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From Voice to Noise: Accented Speech, Constructed Languages, and Subtitling Practices as Markers of Difference
Alice Alonso Limongi
This monograph explores three main strategies of vocal exotification in Anglophone film: representations of accented speech, inclusion of constructed languages, and non-subtitling of snippets of other languages. Using Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding framework, I approach these practices as rhetorical devices that both construct and are constructed by the complexity of our social landscapes. Portrayals of accented speech, constructed languages, and subtitling practices form a gradient of abstraction, where the denotative meaning of words gradually loses importance to the sonic characteristics of the voice. Combining broader cultural scholarship from Edward Said, sound studies writings on power and language from Nina Sun Eidsheim and Ana María Ochoa Gautier, and linguistics theory from Gala Rebane, I argue these vocal performances draw on previous associations between sonic elements and cultural traits while creating new layers of rhetoric. By analyzing vocal practices in Bird of Paradise (1934), West Side Story (1961 and 2021), and Atlantis (2001), I trace patterns of rigidity and homogenization across depictions of linguistic diversity. These practices of vocal exotification are not innocuous, but an extension of culturally flattened depictions of non-English speakers in Anglophone visual media.
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