Universal Pragmatic perspective of Humor in Standup Comedy Shows

It is vital to learn the skill of communication in order to live a larger and happier life. The more we communicate, the less we suffer and the more we enjoy our environment. Humor is a method of communication that is thought to be a universal trait prevalent in all languages. The purpose of this study is to look at humor through a universal pragmatic perspective in a stand-up comedy show called You Wanna Hear Something Crazy. It seeks to examine the validity claims in humorous speech acts raised by the comic in order to bring the audience closer to mutual understanding. The researchers employ Habermas' universal pragmatic theory (1979, 1984, 1987, 1998) to achieve the study's goal. The study of the codes (Validity Claims) raised by the speaker to attain mutual understanding with the hearer in a specific setting is known as universal pragmatics. After analyzing three representative extracts, the study concludes that the universal validity claims of truth, sincerity, and normative rightness for achieving mutual understanding with the audience are raised when producing humor employing various speech acts of Habermas (1981) and more than one validity claim can be raised.