ABSTRACT
So much for legislating the most amorphous and misleading of thingslanguage.
It is my intention in this chapter to demonstrate how the immigrants to the USA at the turn of the century empowered and protected themselves through verbal displays, particularly in the field of comedy, and specifically in the work of The Marx Brothers and their writers. I will close the piece with a reappraisal of the state of American ‘ethnic’ comedy today, and I might even draw some conclusions if I can find some chalk.
