Analysis Of Do You Speak American Hosted By Robert Macneil

The documentary do you speak American hosted by Robert MacNeil is profiling of a journey across various geographical locations of the United States with a primary objective of how it is easy to define people based on their language. As revealed from the documentary, a finding far from the usual assumption that all people in the United States speak English is nothing further from the truth. The reality is that there exists is that not every citizen in the country is able to speak English and those who have the capacity of speaking it have varied versions based on their location, whom they are addressing and the social groups regarding age to which they belong. Another finding from the documentary is that there are Americans who completely cannot

express themselves in English if their lives depended on it.
From the above, the problem that the study develops is that contrary to the widespread assumptions that all Americans speak English, some of them have no slight idea as they talk their local dialect exclusively which in most cases leads to lack of appreciation and considerations for the diversity that exists among Americans (Reaser and Carolyn pg. 165). In the documentary, the producer embarks on the journey to the far down the Eastern Seaboard Philadelphia and through to western parts of Ohio. He also moves to areas of Los Angeles to the main points of California to establish the language spoken by the majority of the residents. Accompanied by expert social linguists, they speak with all groups of people, the politicians, musicians, radio hosts, among others. The conclusions and inferences from their studies indicate that it is hard to place identity to the language spoken by Americans. It has different meanings to different people and mostly tied to some factors such as ethnicity, political affiliations, the socioeconomic status and most importantly the location of an individual and their personality (Reaser and Carolyn pg. 159). (293 words)