How Do Films and Television Get Language Right?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning. This is Cynthia Roemaker from Rancho Santa Fe, California.

Hey, Cynthia, welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Thank you. So here’s my thing.

I’m wondering whether movie sets, film sets have something during production called a linguistic consultant.

And the reason I’m asking is because I recently heard that there nowadays, probably since the Me Too movement, there seems to be something called an intimacy consultant on set, which presumably is someone to make sure the actor’s privacy and personal space is respected and so on.

And I was wondering if there might be something similar for linguistics because admittedly I’m a linguist and terrible words now.

But I was watching a series recently called The Irishman. This is just one example.

And it takes place, I think, in the 50s.

And they used not just words but several expressions that I personally don’t believe could have been in use at the time.

And the examples I kept track of in my mind were at one point somebody said, it is what it is. Hopefully, which is the most inane expression ever, but I don’t think it might have been in use back then.

Another one was, let’s give it up for so-and-so. People are applauding.

And the third one, I’ve forgotten right now. It’ll come back to me.

But at the time, it was just like, it was such an anachronism. I just thought, no, people didn’t say that then.

So is anybody watching out for that?

So you’re talking about the Irishman, the Martin Scorsese movie that’s on Netflix.

Yes. I watched some of that.

The movie, it covers a bunch of different time periods. It hops around historically.

I haven’t watched the whole three-and-a-half-hour movie, but that’s a lot to take in one sitting.

Yeah.

And so your question about a linguistic consultant, yes, they do. They have dialect coaches.

It just depends on the type of entertainment that they’re making. It depends on the type of movie and TV show.

Sometimes the actors themselves will get dialect coaching, individual coaching to get an accent right or to get a mode of speech correct.

Sometimes they have to learn a whole new language, for example, for Game of Thrones, that sort of thing.

They do do period work on scripts to make sure that they can iron out real discrepancies and anachronisms, just get that stuff out of there.

But I got to tell you, the big thing about this is it’s still fantasy.

I mean, it’s all fiction. It’s an approximation of the past.

How could it ever really be exact?

Let me just address the larger point. You’re expecting your 100% accuracy when it comes to your entertainment.

Yeah, I guess I really am.

Why?

You know, for me, it’s like when you come across a word in a book and it makes you stop in your tracks because for some reason that just doesn’t seem right.

And I feel like it interrupts my flow. I get distracted by this linguistic thing that I’m thinking, instead of following the trail of the story, I’m going, wait, whoa, no.

Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. It can be jarring.

And I know that people have had the experience, for example, of watching Downton Abbey and hearing phrases on that series where they think that it’s an anachronism.

And they think, oh, well, that couldn’t have been a phrase that was floating around in the 1920s.

But the truth is that that series is fairly accurate.

And so a lot of times so many words and phrases that we hear that we think are really recent go back a lot farther than we think.

I don’t know about these.

I know you’re right.

Yeah, our intuition is really poor on this.

But I want to get back to this other point is this is all the fakiest fakery that there ever was.

Like these people are all good looking. Their lives are very, their lives are interesting, more interesting than your life and my life, right?

It’s all extraordinarily fake. Like you can’t expect reality at this. You can’t expect perfection.

I’m in the time period. You know, when I’m watching it, I’m like right there.

And I’m thinking, yes, the costumes and, you know, that particular series is all the sort of classic Italian-type mobby guy.

Yeah, yeah.

Cynthia, I think what you’re looking for is what I like to call seamlessness.

You know, you want to be completely—

Right, exactly.

Yeah, you want to be completely immersed in that world, however fake the supporting trappings might be.

You want to be completely immersed in that world and not distracted by something that sounds a lot more modern than—

It does, yeah.

It seems—you’re right. Jarring is exactly the word.

And I’m not so much, you’re right, looking for perfection as seamlessness.

But I think the other thing is it doesn’t seem to me that it would be that difficult to have a linguistic consultant on the script or on the program, the show, the film, that would just look out for that thing.

I am available. They can call me 1-877-929-9673.

I have reasonable rates. They can call me and I will date all of their material for them. I will figure it out.

I like it.

For the expressions that you gave us, just so you know, let me see if I got these right.

One of them was, let’s give it up for us. So this was a stage setting where they were a host or was trying to convince the audience to applaud a performer or something like that.

Yeah, or a boxing match maybe.

Yeah, you’re probably right. Actually, that one, the earliest that I know of is the 1990s for that.

It’s not much earlier than that. Now, we’ve always asked audiences to applaud people.

But used to, we would say, give a hand, give so-and-so a hand.

But the it now is the hand. We just don’t say a hand anymore.

And actually probably came around through shows like the Arsenio Hall show.

So, yeah, earlier than the 90s probably existed, but it’s not much older than that.

It is what it is.

Oh, right. So this is the one that people had a real hard time with in the early 2000s.

People just loved to hate on it. I got to tell you, the earliest use that we found in print, I say we meaning the people who do word history searches, is 1949.

So it’s got a long history. And the thing is, it actually holds up very well.

Even if you examine it for tautology, it actually is really good. It’s a very effective, efficient little phrase that does its job.

Yeah, I’ve seen it in German, too, Es ist fasted.

Well, I’ve seen it in cartoons. I am what I am. Popeye says it.

Oh, yeah. It’s a real take it or leave it is basically what it’s saying.

It does its job. I mean, I know people think of it as empty, but it’s in a very effective phrase.

Well, it’s so great to hear both your voices. Love your show so much.

Thank you so much for your call.

Thank you, Cynthia.

Thank you very much. Great talking with you.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

You too. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.