Abstract
This paper describes a preliminary study examining how the audience of stand-up comedy approach humor analysis. By expanding the scope of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo 2001), it was possible to use the framework to aid and systematize the interpretation process, resulting in shifting the theory’s focus from humor production to humor perception.
 The first part of the paper introduces the main premise of stand-up comedy. The second part is devoted to the theoretical aspects, namely the theory of humor. The third part discusses the methodology of the preliminary study: a two-step interpretation task done by four audience members. The fourth and the fifth sections present the results of the study and discuss the implications. The outcome of the analysis gives an understanding as to what the audience may focus on during the interpretation process, which allows for identification of differences in humor perception.
Highlights
Stand-up comedy is a much more complex phenomenon than the name would suggest; it has evolved into an international phenomenon with ever-growing popularity and an ever-growing audience
Noah jokingly claims that this combination makes a person sound like a criminal until they switch to proper Russian; this person automatically becomes a regular immigrant in his mind
Even though the study is still in its early stages, it has shown that individual members of a stand-up comedy audience tend to interpret narratives in a similar way
Summary
Stand-up comedy is a much more complex phenomenon than the name would suggest; it has evolved into an international phenomenon with ever-growing popularity and an ever-growing audience. The popularity of stand-up comedy is still increasing, despite its over 80-year tradition. Stand-up comedy is much more than ‘canned’ jokes. The jokes take the form of a seemingly improvised (yet highly scripted) humorous narrative in which the comedian tells stories or talks about issues important to them. They expect the audience to engage with what they say, and in turn, the audience expects the comedians to be funny (Brodie 2014)
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