15 Bauman, 1992; Mehan, 1996. In the dissertation, I engage with this concept to analyze
how comedians make use of previous performances and shared knowledge to produce humorous meanings in their talk. Comedic performances are entextualized, de-
entextualized, and re- entextualized ―within and across speech events—referred to, cited,
evaluated, reported, looked back upon, replayed, and otherwise transformed in the production and repro
duction of social life‖ Bauman Briggs, 1990, p. 80. Bauman and Briggs 1990 argue that the investigation of entextualization opens up ways of revealing
1 histories of performance, 2 the social structures where performances play a constitutive role, and 3 performances in relation to other modes of language use. The
examination of entextualization in Hawai‗i comedy reveals the historicity and multiplicity of meaning-making that characterizes this highly performative genre where
linguistic features are ideologically associated with ways of speaking as well as with identities.
1.3.2 Language ideology
Language ideology
refers to beliefs about language and society and the effects of such beliefs. This concept serves as a mediating link between linguistic formsuse and social
structure in the sense that people make sense of social reality through ideological interpretations of linguistic forms in use, and in the sense that they formulate linguistic
reality by means of ideological interpretations of social structure. Woolard 1998 states that language ideology is not ideas
―so much as construed practice‖ p. 10 and
conceptualizes it as mediating links that create the interface between language and
society; in other words, language ideology, linguistic forms, and social forms are
16 mutually constitutive. This construed practice can be consequential and generate effects
in linguistic, interactional, and social processes of meaning-making; that is, language ideology is performative.
Language ideology, therefore, is a semiotic mediation through which we account for, constitute, and re-constitute reality. This semiotic mediation can be analyzed on one
level by means of the Peircean notion of indexicality that Silverstein 2003 appropriates as a theory of the in
dexical order. According to Silverstein‘s theory, individual linguistic, bodily, etc. characteristics are ideologized and typified into collective ones; in other
words, first-order indexicality is transformed into second-order indexicality Woolard, 1998. The theory of the indexical order is also a theory of linguistic and ethnic
stereotyping. Given linguistic and ethnic stereotyping as construed semiotic practice, comedic
performance is not just execution of pre-formed, written, or rehearsed descriptionslines about a social world, but it acts in and creates a social life, social relations, and linguistic
styles. Comedic performance performatively constitutes reality; the type of comedic performance I examine, Hawai‗i stand-up comedy, is an ideological, mediating, and
constitutive practice, and it creates a social world for people of Hawai‗i. Comedic performance often involves the use of various ‗accents‘ that are believed
to be in use in everyday settings. As she discusses language ideology about accents in the United States, Lippi-Green 1997 defines accents as
―loose bundles of prosodic and segmental features distributed over geographic andor social space
‖ Lippi-Green, 1997, p. 42. She makes a general comment about stereotypical accents in the United States:
17 Each of us would group the accents we come across in different configurations.
For the majority of Americans, French accents are positive ones, but not for all of us. Many have strong pejorative reactions to Asian accents, or to African
American Vernacular English, but certainly not everyone does. The accents we hear must go through our language ideology filters. p. 72
Lippi-Green raises three important points here. First, we categorize speech into different accents: for instance, French accents, Asian accents, and African American Vernacular
English. Second, we attribute different social meanings to these accents. Third, there is individual variation in the perception of these different kinds of accents. I have to add
that these categories of accents emerge in talk-in-interaction, and individual perceptual variation is negotiated among the interactants. Accents are also ideologically deployed in
comedic performance and are negotiated between comedian and audience. Performance is what language does, and it serves as a link in theories of language
in social life; that is, performance is ongoing acts of identity. Performance-in-interaction is a moment-by-moment flow that is context-bound but can signal multiple contexts
through entextualization and re-entextualization. Linguistic ideology is also a link between language and society, thereby providing the basis of culturally-specific
multivocal humor.
1.3.3 Code
