I am laughing at his blow by blow commentary, … and his accent …. that stereotyped Cantonese Chinese accent…. Yet I feel a bit uneasy. Should I really be laughing at his accent? And that accent … he must be putting it on, right? Hmmm, but is that ok that he is playing up the Chinese accent?
Laughter and confusion – this was my unsettling experience watching Uncle Roger for the first time. And this native-English speaking Caucasian was not alone. It was amusing in itself to see the awkward discomfort of a British Youtuber couple in a “reacting to” video watching Uncle Roger for their first time. It was clear they did not know what to make of it either.
The basic condition of a joke is to obviously remove it from reality. We recognize many jokes immediately, with openings like “knock knock” and “You ever hear the one about …?”. This is often important because a lot of jokes make fun of certain people or types of people. The butts of many jokes stereotyped people, like engineers, Newfies (in Canada), and in American culture, blondes …
Two blondes fell down a hole. One said, “It’s dark in here isn’t it?” The other replied, “I don’t know; I can’t see.”
Stand-up comics do this all the time, but they tend to poke fun at themselves before poking fun at others. This gives them the green light to do so; it’s like, “hey, we can all laugh at me, which makes it ok for us to laugh at others. And this is what Nigel Ng is doing with Uncle Roger – he is making himself a caricature of a Chinese stereotype (a complaining old guy with a funny Chinese accent) before making a caricature of non-Chinese doing things that are important in Chinese culture, eg making rice or egg fried rice.
But what interests me about Uncle Roger’s Chinese-caricature (not character) is that his accent is the source of authenticity and empowerment, not ridicule. Previous pop cultural portrayals of Chinese with accents ranged from quaint “Confucius say” accent of the insightful but passively obedient yellow-faced detective Charlie Chan in the 1940’s and 50’s to Kung Fu superstar Bruce Lee in the late 1960’s and early 70’s whose British Hong Kong accent and speaking style seemed a larger-than-life oddity that could not be taken seriously. Why is it that in 2020, Uncle Roger’s caricatured accent is not a mark of deficiency and linguistic inability?
I think there are at least three reasons: China has become a global superpower that is taken seriously by everybody; Youtube has democratized and globalized entertainment for anyone and anywhere, and perhaps most importantly, and largely due to the first two reasons, English as an international language no longer “belongs” to native English speakers. Standards of English accent, intonation and pronunciation have been decoupled from their Native Speaker moorings – at least in non-English speaking countries. Although communicative success still depends on intelligibility and being able to articulate the sounds of language to get your message across, international platforms of communication, whether they be Zoom meetings, trade shows, tourist sites, and Youtube vlogs, prioritize content and intelligibility, and not formal language features like grammar and pronunciation.
In fact, in this era of international communication and global access to information, it is the embracing of the non-standard formal features of English as a foreign language that can serve as a source of identity. I recall an applied linguistics conference several years ago when Chinese linguist Jun Ming delivered a keynote address in impeccable English but ended his speech by admitting that his English is not “perfect” by native speaker standards, but that he is not only okay with that, but proud of it. His language identifies him as a Chinese.
I recently read a 2008 online thread asking for commentary on the accent and intonation of the top five participants from an English speaking competition. The request came from a Chinese who I assume was an English teacher in China. The thread discussion and commentary tended to agree that they all had accents and far from native speaker intonation. Of course, the assumption of the poster and commentators is that these Chinese English language learners should emulate and adopt native speaker speaking standards. In reality, this is not only unfair and impractical as a language learning goal for the billions of English language learners in the world, it also shows how entrenched and how biased these standards are.
Perhaps the defining characteristic of a truly international language should be how other cultures appropriate it and make it their own. Just as China has adapted the international economic system of capitalism, English as an international language should also be open to modification, for example English with Chinese characteristics, to rephrase Deng Xiaoping.
Living in Taipei with a Taiwanese wife and daughter and as a learner of Chinese as a Foreign Language myself for the past 25 years, I have never had the desire to spend the time or effort necessary to master the linguistic forms of Mandarin. I have never wanted to sound like a Fluent Taipei or Beijing Native Speaker, but I have always wanted to be able to communicate intelligibly. If my Mandarin were good enough to write articles and do podcasts, I too would probably be inclined to view my non-standard Mandarin as a source of Anglo-identity. This would help me frame and package my view and thinking as a result of my Anglo background and influences when communicating with others.
For Uncle Roger, his thick staccato Cantonese accent and Chinglish grammar do not undermine his authority as a critical Youtuber; quite the opposite, they reinforce the authenticity of his identity as a Chinese adding more weight to his criticism.
“BBC, this not good video. People use this video to make egg fied rice – they think egg fied rice disgusting. Not good for Chinese culture.”
Uncle Roger’s viral popularity is a cultural watershed moment in not just entertainment, but also international communication. His strategic deployment of a thickly accented Chinglish is a badge of authenticity, affirmation and empowerment of Chinese identity. It is also an indication that “Standard” English is not the only valid form of English–we are in an age of a plurality of standards.
