Chick Flicks and Dialects :)

Okay, so I hardly ever post my homework on my blog, because that usually just seems silly to me. But I have to admit, I kind of had fun writing this. First, because I'm a little more snarky than I probably should be in a homework assignment, and second, because I'm writing about dialects, and that's just fun. Not promising that this will be a masterpiece of linguistic insight and argument. It's more just stream-of-consciousness rattling off of thoughts as I watched the movie, but that's exactly what the homework assignment required, so...

Enjoy!

Letters to Juliet is your standard, formulaic chick flick, as prone to fitting characters into stereotypes (both dialectal and appearance-based) as Disney movies are. This movie is a story of a female, American protagonist, Sophie, who goes with her fiancé Victor to visit Verona, Italy. While in Verona, she becomes involved in the 50-year-old love story of a well-to-do British woman who is searching (with her grandson, Charlie) for her long-lost first love. Despite his stuffy and often downright snobbish attitude, the British Charlie provides an obvious foil to the food-obsessed, rapid-fire-Italian-English-talking Victor who apparently doesn’t have much time for his fiancée. The three-way contrast of the Standard American English spoken by Sophie, the Standard British English spoken by Charlie, and the Italian American English spoken by Victor helps to illustrate the characters’ personalities according to the stereotypes associated with each variety.

                Sophie, a typical American, middle-class woman with a white collar job, speaks in Standard American English. Because the movie is marketed primarily toward American audiences, Sophie’s accent makes her instantly relatable, because she talks just like the rest of us. Her brisk, clipped American accent reflects her profession as a businesswoman and a journalist. At the same time, she uses many familiar slang expressions and exclamations (“That is awesome!” “Yeah,” “Are you for real?” etc.) that tie her back into the language associated with the younger generation. This makes her fit the standard “insert-yourself-here” formula for heroines in romantic comedies that allows young women to relate to her.

                 Tight-laced Brit, Charlie, waltzes onto the screen, dripping with disdain and apparently lacking any romantic inclinations in his entire body. Due to many American conceptions about British English speakers being stiff, methodical, unemotional, very intelligent, and occasionally elitist, his accent reinforces the way they want him to come across in the beginning. “He always insisted that love was nothing but hormones, but underneath, he has such a warm, passionate heart,” Charlie’s grandmother says of him at one point during the movie. The flip side of the associations with British English is that it is foreign, and carries with it some romanticism, especially as associated with Shakespeare and English poetry. Regency-era movies, frequently considered the crown jewels of romantic chick flicks, are almost exclusively cast in British English varieties. Letters to Juliet draws on this heritage of British English as a romantic variety as Charlie begins to fall for Sophie and takes his place as the true male lead in the movie.

                Victor, as a sharp contrast to the reserved but witty Charlie, is enthusiastic, emotive, and speaks rapidly in Italian English, often employing the Italian trend for repetition and hyperbole. Appropriately, he is a pasta chef looking to open his own restaurant in New York, and has come to Italy with Sophie to meet with potential suppliers. Caught up as he is by his driving passion for food (another trait commonly associated with Italy and Italians), he is often distracted from paying attention to Sophie, which makes him a less appropriate match for her than Charlie is. Although Italian is widely considered to be the language of love, this movie exploits the less romantic aspects of Italian English to portray Victor’s unsuitability as Sophie’s love interest. The more charming, lyrical Italian accents are relegated to the women Sophie meets, and to the Italian man Charlie’s grandmother had come searching for.

                Though the movie is not intentionally offering commentary on the various dialects it presents – such a subtext is a little deeper and more complex than most chick flicks choose to delve into – the use of the different varieties of English does speed up the audience’s ability to associate each character with their intended personality traits. For the purposes of a chick flick, this use of dialect as characterization is both effective and expected, much as it is with Disney movies.