Sitcoms are central to global humour studies, yet dominant theories continue to privilege situation, narrative closure, and visual gags over the dramaturgical role of language in comic performance. Within this scholarship, Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE) is typically treated as a sociolinguistic marker or representational resource, leaving its function as a structuring comic system under-theorised. This study addresses that gap by proposing the Pidgin Humour Framework, which conceptualises NPE as a dramaturgical engine organising rhythm, repetition, characterisation, and audience alignment within sitcom performance. Drawing on qualitative performance-oriented textual analysis of six episodes of Jenifa’s Diary, supported by a deliberately delimited netnographic reading of selected YouTube comments, the study demonstrates that humour in the series emerges less from situational mishap than from patterned linguistic hybridity, malapropism, code-switching, and rhythmic verbal excess. Nigerian Pidgin operates not as deviation from a norm but as the formal principle structuring comic recognition and audience alignment. By theorising Nigerian Pidgin as dramaturgy, the article re-situates sitcom comedy as a linguistically organised performance form and extends sitcom theory beyond standardised English traditions.

This study examines how notions of foreignness and transnational Brazilian, Latino, American, and French stereotypes are employed as strategies in stand‑up performances by foreigners in Brazil and by Brazilians abroad. Introducing punch-lie to name a punchline whose force depends on deliberately unreal, exaggerated, or impossible setups, the study explores how the negotiation of linguistic and cultural identities, as well as transnational stereotypes, becomes a source of humour. Stand-up comedy is conceptualised as a glocal phenomenon, with particular attention to its evolution within the Global South. Emphasis is placed on the rapid growth of the genre in Brazil, as evidenced by the expansion of live performances, comedy clubs, and significant online virality. The discussion centres on two case studies: the French comedian Paul Cabannes, a leading figure in Brazilian stand-up who adopts a posture of admiration for ‘Brazilianness’ and often highlights the warmth and friendliness of Brazilian culture, and the Brazilian comedian Rafi Bastos, whose US performances explore, often subverting, ethnic identity, politics, and socio-cultural perceptions by using exaggerated stereotypes to criticise socio-political issues. These cases illustrate how the self-translation of humour, linguistic awareness, and transnational stereotypes drive the processes of glocalisation, platformisation, and de-elitisation within stand-up comedy spaces.

This article deepens our understanding of printed comedy as an early modern business by studying Dutch publisher and poet Hieronymus Sweerts (1629–1696) as a comedic entrepreneur. The term ‘comedic entrepreneur’ means to highlight publishers as driving forces in the production of printed comedy and scrutinise their involvement in shaping the comedy they sold. Sweerts’s entrepreneurship is scrutinised through his collection of humorous inscriptions, the Koddige en ernstige opschriften. Clues contained in the opschriften allow for a reconstruction of Sweerts’s roles as collector, editor, and poet in relation to the collection. This approach uncovers how, and to what effect, Sweerts combined the premise of comedy collected from public life with texts of other genres familiar to his readership. His decisions in the three roles illustrate how Sweerts was primarily concerned with the amusing function and commercial viability of the opschriften. The large share of commercial inscriptions from shopkeepers’ signs provide the collection with a distinct flavour of advertisement humour, which allowed the reader to reflect on the pre-capitalist economy and culture wherefrom both the advertisements and the opschriften emerged. The variety of non-inscriptions (satirical epitaphs, anecdotes, lottery rhymes), on the other hand, expanded Sweerts’s comedic toolbox with comic mechanisms not granted by the inscriptions proper. Finally, the inclusion of poems written by or about himself reveal how Sweerts employed his collection for purposes of self-fashioning as a respected poet. This case study, then, uncovers the myriad of creative and entrepreneurial decisions at the heart of seemingly derivative comic printed material.

Comedy Films are a popular genre among audiences in Europe, especially in small European film markets (Higson, 2021a, b; Jones, 2024). Despite its popularity, there is a gap in the empirical study of its audiences, that this paper addresses, by asking (1) How do comedies perform in small European markets? (2) What factors motivate audiences to engage with comedies in those markets? Drawing on a theoretical approach to audiences as active meaning-makers (Bengesser et al. 2023; Rohn, 2011), we conducted a mixed methods study on comedy audiences across seven small European markets: Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Flanders, Ireland, Lithuania, and Portugal (as part of the project CresCine). We combined quantitative data from the European Audiovisual Observatory, with qualitative data (86 interviews and media diaries). Our findings show that audiences value comedy depictions of their national cultures and identities, and it is through actual viewing practices that cultural elements are made relevant. Audiences are critical of stereotypes or flat stories, and highlight content over form, when aware of the small scale of their own countries’ film industry. We conclude that comedy films and their audiences are relevant for small European film markets, culturally and economically (with high production and consumption figures).

Disability has been used in several movies and literary texts as a metaphor to instigate laughter. In contemporary times, Stand-up comedy acts as a dominant medium to defy the stereotypical conventional ideas that associate disability with tragedy. One can observe a marked difference between the demeaning jokes made at the expense of disabled people (disabling humour) by mainstream non-disabled comedians and the disability humour used by disabled comedians from their everyday lived experiences. This article attempts to show how disability humour becomes a powerful medium of art in the public sphere to subvert the depiction of disability as a sentimental or tragic narrative. By employing the theoretical framework of humour theory, the article analyses the various Indian stand-up comedies performed by disabled comedians. It then demonstrates how they use the medium of humour as a form of activism to re-establish their identity of disability. Through the study of selected Indian Stand-up comedy videos, this article argues that disability humour acts as a tool of sub-cultural resistance to question and challenge the ableist normative attitudes, behaviours, misconceptions and oppression of disabled people.

Greek cabaret is an unexplored narrative that encompasses a rich tapestry of elements, including satire, entertainment and profound political and cultural components. While cabaret’s presence in European contexts has been extensively examined, the Greek cabaret scene remains a largely uncharted territory. In the early twentieth century, Greece found itself at a crossroads of great conflicts, a fragile state with evolving notions of identity and expression. This study aims to illuminate how Greek cabarets during the period of 1914–1918 portrayed the Greeks’ endeavours towards Westernisation, with a particular focus on the early twentieth century, during World War I. It examines how Greek cabarets mirrored both the social and performative aspects of the era. The focus extends to the evolving interpretation of the term ‘cabaret’ in the Greek context, shedding light on its cultural adaptation, social reflection and performative representation. Despite the scarcity of historical resources, archival research endeavours to construct a comprehensive repository of materials. Central to this investigation is the birth of Athens’ first cabarets, aptly named ‘Haravgi’ (Greek for dawn) and Etoile in 1914. This illuminating exploration of a lesser-known facet of Greek history reveals the intricate interplay between entertainment, politics, culture, social reflection and artistic expression, all within the framework of academic inquiry. By tracing the political and cultural impact of Greek cabaret, this study significantly contributes to a deeper understanding of societal transformations and Westernising efforts, during this pivotal period.

Stand-up comedy performances in India are undergoing significant changes, marked by transformations in linguistic choices. One noteworthy shift is the inclusion of profane words in the repertoire of Indian stand-up comedians. Given the context that obscene and vulgar content in a public performance may be punishable by imprisonment under Indian laws, this development demonstrates a crucial cultural shift in a conservative society like India’s. This study employed critical discourse analysis to analyse videos (n = 82) of stand-up comedy uploaded on YouTube of Indian stand-up comedians, to understand the content delivery styles and the usage of profanity. The findings revealed that many Indian comedians purposefully incorporated Hindi and English profanity into their stand-up acts, either as an inherent part of their performance style or to amplify the impact of certain portions of their discourse. Interestingly, these videos were also published online without censoring the profanity, indicating a departure from strict self-censorship practices. The results demonstrate the integral role of profanity and its increasing relevance in the discourse of Indian stand-up comedy within the Indian urban subcultural context.

The urgency of the topic is due to the public need to consider and analyze using the latest methods, new works of modern Ukrainian literature, in particular the military genre - one of the most popular areas of Ukrainian modern literature. The aim of the work is to study and thoroughly analyze works of 2014–2021 dedicated to the war in eastern Ukraine, study their genre nature, identify types of comic, its characteristics and create a new typology of comic discourse in modern Ukrainian literature. Among the main methods in the study of texts are historical-biographical, comparative-historical, comparative, as well as elements of hermeneutic, structural methods, textual and discourse analysis and more. A thorough analysis of humorous, ironic and satirical military works is carried out in the work and a new typology of the comic category is proposed. Research materials can be used to prepare basic and special courses in literary theory, history of Ukrainian and foreign literature, while working on textbooks and manuals, including for higher education institutions and more.

The Clown, as a comic archetype, has been demonically possessed by killer clown culture. The latter had produced, all whilst subverting the erotic Greek clowning of satyr plays, several trends, ranging from Commedia dell’Arte in medieval Italy, to British pantomime tradition of leery clown characters like Joseph Grimaldi, and Deburau’s French theatrical performances which led to the development of the lofty and violent pantomime shows of the Hanlon-Lees. These shows inspired European and American literary trends to adopt killer clown personas; most notable of which, perhaps, is the controversial killer clown character ‘The Joker’. This American pop culture ‘anti-hero’ was depicted, controversially, in the movie The Dark Knight, the movie Batman the Killing Joke (2016) and the movie Joker (2019). In modern literary trends, the culture of killer clowns in literature exists for various reasons. Though the lens of philosophical and mythical studies, this article considers the Joker’s killer clown as a descendant of the continuous development of the interpretation of the art of clowning in relation to the Dionysian cult. It views modern clowns as characters that mirror the Greek god Dionysus.