A Discourse Study of Conversations Concerning the Lottery in a Rural Town in Hainan Island (Southern China)

The current paper presents a discourse study of conversational exchanges concerning the local lottery, emerging from ordinary conversations at public settings in Shishan Town, located on the northern Hainan Island of Southern China. The data consists of six hours of naturally occurring conversations in Shishan, a previously undocumented non-Chinese regional dialect of Lingao of the Tai-Kadai language family. The dialogues range from mockery of another speaker's gambling habit, lamentations of lost winning opportunities, gossip of others' mischances and fortunes with the lottery, and discussion of the financially draining and addictive nature of playing lottery. The study shows that the dialogues about the lottery coincide with various forms of rhetorical language use and speech play, such as metaphor, retorts, "signifying," mocking, and verbal dueling. The dialogues reflect the speakers' metaawareness that participation in the lottery is a morally delicate activity.