Film analysis: ''Bend it like Beckham’'!
Jess is an eighteen year old girl so passionate about football that she would like to
emulate the deeds of her idol, the footballer Beckham. But unfortunately for her,
her family does not approve of this choice. Of Indian descent, parents would like
her to dress more feminine clothes and find a man to marry. Now, however,
together with his inseparable friend Jules is about to reach the dream of going to
play in the United States.!
the film intent is, naturally, underline the cultural clash between race, gender,
customs, inherited traditions, religions, prejudice and generations. The first thing
which strokes is, obviously, pronunciation, indeed, all film's characters speak
Hindi, a type of english spoken by south asian immigrants in which there are some
references to panjabij culture. What come out, especially in speaking english, is the
complexity of grammar and structure that's is different between generations,
indeed, while young characters speake a good british english, older generations
speak a basic english putting too much Punjabij terms making up what we've
called "Hindi", in fact, this consists predominantly of English peppere with words
from South Asian Language, especially slang and everyday, family words. It has
gown in popularity to such an extent that it now encompasses not just the code-
switching phenomena but the evolution of a whole new vocabulary which cannot
be add into "inner circle" englishes because, as we said, it refers to a form of
linguistic and intercultural mediation in far-away socio-cultural and ideological
settings where indigenous culture is at least in part an influence.!
Back to film, we can sort out that moreover, both in the original soundtrack and in
italian dubbing, we can observe cases of:!
- Borrowing from Punjabi, as seen in names refering to food, clothes and use of
different vocabulary !
-Appropriation, that's, the use of borrowed indian terms and english inflectional
morphemes.!
However we can split all these differences in four groups:!
1. expression of thanks, differential vocabulary and use of blessing !
for example: “Thank you Massiji, Guru Nanak must have blessed me…”!
2. Food and religious beliefs !
for example: “Bring me back some langar,” and “What did i do wrong in my past
life?”!
3. Lexis!
For example: “I'ts only me!”, where "only" is used to enphazises place and time
where and when speakers is. !
4. Grammar
for example “you're dancing with me” (use of present continuous instead of
imperative).!
