Tuesday, Feb 20: Reading due: Chapter 6 of Language, Society, and Power

Research due: Conduct an informal interview with a parent, grandparent, or “older” adult with whom you feel comfortable. Ask them about changing cultural perceptions toward gendered terms and pronouns: he/she/ze/they, use of the generic “he,” use of “Ms” instead of “Mrs.” or “Miss,” and changing use of actor/actress, stewardess/flight attendant, etc. Questions you might ask would target: do they remember the first time (or when people started to) use the term “flight attendant”? Use of “Ms”? Use of singular “they”?  Did they notice any feelings or attitudes among their peers or in the media toward changing gender-loaded terms? If they feel comfortable, what was their own thoughts? (Not see the point at first? Afraid to get it wrong?)

 

Thursday, Feb 22: Reading due: Tannen, “Indirectness at Work”: Link

Research due: Complete your speech event observation and fill out one of these two surveys to document your findings:

Number and Length of Speech Acts Observation: https://wooster.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5cdM0CaVzxtkMzr

Interruptions: https://wooster.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_81zQPUHCc1ytr0x

 

Writing Due: Your Accents, Identity, and Stereotype project is due this week: Accents, Identity, and Stereotype

You can either turn in your project to the front desk of the Writing Center by 3pm on Tuesday. Or, if you choose to revise by having an appointment in the Writing Center or working with a peer during class time on Tuesday (in the classroom), then you can submit your project on Thursday in class.

My grading rubric for the project: Project 1 Rubric

 

Reading Due:

Tuesday: no reading. Please remember, there will be no class today.

Thursday: first chapter of Articulate While Black (Nah We Straight) and Smitherman interview (Smitherman Interview).  You do NOT need to read Chapter 7 of Language, Society, and Power.

 

Emilee McCubbins, Marcel Elkouri, Hannah Sullivan, Gerald Dryden

Disney’s Treatment of Accent

1. In Zootopia, there is typically just stereotypical, general American accents reminiscent of the northeastern United States whereas the character Gideon Gray and his family—childhood bullies of Judy Hopps—have a regional American accent. The character Gideon Gray, played by Phil Johnston, does not reflect his actual speaking voice in a normal, everyday manner, whereas the rest of the cast use their own manner of speaking.
2. The film is about the importance of respecting each other’s cultures and diversity, making the urban setting an important aspect of the movie. That being said, it is a little inaccurate to make each character speak in a general American accent over anything else as it builds more prejudice along the way against people who speak differently.
3. In Gideon Gray’s case, he is the only character with a regional accent that is used to highlight his idiocy and his status as a villain. In the case of the Italian mice, this builds their character in a stereotypical way as a beacon of Italian mafia villainy. There are a few other representations—a Caribbean yak, an Indian elephant—but none of these do anything more than to further stereotypes about their idea of people who speak the way they do. Meanwhile, the heroes maintain their “standard” general American accent.
4. This film has more subtle, subliminal choices compared to the pre-2000 Disney films that Lippi-Green cites in her analysis, making the treatment of one’s accents something you may not notice unless you are explicitly searching for it. While it is nice that there is not as overt racism or stereotyping in Disney films, it does make subtle stereotype building even more insidious in our children’s television and movies.

Here is the link to the dialect survey discussed in the New York Times (and connected to the Harvard Dialect Survey): link