Pressey, Zacharie 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-7302-9081
(2025)
You Joking Me? or It's Really True: The Comedy of Asian Accents.
Masters thesis, Concordia University.
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Abstract
The line between comedy and offence is often muddled. The funny and unfunny can appear identical to one another. This is especially the case when it comes to racial stereotype humour, which may sound very much like racist mockery. My thesis focuses on the comic value and harms of English spoken in an Asian accent, particularly East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) accents. Drawing on Elaine Chun’s work identifying “mock Asian” as a variety of English “that indexes a stereotypical Asian identity” (263), I analyze the use of mock Asian in fictional representations of East Asians on screen. Beginning with Gedde Watanabe’s (in)famous performance of Long Duk Dong in the film Sixteen Candles (1984), I also consider the vernacular and dialectic stand-up of Margaret Cho in Notorious C.H.O (2002) and Jimmy O. Yang in Good Deal (2020) before turning to the L.A.-based Malaysian comedian Nigel Ng and his accented alter-ego Uncle Roger. Finally, I propose that the relationship between Asian-accented English representations and modern Asian identity construction may be especially clearly illuminated in relation to the linguistic category of “Chinglish.”
| Divisions: | Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > English |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
| Authors: | Pressey, Zacharie |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Degree Name: | M.A. |
| Program: | English |
| Date: | 1 April 2025 |
| Thesis Supervisor(s): | Bobker, Danielle |
| Keywords: | Asian Accents, Mock Asian, East Asian representation, Racial comedy, Ethnic humour, Stereotypes, Stand-Up Comedy, Gedde Watanabe, Margaret Cho, Jimmy O. Yang, Nigel Ng, Chinglish, Linguistic stereotyping. |
| ID Code: | 995363 |
| Deposited By: | Zacharie Pressey |
| Deposited On: | 17 Jun 2025 17:00 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Jun 2025 17:00 |
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