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- Title
Stylizing Dialects and Restructuring the Nation of Nepal in Stand-Up Comedy.
- Authors
Sharma, Bal Krishna
- Abstract
This study presents an analysis of a Nepali comedian's dialect stylization in a stand-up comedy show performed for the diasporic Nepali community in Bochum, Germany. The analysis shows that through creative deployment of diverse linguistic practices of Nepali speakers, the comedian, Manoj Gajurel, engages in important identity work both in the narrating and in the narrated world of the comedy act. In the narrating world, he discursively constructs a shared identity with the audience as "we Nepalis" who are comfortable in celebrating - but also finding humor in - the linguistic diversity in Nepal. Drawing on contemporary political discourse in Nepal, they imagine a new federal Nepal through Gajurel's stylization and the audience's affiliative responses respectively. In the narrated world, the comedian constructs various stereotypical identities of Nepali dialect speakers using multiple speaker footings and revoicings. Although the accuracy of representation can be contested, stylized performances such as this give a symbolic and material value to the traditionally denigrated dialects and serve as a resource for language users to construct and represent a different range of identities in the age of late modernity.
- Subjects
DIALECTS; LANGUAGE arts; LINGUISTICS; GAJUREL, Manoj; NEPALI language
- Publication
Multilingua, 2015, Vol 34, Issue 2, p237
- ISSN
0167-8507
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/multi-2014-2009