Co-constructing humour and gender identity in live stand-up
comedy
This chapter explores the role of kairos in female stand-up comedy, looking specifically
at the co-construction of humour between performer and audience.
Stand-up performers adapt their routines depending on their
audiences, trying to draw these into the performance through the use
of kairos, understood as the opportune
and unpredictable moments of persuasion in which comedians choose to
respond to and interact with their audience with the aim of
promoting a humorous effect (Greenbaum 1999; Medjesky 2017). In order to verify this
claim, the present study is an analysis of the FEMMES-UP corpus
(Linares Bernabéu,
2020), which comprises 15 humorous stand-up comedy
performances by 15 female Spanish comedians. The corpus has been
transcribed and segmented into 504 sequences, and we focus here on
113 of these, in all of which there is direct dialogue between the
comedian and one or more members of the audience. The findings show
that humour facilitates friendly interaction and helps comedians to
negotiate their identity. In fact, the stand-ups in these data use
kairos to adapt their speech in
light of how audiences respond. Overall, the research reported here
confirms that female stand-up comedy is a type of planned discourse,
and that it is used by comedians as a cultural and social tool in
terms of confrontation and resistance.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The genre of stand-up comedy and interactional humour
- 2.1Stand-up comedy performances
- 2.2Kairos in comedy
- 2.3Interaction with the audience
- 3.Methodology
- 4.Analysis of interactional humour in the stand-up comedy
act
- 4.1Frequency of direct interactions with the audience
- 4.2Qualitative analysis of interaction in stand-up
comedy
- 4.2.1Audience participation
- 4.2.2Checking knowledge
- 4.2.3Attracting attention
- 4.2.4Interruptions from the audience
- 5.Conclusions
-
Notes
-
References