A diachronic study of familiarizers (‘man’, ‘guys’, ‘buddy’, ‘dude’) in movie language

Abstract

The present paper aims to illustrate the applicability of corpus linguistics (CL) to audiovisual translation (AVT) and to provide an empirical description of familiarizers in movie conversation as an example of such applicability. The paper is conceptually divided into two main parts: the first, which is introductory, illustrates the benefits that AVT can gain by adopting CL as a methodology, describes the modus operandi followed, and briefly introduces the linguistic items analyzed. The second part, which is more practical, first focuses on original American movies, by investigating the frequency, collocations, colligations and the lexical bundles of ‘guys’, ‘man’, ‘buddy’ and ‘dude’; and then focuses on dubbed Italian movies, by exploring the ways in which these familiarizers are translated. Results show that: the functions that familiarizers traditionally carry out in spoken interaction are also present in original movies; their use in more recent original movies is closer to spoken language than older movies; they tend to be less dubbed after the year 2000; and despite such cut, the function of the linguistic features used to dub them in more recent movies is closer to that of the original movies than those produced in older times.

Keywords:

• corpus linguistics
• audiovisual translation
• dubbing
• familiarizers
• movie language
• vocatives

Notes on contributor

Pierfranca Forchini has an MA in Foreign Languages and Literatures, an MA in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, and a PhD in Linguistic and Literary Sciences. Her PhD dissertation investigated the differences between face-to-face and movie conversation in American English. Her main interests are corpus linguistics (pragmatics and the lexico-grammar of spoken and movie language), language varieties (especially the differences between British and American English), applied linguistics (phraseology and the use of movies as potential sources for language teaching and learning), contrastive linguistics (phraseology, dubbing from English into Italian, English versus Italian sound system), and business English (particularly presentations in company contexts, US corporate culture and values). At Catholic University of Milan (Italy), she teaches English Linguistics and American English and Culture to undergraduates and various aspects of Business English to graduate students.

Notes

1. For example, synchronization, the prosaic constraints of the medium itself, time and budget constraints, inter alia (cf. Chiaro, 2009).