The Manifestation and Evolution of Irony in English Standup Comedy

Abstract

The subject of this study is irony and its manifestation in the humorous monologues of foreign stand-up comedians. The object of this study is the speeches of American stand-up comedians. The author examines in detail such aspects as the main components of creating irony, which include the implicit expression of the author's superiority, the author's presupposition, as well as stylistic means of creating irony, such as contrast, epithets, hyperbole. Special attention is paid to such types of irony as verbal, dramatic and situational irony. Post-irony and meta-irony were also considered, as well as the specifics of their formation in comedians' jokes, which include playing with reality, intertextuality, pastiche, the concept of the author's death, the proclamation of criticism of traditional and modernist meta-narratives. The novelty of the research lies in the previously unseen analysis of stand-up performances for the presence and formation of irony, as well as the means of its creation. A special contribution of the author to the research of the topic is the opening of the corpus of texts of stand-up comedians' speeches for further analysis of the material to identify other linguistic phenomena. The topic of irony, post-irony, meta-irony was presented for the first time in this context and is available for further research. In addition to the seemingly goal of expressing ridicule and the author's superiority over the viewer, irony also reveals the positive sides of the object of jokes.