Representation of identity in dubbed Italian versions of multicultural sitcoms: An SFL perspective

The chapter sets out to offer a contribution to the analysis of audiovisual translation (AVT) from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday 1994), working with the English-Italian language pair. In particular, it aims to explore issues of representation of diversity and identity in multi-ethnic/multicultural sitcoms for a younger audience (cf. Manfredi 2018) which are instantiated through language variation according to the ‘user’ (Halliday & Hasan 1985/1989; Hatim and Mason 1990). The chapter aims to show the advantages of an SFL approach for the analysis of dialectal variation (Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens 1964, Gregory 1967, Gregory & Carroll 1978) in such a text-type. This assumption is demonstrated through practical examples of English dialogues, dubbed into Italian, taken from recent sitcoms (e.g., YTV’s How to be Indie, 2009-2011; Disney Channel’s Jessie, 2011-2015 and its spin-off, Bunk’D, 2015-), where the multicultural nature of the characters is conveyed at both phonological and lexico-grammatical levels, and also from a metalinguistic point of view. The final goal is to see whether televisual products that reflect a multicultural vision of society show a special concern for representation of identity or, as is typical of AVT and dubbing in particular (Chiaro 2009: 158), dialectal varieties are invariably not reproduced in the target versions. Findings reveal that, in the dubbed versions of the tween-sitcoms under investigation, the multicultural identity of the characters is preserved, if one considers the function of dialectal variation in AV source and target texts and interprets the notion of ‘standard’ variety within an SFL framework, which contributes to overcoming prejudices along with promoting and accepting cultural diversity.