Lay Perceptions of Historical English as Portayed in Rolahnd Joffé’s Screen Adaptation of The Scarlet Letter

Abstract

espanolEste articulo toma como objeto de analisis una adaptacion cinematografica de un clasico literario estadounidense, La Letra Escarlata (1850) de Nathaniel Hawthorne, desde el punto de vista del lenguaje. La pelicula examinada es la adaptacion libre de Roland Joffe de la novela de Hawthorne (Joffe 1995). La presente contribucion sugiere un enfoque diferente para el analisis del lenguaje de las peliculas de epoca al que normalmente se adoptaria en el marco de la dialectologia. Esta perspectiva implica un cambio de paradigma de representacion (objetiva) a percepcion (subjetiva): en particular, propongo centrarme en el discurso metalinguistico de los criticos de cine, tanto en el de los escritores profesionales como en el de los no profesionales (que colaboran en periodicos y blogs), con especial referencia a sus comentarios sobre los fenomenos linguisticos en La Letra Escarlata de Joffe, a saber: acento, caracteristicas sociopragmaticas y morfologia verbal. EnglishThis paper takes as its object of analysis a cinematic adaptation of an American literary classic, i.e. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), from the point of view of language. The film under scrutiny is Roland Joffe’s free adaptation of Hawthorne’s novel (Joffe 1995). The present contribution suggests a different approach to the analysis of the language of period movies than one would typically adopt within the framework of dialectology. This perspective involves a paradigm shift from representation (objective) to perception (subjective): in particular I propose to focus on the metalinguistic discourse of film reviewers, both professionals and lay writers (writing for newspapers and blogs), with particular reference to their commentaries regarding linguistic phenomena in Joffe’s The Scarlet Letter, namely accent, socio-pragmatic features and verbal morphology.