GENDER AND ETHNIC STEREOTYPING IN STAND-UP COMEDY: A CASE OF MC JESSY’S CHURCHILL RAW SHOW PERFORMANCES, KENYA

Abstract

This study focuses on MC Jessy‟s Churchill Raw Show Stand-up Comedy and investigates the way in which the comedian employs gender and ethnic stereotyping as well as linguistic strategies to elicit laughter. There is a dearth of in-depth researches on stand-up comedies to explain how gendered language elicits laughter. The main purpose of the study was to examine gender and ethnic stereotyping as manifested in MC Jessy‟s comedy, establish the strategies used to bring out gender and ethnic stereotyping and to find out the audiences‟ perceptions of gender and ethnic stereotyping in MC Jessy‟s jokes. The study was guided by Critical Discourse Analysis theory by Fairclough and Wodak, Cooperative Principle by Grice and the Feminist theory by Crossman to explore the gender and ethnic stereotypes. The study was based on the performances of MC Jessy in the Kenyan TV show, Churchill Raw Show normally aired on Nation Television-Kenya (NTV). The data was derived from past „Churchill Raw Shows‟ editions in form of a DVD from 2015 to 2017, in-depth interviews and three Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with the eight „Churchill Raw Show‟ respondents. The respondents of the FGDs were students from secondary schools who watched the jokes from the DVDs. Purposive sampling was used to select thirty-two jokes from Jessy‟s performances which had gender and ethnic stereotyping. Twenty-four respondents for FGDs were purposively sampled from three secondary schools in Nakuru County, Kenya. The secondary schools consisted of students from a mixed day school, a boys‟ boarding school and a girls‟ boarding school. Nakuru County was chosen for its wide ethnic diversity which provided rich data for the studies. Data analysis involved transcription of the raw data into written form, translation into English language and thematic content analysis to bring out the theme of gender and ethnic stereotyping as used in the comedy. The study found out that women have been stereotyped negatively more than their male counterparts by MC Jessy. The findings will help stand-up comedians to enhance cohesion in the society by fostering gender and ethnic equity and will also enrich knowledge in discourse analysis. The findings benefit the policy makers such as the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK), the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) in giving guidelines and policies on the positive use of gender and ethnic stereotyping in the Kenyan society.