Film as Source Material in Advanced Foreign Language Classes

This paper suggests new ways filmic texts might be employed in advanced foreign language classes. Typically, film has been seen as source material for broadening students’ vocabulary or for developing communicative competence. This paper considers what a close reading of a filmic text might offer foreign language educators and students by exploring how three semiotic systems—language, image, and music/sound—are employed in film to create meaning. Specifically, drawing on film’s employment of language in a rich audiovisual context, we demonstrate various tasks that move beyond the denotative function of language to develop students’ understanding of the relationship between utterances and the context in which they are made, as well as foster an understanding of how language is used subtly to obfuscate, evade, or project positions of power. Finally, we demonstrate how film might be used to develop students’ potential for using their second language (L2) to create meaning in new ways. The tasks we describe here address the goals of a foreign language curriculum as articulated in the MLA Report (2007) (developing students’ translingual and transcultural competence) and in the writings of Claire Kramsch (developing students’ symbolic competence; e.g., 2006)