S C H W E I Z E R A N G L I S T I S C H E A R B E I T E NS W I S S S T U D I E S I N E N G L I S H

Lukas Bleichenbacher

Multilingualismin the MoviesHollywood Characters and TheirLanguage Choices

Schweizer Anglistische ArbeitenSwiss Studies in English

Begründet von Bernhard FehrHerausgegeben von Andreas Fischer (Zürich), Martin Heusser (Zürich), Jürg 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 Brueghel’s The Tower of Babel and a photographic film

Cover design: Martin Heusser, Zürich

This thesis was accepted as a doctoral dissertation by the Faculty of Arts of the Uni-versity 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.

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To my parents

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people:First, the teachers who, over the years, made a few of the world’s

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 (Ser-bian), Dorota Smyk-Bhattacharjee (Polish), Julia Nasčiaková (Czech), and especially Anna Bernold (Russian).

Many more colleagues and friends who offered critical advice during different stages of this work, including Małgorżata Haładewicz-Grzelak, Mar-tin Heusser, Sebastian Hoffmann, Arlette Huguenin Dumittan, Marta Inigo, Anja Janoschka, Ursina Kellerhals, Hans Martin Lehmann, Georges Lüdi, Martin Mühlheim, Adrian Pablé, Thomas Schalow, and Gudrun Ziegler.

The Swiss National Science Foundation for their generous financial support of this publication.

My family, and especially my wife Amália, for her patience in explain-ing to me some of the movies.

Contents

1 Introduction 1 Plan of the book 3

2 Multilingualism in the real world 7 2.1 Introduction 7 2.2 Societal and individual multilingualism 7 Language variation and language contact 7 Individual multilingualism 9 2.3 Language choice 11 The communicative situation 11 Code-switching 13 Accommodation and language mode 14 Multilingual discourse as a political strategy 16 2.4 Linguicism versus linguistic courtesy 17 Linguicism 17 Mock Spanish and linguistic racism 18 Linguistic courtesy 19

3 Multilingualism in fiction 21 3.1 Introduction 21 3.2 Formal aspects 22 Contexts of literary production 22 From elimination to presence: Mareš’s taxonomy 23 3.3 Functional aspects 26 Realism 26 Social criticism 27 Humor 29 3.4 Characterization and stereotyping 30 Contrast 30 Stereotyping 31 3.5 Linguicism in the movies 33 The semiotic processes of linguistic differentiation 33 Iconization 35 Fractal recursivity 36 Erasure 37

X Contents

4 The Language Contact Movie Corpus 39 4.1 Introduction 39 4.2 Linguistic criteria 40 Migration 44 Tourism 45 Crime and terrorism 46 International conflicts 47 4.3 Generic criteria 48 4.4 Economic criteria 49 4.5 Chronological criteria 51 4.6 The replacement and presence sub-corpora 52 5 Replacement strategies 55 5.1 Introduction 55 5.2 Elimination and signalization 57 5.3 Evocation 59 Accents and code-switching 60 Other forms of evocation 66 5.4 Partial presence 70 Orders and background utterances 70 Prayers and songs 72 Linguistic landscape 73 Unrealistic code-switching 78 5.5 Individual multilingualism 83 5.6 Conclusions 90

6 Characterization 93 6.1 Introduction 93 6.2 Coding procedure 94 Selecting the characters 94 Sex and age 96 Nationality/ethnicity and L1 98 Linguistic repertoire 100 Occupation 103 Narrative importance 105 Narrative evaluation 106 6.3 Results 112 Sex, L1, and linguistic repertoire 113 Age, L1, and linguistic repertoire 115 Occupation, L1, and linguistic repertoire 116

Contents XI

Narrative importance, L1, and linguistic repertoire 118 Narrative evaluation, L1, and linguistic repertoire 119 Cross-genre differences 120 Cross-textual differences 121 6.4 Representation of L2 use 124 Interlanguage grammar and lexis 125 Interlanguage pragmatics 130 Impoliteness: beyond interlanguage 132 Who uses interlanguage? 135 6.5 Summary and conclusion 144

7 Language choice 147 7.1 Introduction 147 7.2 Global patterns of language choice 148 Linguistic profile of movie scenes 149 Intertextual differences 153 Setting and language choice 158 Activity and language choice 164 Mood and language choice 166 Minor categories of language choice 169 7.3 Comprehensibility 173 Subtitles 174 Cognates and well-known expressions 178 Incomprehensible dialogue 181 Interpreting 183 Conclusions 190 7.4 Code-switching 191 Situational code-switching 193 Metaphorical or marked code-switching 202 Indexical code-switching 208 Edited code-switching 211 7.5 Summary and conclusion 214

8 Conclusions 219

Works Cited 223

Bibliography 223Filmography 234

List of Tables

Table 1: Matrix of four different communicative situations, based on Lüdi and Py (2002: 160 f )

Table 2: A taxonomy of multilingualism in fictional texts, based on Mareš (2000a, 2000b, 2003)

Table 3: The language contact movie corpusTable 4: List of movies with replacement of other languagesTable 5: James Bond’s second languages in six moviesTable 6: List of movies with presence of other languagesTable 7: Sex and age of movie charactersTable 8: Nationality versus L1 of charactersTable 9: L1 and linguistic repertoires of charactersTable 10: Occupation of charactersTable 11: Narrative importance and sex of charactersTable 12: Narrative evaluation and importance of charactersTable 13: Number of positive and negative OL1 characters in all 16 moviesTable 14: L2 proficiency of multilingual movie charactersTable 15: Comparison of L2 proficiency of mixed-language protagonist

couplesTable 16: Speaker turns by L1 of speakers and language(s) usedTable 17: Linguistic repertoires and languages used in movie scenesTable 18: Average of turns in three categories of scenesTable 19: Settings of movie scenes per countryTable 20: Local setting of movie scenesTable 21: Main activity of movie scenesTable 22: Mood of movie scenesTable 23: Average number of turns in endolingual EL scenes and exolin-

gual OL scenesTable 24: Comprehensibility strategies in scenes with OL dialogueTable 25: A French dialogue and its English subtitles in comparisonTable 26: Motivations for code-switching in scenes with multilingual dia-

logueTable 27: Compared ranking of movies by positive characterization and

amount of OL turns

List of Charts

Chart 1: Sex, L1, and linguistic repertoire of charactersChart 2: Age, L1, and linguistic repertoire of charactersChart 3: Occupation, L1, and linguistic repertoire of charactersChart 4: Narrative importance, L1, and linguistic repertoire of charactersChart 5: Narrative evaluation, L1, and linguistic repertoire of charactersChart 6: Narrative evaluation of OL1 characters in comedies and non-

comediesChart 7: Scenes per movie and category of language choiceChart 8: Countries and categories of language choiceChart 9: Local settings and categories of language choiceChart 10: Main activities and categories of language choiceChart 11: Mood and categories of language choice

List of Figures

Figure 1: Screenshot from Amadeus (1984)Figure 2: Screenshot from GoldenEye (1995)Figure 3: Screenshot from The World Is Not Enough (1999)Figure 4: Screenshot from The Pianist (2002)Figures 5–7: Screenshots from Schindler’s List (1993)Figure 8: Screenshot from Licence to Kill (1989)Figure 9: Screenshot from The Peacemaker (1997)Figure 10: Screenshot from Just Married (2003)Figure 11: Screenshot from Sabrina (1995)Figure 12: Screenshot from Green Card (1990)Figure 13: Screenshot from French Kiss (1995)Figure 14: Screenshot from Braveheart (1995)Figure 15: Screenshot from Frantic (1988)Figure 16: Screenshot from Red Heat (1988)

Key to transcriptions of movie excerpts

Bold face any dialogue in a language other than English

Normal face any dialogue in English

(italic face in brackets) any comments on the scene transcribed

Small Caps 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

[text in square brackets] overlapping parts of speaker turns

‘text in inverted commas’ characters quoting somebody in their turns

xxx or xxx incomprehensible part of turn in English or other language

Frequently used abbreviations

EL English languageEL1 English as a first languageIMDb Internet Movie DatabaseL1 First languageL2 Second languageOL Other languageOL1 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 speak-ers’ 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 (Büchi 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 people’s mul-tilingual 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 pat-terns of negative stereotyping with regard to the use and the speakers of other

2 Chapter 1: Introduction

languages, thereby bolstering monolingual and anglocentric language ideolo-gies. Examples of these accusations include Schiffman’s (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. Grad-dol (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” (Carrière 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 Tannen’s (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 Pablé (2004) understands them as prime sources for the study of language ideologies and linguistic stereotyping. In particular, Kozloff (2002:

Chapter 1: Introduction 3

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 viewer’s 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 increas-ing 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 sociolinguis-tic, pragmatic and psycholinguistic approaches to language choice. Special attention is paid to code-switching as a form of discourse used by multilin-gual 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 lingui-cism, 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 fic-tional 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 Mareš (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,

4 Chapter 1: Introduction

my approach is informed by the three semiotic processes of linguistic dif-ferentiation (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 promi-nently depict situations of language contact with characters who speak lan-guages 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 replace-ment is used.

Replacement is the focus of chapter 5, where I discuss and exemplify Mareš’s 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 evalu-ation, 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 5

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 representa-tion. 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 intro-duction 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.

Adams’s observation illustrates three main aspects of multilingualism: (1) soci-etal 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 multi-lingualism – 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 sociolinguis-tic work is informed by a pronounced criticism of monolingual attitudes, ide-ologies 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

8 Chapter 2: Multilingualism in the real world

interest for variationist sociolinguists, who have found increasingly sophisti-cated 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 lan-guage 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, 1–9), where societal multi-lingualism 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 Baker’s 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 9

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 diver-sity 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 speaker’s 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 simultane-ously (in language contact situations) or consecutively (in the context of immigration)” (ibid.).

This approach has the advantage of explaining different levels of pro-ficiency – 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