Anthropology Question

Outsourced

Since this chapter of our textbook focuses on multilingualism, I thought it would be fun to explore in a bit more detail transidiomatic practices. Obviously, there are a variety of ways to investigate the topic and Ahearn (pg. 136) mentions the documentary, “Diverted to Delhi,” but documentaries can be a bit harder to find. I am therefore asking you to watch Outsourced – the movie OR some of the series. The original movie (2006) is a fictional story of a customer call center manager who is moved from Seattle to Mumbai. Even without the highest rating on Rotten Tomatoes (the film has its moments), it was optioned into a series. I include a link to a general list of Outsourced content on YouTube – the full length film link keeps getting taken down – it is a cute film but currently seems to be a pay to rent so if you can afford to pay the rental fee awesome, if not you’ll want to check out many of the film clips. I want you to be on the lookout for examples of code-switching, code-mixing, diglossia, and/or any other aspects of Chapter 6. You are going to submit 5 examples, writing a sentence or two about how the content of the film applies to our readings.

For example:

“Todd heads to Mumbai to oversee a call center where his co-workers, natives of India, speak English for the specific purpose of helping customers in the United States. Todd is part of a multilingual community with diglossia – a hierarchy of two codes – American English and Indian English.”

Ideally, your examples will include a particular term – please bold/all capitals the term – and SPECIFICS about how it applies to the film. If you want to come up with more than 5 examples, I will give extra credit for up to 5 extra. Your assignment will be submitted using the assignment submission link and your examples MUST be numbered so that I can easily discern each example.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Use complete sentences!!