Jocular mockery in the context of a localised playful frame: Unpacking humour in a Chinese reality TV show

Abstract

Mockery is pervasive in conversational humour. However, little research has been conducted to explore the influence of localised sociocultural constraints on the linguistic choices of interlocutors during jocular mockery acts, especially in non-English-speaking contexts. This paper was written with a focus on examining the jocular mockery strategies that speakers of Mandarin Chinese use to amuse others and the extent to which the speakers adapt themselves to a playful frame. Data were collected from the jocular episodes of ‘The Smiling Proud Wanderer’ (‘Xiao'ao Jianghu’), a television show that was broadcast in standard Mandarin Chinese at the national level in 2016. Based on a detailed analysis of the data, we classified jocular mockery strategies into four categories: jocular depreciation, jocular criticism, jocular directive, and jocular praise. The results indicate that the Chinese prefer using face-threatening strategies (rather than face-saving strategies) to construct a playful frame while mitigating the denigrating force of jocular mockery in the RTV show context. In addition, while the Chinese with high institutional status tend to contextualise the playful frame in an other-denigrating manner, those with low status tend to construct the frame in a self-denigrating way.