Comic performance and the articulation of hybrid identity

Abstract

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.

Identity and interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach

“…Such aspects often emerge most clearly in parodic performance and in some displays of hybrid identity (e.g. Bucholtz, 1995;Jaffe, 2000;Woolard, 1998), but they may also appear whenever an identity violates ideological expectations (e.g. Barrett, 1999;Rampton, 1995).…”

Airing Ethnic and Linguistic Identities Through Public Media Comic Performances: Challenging and Reinscribing Normative Ideologies

“…The objective is to show an example of how airing ethnic-linguistic identities through media comic performances brings to the open previously silenced, sensitive issues for necessary public debate, also providing a rich field for research on contemporary sociolinguistic questions. The example explored here is a comparative illustration -proposed during a multi-site, multimedia academic seminar presentation of Jaffe (2000) -between the comic bilingual performances in Corsica analyzed in that article, and more recent public media comic radio and television performances featuring a Ge rman-Brazilian character. I argue, with Jaffe (2000), that "bilingual comic performance valorizes hybrid identities," taking "this public expression of mixed codes and identities to be in itself a form of legitimation" (p.40).…”

“…The example explored here is a comparative illustration -proposed during a multi-site, multimedia academic seminar presentation of Jaffe (2000) -between the comic bilingual performances in Corsica analyzed in that article, and more recent public media comic radio and television performances featuring a Ge rman-Brazilian character. I argue, with Jaffe (2000), that "bilingual comic performance valorizes hybrid identities," taking "this public expression of mixed codes and identities to be in itself a form of legitimation" (p.40). However, I also acknowledge and discuss "the frequent ambiguity of heteroglossic speech," and the fact that "variously positioned performers and audiences may key and interpret the relationship of performed figures to dominant stereotypes -as celebratory, humorous, realistic, ironic, critical, risqué, or offensive" (JAFFE, KOVEN, PERRINO, & VIGOUROUX, 2015b, p.136).…”

“…However, I also acknowledge and discuss "the frequent ambiguity of heteroglossic speech," and the fact that "variously positioned performers and audiences may key and interpret the relationship of performed figures to dominant stereotypes -as celebratory, humorous, realistic, ironic, critical, risqué, or offensive" (JAFFE, KOVEN, PERRINO, & VIGOUROUX, 2015b, p.136). After presenting the multimedia setting in which the discussion of Jaffe (2000) took place, I describe two videos shown during the seminar that spotlight a fictional German-Brazilian comic character. Further material is examined here -an interview with the radio journalist who created and performs D. Heda, in which he explains the character's success and argues his radio program validates GermanBrazilian identities.…”

“…In the first meeting, my colleagues opened the discussions with background information on Corsica through video footage featuring the island and its cultural specificity. In the second meeting, I summarized Jaffe (2000), which "describes how comedians and radio professionals in Corsica draw on a bilingual linguistic and metalinguistic cultural repertoire" (p.39). By way of introducing the topic and the phenomena as also pertained to Brazilian settings, I showed publicly available footage of multilingual heteroglossic practices in the Brazilian South.…”