![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
The genre of English-language stand-up comedy is increasingly becoming popular in India’s metropolitan cities. This study uses the concept of the public sphere to examine YouTube videos of a prominent Indian live comedian, Daniel Fernandes. The analysis shows that Fernandes’ verbal humor is based on several performative techniques such as linguistic code-switching, calculative pauses, and juxtaposition of incongruous things. The study, furthermore, demonstrates that English-language stand-up comedy extends the bourgeois public sphere by a satirical commentary on political, social, and cultural issues in contemporary India as well as internationally. The article also argues that the public sphere exemplified by the genre of English-language live comedy is not entirely new, but an advancement of the classical public sphere.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to express his gratitude to Dr. Philip Lutgendorf and the anonymous reviewers who read and critiqued earlier drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 This is a well-founded premise upon which this study works. Although there is no published empirical study that examines the impact of comedy in India, there is plenty of evidence in print and broadcast media about the rising popularity of English-language stand-up comedy in metropolitan cities of India. An overview of the number of hits on these live comedy videos on YouTube provides another indication of their popularity. Furthermore, informal conversations with several stand-up comedians as well as people who attended the live comedy shows in India support the premise.
2 Kachru (Citation1983) calls this the Indianness in English which is a result of the acculturation of the Western language in the linguistically and culturally pluralistic context of the subcontinent.
3 Although the centrality of the concept of public sphere to this paper demands a detailed examination of public comments, which are part of the public sphere, this analysis could not be undertaken here mainly because of space constraints.
4 Briefly stated, Bauman (Citation2004) notes performance as a mode of communicative display in which the performer (here, Fernandes) signals to an audience, in effect, ‘hey, look at me! I'm on! watch how skillfully and effectively I express myself.’ That is to say, performance rests on an assumption of responsibility to an audience for a display of communicative virtuosity, highlighting the way in which the act of discursive production is accomplished, above and beyond the additional multiple functions the communicative act may serve (9).
5 World openness, in this context, is associated with the Delanty’s (Citation2006) notion of ‘global publics’ (27). With national boundaries becoming increasingly porous, the global publics are playing a critical role in societal transformation.