Stand-Up as a Narrative of Personal Experience

Abstract

Aim. To reveal personal experience narratives as an effective technique of influence in stand-up discourse.

Methodology. The key research method was content analysis, which allowed us to identify the most frequent patterns of personal narratives in the performances of English-speaking comedians. The classification of the patterns was based on the typology of axiogenic situations proposed by V.I. Karasik.

Results. The high level of multimodality of stand-up discourse appealing to semantic, pragmatic and syntactic principles of joke construction has been proved, which substantiates the relevance of further research into the nature of the manipulative impact of stand-up comedians.

Research implications. The paper reveals the peculiarities of using narratives of personal experience as an effective technique of manipulative influence on the audience.