Spokening Dollar: The Portrayal of the English-speaking Filipino... - Josef Ryan Tosoc @ SOAS 2026

Spokening Dollar: The Portrayal of the English-speaking Filipino as a Rhetorical Diasporic Citizen in Stand-up Comedy Speaker(s): Josef Ryan B. Tosoc Recorded Day 2 – Archipelagic Tongues: SOAS Philippine Studies Conference 2026, 4:00–5:00 (Room KLT) Session: Diaspora, Hybridity, and Global Language Josef Ryan B. Tosoc is an Instructor for the Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts under the College of Arts and Letters at the University of the Philippines and Diliman. He currently teaches public speaking and persuasion. Some of his research interests include ritual studies, humor, rhetoric, the Filipino diaspora, children’s literature, folklore, and performances of faith. His work has previously been published in the Philippine Humanities Review. Abstract: Filipino stand-up comedians in the diaspora are practitioners of Kock and Villadsen’s “rhetorical citizenship”, which proposes citizenship as being discursively enacted and constituted through communication. Despite diverging from a traditional Filipino status owing to their dispersal, they “speak” their citizenship through the jokes they share with their Filipino audiences through performances onstage. As part of a study that seeks to uncover how some of the most popular Pinoy comedians construct the diasporic Filipino as citizen in their comedy specials, I identify how they employ various discursive strategies to portray the English-speaking Filipino. In investigating the nomination, predication, and perspectivization strategies utilized in Rex Navarrete’s “Hella Pinoy” (2004), Jo Koy’s “Live from Seattle” (2017), and James Roque’s “Badong” (2023), I unearth several themes that chart the evolution the Filipino’s relationship with the English language. From disparaging it as “the invader’s tongue”, mockingly defining ESL as “English as a Stupid Language, and bemoaning its nature as a “language of riddles”, I borrow Ruth Wodak’s discourse-historical approach to chronicle how Navarrete and Roque negotiate rhetorical positionalities for the Filipino in the Anglosphere. I also unpack and reflect on “the thick Filipino accent” as portrayed by Jo Koy, underlining the tensions of “hearing home”.