The role of dialect in comedy performances: focus on enregisterment and humor

Many of the most popular comedy performances are rich in non-standard linguistic features of English. This article addresses how dialect contributes to the humor in comedy performances, and how humorous dialect performance leads to the enregisterment of a dialect. It applies enregisterment theory to online clips of three live comedy performances by Stephen Buchanan (‘How to survive Glasgow’), Ali G (‘Harvard Commencement Speech 2004’) and Riaad Moosa (‘I have a weird accent’), and one clip from the British sitcom PhoneShop (2009–13). All four dialectal performances showcase the metalinguistic activity central to enregisterment processes. However, in each performance, the dialect also fulfils a dedicated function in the construction of humor, ranging from building audience rapport to the subversion of a (linguistic) status quo. It is argued that just as dialect can help performers to be funnier, humor can help a dialect to become more enregistered.