Negotiating Chineseness through english dialects in crazy rich asians

The box office hit Crazy Rich Asians is regarded by many as a ground-breaking film for its long, overdue diverse representation of Asians in Hollywood and its potential effect on reviving the romantic comedy genre. The story is set in Singapore where English functions as a national lingua franca commonly spoken not only in public but also increasingly at home. As the story unfolds in this unique English-speaking Asian urban setting, the film reveals to a wider audience how English serves as a common language among the Chinese diasporas. This chapter will explore how, within the larger genre-specific framework of Hollywood romantic comedy, dialects and accents of English are used as markers of education, class, social status, and cultural identity in the characters’ negotiation of diasporic Chineseness.