ABSTRACT
America frequently faces charges of cultural imperialism, not only in terms of its promoting the American Dream and American values but also in terms of its silencing foreign languages and spreading a monolingual and Anglocentric culture. This notion of linguicism has already been investigated by Bleichenbacher (2007a) with regard to Hollywood cinema. In keeping with his approach, the present study examines whether linguicism exists in Marvel superhero comics. It employs a taxonomy that distinguishes between the actual use of foreign languages in the comics and a variety of replacement strategies, such as code-switching or the use of accent to indicate otherness. In addition to looking at how foreign speech is represented, this chapter also focuses on how successfully this representation is achieved, highlighting the inaccuracies and speech stereotypes that appear throughout the comics.
