Article published In:
PragmaticsVol. 23:1 (2013) ► pp.1–22
The interactional context of humor in Nigerian stand-up comedy
Research in the pragmatics of Nigerian humor is almost nil. This article, therefore, highlighted the major pragmatic strategies used by Nigerian stand-up comedians to involve their audiences in the creation of the interactional context of humor. Data comprised fifteen randomly-sampled extracts from the video compact disc recordings of the routines of five stand-up comedians. Analysis revealed the saliency of linguistic coding, stereotyping, formulas, call-and-response, self-deprecation, and shared experiences which not only involved both comedian and audience in humor production and consumption but which additionally reduced the stage authority of the comedian to the barest minimum. It was concluded that Nigerian stand-up comedy’s interactional tenor could be uniquely hinged on linguistic coding, essentially the code-alternation of Nigerian Pidgin (especially) and English Language.
Keywords: Humor, Context, Nigerian pidgin, Nigeria, Stand-up comedy, Night of a thousand laughs
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
References (39)
Adetunji, Akinbiyi (forthcoming) A discursive construction of teasing in football fandom: The context of the South-Western Nigerian viewing center. Discourse and Society 24: 2. 
Attardo, Salvatore (1994) Linguistic theories of humor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. BoP
(1996) Humor. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, J. Blommaert, and C. Bulcaen (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 1-18.
(2002) Humor and irony in interaction: From mode adoption to failure of detection. In Luigi Anolli, Rita Ciceri, and Giuseppe Riva (eds.), Say not to say: New perspectives on miscommunication.Amsterdam: IOS, pp. 159-179.
Attardo, Salvatore, and Lucy Pickering (2011) Timing in the performance of jokes. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 24.2: 233-250. BoP
Brodie, Ian (2008) Stand-up comedy as a genre of intimacy. Ethnologies 30.2: 153-180.
Brown, Gillian, Karen Currie, and Joanne Kenworthy (1980) Questions of intonation. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.
Clark, Herbert H. (1996) Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BoP
BoPDean, Greg (2000) Step by step to standup comedy. Porthsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Deuber, Dagmar, and Lars Hinrichs (2007) Dynamics of orthographic standardization in Jamaican Creole and Nigerian Pidgin. World Englishes 26.1: 22–47.
Double, Oliver (2005) Getting the joke: The inner workings of stand-up comedy. London: Methuen.
Faraclas, Nicholas G. (1996) Nigerian Pidgin. London: Routledge.
Furukawa, Toshiaki (2007) “No flips in the pool”: Discursive practice in Hawai‘i Creole. Pragmatics 17.3: 371-385.
Gilbert, Joanne R. (2004) Performing marginality: Humor, gender, and social critique. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Glick. Douglas J. (2007) Some performative techniques of stand-up comedy: An exercise in the textuality of temporalization. Language & Communication 271: 291–306.
Greenbaum, Andrea (1999) Stand-up comedy as rhetorical argument: An investigation of comic culture. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 12.1: 33-46.
Hieke, Adolf E., Sabine Kowal, and Daniel O’Connell (1983) The trouble with “articulatory” pauses. Language and Speech 26.3: 203-214.
Katayama, Hanae (2008) Humor in Manzai stand-up comedy: A historical and comparative analysis. The International Journal of the Humanities 6.11: 213-223.
Lockyer, Sharon, and Lynn Myers (2011) “It’s about expecting the unexpected”: Live stand-up comedy from the audiences’ perspective. Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 8.2: 165-188.
Mcllvenny, Paul, Sari Mettovaara, and Ritva Tapio (1992) I really wanna make you laugh: Stand-up comedy and audience response. In M.K. Suijanen, and A. Kulkki- Nieminen (eds.), Folia, Fennistica and Linguistica: Proceedings of the Annual Finnish Symposium 161: 225–247.
Mintz, Lawrence E. (1985) Standup comedy as social and cultural mediation. American Quarterly 37.1: 71-80. (
Special Issue: American Humor
)
Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L.F. Nilsen (2000) Encyclopedia of 20th century American Humor. Phoenix: Oryx Press.
Norrick, Neal (2001) On the conversational performance of narrative jokes: Toward an account of timing. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research. 14.3: 255–274.
Okpewho, Isidore (1992) African oral literatures: Backgrounds, character, and continuity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Orhiunu, Wilson (2007) Tribal stereotypes in Nigerian comedy: The Calabar example. Retrieved on August 2, 2009 from the World Wide Web [URL].
Rao, Sameer (2011) “Joke’s on you!” Stand-up comedy performance and the management of hecklers. Senior thesis, Department of Sociology, Haverford College.
Reyes, Angela. (2004) Asian American stereotypes as circulating resource. Pragmatics 14.2/3: 173-192. BoP
Russell, Danielle (2002) Self-deprecatory humour and the female comic: Self-destruction or comedic construction? Retrieved August 1, 2012 from the World Wide Web [URL]
Rutter, Jason (1997) Stand-up comedy as interaction; Performance and audience in comedy venues. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Salford.
(2000) The stand-up introduction sequence: Comparing comedy comperes. Journal of Pragmatics 321: 443-483. BoP
BoP (2011) Rhetoric in stand-up comedy: Exploring performer-audience interaction. Retrieved from [URL]
Scarpetta, Fabiola, and Anna Spagnolli (2009) The interactional context of humor in stand-up comedy. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42.3: 210-230. BoP
BoPSchwarz, Jeannine (2010) Linguistic aspects of verbal humor in stand-up comedy. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Saarland.
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson (1995) Relevance: Communication and cognition (2nd Edition). Oxford: Blackwell. MetBib
Tsang, Wai King, and Matilda Wong (2004) Constructing a shared Hong Kong identity in comic discourse. Discourse and Society 15.6: 767-785.
Wells, Pam, and Peter Bull (2007) From politics to comedy: A comparative analysis of affiliative audience responses. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 261: 321-343.
Woolard, Kathryn A. (1987) Codeswitching and comedy in Catalonia. In Monica Heller, Monica (ed.), Code-switching: Anthropological and sociolinguistic perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 53-70.
Wortham, S., and M. Locher (1996) Voicing on the news: An analytic technique for studying media bias. Text 161: 557–585. BoP
Yus, Francisco (2002) Stand-up comedy and cultural spread: The case of sex roles. Babel A.F.I.A.L. (
Special Issue on Humor Studies
): pp. 245-292.
Cited by (29)
Cited by 29 other publications
Osisanwo, Ayo & Modupe Agunbiade
2024. Beyond academic discourse: practs of humour in departmental chatrooms of selected Federal University students in Southwest Nigeria. African Identities ► pp. 1 ff. 
Osisanwo, Ayo & Lekan Atoloye
2024. “Silence is the best answer for a bully”: an exploration of humour techniques in selected Nigerian newspaper political cartoons. Language and Semiotic Studies 10:3 ► pp. 367 ff.
Bamgbose, Ganiu & Omolola A. Ladele
2023. Gender and ethnic stereotypes in selected Nigerian sitcoms. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 41:2 ► pp. 158 ff.
Olayoku, Philip Ademola
2023. TecHedonism as metaverse in the future of Nigerian netizens’ sociopolitics. Digital Policy Studies 1:2 ► pp. 65 ff.
Osisanwo, Ayo & Omolade Ilesanmi
2023. Gender, ethnic and class as humour strategies in stand-up comedy of Bovi, Kenny Blaq, Akpororo and Basket Mouth. Comedy Studies 14:1 ► pp. 20 ff.
Oyebola, Folajimi & Kingsley Ugwuanyi
2023. Attitudes of Nigerians Towards BBC Pidgin: A Preliminary Study. Language Matters 54:1 ► pp. 78 ff.
Adekunle, Idowu James
2022. Humour of religious satire and linguistic dexterity of Nigerian stand-up comedy. The European Journal of Humour Research 10:1 ► pp. 76 ff.
Nwankwọ, Izuu
2022. Self-censorship and Shifting Cognitions of Offence in the Stand-up Acts of Basket Mouth and Trevor Noah. Journal of African Cultural Studies 34:2 ► pp. 129 ff.
Tosin Gbogi, Michael
2022. Language, identity, and urban youth subculture. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 171 ff.
Chukwumah, Ignatius
2021. Laughter in Disaster: Understanding the Frames of Covid-19 Humour in Nigeria. English Academy Review 38:2 ► pp. 21 ff.
Källstig, Amanda
2021. Laughing in the Face of Danger: Performativity and Resistance in Zimbabwean Stand-up Comedy. Global Society 35:1 ► pp. 45 ff.
Nwaogu, Janet Mayowa, Albert P C Chan, John A Naslund, Carol K H Hon, Christopher Belonwu & Jackie Yang
2021. Exploring the Barriers to and Motivators for Using Digital Mental Health Interventions Among Construction Personnel in Nigeria: Qualitative Study. JMIR Formative Research 5:11 ► pp. e18969 ff.
Sunday, Adesina B. & Ganiu A. Bamgbose
2021. A pragmatic analysis of humour strategies and functions in 'Jenifa's Diary' and 'Professor JohnBull'. The European Journal of Humour Research 9:4 ► pp. 20 ff.
Unuabonah, Foluke Olayinka
Unuabonah, Foluke Olayinka, Folajimi Oyebola & Ulrike Gut
2021. “Abeg na! we write so our comments can be posted!”. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 31:3 ► pp. 455 ff.
Gaudio, Rudolf P.
2019. Pidgin Pride and Prejudice. In The Routledge Companion to the Work of John R. Rickford, ► pp. 331 ff.
Sunday, Adesina B. & Ibukun Filani
2019. Playing with culture: Nigerian stand-up comedians joking with cultural beliefs and representations. HUMOR 32:1 ► pp. 97 ff.
Dore, Margherita
2018. Chapter 5. Laughing at you or laughing with you?. In The Dynamics of Interactional Humor [Topics in Humor Research, 7], ► pp. 105 ff.
Seewoester Cain, Sarah
2018. Chapter 6. Teasing as audience engagement. In The Dynamics of Interactional Humor [Topics in Humor Research, 7], ► pp. 127 ff.
Davies, Catherine E.
2017. Sociolinguistic Approaches to Humor. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ► pp. 472 ff.
Adeoti, Oluwatomi & Ibukun Filani
2016. Contextual Beliefs and Pragmatic Strategies in Online Humour. In Analyzing Language and Humor in Online Communication [Advances in Linguistics and Communication Studies, ], ► pp. 274 ff.
Filani, Ibukun
2016. The use of mimicry in Nigerian stand-up comedy. Comedy Studies 7:1 ► pp. 89 ff.
Filani, Ibukun
2017. On Joking Contexts: An Example of Stand-Up Comedy. HUMOR 30:4
Filani, Ibukun
2020. A discourse analysis of national identity in Nigerian stand-up humour. Discourse Studies 22:3 ► pp. 319 ff.
Filani, Ibukun
2021. The stand-up comedian as an egocentric communicator. Intercultural Pragmatics 18:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Filani, Ibukun
2024. Comicasts as a form of interaction: some preliminary observations. Critical African Studies ► pp. 1 ff.
Inya, Onwu
2016. Pragmatics of Humour in a Nigerian University's Departmental Chat Rooms. In Analyzing Language and Humor in Online Communication [Advances in Linguistics and Communication Studies, ], ► pp. 190 ff.
Oladunjoye, Faleye James
2016. A Linguistic Analysis of Klint Da Drunk's “Alcoholic” Talk Show. In Analyzing Language and Humor in Online Communication [Advances in Linguistics and Communication Studies, ], ► pp. 114 ff.
Taiwo, Rotimi
2016. Discursive Power Relations in Naijabookofjokes.com. In Analyzing Language and Humor in Online Communication [Advances in Linguistics and Communication Studies, ], ► pp. 177 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.