Phonological Elements In The Movie, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fall
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Each country often has their own characteristics of phonological elements even if they speak the same language. In the movie, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fall”, two characters, namely Mudflap and Skids, are perceived as African American speakers. This is generally due to the phonological elements of their speaking, which matches with the characteristics of AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and differs from Standard American English (SAE).
Upon comparing the AAVE and SAE, one obvious characteristics of AAVE speaker is their tendency to abandon the /ð/ to /d/ (African American English, n.d.). From extract 1, line 002, “Those”, was pronounced by Skids as /dəʊz/ in AAVE, which differs from the SAE pronunciation, /ðəʊz/. The same goes with Extract 2, line 006, “That’s”, which was read as /daets/ by Mudflap in AAVE rather than /ðaets/ in SAE. This also happened in Extract 3, line 006, “That’s”. /ð/ is a voiceless consonant, with dental as the place on articulation and fricative as the manner of articulation. It is pronounced by putting the tongue tip near the front teeth and making an absolute stoppage of the airstream. (Denham and Lobeck, 2012). On the other hand, /d/ is a voiceless, alveolar and plosive consonant. It is pronounced with the tip of the tongue near…show more content… (African American English, n.d.) In Excerpt 3, line 006, the word “school” was pronounced as /sku/ by Skids in AAVE, which differs from SAE speakers who usually pronounces it as /skul/. Meanwhile, in excerpt 4 line 007, Mudflap pronounce “little” as /lɪtə/ in AAVE, rather than /lɪtəl/ in SAE. This difference in AAVE and SAE is one element of AAVE speakers. With reference to the IPA table, the place of articulation for /l/ is alveolar and its manner of articulation is lateral. This means that /l/ is pronounced through the tongue of the tip at the alveolar ridge where “air flows around the sides of the tongue” (Denham and Lobeck,