Do you speak American? Episode 1,2,3,
(DVD)

DVD (60 min.)

Producer & director, William Cran ; writers, William Cran & Robert MacNeil ; producer, Christopher Buchanan.

Reporter, Robert MacNeil ; narrator, Orlagh Cassidy.

Examines sociolinguistic questions and the dynamic state of American English, a language rich in regional variety, strong in global impact, and steeped in cultural controversy.

Episode 2Follows Robert MacNeil as he travels down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to Appalachia, Louisiana Cajun country, and the Tex-Mex border to examine Southern dialects and accents and the influences of French and Spanish on American English. Linguist Walt Wolfram, columnist Molly Ivins, pop country singer Cody James, and others talk about regional differences in vernacular, the steady displacement of Southern coastal dialect by inland dialect, the accents of JFK and LBJ, and the Texas border town of El Cenizo, where Spanish is the official language. Includes recordings of Eudora Welty and Appalachian storyteller Ray Hicks, as well as WPA recordings from around 1940.

Episode 3In this program, Robert MacNeil heads to California to take part in meaningful dialogues on Spanglish, Chicano, Ebonics, and "Surfer Dude" before going to Seattle to consider the implications of voice-activation technology. Linguist Carmen Fought, Stanford University's Cliff Nass, screenwriters Amy Heckerling and Winnie Holtzman, and others speak their minds about Spanish in America, why teens create their own language, gay self-empowerment by redefining discriminatory terms, the oo-fronting sound shift, and whether technology will reinforce or weaken racial/regional stereotypes. The teaching of English without devaluing or denigrating cultural linguistice differences is addressed.

Episode 1Robert MacNeil canvasses the North to learn firsthand about linguistic dialect zones, the tension between prescriptivism and descriptivism, the impact on dialect, the northern cities vowel shift, the roots of African-American English, minority linguistic profiling, biases against nonstandard speech, and the general perception of the U.S. Midland dialect as "normal American." Hip-hop street talk, IM slang, Pittsburghese, and Gullah and Geechee are sampled. Features Bill Labov, the dean of American linguists; Jesse Sheidlower, American editor of the august OED; and 'New York' magazine's John Simon. Some language may be offensive.

Electronic reproduction.,Columbus, OH :,OhioLINK,,2005.,Digitized and made available by OhioLINK Digital Media Center from video dist. by Films for the Humanities & Sciences.

System requirements: Real Player media software.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.