The semiotic implications of multilingualism in the construction of suspense in Alfred Hitchcock’s films

Bonis, Giuseppe De

doi:10.1163/9789401210690_011

Cited by 2 publications

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“…The dialogue in the "torture scene" is entirely in German with no English subtitles. This is a case of so-called "contextual translation" (Baldo 2009, De Bonis 2014b in which the audiovisual codes, combined with the elements described above, help and sustain viewers' understanding of what they see and hear on screen. Multilingual humour seems to operate beyond any language barrier as the scene ends up speaking for itself.…”

Section: Examplementioning

confidence: 99%

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An Austrian in Hollywood: the representation of foreigners in the films of Billy Wilder

Chiaro

Bonis²

2019

EJHR

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This paper examines the work of Billy Wilder whose rich cinematic production frequently involves the collision of different languages as well as the clash of dissimilar cultures. As an Austrian living in the USA, the director had the privilege of gaining insight into his adopted culture from the point of view of an outsider – a bilingual ‘other’ who made 25 films in almost 40 years of working in Hollywood. His films recurrently depict foreign characters at which Wilder pokes fun whether they are English, French, German, Italian, Russian or even the Americans of his adopted country. More precisely, the paper offers an overview of the multi-modal portrayals of diverse ‘foreigners’, namely Germans, Russians, French and Italians, with examples taken from a small but significant sample of Wilder’s films. The subtitling of dialogue in the secondary language for the target English-speaking audience and the specific translation solutions are not within the scope of this discussion, instead we focus on the comic collision of two languages and more importantly, on the way Wilder implements humour to highlight the absurdity of cultural difference. In other words, our main goal is to explore two or more languages in contrast when they become a humorous trope.

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Section: Examplementioning

confidence: 99%

“…De Bonis 2014b), but it is also used as a vehicular language between French characters and the American main character. The presence of French is limited to a few easily comprehensible words (on the homogenising convention see Sternberg, 1981, O'Sullivan 2011, De Bonis 2014b, 2015a. This scene is one of the few exceptions.…”

Section: Arianementioning

confidence: 99%

An Austrian in Hollywood: the representation of foreigners in the films of Billy Wilder

Chiaro

Bonis²

2019

EJHR

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Multilingualism and Translation on Screen

Chiaro

Bonis

2020

Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting

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The semiotic implications of multilingualism in the construction of suspense in Alfred Hitchcock’s films

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

An Austrian in Hollywood: the representation of foreigners in the films of Billy Wilder

An Austrian in Hollywood: the representation of foreigners in the films of Billy Wilder

Multilingualism and Translation on Screen

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