“Your Old Mother Am This Gorgeous! How Dare You Stray from Me?”:
Constructing LGBT Identities through Humor and Teasing on Television
Casimir the Great University, POLAND
Chen Li-Chi
Abstract
Based on 540 minutes of video-recorded data from TA-men Shuō ‘LGBTalk Show,’ an LGBT-oriented entertainment variety show in Taiwan, this study intends to illustrate and discuss how the LGBT identities are constructed through humor and teasing among young Taiwanese LGBT people. This is done by looking at their interaction with the ‘straight’ hosts and other invited guests who are also within the LGBT community. The analytical framework of this study is informed by conversation analysis, multimodal discourse analysis and interactional linguistics. Major findings are summarized below:
First, young Taiwanese gay men, bisexual men and transgender women tend to construct humor through highly exaggerated or dramatic expressions (cf. wúlítóu ‘nonsense humor’ in Chen (2016, 2017)), which are found in their self-bragging and other-deprecating humor. These two types of humor, moreover, are employed in an indirect manner to attract more laughter (e.g., by using metaphors).
On the other hand, young Taiwanese lesbians, bisexual women and transgender men are observed to produce less humorous remarks, in the sense that their interactional styles are inclined to be more direct and less dramatic. Second, young Taiwanese gay men, bisexual men and transgender women are found to frequently build solidarity and close intimacy by mocking each other, whereas young Taiwanese lesbians, bisexual women and transgender men tend to show appreciation to others. Third, many gay men and transgender women, in producing humor or teasing others, frequently use ‘feminine markers’ to construct their identities. For example, they are found to use certain self-address forms (e.g., jiějie ‘(your) big sister,’ lǎoniáng ‘(your) old mother’) or other phrases which are usually tagged as ‘feminine’ in traditional Chinese culture (e.g., bù shǒu fùdào ‘not abiding by female virtues,’ méi zhēncāo ‘not sexually virtuous’).
Finally, as gender is viewed as “something that is ‘done’ rather than something that just is” (Coates 2004: 138), this study suggests that the observed humor and teasing styles may change when these young Taiwanese LGBT people interact with others in real life. More specifically, while these invited guests can be viewed as doing ‘being ordinary’ on the program, showing how they actually interact with others in real life, they perhaps are also in an attempt to reinforce their ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ traits when they construct humor or tease others on the program. This is done not only to attract more laughter (as the purpose of an entertainment variety show is to entertain the audience to maintain high viewing figures), but also to demonstrate that there should not be any social norms of speech regulating how people should talk.
References
Chen, Li-Chi Lee. 2016. A socio-pragmatic analysis of wúlítóu ‘nonsense’ in Taiwanese verbal
interactions. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 12(1): 53-76.
Chen, Li-Chi Lee. 2017. Taiwanese and Polish Humor: A Socio-Pragmatic Analysis. Newcastle upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Coates, Jennifer. 2004. Women, Men and Language: A Sociolinguistic Account of Gender
Differences in Language. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.