Regional and Foreign accents in different dubbings of the Simpsons: A comparative study on English, German, French, Italian and Spanish

The research question of this study is: “How is standard language ideology represented in a global or national perspective in the different dubbings of the Simpsons?” In the research we investigate SLI representation in the English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish dubbings of four characters of the Simpsons. We have asked 10 English, French, German, and Spanish speakers and 20 Italian speakers to answer a questionnaire to identify the accent of the characters. We generate the hypothesis that following the principle that the connotative meaning of a cultural object is contingent upon the culture of the time and place of creation, we expect to verify in the data that the meaning of the characters that we analyse differs from country to country. We look for evidence in the fact that in different countries the characters should be dubbed with different accents. The accent with which the characters are dubbed contributes to their connotative signification. Since the need of creating...Show moreThe research question of this study is: “How is standard language ideology represented in a global or national perspective in the different dubbings of the Simpsons?” In the research we investigate SLI representation in the English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish dubbings of four characters of the Simpsons. We have asked 10 English, French, German, and Spanish speakers and 20 Italian speakers to answer a questionnaire to identify the accent of the characters. We generate the hypothesis that following the principle that the connotative meaning of a cultural object is contingent upon the culture of the time and place of creation, we expect to verify in the data that the meaning of the characters that we analyse differs from country to country. We look for evidence in the fact that in different countries the characters should be dubbed with different accents. The accent with which the characters are dubbed contributes to their connotative signification. Since the need of creating new connotative meaning, authors recur to schemes that are pre-existent in the culture of the time and place of creation, it is possible that some stereotypes might be represented in some cultures, while absent from others. Based on the theory we discuss in chapter 1, we generate the hypothesis that in more multicultural countries (e.g., USA) there is representation of more foreign accents, and that in less multicultural countries (e.g., Italy), the foreign accent is translated with a regional accent. In chapter 3 we present the data and we discuss the hypothesis.Show less

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Regional and Foreign accents in different dubbings of the Simpsons: A comparative study on English, German, French, Italian and Spanish