Co-constructing humour and gender identity in live Stand-up comedy

Co-constructing humour and gender identity in live Stand-up comedy

Esther Linares-Bernabéu
University of Navarra

elinaresb@unav.es

The purpose of this paper is to explore female comedians’ kairos and the role of the audience in the gender performance process. We aim to show that Stand-up comedy discourse, as a planned one, is not only a cultural tool but also a linguistic one too in terms of confrontation and resistance. As Ruiz Gurillo (2013a) states, the performance of live stand-up comedy implies a dialogic register, as the comedian engages with the audience during the different sequences. This dialogic register is an argumentative technique that helps the comedian connect with the audience and convince them with her discourse (Greenbaum, 1999; Rutter, 2001; Lockyer & Myers, 2011).Likewise, shaping a gender identity on stage is conditioned by the audience and the shared knowledge between the comedian and the audience. In this respect, the former adapt their speeches depending on who they are in front of and, then, try to involve the latter using their Kairos (Greenbaum, 1999; Medjesky, 2016).

In order to verify this hypothesis, we have analysed the FEMMES-UP corpus (Linares-Bernabéu, 2020), which gathers 15 humorous stand-up comedy acts from 15 female Spanish comedians. The corpus has been transcribed and segmented into 504 sequences, and, in particular, we have examined the 113 humorous sequences in which there is a direct dialogue between the comedian and some members of the audience. Results show that humour facilitates friendly interaction and helps comedians negotiate their identity. In fact, the stand-ups use their Kairos to adapt the speech depending on how the audience responds. This type of dialogues not only promotes the negotiation and co-construction of humour, but also the co- construction of an alternative feminine gender identity. The comedians encourage the audiences to respond and comment as ways of making them feel part of the performance, to catch their attention and to ensure there is mutual shared knowledge between them and their audience before introducing a new topic. We also observed that there are occasions in which hecklers intervene to share their ideas or opinions, and then the comedians have to deal with these comments and incorporate them into their acts as well.

REFERENCES

Greenbaum, A. (1999). Stand-up comedy as rhetorical argument: An investigation of comic culture. Humour-International Journal of Humour Research, 12(1), pp. 33-46.

Linares Bernabéu, E. (2020). La construcción discursiva de la identidad de género femenina en el monólogo humorístico subversivo (Doctoral dissertation, Universitat d’Alacant-Universidad de Alicante).

Lockyer, S., & Myers, L. (2011). ‘It’s About Expecting the Unexpected’: Live Stand-up Comedy from the Audiences’ Perspective. Participation-Journal of Audience and reception studies, 8 (2), pp. 165-188

Medjesky, C.A. (2016). How can rape be funny? Comic persona, Irony and the Limits of rape jokes. In Meier, M. R., & Schmitt, C. R. (Eds.). Standing Up, Speaking Out: Stand-up Comedy and the Rhetoric of Social Change (pp. 227- 244). Routledge.

Rutter, J. (2001). Rhetoric in stand-up comedy: Exploring performer-audience interaction. Stylistyka, 10, pp. 307-325.

Ruiz Gurillo, L. (2013) “El monólogo humourístico como tipo de discurso. El dinamismo de los rasgos primarios”. Cuadernos Aispi, (2), pp. 195-218.