Stand-up Comedy Research Articles

#AverageYetConfidentMen: Chinese stand-up comedy and feminist discourse on Douyin

ABSTRACT With the rise of feminist sentiment and the growing awareness of gender equity in China, social media has become an increasingly central space for Chinese feminist expression. However, the complex dynamics of feminist expression in these online spaces—and the role of popular culture in facilitating such discourse—are still to be fully elucidated. Here, focusing on the understudied social media platform Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), we analyze the online discussion sparked by the stand-up comedy acts of Chinese female comedians. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis of Douyin videos and related comments, we demonstrate how users employed the platform’s creative features to challenge everyday sexism by echoing or building upon the stand-up comedians’ gags. At the same time, the analysis also uncovers how Douyin is used to insult and push back against these feminist voices. Our findings shed light on the sophisticated role of Douyin as a platform for digital feminist expression, and the ways in which it can amplify both feminist discourse or, conversely, give voice to misogynistic attacks.

Politics, Jokes and Power in Africa: The View From Stand-Up Comedy

ABSTRACT The history of stand-up comedy in Africa has often been tied to developments in popular culture, language, and performance. In this article, I take a different perspective by identifying the interactivities of politics and comedy, and how the actions, endorsements, and even censure of national leaders across different nations buoyed up stand-up performances on the continent. With specific examples from different countries, the explications in this paper show how the (in)actions of political leadership in Africa served as fodder for laughter elicitation – in Kenya, with Daniel arap Moi’s capitulation and Mwai Kibaki’s lethargy; in Nigeria, with Olusegun Obasanjo’s comedian-president posture as well as the gaffes of Patience Jonathan; and in South Africa, with Jacob Zuma’s unending drama until his resignation. These situations are equally contrasted with the experiences in Uganda, Egypt and Rwanda, where political censure is variously rife.

The Usage of Taboo Words in Dave Chappelle's The Closer Stand-Up Comedy

The Usage of Taboo Words in Dave Chappelle's The Closer Stand-Up Comedy

The Manifestation and Evolution of Irony in English Standup Comedy

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.

Sexual jokes in Nigerian stand-up comedy

Nigerian stand-up comic artists explore emerging social, religious, and political issues as materials for comic entertainment within their performance space and community of practice. One of the resources for comic performance is the recourse to sexual contents which are deployed to reduce apprehension around stereotyped norms about sex and sexuality in the Nigerian sociocultural context. Drawing on ethnographic qualitative data using social media skits, audio-visual disks and semi-structured interviews, this article examines sexual jokes as ideological texts and rhetorical devices that embody the struggle between conservatism and postmodern conceptions of sex and sexuality. It highlights the recurrent themes and creative discourses of sexual humour which stand-up comedy performers exploit as artistic tools for the engagement of gender roles, sexual myths, sexual politics and social contradictions within a vulnerable socio-political and economic context. We adopt social relief theory and incongruity theory of humour comprehension to provide a nuanced understanding of sexual jokes and the sociocultural inhibitions that surround them. The dominant themes in these jokes include male sterility, faking orgasm, commodification of sex, prostitution, rape, and the use of aphrodisiac. The results indicate that sexual jokes are circulating within the comedy performance space as forms of protest against stereotyped sexual culture. In this way, male and female comedians, working with the tools and ideology of postmodernism, help to satirise conventional sexual values and radicalise their audiences against normative construction of sex and sexuality.

Genres of Rape and Putting Rape Into Genre: Sexual Violence and TV After #MeToo

This introduction to the “Rape, Genre, and TV after #MeToo” special issue articulates the importance of genre for understanding shifting affective and political norms related to sexual violence. Recent TV from the U.S. and the U.K. has worked to expand the public’s understanding of what counts in the genre of rape, bringing into view less discussed harms like nonconsensual condom removal. At the same time, public discussions of rape have put pressure on the conventions of genres, including the genres explored in this special issue: the procedural, stand-up comedy, the Western, and the situation comedy.

Prosodic Analysis of Humor in Stand-up Comedy

The present study investigated the prosodic features employed by Trevor Noah to create humor in his stand-up comedy. The study used quantitative paradigms to frame the verbal narrative. The research employed, Prosodic Markers of Saliency in Humorous Narratives (Pickering et al., 2009) as theoretical framework for prosodic features. Firstly, the data was anatomized via systematic prosodic and cognitive incongruities between the jokes’ setup and the punch lines. Secondly, for each humorous narrative, a series of measurements including pitch, volume, and pause, as identified by Praat (6.1), were used as a framework to dig out the implicit and explicit factors that caused humor in stand-up acts. The data analysis showed that the orator employed a substantial pause before delivering his punch lines which created humor. The study concluded that prosody played a vital role in creating humor, which falls within the domain of linguistics. The study was significant as it contributed to research concerning narrative forms of jokes based on instrumental prosodic analysis. Further, the research might be conducted to analyze other paralinguistic markers of humor, such as the use of laughter and smile during the delivery of jokes in different Pakistani sitcoms and stand-up comedy, to enlarge the studies on humor’s scope. 

Pragmatic Architectonics of Stand-Up Comedy: Actor’s Image, Addressee’s Factor, Interactivity

Stand-up comedy is interpreted in the study as a discourse pattern, perfect for the “cynical” opposition of all aspects of real eventfulness. Fixing the relevant areas of implicit (usually socially labeled) knowledge, not always covered by traditional institutional sources, bringing this knowledge to the target audience are important discourse functions performed by comedians in their appropriate roles. It is established that the actor puts on the mask of an ordinary representative of society, against the background of a comic distortion of reality, he voices “marginal” metaphorical meanings that form the current everyday routine, expressing anger and despair about vicious and weak manifestations inherent in human nature. The comedy genre allows performers to demonstrate a personal view of the world order, to realize their place in the world around them. It is concluded that these possibilities become the central element of the identity of the actor-comedian, determine the parameters of who he objectively is, fix his finding between the internal state and the external manner of behavior that can be recognized by the audience. The comedian is like a creative “persona”, a psychological entity with special characteristics that can be publicly noticed, recognized and used by representatives of a certain culture as a whole. The scenarios generated by the comedian are investigated, which can be traditional or situational (specific to the current communication environment). Their switching in the actor’s discourse determines the nature of the relationship with the audience from complete collusion to confrontation with it.The humorous potential of the actor’s judgments programs a sudden cognitive shift in the audience’s consciousness, which is generated by the discrepancy between perceived meanings and generally accepted mental models of explication of meanings from linguistic units, the effect of deceived expectations. The viewer experiences an unexpected change of psychological state due to spontaneous changes in the interpretation of individual words, phrases or the actor’s narrative as a whole. At the same time, the actor’s jokes do not always correspond to the comedy genre, as a rule, they acquire a deeply tragic content.

Impoliteness Strategies of Dark Humor on Trevor Noah’s Show “Son of Patricia"

This study aimed to explore the phenomenon of how something vulgar or sensitive becomes a joke to execute many meanings, which is interesting to study. It was specifically focused on dark humor presented in stand-up comedy performances as one of the famous media for presenting humor. The researcher investigated the impoliteness strategies and their contribution to express dark humor. This study used phenomenological qualitative with a pragmatic approach. It analyzed dark humor found in Trevor Noah’s stand-up comedy performance entitled “Son of Patricia” through the impoliteness strategy by Culpeper (1996). The result showed that there was 51 dark humor found in Noah’s performance. It enclosed several topics, which were his personal experiences. The most impoliteness strategies used were sarcasm or mock. It was used in all the performance topics to cover up his attacks on others’ faces by making jokes. However, withhold politeness was not found in the performance, as there was no dark humor expressed by failing to use politeness. There were some cases where two impoliteness strategies used together in a joke. The researcher hopes this study will broaden the scope of this study to encompass additional variables, populations, or timeframes. Such an expansion could provide a more comprehensive understanding of impoliteness strategies used in expressing dark humor enclosed behind the dark humor and its impact on various contexts.

Analyzing Jokes in the Light of Cooperative Principle Taking George Carlins Stand-up Comedy as an Example

George Carlin was one of the most brilliant and outstanding comedians in the United States. He criticised social hypocrisy by highlighting conflicting facts that people typically ignore. In stand-up comedy, several linguistic mechanisms assist in the creation of humour. Many linguistic mechanisms contribute to the production of comedy in stand-up comedies. Through a literature analysis, this paper investigates the use of "Cooperative Principle" in George Carlin's comedies and how he uses his language proficiency to entertain his audiences. It reemphasizes the significance of rationality in the "Cooperative Principle" by analyzing the implementation of Grice's theory from a novel perspective, as opposed to focusing on daily conversations. Based on Grecian theory, this research focuses on the implicature of speakers in stand-up comedians and how implicit sentence generates humour.

The Indigenous Origin of Intermediality in Nigerian Stand-up Comedy

Abstract Intermediality, a conflation of different artistic media into one event, is typically considered to have developed in the West. In this paper, we argue that intermediality existed in pre-colonial performance traditions across Africa, where various modes of artistic enactments merged into one were preferred to enactments partitioned into different generic categories. This study identifies multiple artistic genres inherent in Nigerian stand-up art, with specific reference to various sets of Ayo Makun’s AY Live wherein we identify the blending of joke-telling, theatre, cinema, song performance and dance within each show. We trace indigenous origins of this conflation of forms by illustrating how delineations between “types” of play, as seen in AY Live, did not exist in indigenous performances. This paper thus, extends research on intermediality and African popular culture by detailing the ways in which Nigerian stand-up enactments are packaged as total entertainment in the manner of pre-existing indigenous performances.

To Be Real: Truth and Racial Authenticity in African American Standup Comedy

To Be Real: Truth and Racial Authenticity in African American Standup Comedy

In on the Joke: The Original Queens of Stand-Up Comedy

In on the Joke: The Original Queens of Stand-Up Comedy

Figurative Language Used in Bo Burnham’s Stand-Up Comedy Titled What.

This study aims to find out the types of figurative language and the function of the figurative language used in Bo Burnham’s stand-up comedy titled “what.”. The writer conducted this study using the theory of types of figurative language and functions of figurative language by Harris (2018). The writer conducted the study using a qualitative approach method in which he collected and analyzed the data himself. Findings reveal that the figurative language used in "what." comprises simile, metaphor, personification, and allusion, serving to clarify content, provoke interest, and establish associations. This study also found that the types of figurative language used in stand-up comedy depends on the compatibility of the type with the comedic material and the timing and pacing of the performance. It is also found that multiple types of figurative language can appear in a single utterance as it adds layers and creates engagement. It is suggested that future studies consider other forms of humor or alternative theories of figurative language to further diversify and enrich the field.

The Conversational Implicature Found while Trevor Noah Criticizes the Government in Stand-up Comedy Show

This research deals with conversational implicature and flouted maxim found in stand-up comedy. This descriptive qualitative research, analyzed 12 utterances of Trevor Noah from YouTube video entitled “Trevor Noah COMPLETE REMARKS at 2022 White House Correspondents’ Dinner (C-SPAN)” using Grice’s conversational implicature theory. The finding shows that from 12 utterances, every utterance can contain more than one type of flouted maxims, the details are as follows, 10 manner, 9 quality, 7 relevance, 6 maxims of quantity. The researcher also finds that, Noah applied Particularized Conversational Implicature more frequently than Generalized Conversational Implicature, with a ratio of 11:1. Noah has done this to make his satire is less offensive. This research also finds that flouted of maxims does not mean that a conversation has been failed, but that is intentionally done by the speaker to create an implicature effect in his utterance. As long as the speaker and the listener have the same knowledge about the context or background, the conversation will keep going well.

Political satire as alternative journalism in Indian stand-up comedy

Political Satire has changed the way we view comedy. It would be accurate to say that real journalism is more evident in stand-up comedies and less in productive news channels that are also known as the fourth pillar of democracy. Journalism has turned into a laughingstock with all the unnecessary screaming, shouting and pointless/baseless debates. Digital platform has opened its arms wide to memes, stand-up comedies and sitcoms which are not only a visual treat to the audience but has in a way affected day to day lives of people reigning from different walks of life. Political satire through the digital ground has changed the way we perceive politics. Today’s political satire, put forth in the form of stand-up comedies, situational comedies and memes, debunks the status quo. They have revolutionised the content and our perception as to how we perceive important political events. Satire carries the ability to bring about a change in society. This paper is an attempt to understand the journey of Indian Stand-up comedy as an important tool for political satire and how in recent years this has taken the form of alternative journalism.

Othering the Laughable

Abstract This article reviews the incongruity, the superiority, and the relief theories of humour. Challenging the dominant notion of humour as a coping mechanism, it explores humour’s potential for positive transformation. It investigates the uses of humour in Nigeria, including its social and even unsuspected psychological functions. It also inquires into the problem of a seeming rising incidence of unhappiness among Nigerians despite their much-vaunted humorous nature and despite the relief theory of humour being the dominant perspective in humour studies. By spotlighting the synergy of activism and art in humour, subliminal tendencies, and Nigerians’ distinct comic intelligence, the article attempts a nuanced analysis of the production and consumption of humour, with an accent on the growing activist-oriented humour on social media platforms, particularly Twitter. In contrast to traditional stand-up comedy, this activist-oriented humour is found to be generally geared towards real-time impact through a combined deployment of words and actions. The research puts forward illustrative examples of how social media humour has surpassed other more orthodox comedic practices and thereby engendered remarkable social and political impacts in Nigeria.

A Politically Correct Joke: Myth or Reality? (Structural Analysis of a Stand-up Comedy Show)

The article describes the results of structural analysis of a stand-up comedy by the famous British comedian Jimmy Karr to show that political correctness has hardly affected humourous discourse. The study is relevant as it contributes to further linguopholosophic, linguocultural and discursive investigations into political correctness that, according to the authors, contradicts the natural tendency of humans to think in binaries. Stressing that the humorous is based on the binary opposition of Self/Other, the authors question the very chance for a successful joke to be poli tically correct. The theoretical part of the article highlights a number of events that at different times contributed to the evolvement and spread of political correctness, considers the model Self/Other in terms of people’s interaction with the world and with regard to its manifestation in humorous discourse. The methods of structural, discourse and content analysis serve to reveal the linguistic means of representing the opposition Self/Other in contemporary humorous discourse and to identify a number of its elements. The results of analysis show that the growing tendency for political correctness has to some extent affected the thematic aspect of the humorous, however, they give ground to hypothesize that human desire for this kind of jokes will gradually reverse the currently increasing tendency.

Conversation Implications in the Stand Up Comedy "Youtuber Many Haters" on Raditya Dika's Youtube Chanel

Stand Up Comedy is a form of modern comedy art performance. Raditya Dika is an Indonesian comic who is well-known and widely recognized in the world of stand-up comedy. He is also known as a writer, director, and actor. Raditya Dika's comedy style tends to rely on his personal experience and observations of everyday life. He uses a spontaneous, honest, and often absurd storytelling style, which makes the audience laugh. This type of research is descriptive qualitative. This study aims to describe the types of implicatures in the stand-up comedy show "Youtubers Lots of Haters" on Raditya Dika's youtube channel. This study uses the method of free engagement talk, recording, and taking notes. The results of this study indicate that there are 2 types of implicature, namely conventional and non-conventional. the results of the conversational implicature analysis conducted by the author on Raditya Dika's Stand Up Comedy entitled Youtuber Many Haters which aired on December 19 2017 on Raditya Dika's YouTube channel, researchers found conventional implicature and non-conventional implicature. The researcher also found 4 implicature functions, namely Assertive function, Expressive function, Directive function, and Commissive function. However, in this stand-up comedy, the researcher did not find a declarative function because the text is more likely to express the author's emotions, opinions, invitations, or intentions than to convey factual statements.

The rhetoric of comedy: exploring the language and humor styles of Filipino stand-up comedians

Stand-up comedy is an act in which a certain person performs to make people laugh with the intention of appealing to them. It illustrates various language and humor styles that are used by comedians in performing; these styles vary depending on the audience, place, and theme of the event and are unique to each performer. This study aims to provide information regarding the specific approach that Filipino stand-up comedians used during their performances and how effective it was for the delivery and reception of humor. This study employed a qualitative research design using interpretative phenomenological analysis as the specific approach with which it is concerned in exploring experiences in their own terms (Smith et al, 2009). The study also uses thematic analysis approach as proposed by Braune and Clarke which revealed two themes under language styles utilized by stand-up comedians (1) incorporating language based on the audience (2) use of colloquial words and phrases. Three themes under humor styles utilized by stand-up comedians are (1) audience-centric performance, (2) observational comedy, (3) improvisational comedy. Also, three themes underlie the effectiveness of using language and humor styles: (1) importance of building connections, (2) extensive influences of endeavoring to be funny and, (3) enhancing audience satisfaction.