Humour Strategies and Acts in Nigerian Stand-Up Comedy

HUMOUR STRATEGIES AND ACTS IN NIGERIAN STAND-UP COMEDY BY IBUKUN OLA-OLUWA, FILANI B.A. Linguistics (Ilorin), M.A. English (Ibadan) A Thesis in the Department of English, Submitted to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY of the UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN UNIVERSITY OF March, IBADAN 2016 Dedication To Aralewa, for making melodious music in silent seasons, and for coming at his time may you find your time while there is still time; and Oreofe, a pretty princess, for choosing me. UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN ii Abstract Humour, which is associated with amusement and laughter, is produced in comic performances, particularly stand-up comedy; and Nigerian stand-up comedians (NSCs) use language to evoke humour and correct social vices. Existing studies have conceptualised humour, its use and sub-genres but have not given adequate attention to intentionality in Nigerian stand-up joking contexts. This study, therefore, investigated humour strategies and context in Nigerian stand-up comedy, in order to identify NSCs’ intentions and how they are realised in their performances. Humour acts, a model, which combined insights from general theory of verbal humour, multimodal theory, pragmatic acts, relevance, and contextual beliefs, was adopted as the theoretical framework. Data were purposively collected from video compact disc recordings of 28 routines of 16 male and three female NSCs in editions of Nite of a thousand laughs and thecomedyberlusconi, which were produced between 2009 and 2013. This is to reflect the gender composition of NSCs, focus on popular practising professional NSCs and avoid analysing their repeated joking stories. The data were subjected to pragmatic analysis. Humour strategies adopted by NSCs involved manipulating cultural assumptions, stereotypes, representations, corresponding concepts and projecting personal beliefs. The humour strategies included jokes, voicing, verbal and nonverbal cues. NSCs’ jokes were categorised into two: the physical appearance class and the socio-political and cultural situations class. NSCs presented jokes with comic and participants-in-the-joke voices. While comic voice was used to articulate comic image, comedians used participants-in-the-joke voice to dissociate themselves from the activity-in-the-joke. They articulated voicing differently through code-switching, reported speech, mimicry and change in pitch. Female NSCs favoured English as the matrix language of their narration, but male comedians primarily used Nigerian Pidgin. Verbal cues in their jokes included joke utterance, participants-in-the-joke, especially the targets of jokes, and activity-in-the-joke. Two kinds of nonverbal cues, physical and prosodic, were found in NSCs’ performances. The physical cues included gestures, which were categorised into iconic, deictic and metaphoric; posture, which was primarily open; dressing, which connoted professionalism, costume or affiliation with the audience; layout/space, which denoted NSCs’ superior conversational role; dance, which mirrored participants-in-the-joke actions; and pauses, which could be a transition- relevance place pause or a non-transition-relevance place pause. Prosody was used to articulate comedians’ attitudes and indicate different performance functions: a change in pitch signalled a change in voice, accents were used for emphasising comedians’ focus, whereas intonation enhanced the textuality and musicality of narrations. The NSCs operationalized two contexts: context-in-the-joke and context-of-the-joke. The context-of- the-joke consisted in assumptions shared with the audience like shared knowledge of code, shared situational knowledge, and shared cultural knowledge. By making mutually manifest context-in-the-joke in the context-of-the-joke, they instantiated humour acts like commencement, teasing, eliciting, reinforcement, appraisal and informing, which bifurcated into self-praising and self-denigrating. UNIVERSITYNigerian stand-up comedians consciously design OF their humour IBADAN strategies towards building a positive society. There is, therefore, the need to harness the views projected in the jokes of Nigerian stand-up comedians for national development. Keywords: Nigerian stand-up comedy, Humour acts, Humour strategies, Jokes Word count: 480 iii Acknowledgements This study is a product of immeasurable contributions from mentors, friends and family, all of whom are too numerous to mention. That I was able to generate the idea of this thesis and develop it was because I was coached by great teachers and researchers. I am profoundly grateful to all of them. I commend them for helping me to generate the inspiration for this study. Specifically, I like to appreciate all the efforts of my thesis supervisor, Dr A.B. Sunday, who encouraged me to adopt an approach which has not been used in my discipline. I am indebted to him for choosing to supervise my doctoral thesis. His deadlines became lifelines that made me to complete this work within the minimum stipulated period. I am also indebted to Dr M.T. Lamidi, my second degree dissertation supervisor, for being available each time I went to him, and, Prof. Akin Odebunmi, who suggested some theories which I found beneficial to this study. Drs M.A. Alo and O.B. Jegede also gave insightful comments which were helpful for the study; my gratitude goes to them. I am grateful to Prof. E.B. Omobowale, the Head of Department of English, for the encouragement and counsel I received from him during the period of my stay as a student in the department. Dr Ayo Osisanwo is another member of the department who is highly appreciated for his comments on this thesis. I must mention Dr Doyin Aguoru, the departmental PG coordinator, for her contributions too. I am grateful to Profs. Ayo Ogunsiji, Obododimma Oha, and Ayo Kehinde, for their sincere concerns for the progress of this study. I want to express appreciation to the Board of University of Ibadan Postgraduate School for granting me the UI Postgraduate School Teaching and Research Award. The award fast-tracked my study and helped me to focus on writing my thesis. In line with this, I am grateful to Prof E.B. Omobowale and Dr A.B. Sunday for always signing my claims forms promptly. The two contributed to my getting the award renewed by giving positive assessments on my performance in the first year of the award. The reinforcements of my family, my dad, mum and siblings have been ceaseless. I appreciate all the support they gave me in the line of my studies. Particularly, I must mention my wife, who has been very patient with me. Your warm support is always UNIVERSITYcherished. My baby too, who came at the destined OF time, made IBADANcompleting this research more desirable. I am most grateful to my sister, Mrs Aiyegbusi, for providing me with accommodation and food for the period of my postgraduate studies. My parents never cease to pray for my success; the completion of my study is a testament of their answered prayers. iv I must mention Dr Tomi Adeoti, a sister and colleague, whose contributions helped to refine my theoretical model and who helped in editing the thesis. Prof. S.T. Babatunde of the Department of English, University of Ilorin is another individual who contributed enormously to the progress of my research. He made lots of inputs to this study. I am also grateful for his counsel. In addition, the contribution of Dr Felix Ogoanah of the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Benin is highly appreciated. Dr Ogoanah kindly gave me access to his library. The journal articles and most of the texts that were reviewed in this thesis were provided by him. My colleagues and friends, Melefa Moses, Mayowa Ogunkunle, Tope Ajayi and Akin Tella are likewise appreciated for sharing ideas with me and showing me the blind spots of my reasoning. I thank Charles Iyoha, who helped in reading some chapters of this thesis. I am grateful to other colleagues who also supported me for their spirit of camaraderie. Last and most importantly, I am grateful to God, the owner of the spirit of man, who gives wisdom, knowledge and understanding, for enabling me with all I needed for this thesis. My inmost thankfulness goes to Christ, my saviour, for His mercy and grace. And to the Holy Spirit, I am grateful for His inspiration. I.O. Filani, March, 2016. UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN v Certification I certify that this work was carried out by Mr. I.O Filani in the Department of English, University of Ibadan, under my supervision …………………………………………….. Supervisor Dr A.B. Sunday, B.A, M.A., Ph.D. (Ibadan) Department of English, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page i Dedication ii Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv Certification vi Table of Contents vii Transcription Conventions xi List of Tables and Figures xii List of Plates xiii CHAPTER ONE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Background to the study 1 1.2 Statement of the problem 3 1.3 Aim and objectives of the study 4 1.4 Significance of the study 5 1.5 An overview of stand-up comedy 5 1.6 The Nigerian stand-up comedy 9 1.7 Summary 16 CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE 17 2.0 Introduction 17 2.1 Classification of humour 17 2.2 Taxonomy of humour theories 17 2.2.1 The incongruity theory 18 2.2.2 The superiority theory 20 2.2.3 The relief theory 21 2.3 Linguistic theories of humour 22 2.3.1 Semantic script theory of humour (SSTH) 22 2.3.1.1 The pragmatic aspect of SSTH 25 2.3.1.2 Criticisms of SSTH 26 UNIVERSITY2.3.2 General theory

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