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“This guy says I should talk like that all the time”: Challenging intersecting ideologies of language and gender in an American Stuttering English comedienne's stand-up routine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2016

Nathaniel W. Dumas
Nathaniel W. Dumas*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, [email protected]
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Abstract

American Stuttering English (ASE) speakers (or ‘persons who stutter’ in pathological perspectives) have historically had tense relationships with comedic representations of their speech. Mainstream representations pathologize and ridicule stuttering, rather than appreciate it as a legitimate language variety. These depictions also increase non-ASE speakers' ‘possessive investment’ (Lipsitz 1995) in Standard American Fluent English as the dominant language variety. Recently, some ASE speakers have reinterpreted ASE and comedic portrayals of their speech using stand-up comedy. This article analyzes the comedic work of Rona B, an ASE comedienne. Using data on her YouTube channel, I argue that Rona B draws on her intersectional experiences as a female ASE speaker to construct a voice that critiques both the political agendas of anti-linguistic discrimination, which downplays gender, and of antisexism, which minimizes sociolinguistic differences. This study expands on contemporary calls in sociolinguistics that position intracategorical intersectionality as key for analyzing performances on language variation. (Gender, variation, American Stuttering English, performance, stand-up comedy, language ideologies)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , June 2016 , pp. 353 - 374
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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