A pragmatic approach to Kenyan stand -up
comedy: a study of selected Eric Omondi's
performances.
Kinuu, Caroline Kagwiria
2013
Abstract:
This study is a pragmatic analysis of Kenyan stand-up comedies. The study looks into the use of
various stereotypes and how they cause laughter to the audience or the hearer using a RelevanceTheoretical approach. This study explores how the comedians manipulate the encyclopedic
knowledge of the audience so as to achieve humorous effects. It also demonstrates how the
hearer (audience) understands a joke using the comprehension procedure of Relevance Theory. It
was observed that stereotypes are effective in creating humor through incongruity that is, the
violation of the world knowledge of the audience and the comedian and also the violations of the
socially and culturally agreed norms. Code switching and code mixing was frequently used to
reinforce and mark out the beginning and the end of the punch line thus playing a vital role in
enhancing the understanding of jokes. This research project is organized into five chapters.
Chapter one focuses on the background information of the study. This includes; background of
the study, objectives, statement of the problem, theoretical framework, and literature review and
finally data analysis. The second chapter identifies and classifies the stereotypes found in the
data into four categories namely: stereotypes on gender, stereotypes on tribes, stereotypes on
nationalities and regions, and stereotypes on body sizes. The third chapter explores the use of
incongruity and code-switching in the identified stereotypes in manipulating the audience's
encyclopedic knowledge of the world so as to create humorous effects. The fourth chapter
analyzes data against Yus (2008) Relevance Theoretical classification of jokes. This chapter thus
focuses on the explicatures and implicatures in the stereotypes and how humor is created through
this. Finally chapter five gives the summary and conclusions of the study. It also gives
recommendations for further study on this topic.