Creative multimodal and multilingual puns as and through joint actions in Korean media interviews

Abstract

This study examines how participants in Korean media talk, specifically talk show interviews, interactively construct puns as and through joint actions. Going beyond puns as humorous wordplay, the study illustrates their interactional and pragmatic functions. A close examination of the sequential positions and interactional contexts of puns in 16 different interviews shows that they recurrently emerge when participants are placed, socially or interactionally, in delicate or difficult situations. Through puns, the participants not only recontextualise the local meaning of a particular target word, but also globally transform the focus and frame of the troublesome ongoing interaction, as well as managing their identities and roles in the interaction. The analysis shows that the participants creatively design puns based on Korean words as well as utilising English words, formulating multilingual puns. The study also demonstrates that puns are often accompanied, triggered or entirely performed by nonlinguistic devices (e.g. body movements, gestures, facial expressions).These multimodal resources play a key role in formulating creative puns, in understanding and responding to puns, and in diverting the trajectory of ongoing interaction.