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Abstract

This study examines how Otavalan Kichwa vendors, cultural experts, and migrants deploy joking as a multisensory form of intimacy that reshapes cross‑cultural learning of “heritage” within global tourism economies. Jokes, I argue, can be used instructionally and tactically because of their sensory dimensions: in real time, they mobilize sound, motion, touch, color, and emotion to produce moral‑economic (Antrosio & Colloredo‑Mansfeld, 2015), “feelingful,” and “intimate” (Webster, 2015) labor. Drawing on seventeen months of cumulative fieldwork, I analyze three jokes performed across everyday exchanges in Otavalo, semi‑private tourism encounters, and public enactments of Indigeneity abroad. Treating these jokes as discourse (Sherzer 1987; Urban, 1991; Hill, 2008) and as tactical speech play (Sherzer, 2002; Bauman, 1981; Bunten, 2010, 2015), I integrate linguistic, cultural, auto‑ethnographic, and neuro‑somatic approaches — including theories of synesthesia, phantom pain, and mirror‑box regeneration (Ramachandran, 1998). Ultimately, Kichwa joking reveals “heritage” as socially embodied, perceptually illusive, and politically generative.

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2026-08-18
2026-09-09

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Kichwa joke-telling in global tourism
John Benjamins ; https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.25057.pat
/content/journals/10.1075/lcs.25057.pat
/content/journals/10.1075/lcs.25057.pat
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: Kichwa ; speech play ; synesthesia ; Otavalo ; tourism

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