Talking to Americans:
Cultural and Comical Canadian Discourse
I. Introduction
It all began with a seemingly innocent article in the Boston Globe. I was sitting in
work one day, leafing through the paper, when an article caught my eye. It was titled:
Canadian Puts the Joke on US and it detailed the surge of popularity surrounding the
Canadian political satire, Talking to Americans. I don’t recall ever being as intrigued and
amused by a newspaper article as I was this particular day. What has ensued is a year-
long academic pursuit of the cultural and discursive meaning associated with Talking to
Americans. Why would an American be interested in conducting a discourse analysis
about a Canadian political satire that isn’t even aired in her country yet captures her
fellow Americans in their most ignorant and embarrassing moments? The more I read
about this program, the more intrigued I became. I began to wonder how Canadians use
humor to respond to the common assumption that Americans know so little about
Canadians while Canadians know so much about Americans. I also thought about how
this program might typify the US-Canada discursive relationship ( its border is described
by Margaret Atwood as “the world’s longest one-way mirror” - with Canadians, invisible
to the American eyes, peering obsessively south).
After watching seven years of Talking to Americans episodes and conducting
seven depth interviews, I have come to realize that through this show, Canadians begin a
"cultural conversation" about the stereotypical assumption of American ignorance in
which a "communal sense of communicative conduct" (Philipsen 2002: 23) is enacted.
Although this idea began with nothing more than general questions and an intellectual
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Convention