Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Literature Review
2.1. Rhetoric
only talking about politics, it can be anything. It is not only about politic, but
also about the rhetoric of history and the rhetoric of popular culture; not just
about the rhetoricity of formal argument but also about the rhetoricity of personal
supplement traditional modes of work with new techniques for analyzing the
language of text and talk and with ways of describing the sociocultural and
stressed the widening, deepening object of rhetorical study and the need for
appropriate methods and conceptual frameworks for exploring this object. In the
changing, the situation for which it was designed. Attempting to define and study
rhetorical spaces, and the tensions between presumed rhetorical agency and
acknowledged constraints of context, has proven to be one of contemporary
the audience.
- To entertain the audience, that makes audience enjoy with speaker rhetoric.
that performed by the speaker (orator). The idea from the speaker is a thing that
should be listened, because it has a message in order to give information and also
to entertain.
2.2. Narrative Analysis
narrative consisting of three elements ; the orientation, the complicating action, and
evaluation. Labov in 1972 refined this structure to include additional elements: the
abstract, the resolution, and coda. Each clause of a narrative is assigned to one of
these elements of narrative structure, but not all elements are necessary in every
narrative the original three defined by Labov and Waletzky (1967) are sufficient
for a narrative.
event. Of all the events in the story, this is the most fantastic (the least credible)
and has the greatest effect on the lives of the characters. The abstract is an
introduction to the story and often contains a description of the most reposrtable
Shall I tell you about the first man got killed by a car here. . . Well, I can
tell you that.
is the abstract of a narrative collected by Labov (2013).
place, and the persons involved in the story the background information. It usually
occurs at the beginning of the narratives, but some orienting information may be
postponed until later in the narrative, just before it becomes relevant. An example
orienting information
knife.
culminates in the most reportable event. The complicating action chain tells what
happened in the story. In Jacob Schissels story, the chain of complication action
is as follows:
The Evaluation, it is where the narrator gives his opinions on the events of
the story, considers alternative outcomes, assigns praise or blame to the characters,
narrative, but like orientations, they can be interjected among the events of the
complicating action. For example, Jacob Schissel gave this evaluation on being
stabbed:
And the doctor just says, Just that much more, he says, and youd a been
dead.
This evaluation serves two purposes: first, it presents an alternative outcome in
which the narrator did not survive the stabbing; second, it adds credibility to the
resolution of the situation created by the most reportable event. For example, in a
present. For example, in the story about the fight, the lines
An that was it. Thats the only fight I can say I ever lost.
According to Hocket in 1960 who stated in The View from Language that jokes
1. Build-up
2. Pivot
3. Punch line
The build-up forms the body of the jokes. It is the sentence which
introduce the joke, and presents the orientation and much of the complicating
action. The pivot means the word or phrase around which the ambiguity is
created. The punch line serves to conclude the joke and often introduces a
conflicting point of view or scene entirely, as stated on Norrick in 1989. The punch
line represents a surprise effect for the audience and is responsible for their
After waiting for half an hour in a Soho restaurants the customer called over
to the waiter : How long will my spaghetti be? he asked. How should I
know, replied the waiter. I never measure it.
The three components of the internal structure according to Hocket in 1960 are:
Build up After waiting for half an hour in Soho restaurant the customer
called over to the waiter.
Pivot How long will my spaghetti be he asked.
Punch Line How should I know, replied the waiter. I never meassure it.
The build-up consists here of the orientation secion and much of the
complication action. It informs the recipient about a customer who is waiting for
his spaghetti in a restaurant. His question How long will my spaghetti be?
represents the pivot of the joke, because the waiter misinterprets the question. The
waiters answer forms the punch which concludes the joke. It serves as uts
resolution. Although stand-up comedians do not explicitly use the exact structure
as described by Hockett (1960) when telling jokes from their own lives or everyday
affairs, we can nevertheless comprehend their structure even if they sometimes skip
the build-up and start immediately with the pivot. This is the reason why listeners
in general do not recognize the pivot term immediately and are amused by the
surprise effect of the following punch line. Whereas the build-up section can be
neglected without having an influence on the success of the joke, there must be a
pivot section which forms the basis for the following punch lines.
punch line.
2.4. Stand Up Comedy
Stand-up comedy is the term for a special genre of comedy in which the
performer, who is called the stand up comedian, stands on the stage and speaks
performers who plant themselves in front of their listener with their microphones
and start telling a succession of funny stories, one-liner or short jokes, and
anecdotes, which are often called bits, in order to make their audiences laugh.
The humorists personalities, their interaction with the audiences and their
ability to spontaneously react to heckling are crucial aspects for successful stand-
up comedy.
from the work of jesters, commedia dell arte, Shakesperean clowns, British
also stresses the connection to the commedia dell'arte troupes in the 16th and
17th centuries and mentions the stock characters and their spontaneous and
In America, the earliest form of stand-up comedy had its roots in vaudeville,
which first started in the form of the minstrel or variety show. White comedians
painted their faces black and started to perform by speaking and singing in black
dialects.
Near the end of the 19th century, the minstrel show developed into
American vaudeville. The first famous vaudeville theater was opened in 1865
and was Tony Pastor's New Fourteenth Street Theater in New York. Tony Pastor
was the first to present vaudeville to a respectable audience and went down in
From 1960 on, variety could not withstand the competition from television
these clubs began to boom and new, famous clubs such as the Batley Variety
comedians came from the British folk music clubs in which stand-up comedy
Boardman, and Frank Carson became famous through television shows like The
Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club. In 1979, Peter Rosengard even opened
the first American-style stand-up comedy club, namely the Comedy Store in
London, in which the most successful performers of the 1980's began their
careers. It did not take long before British stand-up comedy began to spread all
over the country, and particularly political humor began to dominate this comedy
scene.
Dialogue
difficult to distinguish from jokes from a textuxal point of view and sometimes