{"product_id":"characters-and-surprises-in-stand-up-comedy-9781350448391","title":"Characters and Surprises in Stand-up Comedy: A Linguistic Exploration of How Comedians Use Impersonation and Expectation to Create Humour","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis book employs a social semiotic methodology to investigate how comedians use impersonation and expectation to create humour in stand-up comedy. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt advances the linguistic cartography of how meaning-making resources contribute to humour in interactive humour genres. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) underpins the book’s approach and is integrated with recent work on multimodality and paralanguage as well as humour studies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The author develops a consolidated analytical framework for identifying and analysing the intermodal semiotic resources that contribute to impersonation and expectation in humour including gesture and voice quality – paralinguistic resources vital but underexplored in humorous texts. The framework is then applied through close discourse analysis of excerpts from three stand-up comedy texts by different comedians: Ricky Gervais, Eddie Izzard and Michelle Wolf. The findings outline typical and more complex realisations of intermodal impersonation, differentiate categories in how comedians employ impersonation to create humour, and describe how linguistic expectation can be established and subverted for humorous effect. These findings will be of interest to readers across the disciplines of linguistics, humour studies and multi\/intermodality who are interested in the interaction between paralanguage, expectation and the negotiation of values so as to establish and maintain social relationships.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication date:\u003c\/strong\u003e 13 November 2025\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePage count:\u003c\/strong\u003e 280\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e Height 236 mm; Width 154 mm; Thickness 22 mm\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e Bloomsbury Publishing PLC\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eFormat:\u003c\/strong\u003e Hardback\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9781350448391\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Lorenzo Logi","offers":[{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":50207614992634,"sku":"9781350448391","price":100.89,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0522\/4297\/2845\/files\/9781350448391.jpg?v=1788229287","url":"https:\/\/shulphink.com\/products\/characters-and-surprises-in-stand-up-comedy-9781350448391","provider":"Shulph Ink","version":"1.0","type":"link"}