디즈니 만화영화를 통한 영어학습과 사회적 편견의 형성

English in Animated Movies: The Shaping of Prejudices through Education

The widespread promotion of English education through multimedia technology has brought about a major shift in the teaching materials for English education all over the world. Korea is not an exception in this regard and thus in the recent past we have seen a proliferation of English movies being sold to the general public as excellent language teaching material. Among these movies, animated cartoons are especially popular with both children and adults. This paper discusses the utilization of dialectal and regional variations of the English language in some of these animated movies. Analyzing the contents of discourse among the characters in some of these movies, we find that dialect speaking characters are not given equal treatment. Social prejudices against speakers of certain types of dialectal or regional varieties of English permeate through the characters. Consequently, the possibility exists that the process of learning English through these movies will result in the shaping of prejudices against dialect speakers. Examples from Dumbo and the Lion King are discussed.