Gender, ethnic and class as humour strategies in stand-up comedy of Bovi, Kenny Blaq, Akpororo and Basket Mouth

Abstract

Humour in Nigerian stand-up comedy is used as a weapon against the strong and the weak in society. Existing studies have examined the use of humour using the theories of pragmatics but have not specifically examined how gender, ethnic and class are reflected in stand-up comedies. Therefore, this study examines the humour strategies in selected Nigerian stand-up comedies with a view to identifying how gender, ethnic and class are reflected in the comedies. Attardo and Raskin’s general theory of verbal humour was adopted as framework. The data for the study were purposively collected from stand-up comedy performances of Bovi, Akpororo, Basket Mouth and Kenny Blaq on the YouTube channel. The comedians reflect gender, class and ethnic while narrating the events that surround the participants in the joke. These comedians primarily used Nigerian Pidgin in narrating the activity-in-the-joke. In the data collected for the study, the selected Nigerian stand-up comedians (SNSCs) operated on two main contexts: context-of-the-joke and context-in-the-joke. The SNSCs adopted different humour strategies such as comparison, distortion of shared knowledge, projection of collective belief and denigration. The SNSCs employ the strategies in their performances to expose certain facts about the issues surrounding man in the society, point out ills and to show their creativity.