Samantha Fummerton
Linguistics 210
T Th 10:00
Assignment #4
Part 2: Sociolinguistics
1) Movie Title: 2012
2) Character description: The character I chose is a very large, balding Russian man. He is
portrayed as being very wealthy. He is dating a woman who is much younger than him.
I’m not sure if he is a widow or divorced. He has two sons that he spoils rotten. He acts
very selfish throughout the entire movie, up until his death towards the end.
3) Character language: The character does not speak with a distinct regional or social
dialect. He speaks with an accent with influences from the Russian language.
4) Phonology:

“We are taking the Bentley!” (sounds like Bentley= bengley)
“We are taking the Bentley!”

“You think I didn’t know about you and Sasha?”
“You think I didn’t know about you and Sasha?”
We can identify by using both of these sentences that he is speaking Standard
English with a very heavy Russian accent.
5) Morphology-syntax: There weren’t any morpho-syntactic differences between the
characters language usage and Standard English. I think this might have to do with bad
acting. The actors may have focused so hard on trying to get the accent down, that they
didn’t pay any attention to the morpho-syntactic differences in the Russian language.
6) Lexicon: I unfortunately have no examples to give you. I listened closely to see if I could
hear any words that I didn’t recognize, or words that I wouldn’t normally hear in
Standard English, but came up empty. I again think this may be due to bad acting. The
character used some common English words, but placed the stress on the word in a
different spot so it sounded different.
7) The combination of language representation and characterization of this character did not
accurately portray a socio-economic reality of a Russian speaker. The characters accent
was used to add to the stereotypical personality of a wealthy Russian man. They made the
character out to be a rich, snobby, selfish Russian man, and I believe there are stereotypes
that go along with this portrayal. In lots of other movies, Russians are made out to be the
“bad guys” that are wealthy, rude, selfish people and this movie portrayal added to that
stereotype.
8) The language usage of this character in 2012 does not seem to work to make people more
sensitive to the realities of the language. All it seems to do is strengthen the judgments
and stereotypes of the Russian language. I don’t feel that this perception of the language
perpetuates misconceptions about the connection with intelligence, but most definitely
personality. The accent the character portrays is making the “typical male Russian” out to
be just like the stereotypes that we hear attached to Russian language.
9) Language is portrayed on TV and in movies in a variety of different ways. This particular
portrayal was a bad one in my opinion. There are so many aspects to a language that an
actor or actress has to consider, that I don’t know if there is really a good way of going
about it. Actors have to not only study the accent, but also the lexical choices, phonology,
and morphology of that language. This character seemed to have the accent down, but
was lacking in all other fields. I believe this is why I thought that character did a bad job
of portraying the Russian character.