Bilingual Humor, Verbal Hygiene, and the Gendered Contradictions of Cultural Citizenship in Early Mexican American Comedy

Bibliographic Data

ID2476403
AuthorsPeter C Haney (The University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume13
Issue2
Pages163-188
Publication date2003-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Linguistic Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1055-1360 • E-ISSN: 1548-1395
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/jlin.2003.13.2.163
OpenAlexW2107346155
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited40

This article examines the paradoxes of linguistic purism in a series of sound recordings of comic dialogues made by Mexican immigrant comedians in San Antonio, Texas, during the Depression. The dialogues present characters who mix English and Spanish as transgressors of gender roles and national identities, reserving their harshest criticism for women. However, bilingual wordplay in the dialogues suggests a dialectically opposed ideological move toward a celebration of linguistic and cultural hybridity

Art · Citizenship · Comedy · Comics · Criticism · Hybridity · Ideology · Immigration · Linguistics · Literature · Political science · Sociology · Anthropology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Gender Studies · History · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access