Drawing on data from well-known actors in popular films and TV shows, this reference guide surveys the representation of accent in North American film and TV over eight decades. It analyzes the speech of 180 film and television performances from the 1930s to today, looking at how that speech has changed; how it reflects the regional backgrounds, gender, and ethnic ancestry of the actors; and how phonetic variation and change in the 'real world' have been both portrayed in, and possibly influenced by, film and television speech. It also clearly explains the technical concepts necessary for understanding the phonetic analysis of accents. Providing new insights into the role of language in the expression of North American cultural identity, this is essential reading for researchers and advanced students in linguistics, film, television and media studies, and North American studies, as well as the larger community interested in film and television.

Drawing on data from well-known actors in popular films and TV shows, this reference guide surveys the representation of accent in North American film and TV over eight decades. It analyzes the speech of 180 film and television performances from the 1930s to today, looking at how that speech has changed; how it reflects the regional backgrounds, gender, and ethnic ancestry of the actors; and how phonetic variation and change in the 'real world' have been both portrayed in, and possibly influenced by, film and television speech. It also clearly explains the technical concepts necessary for understanding the phonetic analysis of accents. Providing new insights into the role of language in the expression of North American cultural identity, this is essential reading for researchers and advanced students in linguistics, film, television and media studies, and North American studies, as well as the larger community interested in film and television.

A phonetic analysis of accents in North American film and television: how they vary and how they have changed.

The Routledge Handbook of Sociophonetics is the definitive guide to sociophonetics. Offering a practical and accessible survey of an unparalleled range of theoretical and methodological perspectives, this is the first handbook devoted to sociophonetic research and applications of sociophonetics within and beyond linguistics. It defines what sociophonetics is as a field and offers views of what sociophonetics might become. Split into three sections, this book: • examines the suprasegmental, segmental, and subsegmental units that sociophoneticians study; • reveals the ways that sociophoneticians create knowledge and solve problems across a range of theoretical and practical applications; • explores sociophonetic traditions around the world in spoken and signed languages; • includes case studies that demonstrate sociophonetic research in action, which will support and inspire readers to conduct their own projects. This handbook is an indispensable resource for researchers, undergraduate and graduate students in sociophonetics, as well as researchers and students in sociolinguistics, phonetics, phonology, language variation and change, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, speech pathology, and language teaching—and indeed any area of study where phonetics and phonology interact with social factors and forces.

(Applause Acting Series). The classic Skinner method to speech for the stage! This 75-minute audio CD and booklet is a companion to the paperback Speak with Distinction (ISBN 1557830479). Revised with new material added by Timothy Monich and Lilene Mansell.

This book explores how language is used to create characters in fictional television series. To do so, it draws on multiple case studies from the United States and Australia. Brought together in this book for the first time, these case studies constitute more than the sum of their parts. They highlight different aspects of televisual characterisation and showcase the use of different data, methods, and approaches in its analysis. Uniquely, the book takes a mixed-method approach and will thus not only appeal to corpus linguists but also researchers in sociolinguistics, stylistics, and pragmatics. All corpus linguistic techniques are clearly introduced and explained, and the book is thus accessible to both experienced researchers as well as novice researchers and students. It will be essential reading in linguistics, literature, stylistics, and media/television studies.

This collection showcases the unique potential of stylistic approaches for better understanding the multifaceted nature of pop culture discourse. As its point of departure, the book takes the notion of pop culture as a phenomenon characterized by the interaction of linguistic signs with other modes such as imagery and music to examine a diverse range of genres through the lens of stylistics. Each section is grouped around thematic lines, looking at literary fiction, telecinematic discourse, music and lyrics, as well as cartoons and video games. The 12 chapters analyze different forms of media through five central strands of stylistics, from sociolinguistic, pragmatic, cognitive, multimodal, to corpus-based approaches. In drawing on these various stylistic frameworks and applying them across genres and modes, the contributions offer readers deeper insights into the role of scripted and performed language in social representation and identity construction, thereby highlighting the affordances of stylistics research in studying pop cultural texts. This volume is of particular interest to students and researchers in stylistics, linguistics, literary studies, media studies, and cultural studies.

Is American English in decline? Are regional dialects dying out? Is there a difference between men and women in how they adapt to linguistic variations? These questions, and more, about our language catapulted Robert MacNeil and William Cran—the authors (with Robert McCrum) of the language classic The Story of English—across the country in search of the answers. Do You Speak American? is the tale of their discoveries, which provocatively show how the standard for American English—if a standard exists—is changing quickly and dramatically. On a journey that takes them from the Northeast, through Appalachia and the Deep South, and west to California, the authors observe everyday verbal interactions and in a host of interviews with native speakers glean the linguistic quirks and traditions characteristic of each area. While examining the histories and controversies surrounding both written and spoken American English, they address anxieties and assumptions that, when explored, are highly emotional, such as the growing influence of Spanish as a threat to American English and the special treatment of African-American vernacular English. And, challenging the purists who think grammatical standards are in serious deterioration and that media saturation of our culture is homogenizing our speech, they surprise us with unpredictable responses. With insight and wit, MacNeil and Cran bring us a compelling book that is at once a celebration and a potent study of our singular language. Each wave of immigration has brought new words to enrich the American language. Do you recognize the origin of 1. blunderbuss, sleigh, stoop, coleslaw, boss, waffle? Or 2. dumb, ouch, shyster, check, kaput, scram, bummer? Or 3. phooey, pastrami, glitch, kibbitz, schnozzle? Or 4. broccoli, espresso, pizza, pasta, macaroni, radio? Or 5. smithereens, lollapalooza, speakeasy, hooligan? Or 6. vamoose, chaps, stampede, mustang, ranch, corral? 1. Dutch 2. German 3. Yiddish 4. Italian 5. Irish 6. Spanish

Audio recordings of English are available from the first half of the twentieth century and thus complement the written data sources for the recent history of the language. This book is the first to bring together a team of globally recognised scholars to document and analyse these early recordings in a single volume. Looking at examples of regional varieties of English from England, Scotland, Ireland, the USA, Canada and other anglophone countries, the volume explores both standard and vernacular varieties, and demonstrates how accents of English have changed between the late nineteenth century and the present day. The socio-phonetic examinations of the recordings will be of interest to scholars of historical linguistics, the history of the English language, language variation and change, phonetics, and phonology.

Do you have a burning desire to make it as an actor in the entertainment industry? Do you find yourself wondering what steps to take, wondering where to start? It may be how you're doing it or what you're not doing! Actor and writer Ingrid Torrance has been in the entertainment industry for over fifteen years and knows the in's and out's of how to make it or break it in the industry. Her guidebook is a must-have if you're in the first stages of your career or if you're a burgeoning actor because her formula works. Learn how to kick start your acting career by taking the right steps first, learn what to do and what not to do at an audition, and glean a basic understanding of how the industry works. The industry does change, but the basics stay the same. ACT! is a comprehensive, easy-to-follow book that will provide you with everything you need to start turning your dream into a reality. Ingrid Torrance is an actor, writer, producer and director and has appeared in numerous television series and movies. She has been nominated for a Leo Award as Best Actress, and has been an acting teacher for 15 years and an acting coach on set and off for 12. Ms. Torrance was featured in Entertainment Weekly as a "Breakout" Actress. She is currently writing her next instructional book for actors and a fiction novel. She lives in Canada. Visit her website at: www.ingridtorrance.com. Publisher's website: http: //www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/ACT-AStepbyStepGuidetoStartingYourActingCareer.html