Verbal Humour in Igbo Comedy: A Linguistic Analysis of Selected Anambra State Comedians

This study presents a linguistic analysis of verbal humour in Igbo stand-up comedy, focusing on selected comedians from Anambra State who perform in South East Nigeria and produce content for online audiences. Comedy in Nigeria has grown into a major entertainment and social commentary industry, yet its linguistic dimensions, particularly in indigenous language performance, have attracted limited scholarly analysis. The study draws on the General Theory of Verbal Humour and incongruity-resolution models as its theoretical framework. A corpus of ten comedy performances, collected from YouTube and live event recordings between 2022 and 2024, was transcribed and analysed for humour triggers, linguistic devices, and audience response patterns. The analysis identifies pun construction, pragmatic violation, code-switching incongruity, and cultural script activation as the primary linguistic mechanisms of humour generation in the selected performances. Findings reveal that the most audience-effective humorous sequences are those that exploit simultaneous incongruity at the lexical and cultural levels, particularly where Igbo cultural schemas are violated or subverted in unexpected ways. The study also notes the use of humour to address sensitive social issues including gender roles, political corruption, and ethnic stereotyping in linguistically safe performance frames. The research contributes to the linguistic analysis of Nigerian entertainment discourse and recommends further study of Nollywood and comedy as sites of sociolinguistic data. Keywords: verbal humour, Igbo comedy, general theory of verbal humour, Anambra State, performance linguistics.