Abstract
AbstractThe aim of this paper is to determine whether humour can be used as a discursive strategy to reply to offensive humour about natural disasters and what purpose it serves. A corpus of 431 replies to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons concerning the earthquake in central Italy in August 2016 was analysed. Depending on the target of the humour in these replies, they were used to agree, disagree or deflect away from the offensive and aggressive content of the cartoons. The results show that humour can be used as a discursive strategy to respond to offensive humour. Moreover, an analysis of the corpus revealed that humorous replies were used mainly to agree rather than disagree with the cartoons.
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