The stand-up comedy landscape has been transformed in recent years with an increased number of disabled comedians performing. Via semi-structured interviews with disabled comedians, this article provides a thematic analysis of the material and ideological motives, intentions and lived experiences of disabled comedians. Two themes are discussed -comedy management and control; and affirming disability through comedy. These themes are characterised by complexity and contradictions. The article concludes that, although not a straightforward process, stand-up comedy enacted by disabled comedians is potentially a powerful tool through which hegemonic norms around disability can be challenged and renegotiated.

In this article we analyse letters of complaint about instances of comic discourse where the humour is regarded as overstepping the mark and causing offence. We are particularly interested in how this sense of offence is registered and how complainants articulate the offence for which they seek some form of redress. In pursuing this interest, we seek to bring together two distinctive modes of analysis: linguistic discourse analysis and symbolic cultural analysis. This is methodologically appropriate to the discourse involved because of the ways in which epistolary complaints use forms of linguistic framing for offsetting potential objections to what they want to say, and because of the highly figurative language which is employed in voicing the substantive complaint and the censure of the humour that is entailed in this. Our focus overall is on the underlying ambivalence involved in negotiations between ethical and comic discourse.

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Television (I.B.Tauris 2014) and has published in a range of academic journals. She is also the founding co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Comedy book series.