Choose a contemporary U.S. American movie that was produced after 1980. The movie should be set in the USA in the 20th or 21st century. Find subtitles to the chosen movie. If the movie goes without subtitles, try searching for them at https://www.opensubtitles.org/. Analyze the movie according to the following plan:

1. Background information Brief description of the movie which includes title, year of production, director, leading actors, synopsis. Please write in your own words; if you use an external source, paraphrase it and provide a reference.

2. Phonetics and Phonology Detect as many different features of American English pronunciation as you can in the movie. Write out the corresponding sentences with their timing in the movie and provide the transcription of the words with typically American pronunciation/stress.

3. Spelling Focusing on the subtitles, try to find as many different examples of American spelling as you can. Provide the whole sentence with the timing and mark the lexical item which is spelled differently.

4. Grammar Do the same as in point 3 but focusing on grammatical peculiarities.

5. Vocabulary Write out sentences that contain lexical Americanisms with the timing of their occurrence. Provide their definition and a corresponding British English equivalent.
This point also includes lexical items which are used to name objects typical for U.S. American culture only (e.g. names of games, dishes, devices, etc.). Since these items won’t have a British equivalent, supplement their definition with an image (if you can find one)..

6. Idioms Write out all sentences containing idioms or other fixed expressions. Provide their respective explanations.
If you are not sure, what a fixed expression is, check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_expression
Can you identify one particular character that uses idioms the most? If so, why would he/she do it? Try to generalize situations in which idioms appear most frequently.

7. Slang Write out all sentences containing items of slang and provide their explanation and a way of expression of the same idea in neutral stylistic register. The Urban Dictionary might be particularly helpful to you in this respect – https://www.urbandictionary.com/
Link the use of slang to the context of its occurrence and the character using it. Why do the characters use slang and in which situations do they use it instead of the standard variety?

8. Regional varieties Focus on the state or city where the movie is set and try to spot the regional features of speaking on the level of pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar and syntax. Those items that turn out to be regionalism will only go here; you do not have to repeat them in earlier sections of this table.
Check whether any character in your movie belongs to an ethnic group other than white U.S. American (e.g. African Americans, Chinese Americans, Jewish American, Native Americans, Latino/a, etc.). If so, describe the peculiarities of his/her speaking on the level of pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar and syntax.

9. Conversational phrases Write out conversational phrases that you spot in the movies and identify their function. E.g. – How’ve you been? – Keeping cool. (a greeting and a reaction to it expressing general state of happiness and well-being)

10. Culture List all the cultural information that the movie contains together with a brief explanation. Some examples include real-life public figures, historical events, companies, books, movies, cities, natural parks and so on.