Teaching English as a Second Language via the American film Forest Gump

Abstract

This study belongs to the line of research on the interface between ESP and Cinematography. In particular, it seeks to investigate the usefulness of using the film Forest Gump in English language teaching and learning. Stylistics is used because the present study studies language and style, which are rooted in figurative language via figures of speech. To this effect, this article applied a descriptive qualitative method. The data of the study were taken from the film Forest Gump. The forms of the data are the sentences uttered by the main character who is Forest Gump in the selected film, which is replete with figures of speech. For its theoretical framework, this paper relies on Perrine’s theory. It focuses on five figures of speech, namely metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole and paradox. Each type of figure of speech has its specific function and meaning. In addition, the results of the pilot study were interpreted quantitatively to reveal the positive effect of the selected film upon participants’fluency. it has been found that students’fluency is improved by language input and figures of speech they are exposed to during the viewing process of the film.