Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Film language'

Ethnic identity can be subject to both passive and overt review, which has the potential to cause traumatic fracture of identity. I am a second generation American-Puerto Rican, which can be defined as a person born in the United States of native Puerto Rican ancestry. Personal identity is constructed in part via social and linguistic associations that work with, and against, the cohesive development of an individual’s claim to his or her identity. From the standpoint of a non-fluent Spanish speaker of Puerto Rican descent, I analyze the connection between place, language, and in particular, face-to-face communication, as these aspects come together in developing/disassembling identity. The major focus of this thesis concerns the power of the face as a point of (mis)recognition between people, the site in which a confrontation of identity takes place, in conjunction with spoken language.

The face is the essential locus on the body for recognizing that the person before you is indeed a person; from that point forth, identity is revealed and awareness of subjectivity constructed. Stuart Hall discussed the construction of identity through the concepts of the enlightened subject, the sociological subject, and the post-modern subject. I will be referring to an individual’s identity in terms of these three models, while focusing on ethnic and cultural associations. It should be understood that in my discussion of face, “face” is not comprised solely of what rests above one’s shoulders; rather, the concept incorporates the entirety of an individual’s physical representation. I will question the ways in which language shapes identity, and how culture(s) and society reinforce it. I will also explore the conflict that unfolds when one is denied ownership of the identity that one has established as true. This analysis incorporates philosophy and cultural theory, including, but not limited to: Emmanuel Levinas’ “Face of the Other,” which professes that we must not inflict conceptual violence on the face of the person standing before us; additionally, Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of the ethnic face and haciendo cara (making face), which states that minorities (women in particular) must construct layers of masks in order to adapt, and to deflect persecution.

Language defines the borders of “face,” and urges us to construct a binary of correct and incorrect, true and false. However, a person’s identity cannot be false, because subjectivity exists beyond language. In the context of this thesis, I re-frame the individual’s frustrations with misrecognition of ethnic identity, through my focus on face and fluency, or lack thereof, in a particular spoken language. Through my video practice, I have forged a new pathway to explore these dualities. In a self-revelatory process, this project guides the viewer through a mixed media visualization of ethnic authentication and judgment.

The aim of this essay is to investigate to what degree films and TV-programs are shown in two Swedish 8^th grade English classes today and to see if this is a fruitful teaching method. The investigation was carried out with the help of a student survey, two teacher interviews and interviews following directly on their viewing of the TV-show Goal.  The result was that the students do not seem to learn a great deal from watching films or TV-shows in English class. They hear words that they already know and this provides reinforcement, but they learn very few new words. However, watching films and TV-shows is a good way to motivate students to work with their ordinary classroom English. Films and TV-shows were shown regularly according to the interviewed teacher, but the students thought that they saw too few movies and TV-shows. The teachers saw movies and TV-shows as a useful teaching addition, but they thought that the students learned more by traditional methods. The students, on the other hand, thought that they learned a great deal from watching movies and enjoy doing so. The time used to show movies and TV-shows today seems to be sufficient. TV-shows and films should be used as motivation and as a complement to classroom instruction rather than as a teaching material in itself.

This paper examines the role of the pioneer Filipino filmmaker Jose Nepomuceno and his films in the Philippine quest for independence and in the process of nation-building. As all of Nepomuceno's films are lost, most of the information was gathered from old newspaper articles on microfilm in different archives in Manila. Many of these articles were hitherto undiscovered. Nepomuceno made silent films at a time when the influence of the new coloniser, United States, was growing, and the Spanish language was what unified the intellectual opposition. Previous research on Nepomuceno has focused on the Hispanic influences on his filmmaking, as well as his connections to the stage drama. This paper argues that Nepomuceno created a national consciousness by making films showing native lives and environments, adapting important Filipino novels and plays to the screen and covering important political topics and thereby creating public opinion. Many reviews in the newspapers connected his films to nation-building and independence, as the creation of a national consciousness is a cornerstone in the process of building a nation and defining "Filipino". Furthermore, the films of Nepomuceno helped spreading the Tagalog culture and language to other parts of the Philippines, hence making Tagalog the foundation of the national Filipino language.

Language-play can briefly be described as the wilful manipulation of the peculiarities of a linguistic system in a way that draws attention to these peculiarities themselves, thereby causing a communicative and cognitive effect that goes beyond the conveyance of propositional meaning. Among the various phenomena answering this description are the different kinds of puns, but also more strictly form-based manipulations such as rhymes and alliteration, in addition to a host of other, sometimes even fuzzier, subcategories.

Due to its unusual nature, and especially its frequently strong dependence on the idiosyncrasies of a particular language, language-play can generally be assumed to constitute a significant challenge in a translation context. Furthermore, given its non-negligible effects, the translator is not free to simply ignore the language-play (provided it has been recognized as such in the first place) without having taken an active stance on its treatment. However, the difficulties in finding a suitable target-language solution are possibly exacerbated if the source text is a complex multimedia product such as a film, the translation of which, normally in the form of dubbing or subtitling, is subject to additional constraints.

In view of these intricacies, it has been the aim of this study to analyze and measure how language-play in film has actually been treated in authentic dubbing and subtitle versions. As a prerequisite, the concept of language-play has been elaborated on, and more than a dozen subcategories have been described, developed, and employed. For the purpose of carrying out a meaningful analysis of the dubbing and subtitling of language-play, a corpus has been compiled, comprising 18 family films and 99 of their various target versions, most on DVD, and yielding nearly 800 source-text instances of language-play and thousands of translation solutions.

The results indicate that especially two sets of factors, among the many that are likely to influence a translation, play a prominent role: the type of the language-play, and the identity and working conditions of the translator. By contrast, the mode of translation (dubbing vs. subtitling), the target language, or the general properties of the films, could not be shown to have a sizeable impact.

There are a growing number of mainstream films and television shows which include gay characters or same-sex families as central figures: A Single Man, The Kids Are Alright, Will & Grace, Mad Men, Two and a Half Men, and Modern Family. This thesis sets out to determine if the film Interview with the Vampire, which preceded the above named films and television shows by more than five years, is a cite of queer cinema that focuses on gay themes while proposing a same-sex family. In coupling Seymour Chatman's rhetorical theory of narrative in fiction-literature and film with Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin's theory of Queer Cinema, the study focuses on locating and citing specific instances where gay themes of identity and identification along with the theme of the same-sex family emerge. The study utilizes the novel Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice as a critical touchstone and draws from Roland Barthes' concept of "Rhetoric of the Image" to evaluate the strength of the themes found within the adapted film Interview with the Vampire. The research finds several examples of the re-presentation of individual gay lives and uncovers evidence of a cinematic representation of a same-sex family. The researcher concludes that while the film Interview with the Vampire is certainly an example of queer cinema, it also presents a same-sex family unit that may be the first of its kind.

In less than a decade since the onset of the global economic crisis, more than 2 million people have left Spain in search of work and the possibility of a livable existence. Many of these economic exiles are young and highly qualified, leading some to classify this exodus as a brain drain. Lingering labor market instability and growing mistrust in Spain’s political system portend a challenging future for members of the so-called “lost generation,” both at home and abroad. Meanwhile, many questions remain about the lasting effects and repercussions of the crisis and massive departure of young Spaniards.

In response, the recession and ensuing surge in emigration have been popular themes of economic, demographic and sociological research in recent years; however, the cultural productions representative of this group remain relatively unstudied. The current investigation focuses on a selection of documentary films and fictional literature that portray the experiences of these highly qualified migrants. Through close analysis of these works, narrative patterns and trends appeared. These literary and audiovisual texts manifest the dialectical tensions of exile literature theorized by Sophia McClennen as well as the complex nostalgias of Svetlana Boym. They also reject and redefine the generational terms imposed upon them, express diasporic solidarity and call for political involvement and collective action. The rhetorical undercurrents at work in these constructions of individual and group identity suggest the emergence of an archetypal narrative of the new Spanish migrant. The cultural negotiations implicit in this narrative seem to confirm that sweeping but gradual societal changes are taking effect, even beyond Spain's borders.