人教版高中英语新课程教材中,语言运用（Using Language）是每个单元必不可少的部分,提供了围绕单元中心话题的听、说、读、写的综合性练习,是单元中心话题的延续和升华.如何设计Using Language部分的教学,使自己的教学模式既不落俗套,又能真正体现新课程标准所倡导的教学理念,正是广大一线英语教师一直努力探索的问题.

打磨Using Language,倡导新理念

The goal of this study is to analyse the use of mimicry in Nigerian stand-up comedy. Mimicry is conceived as a strategy in the routines of Nigerian stand-up comedians, who adopt two kinds of mimicry acts: verbal and nonverbal. For comedians to use mimicry, they have to draw from collective beliefs they share with their audience. On their part, the audience find a mimicry act humorous because it relates to their background assumptions. Data for analysis comprised four routines of four Nigerian stand-up comedians purposively selected because of the comics’ extensive use of mimicry. Mimicry activates background assumptions, distorts the collective representation of the target and could be used for articulating voice in stand-up performances.

The use of mimicry in Nigerian stand-up comedy

In this chapter, the authors offer a working definition of political humour and summarise its main aspects as discussed in the relevant literature: the genres where political humour surfaces or dominates; the reasons why political criticism is so often encoded in humorous terms; and the (side-)effects of political humour. They also discuss the so-called “inherent ambiguity of humour”, thus explaining why political humour does not necessarily influence politics. Rather than provoking social and political change, political humour conveys criticism against the political status quo and recycles and reinforces dominant values and views on politics. The diverse sociopolitical conditions may influence who is allowed to participate in the creation and circulation of political humour and who may become its target.

Chapter 1. Humour in politics and the politics of humour

In this thesis, conversational discourse markers (e.g. well, you know, bem, quer dizer) are seen as a genre parameter of stand-up comedy, i.e. a characteristic trait that constitutes the genre’s identity (Coutinho 2007). This assumption is based on the fact that stand-up comedy is typically described as a conversational form of art (Attardo 2001; Brodie 2014; Double 2014; Rutter 1997; Greenbaum 1999) and, therefore, similar to any interactive spoken practice, it is rich in discourse markers. The study explores the frequency, the functions, the distribution, the position and the role of the selected range of conversational discourse markers in text organization of the genre stand-up comedy. The results showed that there are three main tendencies regarding the implementation of this genre parameter in concrete texts (in American English and European Portuguese). Firstly, Portuguese units are predominantly non-discourse marking, whereas their English counterparts represent mostly discourse-marking uses. Secondly, new functions have been attested, i.e. to anticipate a shift between direct/indirect modes of speech, to signal personal experience and to address the audience. These newly emerging functions are closely related to the specificity of the genre stand-up comedy, namely, its narrative, autobiographical and interactive nature. The third and last observed tendency refers to the position of the discourse markers in text organization or text plan. All the selected discourse markers, with no exception, function within the body of a stand-up comedy act, performing a series of textual and/or interactional functions, according to the hypothesis of duo-domain (i.e. textual and interactional functions, as proposed in Brinton, 1996). Predominant occurrence of these units within the body of stand-up comedy acts indicates the importance of their textual functioning; the wide spectrum of functions they perform within the comedian’s act is used to structure, shape, mend, clarify, introduce, prepare, etc. the text for perception. In this respect, conversational discourse markers are akin to guiding devices within the text organization of the stand-up comedy.

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The role of discourse markers (DMs) in text organization of the genre stand-up comedy in Portugal and in the United States

Abstract Studies on stand-up comedy and jokes have noted that context plays a major role in the generation and interpretation of jokes and humorous routines. However, these studies do not formalize the concept and what constitute it in joke exchanges. Focusing on Nigerian stand-up comedy, this study is aimed at conceptualizing and describing the contexts that could be found in joking exchanges. The study proposes two types: context-of-the-joke and context-in-the-joke. The context-of-the-joke is grounded in shared beliefs that exist between the participants-of-the-joke. The context-in-the-joke is characterized by features such as joke utterance, participants-in-the-joke (most especially the target) and activity-in-the-joke among others. These features make up the contextualization cues that the participants-of-the-joke (both the joke teller and recipient) use in joke generation and interpretation.

On Joking Contexts: An Example of Stand-Up Comedy

The primary focus of this paper is to apply Discourse Type theory to stand-up comedy. To achieve this, the study postulates two contexts in stand-up joking stories: context of the joke and context in the joke. The context of the joke, which is inflexible, embodies the collective beliefs of stand-up comedians and their audience, while the context in the joke, which is dynamic, is manifested by joking stories and it is made up of the joke utterance, participants in the joke and activity/situation in the joke. In any routine, the context of the joke interacts with the context in the joke and vice versa. For analytical purpose, the study derives data from the routines of male and female Nigerian stand-up comedians. The analysis reveals that stand-up comedians perform discourse types, which are specific communicative acts in the context of the joke, such as greeting/salutation, reporting and informing, which bifurcates into self-praising and self denigrating.

/pdf/discourse-types-in-stand-up-comedy-performances-an-example-2khr86ush4.pdf

Discourse types in stand-up comedy performances: an example of Nigerian stand-up comedy

In Nigeria, in relation to the aforesaid functions, everyday citizens and professional humourists use humour to express their expectations from and disappointments in the socio-political leadership of the country. Common Nigerian jokes indicate the country’s travails with ethnicity and failed political leadership. They also enunciate populist perspectives on nationhood, identity and the challenges of everyday living. In spite of the centrality of humour to daily life in Nigeria, scholarly interests in its sociocultural, political, rhetorical, interactional and interpersonal dimensions have been very minimal. According to Obadare (2016), it is as if once something is categorised as humour, it is expunged from any serious interrogations. There are diverse and numerous dimensions of humour in Nigeria, given the country’s extensive and still expanding popular culture landscape. A handful of these dimensions are examined in the papers that make up this special issue of EJHR.

https://www.europeanjournalofhumour.org/index.php/ejhr/article/download/330/pdf

Editorial: Dis laf fit kill person - An overview of Nigerian humour

The social media in Nigeria provides an avenue where cultural practices are produced and consumed. One of such practices is joking. Specifically, a genre of jokes found in Nigeria social media space is Akpos jokes. The goal of this chapter is to explore the contextual beliefs in Akpos jokes and the pragmatic strategies employed by the writers of Akpos jokes. Akpos jokes are narratives about an imaginary character named Akpos. The study benefited from contextual belief theory (Odebunmi, 2006) while the data comprised jokes randomly picked from a blog and Facebook pages where Akpos jokes are published. The study revealed that the writer(s) of the Akpos jokes manipulate contextual beliefs like shared knowledge of language and shared knowledge of situations and events in Nigeria in order to generate humour. The writers also employ Implicature and stereotyping of the character of Akpos for humorous effects.

Contextual Beliefs and Pragmatic Strategies in Online Humour: An Example of Akpos Jokes


 Nigerian stand-up comedy has attracted several investigations from different disciplinary perspectives; however,
 there has been little research interest into the performance of femininity in the genre. Coming from pragmatics, this paper
 analyses how Nigerian comediennes use the language of humour to (de)construct sociocultural perspectives on the female identity.
 Data comprise purposively selected routines of three female comics while Kecskes’
 (2014) approach to intention serves as the theoretical framework. Comediennes employ different pragmatic strategies
 that reference their intention to reinforce or challenge the traditional image of femininity. Analysis reveals comediennes perform
 the popular perspectives on femininity, which are enshrined in the wider sociocultural context of the country.

Ibukun Filani

Papers

Discourse types in stand-up comedy performances: an example of Nigerian stand-up comedy

The use of mimicry in Nigerian stand-up comedy

Editorial: Dis laf fit kill person - An overview of Nigerian humour

Contextual Beliefs and Pragmatic Strategies in Online Humour: An Example of Akpos Jokes

Nigerian stand-up comediennes performing femininity