User:Skakkle/vehicular language (media)

The vehicular language of a fictional film or TV program is the language the story is told in. The vehicular language of a piece of media often includes every instance of spoken or written language on-screen or within the narrative world. That comprises any non-character narration, on-screen text, but also any signage or other text whether written, printed, or on a screen-within-the-story, and spoken language within the narrative world.

Term origin
The concept of a vehicular language for media is borrowed from the term "vehicular language" as used in the Catalunya community in Spain, where "vehicular language" (llengua vehicular) refers to the language of education for all subjects, particularly in K-12. The concept entails language immersion, and is thought there to be the means by which all information is conveyed

Related but distinct concepts

 * The vehicular language of a piece of media may be sometimes be conflated with the "primary language" of a piece of media, but the concept of a vehicular language for media is a larger, more robust concept.
 * A lingua franca is also something different, despite being conflated with vehicular language sometimes.

Choosing a vehicular language
Many factors influence the choice of a vehicular language. The first factor often is, and should be, informed by the setting of the story (call it the story setting location).

Usually, the piece of media is filmed principally or entirely in that location, and the film features native speakers of that language.

Distribution and Hollywood
But often, the vehicular language is determined by who is producing the film. Those producers generally want to distribute the film to their home audience first. And then the biggest opportunity to then distribute that media globally, is to produce it in English. So if the story is not set in an English-speaking part of the world, the producers often employ the translation convention. Under this convention, the vehicular language (English in this case) is pretended to be the language of everyone in the film all the time, despite any cultural factors or situations that would plausibly indicate use of other languages. This conceit is quite ridiculous, if considered carefully for a moment. But the technique is a ubiquitous storytelling device in modern film, and sometimes TV as well, as marketing and distribution are driving priorities. Home-culture-centric thinking also contributes to the continued, unquestioned use of the translation convention.

One place, all native characters, one language
Many stories are set in one country, and one language is spoken throughout the piece, by all characters.

Story has some foreigners
Some stories are set in one place but feature one or more non-main foreigner characters who speak their own native language.

The foreigner characters may have some competency in the story setting location language. In this case the chosen vehicular language still aligns with the natural, native language of the setting.