Article published in:
Art and the expression of complex identities: Imagining and contesting ethnicity in performanceEdited by Valentina Pagliai and Marcia Farr
[Pragmatics 10:1] 2000
► pp. 39–59
Comic performance and the articulation of hybrid identity
This article describes how comedians and radio professionals in Corsica draw on a bilingual linguistic and metalinguistic cultural repertoire. In the context of Corsica’s history of language domination, language shift, and linguistic revitalization efforts, many of the products of language contact - mixed codes and compentences - are socially stigmatized. In the logic of dominant language ideologies, these mixed codes do not ‘count as’ language and depreciate individual speakers and collective identitities. Comic performances, it is argued, derive part of their tension and effect from the dominant view of languages as fixed and bounded codes which index single identities. Yet at the same time, performers make use of bilingual repertoires in ways that validate mixed language practices and identities. They do so by making maximal use of fluidity and indeterminacy in speaker stances towards mixed codes and identities. Bilingual comic performance also validates mixed codes and identities by evoking an ‘expert’ bilingual audience.
Keywords: Performance, Corsica, humor, hybridity
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 01 March 2000
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.10.1.02jaf
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.10.1.02jaf
References
Auer, Peter
Bauman, Richard and Charles Briggs
(1990) Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology 191: 59–88.
BoP
Duranti, Alessandro
Filippi, Paul
(1992) Le français régionale de Corse. Ph.D. Dissertation University of Corsica.
Finlayson, Rosalie and Sarah Slabbert
Gardner-Chloros, Penelope
Gelo, Daniel J.
Giles, H. and P. Smith
Goffman, Erving
Handler, Richard
Hanks, William
Haviland, John B.
Heller, Monica
Hill, Jane and Judith T. Irvine
(1993) Introduction. In J. Hill and J. Irvine (eds.), Responsibility and evidence in oral discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–23. BoP
Irvine, Judith T.
Jaffe, Alexandra
Le Page, Robert and Andrée Tabouret-Keller
Meeuwis, Michael and Jan Blommaert
(1994) The ‘markedness model’ and the absence of society. Multilingua 13–4: 387–423.
Nelson, Cecil
Urban, Greg
(1996) Entextualization, replication and power”. In M. Silverstein and G. Urban (eds.), Natural histories of discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 21–44. BoP
Stroud, Christopher
Woolard, Katheryn
Zentella, Ana Celia
Full-text
Cited by
Cited by 53 other publications
Androutsopoulos, Jannis
Atkinson, David & Helen Kelly-Holmes
Bekker, Ian & Erez Levon
Ben Nafa, Hanan
Bhatt, Rakesh M.
Britt, Erica
Bucholtz, Mary & Kira Hall
Chun, Elaine W.
Chun, Elaine W.
Ciriza, Maria del Puy
Cornips, Leonie & Louis van den Hengel
Da Silva, Emanuel
Dick, Hilary Parsons
Dumas, Nathaniel W.
Elordui, Agurtzane
Elordui, Agurtzane
Elordui, Agurtzane
Faudree, Paja
Fonseca, Natália Barroncas da
FREKKO, SUSAN E.
Furukawa, Toshiaki
Furukawa, Toshiaki
García Vizcaíno, María José
Hall, Kira, Donna M. Goldstein & Matthew Bruce Ingram
HIGGINS, CHRISTINA
Jaffe, Alexandra
Jaffe, Alexandra
Jaffe, Alexandra
Jaffe, Alexandra, Michèle Koven, Sabina Perrino & Cécile B. Vigouroux
Jaffe, Alexandra M
Jung, Neiva Maria & Regina Coeli Machado e Silva
Kelly-Holmes, Helen
Koven, Michèle
Koven, Michèle & Isabelle Simões Marques
Lucena, Maria Inêz Probst & Bianca Campos
Managan, Kathe
Miller, Zubin
Moriarty, Mairead
Queen, Robin
Reyes, Angela
Skapoulli, Elena
Stengs, Irene
SturtzSreetharan, Cindi
Thompson, Katrina Daly
Tseng, Amelia
Weiyun He, Agnes
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.