Sociolinguistic Artifacts

This is a clip from the movie Rush Hour where Agent Carter misunderstood that Jackie Chan (Lee) cannot understand English; therefore he got frustrated and started to change his tone and volume while talking to him. This clip touches on the issue of performativity, racial and linguistic ideologies, Standard Language Ideology and Language socialization. Chris Tucker in the movie was expecting Jackie Chan to be able to speak English, and he also used forms like “speaka” and said “Mr. Rice-a-Roni don’t even speak American”. Based on this example and also the rising tone and increasing volume, it shows how Tucker had the linguistic ideologies of if he speaks louder and slower then the other person is going to understand him. He also used terms that shows his own identity such as “speaka”, and he also said, “speak American” to show his ideology of American equals English only.