Gendered concepts in Nigerian stand-up comedy

Abstract

This essay examines the manner in which Nigerian stand-up comedians evoke gendered concepts in their routines. Specifically, it analyses how gender is manifested and enacted in linguistic expressions, which literally do not have gender undertones. Three strategies for instantiating such gendered conceptualization are identified, privatization of meaning through lexical contextual adjustment, creating ad hoc conceptual coherence in the monologues and foregrounding pragmatic presuppositions on gender. The paper indicates that, to analyse gender stereotyping in humour, one does not necessarily need to focus on the targets.