Ironic or sad?
KQED has been running a series of short films on immigration and documentaries with the intention of bringing the topic to the forefront of people's minds. Great idea, at issue here is their use of subtitles in the section that I saw.
Everyone was speaking English but almost categorically the immigrants they were interviewing were subtitled. As if to say, this person is not speaking in a manner that you should understand so we're going to print their words. Instead of helping the American public train their ears to understand different accents, speech patterns or intonation. Even though one of the talking heads was an Amercian with a noticable speech impediment his words were never subtitled. It was a rather astonishing decision especially since the goal of the program was to address issues of xenophobia.
The US is not alone in this kind of marginalization while in France when postcolonial speakers were interviewed their words were most often subtitled in French. Even French speakers from the North of France were sometimes subtitled as well. Interesting...
Everyone was speaking English but almost categorically the immigrants they were interviewing were subtitled. As if to say, this person is not speaking in a manner that you should understand so we're going to print their words. Instead of helping the American public train their ears to understand different accents, speech patterns or intonation. Even though one of the talking heads was an Amercian with a noticable speech impediment his words were never subtitled. It was a rather astonishing decision especially since the goal of the program was to address issues of xenophobia.
The US is not alone in this kind of marginalization while in France when postcolonial speakers were interviewed their words were most often subtitled in French. Even French speakers from the North of France were sometimes subtitled as well. Interesting...