Creative uses of language to invoke sex-related taboos in Churchill Raw comedy shows

Bibliographic Data

ID13079141
AuthorsSimon Nganga (0009-0002-6476-1063, Moi University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume11
Issue2
Pages88-105
Publication date2023-06-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Humour Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2307-700X • E-ISSN: 2307-700X
PublisherCracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies (PUBLISHER • PL)
DOI10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.2.821
OpenAlexW4382794713
LanguageEN
References cited24

Churchill Raw event facilitates creative self-expression of young comedians through the incorporation of a variety of sex-related taboo topics. Yet, the multicultural nature of the participants in the Nairobi-based event makes the communication of such topics particularly problematic, as they can also be deemed offensive. Drawing on theoretical and methodological principles from Interactional Sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 2003), this article investigates how sex-related taboos are drawn into performances using euphemistic linguistic resources, such as puns, metaphors, metonymy, codeswitching and so on. As data we use 10 video recordings of comedians and 2 two-hour interviews with the key comedians. By focusing on situated uses of euphemistic language in the context of comedy in the African city of Nairobi, this article demonstrates that contrary to the general perception, young people observe sex-related taboos by using euphemistic language resources

Art · Comedy · Context (archaeology · Event (particle physics · Key (lock · Linguistics · Literature · Multiculturalism · Offensive · Pun · Situated · Sociolinguistics · Sociology · Taboo · Variety (cybernetics · Anthropology · Computer Science · Gender Studies in Language · History · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Psychology · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism