Chapter 9
Español neutro and marketing in Latin American
and U.S. audiovisual media
This chapter has a descriptive and a theoretical
aim. The descriptive aim involves elucidation of the term
neutro in different contexts and analysis of
phonetic/phonological features usually associated with the type of
“neutral” Spanish as marketed by global media conglomerates. The
theoretical aim is to link this Spanish “from nowhere” with issues
of standardization and with globalization-related concepts such as
anonymity, commodification, agency, and disembedding. Data come from
publicly available interviews of dubbing professionals, coaching
videos on “neutralization” of a local accent, and excerpts of TV
show dubbings previously outsourced by Miami-based conglomerates, in
tandem with Bogotá and Mexico DF, to other Latin American
countries.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Phonetic variation in Latin America and the ideology of the
standard
- 2.1Phonetic variation
- 2.2Speed and clarity of speech
- 2.3Ideology of the standard: Correctness, authority and uniformity
- 3.The three types of neutro
- 3.1
Folk neutro
- 3.2
Broadcast neutro
- 4.The marketing neutro (MN)
- 4.1Phonetic and phonological elements
- 4.1.1Rate of speech
- 4.1.2Non-Spanish phonotactics
- 4.1.3Other sounds
- 5.U.S. Latino and Latin American multimedia networks
- 5.1The dubbing journey
- 5.2Latino TV networks in the United States
- 5.2.1Linguistic profile of each of Gomez’s circles and
representative channels
- 6.MN and globalization
- 7.Further research directions
-
Notes
-
References