Stand-up comedy as rhetorical argument: An investigation of comic culture

During a year-long ethnographic investigation of professional comic culture in Tampa, Florida, I discovered that comic narratives are consistently rhe torical, designed to persuade audience members to adopt certain ideological positions. Further, the narratives are constructed within a classical rhet orical framework, with comedians employing various discourse strategies. Co medians used Aristotelian notions of ethos, as they strived to create and m ain tain their "comic authority." They also utilized Isocrates' concept of kairos, adapting and tailoring their narratives to their particular regiona l audiences, and ultimately, the comedians worked within a Isocratean disco urse paradigm, consisting of natural talent, praxis and theoria.