Incongruous liaisons: Routes of humour, insult and political (in)correctness in Nigerian stand-up jokes

• Authors: Izuu Nwankwọ E.
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Nigerian humourists have always told risible jokes within myriad pre-colonial satirical acts and now, stand-up comedy. Scholars rarely study the menacing backlash against ostensible “inappropriate jokes” which largely ignores the fact that humour is derived mostly from offence. This paper sets out to study this threat by interrogating how four comics-I Go Dye, Basket Mouth, Klint da Drunk and AY-deploy self-censorship in averting offence. The specificities of stand-up arts, the peculiarity of its demands on artists’ joking capabilities, and the dependence of courting audiences’ participation and familiarity are foregrounded in describing the stringency of eliciting mirth through insult.

Keywords

EN

humour, insult, Nigerian stand-up comedy, jokes, political correctness

• Publisher: Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies
• Journal: The European Journal of Humour Research
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 2

Dates

published

2019

online

2019-07-28

Contributors

author

Izuu Nwankwọ E.

Identifiers

DOI

10.7592/EJHR2019.7.2.nwankwo