Cognitive strategies and figurative language in subversive stand-up comedythe case of trumping

Abstract

This paper aims to show that trumping is a cognitive strategy that exploits the salience gap between the literal and figurative meaning of an expression, which is used by female comedians to attack certain targets with different humour markers such as polysemy, metonymy or metaphors. In order to verify this hypothesis, we have analysed the FEMMES-UP corpus, which gathers 15 humorous stand-up comedy acts from 15 female Spanish comedians. The corpus has been transcribed and segmented into 504 sequences. The analysis reveals that trumping is used in 67 of these sequences, that is, in 13.5% of the cases. We have been able to identify five types of trumping: homophonic, syntactic, metonymic, metaphorical and referential. Results showed that the most frequently used types are metonymic, syntactic and metaphorical, although these can also be used simultaneously, e.g., syntactic and metaphorical trumping. Findings also evidence that trumping acts as a rhetorical-pragmatic strategy for the female comedians to disassociate themselves from certain gender-based behavioural norms, to construct alternative identities and to question some heteronormative norms in a creative, humorous fashion.