Accent Stereotypes

The Origin of the English Language

Conclusion

Accent stereotyping is prevalent in society

The English that we speak today was originally brought into Britain by Germanic tribes such as The Angles, Saxons and Jutes from an area which is now known as Germany and Denmark. By that time, the people of Britain spoke Celtic, but due to the invasions, Britain pushed the Celtic-speaking inhabitants into Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.

Accent stereotyping is often linked to or used as a type of racial profiling

This is concerning because Disney mainly markets to children of an impressionable age, and stereotypes employed by Disney filmmakers tend to portray minority groups as "bad."

ACCENT STEREOTYPES

How did the original English become the English that we speak today?

English is made up from three different types of English: Old, Middle, and Modern English. Old English was very similar to Germanic: spoken from about 450 to 1,100.

Norman Invasions, French was brought into Britain. This way, there was a division between the people who spoke English, since they belonged to lower classes, and the people who spoke French, who belonged to the upper classes.

14th Century, English became the dominant language again, and some French words were implemented into the English Language.

With the passing of time, and the development of new technology such as the printing press, the English language was progressively standardized until today.

Discuss the media's presentation (stereotyping)

of accents and dialects and the impact of it on a

person's perception.

Movies time!

Linguistic Profiling

Stereotypes in the Media

Linguistic

Profiling

"It is the practice of the use of speech characteristics or dialect to identify a speaker as belonging to a linguistic subgroup and even racial subgroup." - John Baugh

In Disney movies, foreign and minority accents are associated with malevolent behavior.

Accents are used as a form of profiling to place characters into archetypal categories

The National Association for the Education of Young Children: "When children are between the ages of two and five they become truly aware of many aspects of the world such as race, ethnicity, gender and disabilities"

Heroes/Heroines (typically the princesses and “prince charming”) speak with Standard American English accents even when they are not Caucasian and should have a different ethnic accent.

Pocahontas

Gru

Most villains speak with foreign accents, even

when they are animated animal characters that

have no human ethnic characteristics.

Around 11% of Diney characters:

speaks SAE rather than speaking

with a Native American accent

Around 50% of Disney Characters:

speaks with eastern European accent

Caucasian

Hispanic

Asian

Arab

European

backgrounds

Race is not distributed equally across

Disney film characters.

Snow White

Merida

Jasmine

Mulan

Audrey

Ramirez

Effect of Standard Language Ideology

The American writer Lippi-Green claims that many speakers of non-mainstream dialects who approve of the standard language ideology find themselves in the adverse party to their true interests and identities.

It negatively affects the ability of minority language speakers to succeed in educational settings, because a teacher's perception of what constitutes proper language could be biased against the language or dialect spoken by the student.

Central characters:

- Hero/heroine

- Standard American English

Secondary characters:

- Villain

- British English

Tertiary characters:

- Fool/comic, relief character

- Foreign accent