Deciphering Linguistic Stereotypes in Polandball Comics: A Qualitative Analysis of 'Engrish' and Cultural Representation

Abstract

Polandball, or Countryballs, are online user-generated comics about geopolitical satire, with countries personified in spherical characters. One of the most important aspects of Countryball memes is the non-standard English, or Engrish, used in the conversations between characters. This research delves into the Engrish phenomena by collecting and qualitatively examining 200+ comics in the subreddit r/polandball, proposing plausible causes of the phenomena, and raising concerns regarding the implications of the exhibited linguistic stereotypes. The investigation figures out that the language choice in Polandball comics on Reddit generally ranged between serious cultural misunderstanding and code-switching of English with another language. It is concluded that the linguistic stylizations of non-standard English in Polandball comics might be rooted in certain cultural and racial stereotypes and might further reinforce these biased cross-cultural perceptions. The research shed light on the long-ignored African-American Vernacular English appropriation in Polandball comics, and extensively enumerated and identified the most recent Engrish stylizations in Polandball comics.