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Stand-up comedy has enjoyed a huge boom in Sweden during the 2010s and 2020s. The overall aim of this thesis is to examine negotiations and struggles over meaning within the Swedish stand-up comedy field. More specifically, it examines boundaries, power hierarchies and disputes over what counts as funny, how to achieve success, and the role and function of the stand-up comedian in society. The study contributes to scholarship on stand-up comedy and ethnological and folkloristic humour research. The analysis is primarily based on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s political discourse theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s field and capital theory. The analysis also draws on selected concepts from critical discourse theory, intersectional perspectives, gender theories, rhetoric and humour theory. The main empirical material consists of 16 interviews with stand-up comedians conducted via video calls, 50 observations of recorded stand-up comedy and 3 observations at stand-up comedy clubs. It is supplemented by newspaper articles, TV programmes, videos, podcasts, social media posts and short video clips dealing in various ways with stand-up comedy or humour more generally. The dissertation highlights the antagonistic relationships that, during the period of the study, have dominated the field of Swedish stand-up comedy and manifested in discursive struggles over the conditions of the industry, what is and is not considered appropriate and ethically acceptable to joke about, and the role and responsibilities of the stand-up comedian in society. The negotiations and struggles over meaning in the stand-up comedy field are shaped by different discourses connected to questions of artistic freedom and freedom of expression, democracy, equality, inclusion, diversity, and political struggle. The study also shows how the possession of symbolic capital, that is, capital that is recognized as legitimate within the field, is crucial for being acknowledged as funny and for gaining access to different comedy venues.

I den här artikeln analyserar jag humor om känsliga och tabubelagda ämnen utifrån tre perspektiv: yttrandefrihet, berättigande och kontext. Yttrandefriheten, i form av rätten att skämta om allt, kan ses som en viktig princip i humordiskurser. I humordebatter är det vanligt att hänvisa till yttrandefriheten för att försvara humor som har blivit kritiserad. Men i mitt empiriska material artikuleras även en princip om berättigande, som handlar om att vissa är mer berättigade än andra att berätta vissa skämt, vilken strider mot principen om yttrandefrihet. Slutligen är även kontexten viktig för vad som går att skämta om. I vissa sammanhang anses det vara opassande att skämta om tabubelagda ämnen medan det uppmuntras i andra sammanhang. När ett komiskt uttryck spelas in och sprids via sociala medier till en annan publik än det ursprungligen var menat för finns det en risk att vissa individer och/eller samhällsgrupper tolkar det på ett annat sätt och upplever det som stötande.

In this article, humour about sensitive and taboo subjects is analyzedfrom three perspectives: freedom of speech, entitlement, and context. Freedom of speech, in the form of the right to joke about anything, can be seen as an important principle in humour discourses. In debates about humour, it is common to refer to freedom of speech in defense of what has been criticized. In my empirical material, however, a principle of entitlement is also articulated that concerns what kind of jokes you have the right to tell depending on who you are. The principle of entitlement contravenes the principle of freedom of speech. Finally, the context of a joke is also important for what you can joke about. When a comical expression is recorded and spread through social media and/or streaming services to another audience than that it was originally meant for, there is a risk that some individuals and/or groups in society will interpret it in another way and perceive it as offensive.