Why Do Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign Accents?

Children’s shows often use non-standard dialects to voice the “bad guys,” sending a dangerous message to kids about diversity. 儿童节目常常用非标准语言的方言来表达“坏蛋们”的声音，其传递的信息给孩子们接纳多样性带来隐患。

When the sociolinguist Calvin Gidney sawThe Lion Kingin theaters two decades ago, he was struck by the differences between Mufasa and Scar. The characters don’t have much in common: Mufasa is heroic and steadfast,while Scar is cynical and power-hungry.But what Gidney noticed most was how they each spoke: Mufasa has an American accent, while Scar, the lion of the dark side, roars in British English.In a climactic1climactic高潮的。scene in which Scar accuses Simba of being the “murderer!”responsible for Mufasa’s death, the fi nal“r” in his declaration fl oats up into a sky bursting with lightning, and it’s hard to imagine it sounding quite as monstrous in another tone.

20年前，社会语言学家卡尔文·吉德尼在剧院看《狮子王》时，他被木法沙和刀疤之间的差异所震撼。这两个角色没有多少共同之处：木法沙英勇、坚定，而刀疤愤世嫉俗、渴望权力。但最引起吉德尼注意的是他们的说话方式：木法沙拥有美国口音，而反派刀疤则用英式英语咆哮。在刀疤指控辛巴是杀死木法沙的“凶手！”的那场高潮戏中，随着刀疤喊出的最后一个音r冲上云霄，天空顿时电闪雷鸣，其声音之可怕，很难想象它在另一种语调中也能传达出同样的效果。

[2] Gidney, an associate professor in child study and human development at Tufts University who specializes in sociolinguistics, saw Scar’s accent as part of a disturbing pattern in the film:Foreign accents and non-standard dialects were being used to voice all of the “bad”characters. Gidney also noticed that Scar’s minions, the hyenas, spoke in either African American English or English with a Spanish accent. Gidney found this trend concerning, especially since the theme of the movie could be described as“the ‘natural order of things,’” he said. “I thought it was really disturbing that it was necessary to ‘take back the jungle’ from the British-sounding evil lion, plus the African American-sounding and Latinosounding hyenas.”

[3] Gidney was inspired to embark on a study of language patterns in animated kids’ entertainment, teaming up with Julie Dobrow, a senior lecturer at Tufts who specializes in issues of children and media, to study how these trends play out on kids’ television shows.They’ve since analyzed about 30 shows and 1,500 characters, and they’re still at work on the project.

[2]吉德尼是塔夫茨大学从事儿童研究和人类发展学研究的副教授，专攻社会语言学。他将刀疤的口音看作电影中令人不安的套路的一部分：所有“坏”角色都操着异域口音和非标准语的方言。吉德尼还注意到，鬣狗作为刀疤的爪牙，说的要么是非洲裔美式英语，要么就是带西班牙口音的英语。吉德尼发觉这种趋势颇令人担忧，特别是因为本片主题可以说是表现“自然法则”的，他说：“我觉得有个问题很让人不安，即必须要从英国口音的邪恶狮子及非裔美国口音和拉丁口音的鬣狗手中‘夺回丛林’。”

[3]于是，得到启发的吉德尼开始着手研究儿童动画节目中的语言模式，他与塔夫茨大学专门研究儿童和媒体问题的高级讲师朱莉·多布罗合作，共同研究这些趋势如何影响儿童电视节目。自那时起，他们分析了大约30个节目和1500个角色，如今他们仍然在做这个项目。

[4]在1998年的初步研究中，吉德尼和多布罗让一组程序员分析了323个电视动画角色，采用了诸如种族和性别识别、外貌、英雄/恶棍身份和语言学标记等量度。程序员测试了随机抽样的12个节目，这些节目体裁各异，取自不同的电视台和广播电台，包罗各种体裁。研究结果表明，许多儿童节目都用语言来标记某个给定角色的某些特征。除两个节目以外，所有节目中的方言（这里指的是一种语言的任何特殊变体）都在某种程度上体现了人物的个性特征。

[4] For their initial study in 1998,Gidney and Dobrow had a team of coders analyze 323 animated TV characters using measures such as ethnic and gender identification, physical appearance, hero/villain status, and linguistic markers. The coders tested a random sample of 12 shows, which spanned a variety of networks, air-times2air-time广播时间。,and genres. Their fi ndings suggested that lots of kids’ shows use language to mark certain traits in a given character. All but two of the shows studied correlated dialect (a term that refers here to any particular variety of a language) with characters’ personality traits in some way.

[5] The kicker: In many of the cases studied, villains were given foreign accents. A modern-day example is Dr.Heinz Doofenshmirtz, the bad guy inPhineas and Ferbwho speaks in a German(ish) accent and hails from the fictional European country Drusselstein.Meanwhile, the study found that most of the heroic characters in their research sample were American-sounding; only two heroes had foreign accents. Since television is a prominent source of cultural messaging for children, this correlation of foreign accents with “bad” characters could have concerning implications for the way kids are being taught to engage with diversity in the United States.

[6] The most wicked foreign accent of all was British English, according to the study. From Scar to Aladdin’s Jafar,the study found that British is the foreign accent most commonly used for villains.German and Slavic accents are also common for villain voices. Henchmen or assistants to villains often spoke in dialects associated with low socioeconomic status,including working-class Eastern European dialects or regional American dialects such as “Italian-American gangster” (like when Claude in Captain Planet says ‘tuhraining’ instead of ‘training.’) None of the villains in the sample studied seemed to speak Standard American English; when they did speak with an American accent, it was always in regional dialects associated with low socioeconomic status.

[5]值得注意的是：在许多案例中，反派都操异域口音。一个现代的例子是海因茨·多芬希姆茨博士，他是《菲尼亚斯和费尔布》中的坏蛋，说话带有德国口音，他来自虚构的欧洲国家德鲁斯坦。同时，研究样本中大多数英雄人物的发音都是美式的，只有两位英雄有外国口音。由于电视是向儿童传递文化信息的主要来源，外国口音与“坏”角色之间的这种相互关联可能会对美国儿童受教接纳多样性产生不良影响。

[6]根据这项研究，最邪恶的异域口音当属英式英语。从“刀疤”到《阿拉丁》的“雅法尔”，恶棍最常使用的异域口音都是英式英语。德语和斯拉夫语的口音也常见于反派的声音。恶棍的亲信或手下经常说着社会经济地位低下地区的有关方言，包括代表工人阶层的东欧方言或美国地区方言，如“意大利裔美国帮派方言”（就像克劳德在《地球超人》中说的tuh-raining，而不是training）。在研究样本中，似乎没有一个坏蛋说标准的美语；当他们操美国口音时，也总是一口社会经济地位低下阶层的地区方言。

[7] Some shows also gave foreign accents to comic characters, though British English was almost never used in this way. “Speakers of British English are portrayed dichotomously3dichotomous两分的。as either the epitome of re fi nement and elegance or as the embodiment of effete4effete软弱的；女人气的。evil,”the study concludes. “What general sociolinguistic theory would suggest,”Gidney added, “is that American adults tend to evaluate British dialect… as sounding smarter.” Funny characters, on the other hand, often speak in German or Slavic accents (Dobrow offered as an example the associates of the evil Dr.Claw inInspector Gadget), as well as in regional American dialects associated with the white working class.

[7]有些节目也赋予喜剧人物异域口音，不过英式英语几乎从未以这种方式使用过。研究报告总结道：“讲英式英语的人要么被描绘成精致和优雅的典范，要么被描绘成衰败邪恶的化身。”吉德尼补充说：“普通社会语言学理论认为，美国成年人倾向于认为英国口音……听起来更聪明。”另一方面，滑稽的角色经常使用德语或斯拉夫语口音（多布罗举了一例——《G型神探》中邪恶的克劳博士的同僚）以及代表白人工人阶层的美国地区方言。

[8] Gidney and Dobrow’s findings suggest that the use of German, Eastern European, and Russian accents for animated villains is likely reflective of America’s hostility toward those countries during World War II and the Cold War. They have continued to find these same accent trends through the past few decades, even as the political and social climate changes and the nation’s zeitgeist is marked by different ethnic and global tensions. Rosina Lippi-Green,a linguist who has written on the uses of language in Disney movies, said that these tendencies likely have to do with the“age and training” of the show runners themselves. In other words, show runners may be making decisions on the basis of what was popular and successful in the shows they grew up watching.

[9] Research has shown that kids use TV as a key source of information about other ethnic groups, as well as about their own ethnic and racial identities.Linguists have also found that not only do people make judgements about their peers’ intelligence and education levels based on language characteristics (with those who speak standard dialects usually being viewed as smarter and betterlooking), but also that those judgments often shape how a person or group of people is treated. These patterns imply that when children see a correlation between evil and foreignness5foreignness异源性。foreign非典型的；陌生的。, or between evil and low socioeconomic status, there’s a good chance they are internalizing negative perceptions of themselves or other groups.

[8]吉德尼和多布罗的种种发现表明，使用德语、东欧语和俄罗斯语口音为动画片中的反派配音，很可能反映了美国在二战和冷战期间对这些国家的敌视态度。在过去几十年里，尽管政治和社会氛围在变化，且如今美国的时代精神有着不同种族和全球紧张局势的烙印，口音使用的这些趋势仍在继续。罗西娜·利皮-格林是研究迪士尼电影语言用法的语言学家，她说，这些倾向很可能与节目运营者本身的“年龄和教育”有关。换句话说，节目运营者做决定时可能会参考他们从小看的节目中流行和成功的元素。

[9]研究表明，电视是孩子们用来了解其他族群和本族并形成种族认同的关键信息源。语言学家还发现，人们会根据语言特征（说标准语言的人通常被认为更聪明、更漂亮）判断同龄人的智力和教育水平，而且，这些判断往往决定了一个人或一群人将如何被对待。这些模式意味着，当孩子看到邪恶和异质性之间的联系，或邪恶和低社会经济地位之间的关联时，他们很有可能正在内化对自己或其他群体的负面观念。

[10] Even civilization’s earliest storytellers likely used accents as markers of the “foreign,” Lippi-Green said. From the beginning, “people who were the best storytellers changed their voices”—doing so is, after all, one of the easiest ways to effectively mark an outsider.

[11] So what are parents to do with the knowledge that many kids’ TV shows and movies are brimming with cultural biases? Dobrow points to intentional,collaborative TV-watching. “What’s really important is to be able to make your children into media-literate viewers,” she said. “If a parent or sibling or caregiver is there with a child watching television or a film, this... can make anything into an educational experience.” ■

[10]利皮-格林说，即使在文明初期，最早开始讲故事的人也很可能用不同口音为角色带上“异域”标记。从一开始，“最会讲故事的人改变了他们的声音”——毕竟，要有效地标记一个局外人，这样做是最简单的方法之一。

[11] 那么，在认识到许多儿童电视节目和电影中充斥着文化偏见以后，家长该怎么做呢？多布罗提出要有目的性地跟孩子一起看电视。她说：“真正重要的是让你的孩子能够成为了解媒体的观众。如果父母、兄弟姐妹或看护者中的某一个和孩子一起看电视或电影，那么这样……可以将任何内容变成一种有教育意义的体验。” □