TY - JOUR
T1 - Comparing insults across languages in films
T2 - Dubbing as cross-cultural mediation
AU - Pavesi, Maria
AU - Formentelli, Maicol
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.
PY - 2019/9/1
Y1 - 2019/9/1
N2 - Insults are prototypical means to express impoliteness in social interactions. In film they are prime ways of staging conflict or jocular abuse, reflecting everyday communicative practices while contributing to the emotionality of dialogue, characterisation and plot advancement. Both original and dubbed films offer a privileged perspective to investigate the codification of impoliteness within and across linguacultures. In this contribution, we hypothesise that cross-cultural mediation in dubbing arises from hybridisation, a product of the contact between source and target language. Drawing on a parallel and comparable corpus of original and dubbed films, the study focuses on two major categories of insults and explores contrastively their overall frequency, the distinction between genuine and mock impoliteness and the structural complexity of forms. A degree of comparability is observed across Anglophone, Italian and dubbed Italian films, although distinctive trends also emerge from the corpus analysis. If Italian films globally make more frequent use of insults, Anglophone films stand out for their greater reliance on mock impoliteness and greater elaboration of forms. Dubbed films tend to position midway, reproducing source language patterns, while also partaking distinguishing lexico-grammatical traits of the target language. The results substantiate the function dubbing serves in cross-cultural mediation by activating an array of frames of reference that allow the new receiving audiences to experience foreign communication practices from their native language perspective.
AB - Insults are prototypical means to express impoliteness in social interactions. In film they are prime ways of staging conflict or jocular abuse, reflecting everyday communicative practices while contributing to the emotionality of dialogue, characterisation and plot advancement. Both original and dubbed films offer a privileged perspective to investigate the codification of impoliteness within and across linguacultures. In this contribution, we hypothesise that cross-cultural mediation in dubbing arises from hybridisation, a product of the contact between source and target language. Drawing on a parallel and comparable corpus of original and dubbed films, the study focuses on two major categories of insults and explores contrastively their overall frequency, the distinction between genuine and mock impoliteness and the structural complexity of forms. A degree of comparability is observed across Anglophone, Italian and dubbed Italian films, although distinctive trends also emerge from the corpus analysis. If Italian films globally make more frequent use of insults, Anglophone films stand out for their greater reliance on mock impoliteness and greater elaboration of forms. Dubbed films tend to position midway, reproducing source language patterns, while also partaking distinguishing lexico-grammatical traits of the target language. The results substantiate the function dubbing serves in cross-cultural mediation by activating an array of frames of reference that allow the new receiving audiences to experience foreign communication practices from their native language perspective.
KW - cross-cultural mediation
KW - dubbing
KW - hybridisation
KW - impoliteness
KW - insults
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85071669289&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1515/multi-2018-0124
DO - 10.1515/multi-2018-0124
M3 - Article
SN - 0167-8507
VL - 38
SP - 563
EP - 582
JO - Multilingua
JF - Multilingua
IS - 5
ER -