Toshiaki Furukawa* Localizing humor through parodying white voice in Hawai‘i stand-up comedy DOI 10.1515/text-2015-0022 Abstract: This discourse analytic study investigates the strategic use of repre- sented talk and thought in Hawai‘i stand-up comedy performances. Utilizing the methods and findings of membership categorization, and stylization, I analyze how Local comedians make discursive contrasts by deploying Pidgin (Hawai‘i Creole) to voice Locals and by deploying “Haole” (‘white’) or racially parodied, mock English to voice non-Locals. Findings show that Local comedians and their audiences collaboratively manipulate and display their understanding of these culturally specific indexicals to co-create and localize humor. Analysis further shows that Local humor is a highly political act that is selectively designed for a particular sociolinguistic and cultural audience and sociopolitical context. Keywords: represented talk, reported speech, Hawai‘i Creole, Pidgin, stylization, comedy, ethnic humor 1 Introduction Interaction-based studies of stylization have shown that multilingual speakers frequently identify and manipulate various semiotic resources surrounding ethnicity and language at crucial interactional junctures in ways that make visible and allow critique of the public and private ideologies of membership in different groups. For instance, white television characters use “black voice” to claim African- American hypermasculinity (Bucholtz 2011), while African reality TV contestants from sub-Saharan countries use “white voice” to perform a California male slacker youth identity (Wahl 2010). The present study, situated at the interface of socio- linguistics and interactional sociolinguistics (e.g., Auer 2007; Bucholtz and Hall 2005; Gumperz 1982; Rampton 1995), examines the complexity of voice and styliza- tion through represented talk and thought (hereafter, I will use RT and reported speech synonymously) within a highly performative genre in multilingual Hawai‘i society: Local comedic performances. *Corresponding author: Toshiaki Furukawa, Department of Communication and Culture, Otsuma Women’s University, 12 Sanbancho, Chiyoda, Tokyo 102-8357, Japan, E-mail: tfurukawa@gmail.com Text&Talk 2015; 35(6): 845–869 Brought to you by | University of Hawaii Main Library Authenticated Download Date | 12/1/15 10:49 AM