Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the power of Gaelic names as a dynamic and transformative force in transgressive comedy. Folk and popular modes of intersectional code-switching between popular humour and small-group identity seek to creatively redress and subvert longstanding power imbalances.

Paper long abstract:

The trope of Irish and Scottish Gaelic names in global English-language humour is well attested and provides a noteworthy lens to explore popular majority-language conceptualisations of alterity and the esoteric. Recent iterations of these forms of transgressive comedic othering have revealed a dynamic and transformative force within contemporary comedic discourse that attempts to redress these power imbalances. From Stephen Colbert’s Late Show interview with Saoirse Ronan to parody music videos integrating Starbucks baristas' notorious misspelling of customers’ names, we find a dynamic web of comedic expression rooted in the subversive power names in endangered languages hold in post-colonial discourse. Simultaneously, habitual speakers of these endangered languages have taken to employing the power their names wield as a Shibboleth within wider folksonomies in social media (Cocq 2015) linked to what can be considered an enactment of digital dúchas/dùthchas (sense of belonging to a natural and ancestral world). A noteworthy recent example was the #dèantainmathort (‘what is your name?’) profile badge movement on Facebook in Summer 2020 with users replacing anglicized personal names with their Scottish Gaelic forms as a collective ‘folk’ response amid the Covid-19 pandemic to the release of a study that posited that Gaelic as a vernacular language in the Hebrides was in danger of dying out within a decade. Taken together, the power of names in forging small-group identity and building humour rooted in empathy reveals complex modes of intersectional code-switching between folk and popular discourses that seek to creatively redress and subvert longstanding imbalances in power.