Movies, Speech Communities: A Study Focused on Technical Terms from The Blacklist

The purpose of the study is to investigate learners’ perceptions of a speech community during English learning. The theoretical background is the proposition that technical terms are language forms which qualify learners to be a member of a targeted speech community. The Blacklist (Watkins, 2015) season 2 episode 15 was used as teaching material. The research method was to survey the responses of seven college student participants to the research questions after studying the script. Four scenes revealing different speech communities were chosen for the survey. The participants were asked to select difficult words when they translated the scenes. They submitted a report answering three research questions: the reason for difficulty in translating; if they thought there was an easier way to translate the script; their willingness to recommend The Blacklist as learning material. According to their reports, the scene which included the fewest technical terms was chosen as the most suitable scene for learning English. They reported that studying the technical terms has priority for better translation. However, they thought that a TV series including many technical terms was inappropriate as learning material. Except for one participant, all participants hesitated to recommend this series. The findings reveal the participants' lack of perception of speech communities and the technical terms.