Sociolinguistic Artifacts

Russell Peters is a famous Stand up comic who is known for his portrayals of other cultures and ability to mimic their accents. Russell is a world traveled individual who has shows in Bangkok, Dubai, Europe and America. He draws on his life interactions to really capture a moment or interaction and portray it in a humorous way. In this clip he is setting up a power hierarchy of cheapness and claiming that cheap is good thing to the minority and an insult to the Hegemonic identity in America. “Cheap” in this sense is going against the dominant cultural belief of cheap is an attribute that is unfavorable. This is showing the intermingled power struggle between the dominant class and others and how pushing back against ideologies is occurring. The voices used in separating the characters also indicate indexicality and Language socialization. The voices used help guide and reaffirm how we preserve different culture groups to sound. His experience and worldliness is also a point of power. Most people are not as traveled as Russell Peters and cannot truly understand the differences in cultures he is portraying however through him we get a glimpse of the other. He has the power in the setting and his perception of life is the one we are subjected to. His viewpoint on life is guided by humor and stereotyping for a broader audience in order to showcase cultural differences and how they interact and intermingle within the world.