Interactional Humor

This book deals with the construction of diverse forms of humor in everyday oral, written, and mediatized interactions. It sheds light on the differences and, most importantly, the similarities in the production of interactional humor in face-to-face and various technology-mediated forms of communication, including scripted and non-scripted situations. The chapters analyze humor-related issues in such genres as spontaneous conversations, broadcast dialogues, storytelling, media blogs, bilingual conversations, stand-up comedy, TV documentaries, drama series, family sitcoms, Facebook posts, and internet memes. The individual authors trace how speakers collaboratively circulate, reconstruct, and (re)frame either personal or public accounts of reality, aiming –among other things– to produce and/or reproduce humor. Rather than being “finished” products with a “single” interpretation, humorous texts are thus approached as dynamic communicative events that give rise to diverse interpretations and meanings. The book draws on a variety of up-to-date approaches and methodologies, and will appeal to scholars in discourse analysis, conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, pragmatics, ethnography of communication, and social semiotics.

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in interactional humour from social and pragmatic perspectives, with fascinating results. Released more than a decade later than Norrick and Chiaro (2009) Humor in Interaction, The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts gathers some of the most recent work on humour in interaction, with contributions taking (meta)pragmatic approaches to the analysis of various genres of interactive humour in both online and offline settings. This volume illustrates that a range of methodologies and perspectives can be applied to the study of such a complex phenomenon. These include analyses with a cognitive orientation and with multimodal approaches, work based on Relevance Theory, the General Theory of Verbal Humour, and Conversation Analysis, among others. In addition, all the authors represented here are recognised experts on the subject, and in most cases, are leading specialists in their respective fields. The book can be of use not only to scholars who study the linguistics of humour in interaction but also to students who wish to pursue research in the area.

The central question explored in this volume is: How is humor multimodally produced, perceived, responded to, and negotiated? To this end, it offers a panorama of linguistic research on multimodal and interactional humor, based on different theoretical frameworks, corpora, and methodologies. Humor is considered as an activity that is interactionally achieved, regardless of whether the interaction in which it is embedded is face-to-face, computer-mediated, with a human or a robot, oral or written. The aim is to analyze both the linguistic resources of the participants (such as their lexicon, prosody, gestures, gazes, or smiles) and the semiotic resources that social networks and instant messaging platforms offer them (such as memes, gifs, or emojis).

The corpus-based approach to humor offers innovative and more than plausible objectives, supported by sound arguments, which underline the need to analyze humor both verbally and non-verbally. The cognitive linguistic account of humor sets to analyze a corpus of humorous meanings in interaction and to present the elements that help to create the humorous effects: common ground, intersubjectivity, facial expressions, speakers' attitude, etc. The large corpus of examples annotated in ELAN offers a much-needed multimodal perspective of humor, which encompasses all the different techniques used by speakers. The present analysis offers inspiring insight for future research, in different fields of study: multimodality, humor, and psycholinguistics. The study reveals the need of analyzing both verbal and non-verbal elements in discourse in general and humor in particular as co-speech gestures are essential for the understanding of the message as intended by the speakers.

The occasioning of self-disclosure humor / Susan M. Ervin-Tripp & Martin Lampert -- Direct address as a resource for humor / Neal R. Norrick & Claudia Bubel -- An interactional approach to irony development / Helga Kotthoff -- Multimodal and intertextual humor in the media reception situation : the case of watching football on TV / Cornelia Gerhardt -- Using humor to do masculinity at work / Stephanie Schnurr & Janet Holmes -- Boundary-marking humor : institutional, gender, and ethnic demarcation in the workplace / Bernadette Vine ... [et al.] Impolite responses to failed humor / Nancy D. Bell -- Failed humor in conversation : a double voicing analysis / Béatrice Priego-Valverde

The central question explored in this volume is: How is humor multimodally produced, perceived, responded to, and negotiated? To this end, it offers a panorama of linguistic research on multimodal and interactional humor, based on different theoretical frameworks, corpora, and methodologies. Humor is considered as an activity that is interactionally achieved, regardless of whether the interaction in which it is embedded is face-to-face, computer-mediated, with a human or a robot, oral or written. The aim is to analyze both the linguistic resources of the participants (such as their lexicon, prosody, gestures, gazes, or smiles) and the semiotic resources that social networks and instant messaging platforms offer them (such as memes, gifs, or emojis).

Intersubjectivity and usage play central roles in figurative language and are pivotal notions for a cognitively realistic research on figures of thought, speech, and communication. This volume brings together thirteen studies that explore the relationship between figurativity, intersubjectivity and usage from the Cognitive Linguistics perspective. The studies explore the impact of figurativity on areas of lexicon and grammar, on real discourse, and across different semiotic systems. Some studies focus on the psychological processes of the comprehension of figurativity; other studies address the ways in which figures of thought and language are socially shared and the variation of figures through time and space. Moreover, some contributions are established on advanced corpus-based techniques and experimental methods. There are studies about metaphor, metonymy, irony and puns; about related processes, such as humor, empathy and ambiguation; and about the interaction between figures. Overall, this volume offers the advantages and the opportunities of an interactional and usage-based perspective of figurativity, embracing both the psychological and the intersubjective reality of figurative thought and language and empirically emphasizing the multidimensional character of figurativity, its central function in thought, and its impact on everyday communication.

This book explores an important aspect of human existence: humor in self-translation, a virtually unexplored area of research in Humour Studies and Translation Studies. Of the select group of international scholars contributing to this volume some examine literary texts from different perspectives (sociological, philosophical, or post-colonial) while others explore texts in more extraneous fields such as standup comedy or language learning. This book sheds light on how humour in self-translation induces thoughts on social issues, challenges stereotypes, contributes to recast individuals in novel forms of identity and facilitates reflections on our own sense of humour. This accessible and engaging volume is of interest to advanced students of Humour Studies and Translation Studies.