Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hollywood English

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was delete. —Xezbeth 18:32, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hollywood English

Summary to help me and other admins: Votes broke down as follows:

• Delete 9: Angr, RickK, Calton, Uncle G, Megan1967, Postdlf, Lucky 6.9, Kevin Rector, Rossami
• Keep 4: Zzyzx11, Charles Matthews, Lotsofissues, adamsan
• Master Thief Garrett's vote appears to be a delete as the article has not improved much.

10/14=71%.

Page when it was first nominated for deletion: [1] which is different from now in these ways: [2], that is, with very little added material.

Delete as a neologism. It's certainly true that most American actors don't do British accents well (vice versa is true as well; remember Emma Thompson in Primary Colors?), but "Hollywood English" is not a well-known term for the phenomenon. The claim that the accent in question has a "distinct Australian undertone" is POV, as it probably only sounds Australian to Brits, but not to Australians. The claim that the accent involves "tension on vowels" is meaningless without a definition of "tension"; if tenseness is what's meant, well, probably all accents of English use tenseness as a vowel feature. --Angr/_comhrá 20:49, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. No credible third party references. Zzyzx11 | Talk 20:54, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep and tag it as {{cleanup}}. Zzyzx11 | Talk 23:08, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. The content is all true enough. Charles Matthews 20:59, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • But, this article currently does not cite its references or sources. Zzyzx11 | Talk 21:24, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Then tag it as {{cleanup}}. Zzyzx11 | Talk 23:08, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • OK, [3] calls this 'Fake Brit', which would be a good title (Spike from Buffy - also nice example since he's closer than DvD ever was - no cigar, though).Charles Matthews
• This is not a neologism entry - but an observation of Hollywood portrayed English accents. Your further reasons are suggestions for improvement of the article. keep, fix what you want - it seems you have opinions. And a lack of citations is most certainly not a reason to delete in a largely unsupported encyclopedia. Lotsofissues 21:26, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Of course it's a neologism: can you point me to four places it's being used? And lack of citations = lack of verifiability = non-encyclopedic = a very good reason to delete. --Calton | Talk 00:39, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Weak Keep if expanded/improved, Delete if not. Master Thief Garrett 21:29, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Original research, neologism, POV. RickK 23:15, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Original research, POV. Smells of a British movie fan's peculiar obsession - kind of like the firm belief among some British movie fans that British character roles are exclusively used for villians in Hollywood movies. --Calton | Talk 00:34, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• I'm not persuaded that a concept of Hollywood English actually exists. There are a wide range of individual actors, of varying degrees of ability at imitating foreign accents, and a wide range of characters with different English accents to be portrayed. There's no single overarching Hollywood English pronunciation standard that they all adhere to. (Indeed, for the better actors, quite the opposite.) Zzyzx11 has struck out xyr rationale above, but I echo it for the article as a whole. I'd like to see sources for this being an actual recognized linguistic concept, on a par with Indian English, Australian English, Scottish English, Irish English, American English, Received pronunciation and others (all of which cite at least one source using the term). None have as yet been provided, so my vote is currently Delete. Uncle G 00:35, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)
• Delete, POV, neologism, original research. Megan1967 03:59, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Delete for all above reasons. Postdlf 06:43, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Keep the Dick van Dyke accent phenomenon alone shows this is not original research. Although there is no single type of Hollywood English accent, the universal awfulness of Americans' attempts to sound 'Briddish' is well known in the UK even if the Yanks are oblivious to it. adamsan 18:19, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Your provincialism is showing. I've seen my fair share of British domestic entertainment (the kind that normally doesn't get to a wide American audience) to know about the near-universal awfulness of British actors attempting American accents. Hint for British actors: Bronx/Brooklyn and Hillbilly are not the only two speech modes available to Americans, even if the Brits are oblivious to it. --Calton | Talk 01:12, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • My point is that this is a known phenomenon and therefore could be a valid article. Your problems with RADA American are for another time. adamsan 09:57, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • My point is that this is a neologism, a pile of original research carrying a load of narrow provincialist axe-grinding with no citeable basis. Clear enough? --Calton | Talk 15:06, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
        • I didn't ask for clarification of your assumptions but thank you for providing it anyway. If it's the limited cite-ability of the term you object to, then perhaps we can arrive at a more acceptable name whence it can be moved. I have already demonstrated the meme value of Mr Van Dyke's Cockney accent and see potential for a valid article. Best wishes adamsan 15:27, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• I really need to stop visiting this page anonymously while on Wikivacation.  :^) Anyway, the phenomenon is real enough. I just don't know what the proper term is, if any. I was in a stage production of A Christmas Carol about four years ago. One of the cast members was from London and he absolutely cringed at some of the accents. Patsy Garrett was in the cast and her Cockney was on the nose. With a bit of help, I was able to cultivate a pretty good London accent, but it wasn't easy. Anyway, I'm going delete for the time being because this comes off as original but well-stated research. - Lucky 6.9 03:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Kevin Rector (talk) 03:42, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)
• A Google search on the exact phrase "Hollywood English" returns a fair number of hits but of the first 100, only three refer to an accent and none of the three use the term in the way described in this article. Without an authoritative source, this is a neologism/original research. Delete. Rossami (talk) 06:06, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.