LINGUIST List 11.1867

Tue Sep 5 2000

Qs: Help w/ "Hieroglyphics",Ling Analysis of Film

Editor for this issue: James Yuells <jameslinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Natalie Schilling-Estes, "Hieroglyphics" Translation/Language Identification
2. Claudia Bubel, Linguistic Analysis of Film Dialogue

I'm trying to help out a relative, who is a jeweler, by identifying (and
possibly deciphering) the characters on the bottom of a large-ish scarab he
recently acquired. They don't appear to be genuine Egyptian hieroglyphics, but
I'm by no means an expert in this area. The characters can be viewed at
www.roughdraft.com/natsite/scarab, if anyone might be able to help.

Thanks,
Natalie Schilling-Estes
Linguistics Dept.
Georgetown University

Dear colleagues -

	I'm planning a seminar on the linguistic analysis of film dialogues. In
this course students are intended to apply their skills in discourse
analysis to film conversations and compare these to naturally occurring
conversations. 

Has anyone done research on this topic? 
Any recommendations on literature are welcome (the only article I have is
Tannen and Lakoff's 1984 "Conversational Strategy and Metastrategy in a
Pragmatic Theory: The Example of Scenes From a Marriage." Semiotica
49:3/4.323-346.). 

I would like to put together a list of movies with dialogues that would be
interesting to analyse from a linguistic point of view. They might be
especially close to naturally occurring conversation with overlaps,
interruptions etc. or diverge from naturally occurring speech as older
movies tend to do (cf. 1996 discussion on the LINGUIST LIST 7.503). Jeff
Siegel has collected a list of movies with examples of code-switching
(LINGUIST List 11.1741) - one linguistic phenomenon covered. What about
others?

I am not looking for films in which language is the central theme though,
like Nell or My Fair Lady (Ernest Scatton and Steven Weinberger have
already put together lists of those, available at
http://cnsvax.albany.edu/~alin220/lin220films.html and LINGUIST 7.1708 ). 

I will post a summary, if there are sufficient replies.

Many thanks,
Claudia.







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Claudia Bubel
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. Neal R. Norrick
Fachrichtung 4.3 Anglistik
Universitaet des Saarlandes
Postfach 15 11 50
D-66041 Saarbruecken

Tel.: 0681 - 302 - 2270
e-mail: c.bubelmx.uni-saarland.de
url: http://www.uni-saarland.de/fak4/norrick/

Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated
than it. - Ludwig Wittgenstein