Linguistic Devices and Rhetorical Strategies in Nigerian Stand-up Comedy

Abstract

This paper analyses how Nigerian stand-up comedians utilize and manipulate aspects of the syntax of Nigerian Pidgin and other sociolinguistic features of the various languages in which they ply their act. The data, derived from recorded videos of five Nigerian stand-up comics, is analysed using M.A.K Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar and Myers-Scotton Matrix language frame (MLF). The study reveals that the comedians adopted communicative strategies: language alternation and code switching, to foreground certain exigent socio-cultural themes in their jokes. They also utilize the interpersonal metafunction, parallel structures, and sentence fragments to engage the audience and highlight incongruities to elicit laughter. The study also examines the structural patterns of sentences used by the comedians and notes that Nigerian pidgin is not the
only language employed by Nigerian stand-up comedians.