195 The analyses of mockery sequences in this chapter demonstrated 1 that there
was no difference between ‗mockery‘ and ‗crossing‘ and 2 that there was no difference between stylized English with an ‗accent‘ and stylized languages, either, in terms of their
interactional achievement; that is, this chap ter‘s excerpts indicated a general pattern in a
mockery sequence in which the use of stylized languages co-occurred with initial ethnicization, a first laugh token, and a closing without translation into English. The
deviant cases also showed that they followed this pattern. The observation of this general mockery pattern brings us to the next point.
Why do Local comedians deploy mockery in their performances-in-interaction if it assures them of only one laugh token? In other words, if mockery leads to a single
laugh token, it seems an inefficient interactional resource because the comedians‘ institutional goal is to make people laugh at least more than once. As seen above,
mockery rarely led to a second laugh token unless the comedians deployed additional performative strategies such as constructed dialogues. I argue, however, that mockery is a
powerful performative tool for the comedians because it assures them of laughter. I showed some deviant cases where the comedians received delayed laughter, but however
delayed it was, the comedians always received laughter; there was no case where the comedians ended up receiving no laughter. The comedians recycled these short mockery
sequences to draw more laughter from their audience before initiating another topic.
5.5 Conclusion
This chapter examined the deployment of mockery in Local comedy, focusing on its interactional sequence. Mockery followed a general pattern, and it demonstrated that
196 assuming a distinction between mockery and crossing or assuming a distinction between
stylized languages and stylized ‗accents‘ was interactionally irrelevant. Mockery co- occurred with ethnicization and laughter, but it did not involve English translation
because it was situated, and the audience displayed their understanding of the stylized languages other than Pidgin and English and of stylized English with an ‗accent.‘
Because mockery assured the comedians of laughter, it became a powerful performative tool. Furthermore, it served as a membership categorization device because it constituted
a Local comedy community when the participants displayed their understanding of stylized languages‗accents.‘
The next chapter examines interpretive frames of Local comedy, based on the data generated through interviews with Local comedians and through focus group
sessions with Local comedy audience members.
197
CHAPTER 6. INTERPRETIVE FRAMES
6.1 Introduction
This chapter is about how Local people make sense of Local comedy, getting into their accounting practice. In other words, this chapter
investigates people‘s meta-performance talk and extends studies on intertextuality into a more explicitly interactional context.
Both comedy shows and the meta-performance talk constitute a site where, I argue, the participants share a common orientation to cultural signs and become connected to one
another —and even to other members that they may not know. Because the interview and
focus group participants talk about their interpretation of Local humor, this activity inevitably involves intertextuality i.e., every text, including any statement or utterance,
displays links with previous as well as synchronic texts [Blommaert, 2005]. For instance, there are many occasions on which the comedians and the focus group participants
display a retrospective orientation that helps them to manage their talk. The retrospective orientation is a type of projection i.e., making normative connections that interactants
display. I argue that interactants resort to the act of projection flexibly to manage their talk and jointly achieve intersubjectivity.
In her discussion of the social circulation of media discourse in popular culture, Spitulnik rightly points out that ―we learn little about the practices of consumption and
even less about what people are saying to each other about their experiences of consumption‖ Spitulnik, 2001, p. 97, and claims that the recycling of media discourse
serves as a crucial component in the formation of community.
79
I take a membership
79
Spitulnik‘s insight is applicable to the consumption of Room Service.
198 categorization analysis approach Sacks, 1979 as my chief analytical tool and examine
the emergence of membership categories in interviews and focus groups as talk-in- interaction. In addition, based on Zimmerman 1998, I distinguish three kinds of
identity: portable e.g., Asian, situational e.g., interviewer, and discursive e.g., white- washed Asian.
Reception research often uses interviews or focus groups as a data generating method.
My use of this method is less systematic than Gumperz‘s 1982, pp. 136-140 elicitation on particular exchanges such as question-answer pairs in interethnic
communication; it focuses more on entire passages and is designed to generate explicit references to or implicit projections of a network of categories and normative
expectations that constitutes culturally-specific knowledge about Hawai‗i comedy. In this
sense, my procedure is closer to an approach described by Rampton 1995, p. 352, but it has a stronger orientation to generating a network of categories and normative
expectations that would be deployed across everyday and highly performative contexts. As I mentioned in the data analysis section of Chapter 2, I argue that the ‗what‘ and
‗how‘ aspects are components of meaning-making and cannot be separated Baker, 2003; Edwards, 1991; Gubrium Holstein, 2002; Roulston, 2006. Taking a sequential
analysis approach to interview and focus group data Edwards Stokoe, 2004; Wilkinson, 2004, 2008 will reveal that categories are not
―preformed‖ but ―performed‖ in situ Puchta Potter, 2004, p. 21. I argue that when the participants construct their
versions of reality, they orient to the relevance of social structures, for instance, among themselves and even other members of the same category. To illustrate these points, I
examine the interpretive process of membership categories Sacks, 1979 among Local
199 comedians and comedy audiences, interweaving interpretive meta-performance talk of
these two groups. Hawai‗i comedy constitutes a multilingual, multicultural, and multiracial niche of
identity management within broader political-economic dimensions of media circulation; therefore, this study also contributes to the discussion of crosscultural membership
categorization in mass mediation. This chapter is about how media products such as comedians and comedy clips can effect
ively be ‗stance objects‘ Du Bois, 2007 towards which interviewees and focus group participants orient and which they deploy to
construct personal and collective identities. The object of stance is ―what the evaluation is about‖ Du Bois, 2007, p. 149; and it can be knowledge, emotion, or membership
categories. This chapter poses three research questions: 1 How do the interview and focus
group participants make sense of Local comedy? 2 How do the participants talk about multivocality and code in Local comedy? and 3 How do the participants show
sensitivity to intertextual links with previous or relevant media discourses? My objective is not to generalize about what Local people think about Local comedy; rather, I consider
focus group participants as members of a community who understand a certain type of comedy in Hawai‗i. They may not only understand, but even enjoy this type of comedy
partly because I recruited them under the two conditions stated earlier. Nevertheless, I investigate how they construct their attitudes
—positive, negative, or both—in focus groups as talk-in-interaction. My goal is to illuminate the actual process of intertextuality
through analyzing the interaction in focus groups and interviews and identifying how the participants performatively make ideological connections between different contexts. The
200 participants make intertextual connections by deploying various membership categories
or bundles of semiotic signs with historically and culturally-specific meanings. A summary of the
focus group participants‘ backgrounds is given below.
80
Figure 6.1. Focus group participants Group
Excerpts Name
Age Sex
Ethnicity
81
1 6, 13
Andy H-Mom
J Kaimana
Michi T
20s 40s
20s 20s
20s 40s
M F
M F
F M
Chinese Hawaiian, Native American, Spanish
82
Filipino Filipino, Hawaiian, Portuguese
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Okinawan Hawaiian, Other
83
2 7, 8
Angel Chris
Clara Jessica
Katie 20s
20s 20s
20s 20s
F M
F F
F Filipino
Japanese, White Filipino
Filipino Chinese, Hawaiian, Portuguese, White,
Spanish, Native American
84
3 2, 11
Craig Kekoa
Kristy Sarah
30s 40s
20s 40s
M M
F F
Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, White Chinese, Hawaiian, White
Japanese Chinese, Hawaiian, White
4 1, 3, 12
Akemi Jill
Judee Mary
30s 20s
50s 50s
F F
F F
Chinese, Hawaiian, Japanese Japanese, Okinawan
Japanese Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, White
6.2 Interpretive frames
