positive. A further point of interest is how characters differ in the way in which they are portrayed as users of second languages: is it true that all bad guys speak broken English, or is the overall picture more complex? Chapter 7 is based on the same data as the preceding chapter, but the focus is on the conversations as such. The issue of language choice is addressed from three different viewpoints. Firstly, there is the global choice of languages in the different movie scenes: what are the typical settings, social activities, and narrative moods that accompany scenes with dialogue in English, other languages, or a combination thereof? Secondly, when and how is the content expressed in other languages made comprehensible to the viewer who does not understand them? Thirdly, what is the nature of code-switching in movie dialogues: does it appear as reasonably realistic, or grossly stereotypical and

Chapter 1: Introduction

odd? The results are then compared to those of chapter 6, in an attempt to rank the 16 movies on a scale from little to much linguicism in representation. The concluding chapter 8 puts the results into context.

Chapter 2: Multilingualism in the real world

2.1

Introduction

What is multilingualism? A useful starting point can be found in the introduction to the book Bilingualism and the Latin Language, a study of how multilingual practices are reflected in written sources from Roman Antiquity, where Adams (2003: 7 f ) argues that
[t]he merchant who manages to communicate in a foreign market place with a mixture of gestures and words of the foreign language shorn of some inflectional morphemes and articulated in a foreign accent may in a sense be described as a practising bilingual, but his proficiency in the second language is at a far remove from that, say, of a foreign ambassador who delivers a speech in Latin at Rome on a political subject.

Adamss observation illustrates three main aspects of multilingualism: (1) societal multilingualism, or the social reasons for and manifestations of language contact; (2) individual multilingualism, or the extent to which persons know and use more than one language; and (3) multilingual discourse, defined as the use of more than one language within a given spoken or written text. This chapter contains a brief survey of the three aspects, with special emphasis on the third one, where different approaches to language choice are discussed. The aim of this discussion is not to offer a comprehensive introduction to the enormous field, but to describe those insights gained by scholars in studies of real-life multilingualism that are most relevant for a comparison with its cinematic representations. As a common denominator, many contemporary scholarly approaches share an increasingly favourable assessment of multilingualism to the extent that monolingualism, the opposite phenomenon, has come to be known as a cureable disease among some sociolinguists (see Phillipson 2003: 63). This viewpoint explains why much recent sociolinguistic work is informed by a pronounced criticism of monolingual attitudes, ideologies and practices, which is discussed in the final section of this chapter. 2.2 Societal and individual multilingualism

Language variation and language contact Multilingualism I use the word as an umbrella term for the use of two (bilingualism) or more languages has two necessary ingredients: language variation and language contact. The first phenomenon is the core area of

Chapter 2: Multilingualism in the real world

interest for variationist sociolinguists, who have found increasingly sophisticated explanations for the interrelations between linguistic differences on the one hand, and social factors on the other. Linguistic varieties have been found to reflect their speakers individual biography and social background, while different registers (language varieties used in specific contexts) and styles (varieties characteristic of distinct levels of formality) index social contexts in a precise and fairly predictable way. Moreover, pragmatic approaches to language variation emphasize how speakers, rather than being strictly confined in their use of different varieties, take conscious choices and exploit the different linguistic means available to them, for instance to negotiate power relations or interpersonal relationships in any given communicative situation. The sociolinguistic study of language variation has also contributed to our appreciation of language change, or the question of how similar varieties may become more and more distinct, until in the long run, they cease to be mutually comprehensible, and are then considered different languages1 altogether. If we understand language mainly or exclusively as a tool for communication, such a development may appear as essentially absurd. This is the conclusion offered by core myths of Western (and other) cultures, such as the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis (11, 19), where societal multilingualism is portrayed as a form of divine punishment. In contrast, linguists point out that communication would be harmed, rather than improved, if language were not a flexible, adjustable system (Aitchison 1996: 30); in Bakers words, diversity is directly related to stability; variety is important for long-term survival (Baker 2001: 51; see also Crystal 2000). Language contact occurs when speakers of different languages interact. As the main reasons, large-scale processes such as territorial expansion (e. g. colonization), political unions, border contacts and migration have been identified (Edwards 1994: 33 ff; Wei 2000a: 3 ff; Thomason 2001: 15 ff ). None of these are completely new phenomena in history, but examples of their intensification in recent times are easy to find. The enormous economic disparities worldwide are bound to cause yet greater migration towards richer countries, while economic globalization results in more mobility among the more affluent, and both telecommunication and public or private means of transport become faster and cheaper. Also, the creation or solidification of
1

The absence of mutual intelligibility is only one of many factors that can influence speakers and policymakers decisions to conceive of linguistic varieties as either different languages, or dialects of the same language. Other arguments include social factors, such as the number of speakers and official status, and socio-psychological ones, such as dominant attitudes towards the different varieties and their speakers. See, for instance, Edwards (1994: 15 ff ) or Wei (2000a: 8 ff ).

2.2 Societal and individual multilingualism

political and economic unions are now widely accepted as necessary answers to globalization, with the European Union as a prime example. Edwards (1994: 34) is right in pointing out that few people become or remain multilingual on a whim; rather, it is often a matter of necessity. It is precisely the close connection between language contact and the struggle for resources that has resulted in the view that language contact is necessarily accompanied by social conflict (see Darquennes 2004). However, sociolinguists have taken care to avoid generalizations about the relationship between language diversity and sociopolitical conflict (Tollefson 2002a: 230), or, in the words of Dicker (1996: 237):
Diversity in itself is not a problem. However, it becomes a problem when those with power use it to set less powerful groups against each other. The result benefits those in power and helps maintain the social status quo.

It is not societal multilingualism itself which creates conflicts, nor does the simplification or homogenization of a sociolinguistic setting caused by language death necessarily result in less conflict and more stability. However, conflicts can become more pronounced if different languages are symbolically associated with opposing viewpoints and it is these symbolic associations which can be fuelled by media representations of multilingualism among others. Individual multilingualism Individual multilingualism can be defined as an individual speakers ability to use more than one language. While scholars disagree on how well individuals should know the languages to qualify as multilingual individuals (see, for instance, Grosjean 1982: 228 ff ), and also about who is to judge in the first place, many scholars have drawn attention to the limitations of the folk view of individual multilingualism, namely that people have similar levels of proficiency in two or more languages, typically learned from birth (Pavlenko 2005: 6). In contrast, Pavlenko advocates a use-based definition rather than an emphasis on proficiency, and understands multilinguals as speakers who use two or more languages or dialects in their everyday lives be it simultaneously (in language contact situations) or consecutively (in the context of immigration) (ibid.). This approach has the advantage of explaining different levels of proficiency which undoubtedly exist with the different domains in which speakers use their languages, rather than with a general inability of human beings to acquire high levels of proficiency in more than one language. In contrast with early negative views of individual multilingualism (which