Humor in multimodal language use: Students’ Response to a dialogic, social-networking online assignment

Abstract

The focus of this study was on how students created and shared humor in an online multimodal learning environment. Across two semesters of a graduate course on psycholinguistics in education, 28 students posted 1006 pins on a social-networking webpage (Pinterest) that were subjected to a multimodal content analysis. The Pinterest boards provided a dialogic space for students to engage in on-going collaborative exploration of notable ways of using language in authentic sociocultural spaces. Many examples of humorous uses of language attested to students’ playful and creative application of course concepts. Through participants’ comments on pins and multimodal aspects of pins that transformed the nature of student-shared examples, some pins, originally not intended to be funny, came to represent examples of humor. Students took risks in pinning what they envisioned as possibly misconceived or even provocative content in pursuit of refining their understanding of psycholinguistic concepts.