Incongruous liaisons : routes of humour, insult and political (in)correctness in Nigerian stand-up jokes
Date
2019
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language
Abstract
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.
Description
CITATION: Nwankwo, I. E. 2019. Incongruous liaisons : routes of humour, insult and political (in)correctness in Nigerian stand-up jokes. European Journal of Humour Research 7(2):100-115, doi:10.7592/EJHR2019.7.2.nwankwo.
The original publication is available at https://www.europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/
The original publication is available at https://www.europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/
Keywords
Jokes
Citation
Nwankwo, I. E. 2019. Incongruous liaisons : routes of humour, insult and political (in)correctness in Nigerian stand-up jokes. European Journal of Humour Research 7(2):100-115, doi:10.7592/EJHR2019.7.2.nwankwo