The rise of India's global economy has reinforced a perception of English as a language of sexual modernity within the expanding middle classes. This article explores this perception in the multilingual humor of Hindi-speaking Delhi youth marginalized for sexual and gender difference. Their joking routines feature the Sikh Sardarji, a longstanding ethnic figure often caricatured as circulating in modernity but lacking the English competence to understand modernity's semiotics. Reflective of the economic restructuring that ushered in the millennium, the humor supports a normative progress narrative that prioritizes an ethnically unmarked urban middle class. At the same time, the lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth who tell these jokes—still criminalized under Section 377 when this fieldwork was conducted—shift this narrative by positioning sexual knowledge at modernity's forefront. The analysis reveals how sexual modernity—here viewed as constituted in everyday interaction through competing configurations of place, time, and personhood—relies on normativity even while defining itself against it. (Chronotope, ethnic humor, formulaic jokes, globalization, Hindi-English, Hinglish, media, middle class, normativity, sexual modernity, temporality)*

中文翻译：

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中产阶级时间表：德里的民族幽默和性现代性

印度全球经济的崛起在不断扩大的中产阶级中强化了英语作为一种性现代语言的看法。本文探讨了在讲印地语的德里青年因性别和性别差异而被边缘化的多语言幽默中的这种看法。他们的笑话以 Sikh Sardarji 为特色，这是一个长期的种族人物，经常被讽刺为在现代性中流传，但缺乏理解现代性符号学的英语能力。该幽默反映了进入千年的经济结构调整，支持一种规范的进步叙事，该叙事优先考虑没有种族特征的城市中产阶级。同时，女同性恋、双性恋、和讲这些笑话的跨性别青年——在进行实地调查时仍然根据第 377 条被定罪——通过将性知识置于现代性的前沿来改变这种叙述。分析揭示了性现代性——在此被视为通过地点、时间和人格的竞争配置在日常互动中构成——如何依赖于规范性，即使在定义自身时也是如此。（Chronotope、民族幽默、公式化笑话、全球化、印地语-英语、Hinglish、媒体、中产阶级、规范性、性现代性、时间性）*