Humor in American Stand-up Comedies Addressing the Arabs: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Study الفكاهة في الكوميديا الارتجالية الأمريكية حول العرب دراسة في تحليل الخطاب متعدد الوسائط

Humor in stand-up comedy has long been studied where humor is disputably attributed to the incongruity theory or to some linguistic tools such as pun or hyperbole. This study investigates humor in American stand-up comedies that tackle Arabs’ issues. More specifically, the study tries to determine the features of such comedy; whether this humor is verbal or nonverbal, and how it creates laughter. The study employs Kress & Van Leeuwen’s (2021) model of visual design to analyze the data_ 13:43 minutes of videos, collected from the YouTube platform. The data comprises videos for American comedians who do jokes about the Arabs. Russell Peters is Indian American, Maz Jobrani is Iranian American, and Nemr Abou Nassar is Lebanese American. This study applies Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) within a qualitative approach to carry out deep linguistic analysis of the data. Results indicate that comedians try to create laughter using eight comedy tactics (expectation breaching, misconstruing, exaggerations, fear, disproportionate reactions, contradictions, stupidity, and fooling) which are realized by a shift between verbal and nonverbal techniques. Verbal techniques involve pauses, voice modulation, word elongation, accent mimicry, incorrect language, word choices, laughs and sounds. Non-verbal strategies include body movement, gestures, gazes, and facial expressions. Such findings are useful for any future research involving stand-up comedies, and for helping comedians construct their shows.