Mediating hegemony through political humour: A discourse analysis of Spring Festival Gala sketches in China

What does humour do to us and our relationship with the society? This article examines political humour in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and asks how hegemony is mediated through political humour in China. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) of two Spring Festival Gala sketches, 春晚小品 (‘chunwan xiaopin’), is applied not only for its ontological fit with the literature of hegemony but also because of its potential to unravel the hidden power relations. I argue for the social and psychological significance of xiaopin to the general public because they reveal the fragility of the intellectual hierarchy that places the rural population at the bottom, play with the heavy historical episode of the Great Leap Forward, and create the illusion of empowerment. Furthermore, it reveals that humour can be subversive on the textual level and simultaneously hegemonic on the discursive level.