Degree of foreign accent and contrastive characterization

Abstract Past research on American telecinematic media suggested that foreign-accented English often marked contrastive characters. However, studies addressing Hollywood’s representations of individual groups of non-native speakers of English have been scant. Moreover, although the degree of foreign accent in character depiction was commented on, apparently being meaningful, it was not systematically assessed. This article analyzes the use of various degrees of foreign accentedness in the portrayals of Russian characters in 36 Hollywood films released in the post-Soviet period. Focusing on contrastive roles, determined as negative, criminal, and comic, the study identifies their correlation with stronger foreign accents. In addition, characters with elite occupations display a higher degree of foreign accentedness than characters with mainstream occupations, which is explained by the less perceived threat of the latter, hence, less need to be cast as a linguistic other. The findings indicate that the accent portrayals of Russians in American cinema are biased and reflect a broader standard language ideology in the US. The study also provides support for the supposition that negative attitudes toward Russian English in the US are prompted by unfavorable images of cinematic Russians.