ABSTRACT
In 2017, Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) Hong Kong produced a 28-episode, Cantonese-language television series that is a romantic comedy with an English title, My Unfair Lady, and a Chinese title, 不懂撒嬌的女人 (Budong Sajiao De Nüren, Women who do not know how to sajiao). This 21-hour series pits Molly and Cherry, two Hong Kong non-practitioners of sajiao, against competitors who are indeed skilled performers of sajiao; that is, those who are well versed in behaviour that is perceived by others as acting cutely or flirtatiously. This study of the series’ humour and its interplay with gender and gender-linked sajiao behaviour focuses on examining the rich and playful use of names for the six main characters in the series. This includes proper names used in isolation or in conjunction with prefixal forms and kinship terms, as well as nicknames that may be used as terms of address, and/or as terms of reference. Through puns, irony, hyperbole, code-mixing, and other tools of the trade, language intersects with a rich tapestry of social and cultural elements to entertain the local audience. Linguistic study of humour through name-use is balanced with an analysis of three short scenes that are snapshots of situation comedy, adding visual and other comedic displays of humour to this television series. The study concludes with a brief discussion of how humour is used to raise some serious, real-world, social issues that challenge working women in today's society, in Hong Kong as elsewhere.
