Isabel Fattal wrote an article titled, “Why Do Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign

Accents,” in January of 2018. In the article, she talks about the effect on children that foreign
accents have. The article starts off by talking about the experiment of Calvin Gidney. His
experiment was to test and see how foreign accents affected children when they are associated
with bad guys. So he first analyzes different animated characters and took a lot of data from each
of them. He found out that the majority of the villains were given foreign accents. The most
surprising thing he found was that the British English accents were the most wicked and most
used for villains. He also found that funnier characters generally had a German or Slavic accent.
They theorize the reason that villains had accents in American cartoons was most likely because
of the hate developed in the 1900s due to the many wars America fought in Europe and Asia.
Then they went to see how kids would react to this phenomenon and they found out that it wasn’t
only kids but some adults also are affected by this. They make a quick judgment based on what
they have seen on tv. This can lead to some very unpleasant interactions with those people with
foreign accents. She shows her concern by providing many different examples of how they can
affect the child's brain. This article is targeted for people with younger children. One of the
things that she does really well is she uses many different reliable sources to help prove her
point. Another thing she does well is using very credible sources.
In the article, “Why Do Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign Accents,” She gives many
different people and what they say about the subject of the effect of villains with foreign accents.
For example, Calvin Gidney, a sociolinguist, watched the Lion King and noticed how Scar had
an English accent. He thought this was weird so he goes to a bunch of different movies and he
says a pattern. The pattern was that most Villians in movies nowadays have foreign accents. So
as a professor in child study and human development at Tufts University, he goes out and tries to
find the effects on children when they were exposed to this. This is a perfect example of a
reliable source. Gidney had a major in Socialinguist, someone who studies the different ways
humans speak and the different functions of language and how it affects us in social situations,
which was a perfect person to talk about how the accents of Villians affect children. This shows
that Isabel Fattal has done her research and knows how to choose reliable sources. This means
that she too is a reliable source.
Another example of how Isabel Fattal uses reliable sources is from another source she
used in her article. Her name is Rosina Lippi-Green. She is a Linguist who also noticed how
movies have used foreign accents to classify Villians, but she adds that producers of shows might
also use accents on what is popular and successful in the shows that they grew up on. This is
another great example of a reliable source because Rosina is a linguist, which is the study of the
way people talk. This relates to what a sociolinguist is but is not as specific with the effects it has
on social interactions. Rosina also worked with Gidney making them both a more reliable source
by showing that they are willing to work with others to better understand what they are working
on.
One other thing that she did well as she used ethos and logos a lot. For example, in her
article, she uses many different stats and data to better strengthen her argument. In the article she
used this specific quote form Lippin-Green to better prove her argument, “children learn through
repetition. You show them a pattern, you keep showing them that pattern … of course they’re
going to assimilate that. (Isabel Fattal)” This quote goes with some data that proves this, but it
shows that the Isabel Fattal has done her research on what she is talking about. She uses ethos by
giving us many different people in the article. These people are very credible and have a lot to do
with the subject that Isabel decided to talk about. For example, Gidney is a Sociolinguist, and
Lippin-Green, a linguist.
One of the things that Isabel didn’t do so well as she didn’t use pathos at all. This would
have helped her case if she could have used it to show how the effects on children are truly
damaging. Maybe if there was a test conducted where they tested how the children act to people
with the same accents as the villains in their tv shows, and it would. For example, do an
experiment with something like this. Show half of a group of children villains that have foreign
accents and half that don’t then when they grow up you can have them meet people with those
accents and see how they interact with those people. This would have shown some of the
negative effects and would have more fully used the rhetoric strategy pathos.
To conclude, I am not part of the intended audience so I don’t have as much of a tie to
what she is talking about, but she does do a very good job of persuading. She provides lots of
good data and statistics on the subject. With a lot of credible sources that had a lot of background
that was really relatable to the subject that she chose to talk about. One thing that might have
helped her become more persuasive is if she used more pathos. Maybe is she showed how the
children were really impacted on a social level. Like how they were to interact with someone
who had an accent that was considered to be evil. That might have done a lot to be more
persuasive. She could have also given some real-life examples that made it closer to the reader,
or closer to me. Overall Isabel Fattal did a good job and had me pretty convinced on the whole
thing.

Work Cited
Fattal, Isabel. “Why Do Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign Accents?” The Atlantic, Atlantic
Media Company, 4 Jan. 2018,
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/why-do-cartoon-villains-speak-
in-foreign-accents/549527/.