Article published in:
Pragmatics
Vol. 21:3 (2011) ► pp. 341–371

Is dat dog you’re eating?

Mock Filipino, Hawai‘i Creole, and local elitism

This paper explores both racial and socioeconomic classification through language use as a means of membership categorization among locals in Hawai‘i. Analysis of the data focuses on some of the most obvious representations of language ideology, namely, ethnic jokes and local vernacular. Ideological constructions concerning two types of Filipino populations, local Filipinos and immigrant Filipinos, the latter often derisively referred to as “Fresh off the Boat (FOB)” are performed differently in ethnic jokes by local Filipino comedians. Scholars report that the use of mock language often functions as a racialized categorization marker; however, observations on the use of Mock Filipino in this study suggest that the classification as local or immigrant goes beyond race, and that the differences between the two categories of Filipinos observed here are better represented in terms of social status. First generation Filipino immigrants established diaspora communities in Hawai‘i from the plantation time and they slowly merged with other groups in the area. As a result, the immigrants’ children integrated themselves into the local community; at this point, their children considered themselves to be members of this new homeland, newly established locals who no longer belonged to their ancestors’ country. Thus, the local population, though of the same race with the new immigrants, act as racists against people of their own race in the comedy performances.
Keywords: Stylization, Mock Filipino, Hawai‘i Creole, Mobility, Ethnic jokes
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 01 September 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21.3.03hir

Full-text

Is dat dog you’re eating?
References

References

Adams, Romanzo
(1937) Intermarriage in Hawaii: A study of mutually conditioned processes of acculturation and amalgamation. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict
(1983) Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun
(1990) Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture & Society 7: 295-310. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M.
(1981) The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Google Scholar
(1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
(1986/2006) The problem of speech genres. In Adam Jaworski and Nicholas Coupland (eds.), The discourse reader, 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 98-107.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek
(1981) Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar
(1992) Language and species. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek, and Carol Odo
(1976) Change and variation in Hawaiian English. Vol.1: General phonology and pidgin syntax. Honolulu: Social Sciences and Linguistic Institute, University of Hawai‘i.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan
(2007) Sociolinguistic scales. Intercultural Pragmatics 4.1: 1-19. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, Jan, James Collins, and Stef Slembrouck
(2005) Spaces of multilingualism. Language & Communication 25: 197-216. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
Cataluna, Lee
(2000) “Portagee” jokes born of cruelty. Honolulu Advertiser, B1. November 21.Google Scholar
Center for Filipino Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
(2010) A brief history of Filipinos in Hawaii. http://​www​.hawaii​.edu​/cps​/fil​-community​.html
Chun, Elaine
(2004/2008) Ideologies of legitimate mockery: Margaret Cho’s revoicings of Mock Asian. In Angela Reyes and Adrianne Lo (eds.), Beyond yellow English: Toward a linguistic anthropology of Asian Pacific America. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 261-287.Google Scholar
(2009) Speaking like Asian immigrants: Intersections of accommodation and mocking at a U.S. high school. Pragmatics 19.1: 17-38.  BoP CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Coupland, Nicholas
(2001) Dialect stylization in radio talk. Language in Society 30.3: 345-357.Google Scholar
DeLima, Frank
(2008) The official Frank DeLima website. (http://​www​.frankdelima​.com/)
Furukawa, Toshiaki
(2007) No flips in the pool: Discursive practice in Hawai‘i Creole. Pragmatics 17.3: 371-386. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2011) Humor-ing the local: Multivocal performance in stand-up comedy in Hawai‘i. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Hawai‘i, Honolulu, Department of Linguistics.
Gal, Susan
(2004) Commentary: Perspective and the politics of representation. Pragmatics 14.2/3: 337-339. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Geertz, Clifford
(2004) What is a state if it is not a sovereign? Reflection on policies in complicated places. Current Anthropology 45.5: 577-593. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
Hill, Jane
(1993) Hasta la vista, baby: Anglo Spanish in the American southwest. Critique of Anthropology 13.2: 145-176. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(1998) Language, race, and white public space. American Anthropologist 100.2: 680-689. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2005) Intertextuality as source and evidence for indirect indexical meanings. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15.1: 113-124. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2008) The everyday language of white racism. Singapore: Utopia Press for Wiley-Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hiramoto, Mie
(2009) Slaves speak pseudo-Tôhoku-ben: The representation of minorities in the Japanese translation of Gone with the wind. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13.2: 249-263. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Inoue, Miyako
(2003) Speech without a speaking body: ‘Japanese women’s language’ in translation. Language and Communication 23: 315–330. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal
(2000/2009) Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Alessandro Duranti (ed.), Linguistic anthropology reader, 2nd ed. Singapore: SPi Publisher for Wiley- Blackwell, pp. 402-435.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara
(1999) Uses of Southern-sounding speech by contemporary Texas women. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3.4: 505-522. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
Kawamoto, Kevin Y.
(1993) Hegemony and language policies in Hawaii. World Englishes 12.2: 193-207. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
(1972) Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Labrador, Roderick
(2004/2008) “We can laugh at ourselves”: Hawai‘i ethnic humor, local identity and the myth of multiculturalism. In Angela Reyes and Adrianne Lo (eds.), Beyond yellow English: Toward a linguistic anthropology of Asian Pacific America. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 288-308.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Henri
(2000) La production de l’espace. Paris: Anthropos.Google Scholar
Lind, Andrew
(1938) An island community: Ecological succession in Hawaii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lippi-Green, Rosina
(1997) English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. London and New York: Routledge.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Meek, Barbra
(2006) And the Injun goes “How!”: Representations of American Indian English in white public space. Language in Society 35.1: 93-128. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor
(1992) Indexing gender. In Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 335-358.Google Scholar
(1996) Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In John Gumperz and Stephen Levinson (eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 407-437.Google Scholar
Odo, Carol
(1975) Phonological processes in the English dialect of Hawaii. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Hawai‘i, Honolulu.
Okamura, Jonathan
(1990) Ethnicity and stratification in Hawai‘i. Operation Manong Resource Papers 1: 1-11.Google Scholar
(1994) Why there are no Asian Americans in Hawai‘i: The continuing significance of local identity. Social Process in Hawai‘i 35: 161-178.Google Scholar
(1998) The illusion of paradise: Privileging multiculturalism in Hawai‘i. In Drew Gladney (ed.), Making majorities: Composing the nation in Japan, China, Korea, Fiji, Malaysia, Turkey and the United States. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 264-284.Google Scholar
Park, Robert
(1926) Our racial frontier in the Pacific. Survey Graphics 56 (May): 192-196.Google Scholar
Queen, Robin
(2005) “How many lesbians does it take...”: Jokes, teasing, and the negotiation of stereotypes about lesbians. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15.2: 239-257. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rampton, Ben
(1995) Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman.  BoPGoogle Scholar
(1999) Styling the other: Introduction. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3.4: 421-427. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
Reinecke, John E.
(1935/1969) Language and dialect in Hawaii: A sociolinguistic history to 1935. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne
(2005) Orthographic practices in the standardization of pidgins and creoles: Pidgin in Hawai‘i as anti-language and anti-standard. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics 20: 101-140. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
Ronkin, Maggie, and Helen Karn
(1999) Mock Ebonics: Linguistic racism in parodies of Ebonics on the internet. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3.3: 360-380. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
Rosa, John
(2000) Local story: The Massie case narrative and the cultural production of local identity in Hawai‘i. Amerasia Journal 26.2: 93-115. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sakoda, Kent, and Jeff Siegel
(2003) Pidgin grammar: An introduction to the creole language of Hawai‘i. Honolulu: Bess Press.Google Scholar
(2008) Hawai‘i Creole: Phonology. In Kate Burridge and Bernd Kortmann (eds.), Varieties of English 3: The Pacific and Australasia. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 210-233.Google Scholar
Sato, Charlene J.
(1989) A non-standard approach to Standard English. TESOL Research Quarterly 23.2: 259-282. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Shimote, Kelliann
(2001) Whatever happened... An update on past news: Isle singing duo retired from show biz. Honolulu Star Bulletin. August 18. (http://​archives​.starbulletin​.com​/2001​/08​/18​/news​/whatever​.html)Google Scholar
Siegel, Jeff
(1995) How to get a laugh in Fijian: Code-switching and humor. Language in Society 24.1: 95-110. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
(2000) Substrata influence in Hawai‘i Creole English. Language in Society 29.2: 197-236. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stannard, David
(2005) Honor killing: How the infamous “Massie affair” transformed Hawai‘i. New York: Viking Penguin.Google Scholar
Talmy, Steven
(2004/2008) Forever FOB: The cultural production of ESL in a high school. In Angela Reyes and Adrianne Lo (eds.), Beyond yellow English: Toward a linguistic anthropology of Asian Pacific America. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 347-365.Google Scholar
Tamura, Eileen
(1996) Power, status, and Hawai‘i Creole English: An example of linguistic intolerance in American history. The Pacific Historical Review65.3: 431-454. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Terrazas, Aaron, and Jeanne Batalova
(2010) US in focus: Filipino immigrants in the United States. Migration Information Source. (http://​www​.migrationinformation​.org​/USfocus​/display​.cfm​?ID​=777#6)Google Scholar
Van Dijk, Teun
(1989) The role of the media in the reproduction of racism. In Ruth Wodak (ed.), Language, power, and ideology: Studies in political discourse. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 199-226. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wee, Lionel
(2006) The semiotics of language ideologies in Singapore. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10: 344-361. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Andrew
(2005) The reappropriation of tongzhi . Language in Society 34.5: 763-93. Crossref  BoPGoogle Scholar
Woolard, Katherine
(1987) Codeswitching and comedy in Catalonia. Pragmatics 1.1: 106-122.Google Scholar
(1999) Simultaneity and bivalency as strategies in bilingualism. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8: 3-29. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Archakis, Argiris, Sofia Lampropoulou & Villy Tsakona
2018. “I’m not racist but I expect linguistic assimilation”: The concealing power of humor in an anti-racist campaign. Discourse, Context & Media 23 ► pp. 53 ff. Crossref logo
Dore, Margherita
2018.  In The Dynamics of Interactional Humor [Topics in Humor Research, 7], ► pp. 105 ff. Crossref logo
Furukawa, Toshiaki
2015. Localizing humor through parodying white voice in Hawai‘i stand-up comedy. Text & Talk 35:6 Crossref logo
Hiramoto, Mie
2014. “Island girl from the island”. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 24:2 ► pp. 173 ff. Crossref logo
Lesho, Marivic
2018. Philippine English (Metro Manila acrolect). Journal of the International Phonetic Association 48:3 ► pp. 357 ff. Crossref logo
Saft, Scott, Gabriel Tebow & Ronald Santos
2018. Hawaiʻi Creole in the public domain. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 28:3 ► pp. 417 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 march 2021. 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.