4.1 Types of Crosslinguistic Humor
4.1.1 Overdone lexical insertion: „We-ness‟ or „otherness‟
Examples of codeswitching at lexical levels across sentences are eye-catching. As mentioned previously in Introduction, lexical codeswitching in the Taiwanese context is common. Yet, overdone lexical switch is marked and attention-seeking, though it is implausible to define ‗overdone‘ quantitatively. The section discusses two examples of overdone lexical insertion. The practice can be further linked to identity and perspective shift, the ‗fractal pivoting‘ termed by Gal and Irvine (2019, 154).
Lexical insertion of English words in a Chinese- or Taiwanese-dominant context can
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explain how a sense of non-serious, non-authentic ‗other-ness‘ can be brought into the conversation in order to reinforce a sense of ‗we-ness.‘ Excerpt (4), taken from Super Taste, shows how overdone lexical insertion projects a sense of ‗not ours,‘ and in return defines implicitly what is ours. The narrator of the program, Song, is feigning foreign-accented Mandarin by stylizing his introduction of the Italian city Verona. The stylized utterances are underlined in the transcript. To present the stylized speech as precisely as possible, the narrow transcription is annotated with Hanyu Pinyin stead of Chinese characters.
(4) From Super Taste, April 24, 2012
(‗we are visiting the most romantic Italian city,‘) 4 Verona
|維諾納|
(‗Verona.‘)
5 zhèli shì cóng liànren gēn fūqī dū hěn like lái de [plei:z]
|這裡是從戀人跟夫妻都很喜歡來的地方|
‗It is a place where couples like to visit,‘
6 yīnwēi (.) tā shi luómìōu and Juliet de gùxiǎng
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|當你的愛情上| |有困擾的時候|
(‗When you have relationship problems,‘) 9 zhūlìyè yě kěyǐ help you wò
|茱麗葉也可以幫你喔|
(‗Juliet can help you as well.‘)
10 Ouch
(‗Ouch‘)
11 kěshì tiāntuán hǎoxiàng zhāo bù dào rùkǒu ní
|可是天團好像找不到入口|
(‗But AX and HZ can‘t seem to find the entrance.‘)
When Song is narrating, a portrait of himself in medieval clothing shows up at the left bottom of the screen. On the one hand, the portrait shows that Song is doing the narration. On the other hand, the clothing also associates the act of narration with playful, non-authentic foreignness. The portrayal is accompanied by two noticeable performances, including excessive lexical switch and stylized speech. The lexical insertion is probably more inclined
to consider being overdone than otherwise. Unfolding information about Verona, the narrator uses ―like‖ (line 4) rather than 喜歡 xihuan ‗like‘ while the subtitles show the Mandarin
phrase. Song continues explaining that Verona can offer relationship counseling (lines 7 and 8). Song substitutes ―help you‖ for its Chinese counterpart 幫忙 bangmang. The Chinese
translation of all the lexical insertions is provided in the subtitles except for the exclamation
―Ouch‖ in line 10. The exclamation does not show in subtitles. In addition to excessive
lexical insertion, the speech is also stylized. First, several words of the fourth tone are changed into the third tone. In the stylized speech, 愛 ài (line 2), 眾 zhòng (line 2), 在 zài (line 3), and 市 shì (line 3) sound similar to their third-tone counterparts. The tonal
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transformation is not consistent, though. The 愛 ài, 候 hòu in line 8, and 像 xiàng in line
11 do not undergo noticeable tonal change. Also, the use of exclaimers such as oh (line 1) and ouch (line 10) adds a taste of foreignness in the discourse. Moreover, the final syllables in
several sentences are lengthened. The lengthening makes the final syllable acoustically similar to the third tone. It could be possible that the third tone in Mandarin Chinese sound similar to the drawl that people tend to connect with foreign languages. The lengthening is also inconsistent. Starting from line 7, the final syllable lengthening disappears. Significantly, lexical insertions and stylized speech are not targeted at creating a sense of ‗real‘ foreignness.
Instead, they identify a we-ness with this performance. A foreigner is probably never expected to speak like this. The speech does not precisely imitate how a foreigner speaks. The narrator is using what is stereotypically taken as non-local to Taiwanese to create a playful sense of foreignness. The subtitles do not show English words. Therefore there is an incongruity between what is verbalized and what is textually presented. Another observation lies in the association between place and language. To construct a sentence of foreignness, Italian probably serves as a better choice. Instead of using Italian and supplementing the performance with Chinese subtitles, English is used. It will be discussed in Section 4.3 that the ideological and overgeneralized association between English and foreignness accounts for the interpretation of this performance.
Another example of overdone lexical insertion illustrates how codeswitching is
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overgeneralized as a characteristic of how Taiwanese speak. At first sight, the indexing seems to contradict the previous example. Nevertheless, the study will discuss how ridiculing at overdone lexical insertion defines codeswitching as an act of disowning. In another program WTO Sister Show, the two hosts, Alexia and Ryan, start the program by demonstrating how
codeswitching at lexical level between English and Mandarin Chinese is excessively done.
Alexia‘s performance leaves the guest speakers in fits of laughter, shown in (5) below.
(5) From WTO Sister Show, March 15, 2016
3 Alexia You know ((points forward with her index finger))
|You know|
4 ((laugher in the background))
5 我們的節目就是
|我們的節目就是|
(‗Our program‘)
6 talk about foreign culture. ((hands moving in circles))
|討論外國的文化| <撂英文>
(‗talks about foreign cultures.‘) 7 Ryan & guests ((laugh))
8 ((guests laughing in the background))
9 Alexia 你知道 (.) 就是那種 (.) different experiences 在台灣
((points forward))
|你知道就是那種|<different experiences>
<在台灣><中英混合>
(‗You know, it‘s about different experiences in Taiwan.‘)
10 Ryan 喔
(‗Oh.‘)
11 Alexia 你知道 (.) 你知道 (.)我們這些外國的朋友們 (.) 在台灣的
(.) ((turns to look at the camera)) life
<外國朋友們><在台灣的><life>
(‗It‘s about the lives of those foreign friends in Taiwan.‘)
12 Ryan Life.
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13 ((guests laughing in the background)) ((cameras turn to guests))
14 Alexia 講話一定要這樣嗎=
|很讓人討厭嗎| <也中毒, an arrow pointing at Ryan>
(‗this sounds annoying?‘)
(‗What is considered a bad habit of Taiwanese‘)
25 就是講話的時候
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(‗People from the South even spice it up with Southern Min.‘)
28 Alexia [台語] (.) 對
(‗Taiwanese. Right.‘)
29 ㄟ (.) 我覺得講台語這樣加在一起比較好聽耶
|我覺得講台語||這樣加在一起比較好聽|
(‗I think it sounds pleasant when mixing with Taiwanese.‘)
30 Ryan 可是我一直覺得我們的習慣是學香港人的
|可是我一直覺得|
|我們的習慣是學香港人的|<拖別人下水>
(‗But I always think we learn this from Hong Kongers.‘)
31 Alexia 喔
(When I watch those Hong Kong dramas)
34 Alexia ＝國際大都市啊
(‗Actually it shows that we are internationalized.‘)
This performance takes place after the greetings. Alexia‘s ―You know‖ (line 3) immediately draws laughter. It shows that the use of you know is unexpected. The use of ―you know‖ and
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the gesture signal a swift transformation into a laid-back, young, American style of practice (Stubbe & Holmes 1995). Similar to the exclaimers oh and ouch in the previous example, these terms immediately frame a non-Taiwanese context. Her performance of mixing English in Mandarin Chinese discourse is found amusing by the other host and other guests (lines 5 to 13). The question in line 14 講話一定要這樣嗎 Jianghua yiding yao zhe yang ma ‗Must [someone] talk like that?‘ suggests that her previous demonstration is excessive, unnecessary
and somewhat criticism-prone. When Alexia switches to English, the subtitles also show English. The only exceptions are ―talk about foreign culture‖ (line 6) which is also the
longest English chunk in this excerpt, and the ―annoying‖ in line 14. Also intriguing is the additional information in the running text. When Alexia says ―talk about foreign culture,‖ the
running texts show 撂英文 lao yingwen, literally ―showing off English,‖ as seen in (4a). The
comment is far from an appraisal. It indicates that codeswitching between Mandarin Chinese and English is depicted as unnecessarily marked, and showing off (Su in press 2021). The
other host, Ryan, further elaborates that the mixing is irritating (line 17). When he switches to English for ―annoying,‖ the subtitles provide the Chinese translation 討厭 taoyan. Ryan‘s
evaluation of Alexia‘s overdone codeswitching is also strategically conveyed in English.
Ryan‘s comment can thus be seen as juxtaposition. The adjective ―annoying‖ reveals his
negative attitudes toward excessive codeswitching. At linguistic representation, he actually accommodates (Bell 1984) to Alexia‘s speech by using an English word that requires
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post-production to provide the Chinese subtitles. The evaluative comment 也中毒 ye
zhongdu ‗get addicted to, get poisoned‘ (line 17) describes how Ryan is negatively influenced
by her. Ryan later describes codeswitching as Taiwanese‘s 壞習慣 huai xiguan ‗bad habits‘
(lines 24-26), showing again the lay belief that the mixing is not rated highly. It has established that excessive English codeswitching is perceived as negative and Taiwanese.
The second half of the hosts‘ performance proceeds to connect codeswitching to place identity. Ryan further states that codeswitching comes from Hong Kong (line 30), a 國際大 都市 guoji da dushi ‗international metropolis‘ as Alexia characterizes it as (lines 32 and 34).
The conjunction 可是 keshi ―but‖ in Alexia‘s statement (line 32) introduces contradictory
propositions with several potential meanings (Y.-F. Wang & Tsai 2007). If a bad habit comes from Hong Kong, juxtaposition lies among Hong Kong being an international metropolis, codeswitching being a bad habit, and codeswitching being originated from Hong Kong,
because inferably a speech habit from an international metropolis cannot be bad. Second, the
―but‖ could also mean that Hong Kong is different from Taiwan, which is not as
internationalized, and not as metropolitan. She could be inferring that Taiwan probably does not see the need to codeswitch to such a great extent. Third, a point that can extend from the second point is that Hong Kong is more legitimated in using English-Chinese codeswitching than Taiwan. Ryan further justifies that Taiwan can also show the internationalized side with English-Chinese codeswitching. The hosts‘ stances toward codeswitching change as their
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interaction proceeds. Alexia‘s overdone codeswitching reveals how English-Chinese codeswitching is marked to begin with. When the linguistic practice is associated to Hong Kong, it suddenly receives positive evaluations. According to Y.-F. Wang, Tsai and Yang (2010), 其實 qishi ‗actually‘ moderately introduce the following discourse as the truth to
contrast the prior proposition. Ryan is expressing that codeswitching marks language use not as disturbing and Taiwanese, but actually internationalized. The excerpt explicates that though English is considered to connect with internationalization, another ideologizing process of English is at work, one process that addresses the use of English not from a transnational perspective, from a translocal retrospect.
This section has discussed codeswitching at lexical level and several layers of contestations are discussed. Epistemically, Excerpt (4) provides Chinese subtitles of all English words. Excerpt (5) provides Chinese subtitles to longer English utterances and less common words. The Chinese subtitles indicate that English is still regarded as an additional language because the audience‘s English proficiency is only minimally expected. However, English being an additional language contradicts the so-called Taiwanese‘s bad habit of overdone codeswitching in between English and Mandarin Chinese. At sociopragmatic level, the conceptualizations of English are dynamic and inconsistent. The finding urges us to examine the rationalization of English.
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