The language of Nigerian stand-up comedy.

Nigeria is complexly multilingual. Arising from this, Nigerian stand--up comedians employ various linguistic strategies to communicate with their audiences. This research investigates the peculiarities of language use in Nigerian stand-up comedy by analysing patterns of code choices in the comic performances of four comedians. Because the stand-up comedy industry is predominant in Southern Nigeria, the comedians chosen for this study represent the three geo-political zones of southern Nigeria. The data analysis indicates that (1) although Nigerian stand-up comedians primarily use Nigerian Pidgin (NP), they also employ language alternation and code-switch between NP, English, and various indigenous languages. (2) NP is mainly used in the oral medium. Consequently, features of orality: repetition, parallel structures, anaphora, lexical cushioning, semantic extension, metaphoric imagery, sentence fragments, and rhetorical devices are other dominant features of Nigerian stand-up comedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]