Twin Constellations: Parallelism and Stance in Stand-Up Comedy

Abstract

This paper addresses the interrelations between poetic parallelism and interactional stance-taking in stand-up comedy by examining commercially edited recordings of stand-up routines performed by two contemporary comics. Methodologically, the article suggests a heuristic distinction between 1) an approach to parallelism as a textual and rhetorical device based on sequential repetition of units of expression, and 2) a more positional or symbolic orientation that conceptualizes parallelism as a higher-order structural and functional principle. It is concluded that both types rely on iconic mappings across co-textual signs. The flexibility of parallelism is simultaneously proposed as affording diversity on the level of discursive presentation.

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