Page 110 - The Language of Humour

Unit eight
Stand-up comedy

In the 1990s stand-up has been called the ‘rock and roll’ of comedy.
The comedians tend to be young, often male; they use the same venues
as bands and attract similar audiences. Unit 7 also dealt with spoken
humour, but there are significant differences between broadcast humour
and stand-up comedy. Although there are examples of television and
radio humour that are spontaneous and ad-libbed, the material is
generally pre-recorded. This gives a form of protection, not only for the
broadcasting company—mistakes, gaffes, offensive material can be
edited out—but for the writers and performers. The material is carefully
scripted and edited; the performance is rehearsed and may involve a
cast of actors; it can be enhanced by a range of sophisticated effects; there
can be several ‘takes’ before the final version is presented in its best
form. Broadcast humour is not ‘live’ in the way that stand-up comedy is.
This aspect affects the language of stand-up comedy in various ways.

Features of spontaneous speech
The first concerns features of speech as would occur in unscripted,
informal talk. Although it may be scripted and rehearsed, the language
must seem spontaneous. As well as use of colloquialisms, there will be
more fillers, like ‘sort of’; ellipsis (shortened forms of words);
redundancy and back-tracking (the repetition of words); and
sympathetic circularity—phrases like ‘isn’t that right?’ addressed to
the listener.

Activity with text
Identify the features of spontaneous speech in this extract from Lennie
Henry, as the character of Delbert Wilkins.