ABSTRACT
This work is a study in stylistics. It goal is to examine the language of comedy in our society. It shows the effect of the language of comedy on the audience and what the audience has to benefit from the language used by comedians.
The theoretical framework, ‘’ethnography of communication’’ using the speaking model, is used to accurately and satisfactorily describe any speech event, more especially the joke extract for this study. The data for the study are joke extract, the sources of the data were fathered from various comedy shows and radio station in Nigeria.
The work shows, through critical analyses that comedy is beyond entertainment, it mirrors the society. It also shows what makes a comedian special from other character, by examining their style of language and the message; what it communicate.
In conclusion the main contribution of this work is that it suggest re-examination of people towards comedy. It is also noticed that there is a link between linguistics and literature. Hence, there is need for other linguist to work on literature.
