Language Use in Transnational Media:
Hollywood Dominance, Linguistic Localization, and English Literacy
Dr. Suzanne Hilgendorf, SFU
Much scholarship on transnational flows and English use has focused on bottom-up processes (e.g., Pennycook 2007). Surprisingly, little research explores top-down language practices, for instance, in media (cf. Martin 2006). Using qualitative, macrosociolinguistic methods I address this gap by examining the century-old transnational medium of motion pictures. These practices are considered in the Expanding Circle context of the European country of Germany.
In the first part of this presentation I outline the interdisciplinary approaches for this study: Kachru’s (1985, 1990) world Englishes theoretical framework from sociolinguistics; Chalaby’s (2006) paradigm of American cultural primacy in media studies; and from sociology, Beck’s Cosmopolitan Framework (Chalaby 2007). The second part of the presentation focuses on language use in cinema. Although early Hollywood executives expressed views consistent with linguistic imperialism (cf. Philippson 1992, 2009), following the introduction of sound in the late 1920s there was quick recognition of the need to localize films linguistically with subtitles and synchronization, practices still employed today. In Germany, English nevertheless plays a prominent role in the titles of (Inner Circle) films. Drawing on databanks of the German Federal Film Board (Filmförderungsanstalt http://www.ffa.de), I examine titles of the most popular films released in the country from 1986 to 2005. These demonstrate that language use falls along a continuum with English and German at the two poles, and that great linguistic creativity and resourcefulness is employed in combining elements from both languages in innovative yet meaningful ways. They further provide evidence of a broader English literacy that has emerged on a societal level in recent decades.
BIO: Dr. Hilgendorf is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University, where she also teaches language courses for the German program. Her areas of expertise are sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, and foreign language pedagogy, with a primary research focus in World Englishes. She has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries dealing with various aspects of the impact of English in Germany/Europe/the Expanding Circle, as well as (co-)edited special issues of the journals World Englishes and Sociolinguistica. She is a past President of the International Association for World Englishes (2013-14), and currently serves as Review Editor for World Englishes as well as Associate Editor for the Journal of World Languages.
Visual Methodology before Visual Methods
Dr. Amy Scott Metcalfe, UBC
Visual methods are becoming more common in the social sciences. Yet, as Luc Pauwels stated in the introductory chapter of the Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods (2011), visual methods “seem to be reinvented over and over again without gaining much methodological depth and often without consideration of long-existing classics in the field” (p. 3). Thus, we may become more sure of our visual methods while simultaneously becoming less sure why this matters. Sarah Pink has stated that “Understanding methodology is concerned with comprehending how we know as well as the environments in which this knowing is produced; as such, it involves engaging with a philosophy of knowledge, of practice and of place and space” (2012, p. 3). In this talk, I will discuss visual methodology through the example of my own theoretical and philosophical assumptions about the lack of innocence surrounding images and the (in)visibility of social discourse, referencing the work of Ranciére, hooks, Razack, and Said. Questions surrounding the locus and logic of the gaze guide my visual methodology in two concurrent, large-scale research projects. In the first, Difficult Knowledge of the University, I explore concepts of remembrance, forgetting, and knowing in relation to the visual parlance of university identity and image-making. The second project, 100 Views, seeks to expose the “frame of reference” of official views (historic and contemporary) in the processes of seeing and representing the university. For both projects, visual methods—specifically photographic methods—are necessary as tools to unsettle conventional modes of recollection and display.
BIO: Dr. Metcalfe is an Associate Professor in EDST. She studies the social contexts of higher education with an emphasis on researchers, research policy, research universities, and the implications of internationalization. Drawing upon her background in the arts and humanities, Dr. Metcalfe is interested in the development and application of visual research methods in higher education. Dr. Metcalfe’s methodological scholarship has been recently published in The International Journal of Qualitative Research in Education and she has book chapters forthcoming in Visual Research in Education (Moss & Pini, Eds; Palgrave) and Research in the College Context (Stage & Manning, Eds; Brunner-Routledge). Dr. Metcalfe’s 2013 SSHRC Connections Grant, “Educational Policy Analysis for a Complex World: The Possibilities of Post-Structural Policy Analysis” has resulted in her co-edited special issue of Critical Studies in Education (February, 2015).
https://blogs.ubc.ca/amyscottmetcalfe/
https://blogs.ubc.ca/100views/
https://blogs.ubc.ca/poststructural/