Thurston, T (2018) A Careful Village: Comedic Dialogues and Linguistic Modernity in China's Tibet. Journal of Asian Studies, 77 (2). pp. 453-474. ISSN 0021-9118
Abstract
Comedy is a powerful tool for public meditation on and critique of lived experience and discursive practice. In China’s post-Mao period, comedy also provided a means for Tibetan intellectuals to access state-sponsored stages and airwaves in minority-dominated Northwest China’s restrictive cultural climate. This article examines a series of four comedic dialogues popular in Tibetan regions in the mid-1990s. Centered on the fictional Careful Village, these four performances juxtapose urban sophisticates and country bumpkins in ways that allow comedians to grapple with questions of tradition and modernity in a rapidly modernizing society. Though superficially similar to Chinese state-sponsored modernity—itself centered on Chinese Putonghua—attention to these performances’ juxtaposition of characters, social issues, and linguistic practice reveals the promotion of certain forms of the Tibetan language at the center of uniquely Tibetan modernity. This Tibetan modernity is longer assimilationist, but based on mastery of the proper, Tibetan linguistic competences.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2018. This article has been published in a revised form in The Journal of Asian Studies. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911817001383. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works |
Keywords: | comedy; humor; language ideologies; linguistic modernity; metadiscursive regimes; Tibet |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) > East Asian Studies (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 16 Feb 2018 16:53 |
Last Modified: | 12 Jun 2018 15:03 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/S0021911817001383 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:127428 |