Language, allusion, and performance: A critical-cultural study of Black American popular culture as minor discourse

The purpose of this project is to explore how the humor in black American popular culture functions as minor discourse. This project borrows from cultural studies, as well as popular culture and black popular culture scholarship. It explicates how the humor in African American stand-up comedy and film parody creates in-group allusions about African American lived experiences, reinforces the distinctiveness of African American culture, and possibly excludes other audiences from fully understanding and appreciating such humor.;This examination employed a multidimensional critical-cultural approach, which more specifically sought through an equipment for living framework of analysis, textual analysis, and phenomenological inquiry to illustrate minor discourse at work. The texts analyzed for this project consisted of the routines of 16 African American stand-up comedians, 2 African American film parodies, and responses from the African Americans who participated in 2 focus group interviews.;The analysis reveals that the humor in African American stand-up comedy and film parody serves as a type of comic catharsis that provides African American artists and audiences with a means for dealing with their marginalization. In doing so, this project explores the critical space that the humor in these forms of black American popular culture occupies in African American culture, and it highlights the contribution that they make to the legacy of African American artistry.