Analysis of Conversational Humor in the Comedy Show Khandevaneh

The aim of the present study is to investigate the types of conversational humor employed in a popular Iranian comedy show Khandevaneh . Aired on Nasim TV from June 11, 2014, the program has been the highest rated comedy show in the country since then. The show is produced and hosted by Rambod Javan and a stand-up puppet comedian named Jenab Khan. As the name khande (meaning laughter in Persian) suggests, the show provides a rich source of the culture of laughing and thus effectively serves the purpose of the current paper. To this end, 30 minutes of the program scripts were analyzed based on Dynael’s (2009) categorization for conversational humor. A total number of 183 instances of conversational humor were identified and subsequently analyzed. Results displayed the manifestation of various types of conversation humor including stylistic figures, retort, witticism, teasing, put down, Phrase me, Register clash, Lexeme, Self denigration, Allusion, Anecdote. Moreover, the findings suggested that stylistic figures, retort and witticism were among the most frequently used types of conversational humor exchanged between Rambod Javan and the puppet Jenab Khan. Since there are few TV comedy shows in Iran, studying the type of humor employed by a wildly successful one may pave the way for others to be produced even more successfully. Besides, this study can be considered unique as it represents a linguistic approach to analyzing humor and humor research in Persian language.