Linguistic prejudice and regional pride. US voices for Austen’s classic

The protagonists of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen are often described as engaging in a ‘battle of words’. The respective dialogue exchanges have been exploited to different ends by the various screen adapters of this literary classic and this chapter focuses on the transpositions that shift the emphasis from the characters’ personal attributes and social connections to a value judgment on their accent and culture. In the adaptations that have been considered, either Darcy or Elizabeth Bennett is not British but American. The reactions that the US-accented speakers elicit from their interlocutors respond to how they sound as well as to the culture they belong to. A discourse on social class is never absent in adaptations from Jane Austen and in these transpositions it is alluded to and conveyed through the use and the (negative) evaluation of a language variety. The respective dialogue interactions are interpreted through the lens of linguicism (a concept first introduced by Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas 1986) and of the recurrent narrative topos of the American character as the odd wo/man out in a British context (or vice versa).