Taboo infringement and layered comedy: a linguistic analysis of convolution in Gervais and Merchant's Life's Too Short

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhat follows is a qualitative, linguistic analysis of layered comic techniques used by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in the British comedy series Life's Too Short. Because each episode revolves round Warwick Davis, an actor with restricted growth, or dwarfism, the likelihood of taboo infringement and of consequent offence is considerable. One of the ways in which this risk is diluted in contemporary comedy is through the process of ‘convolution’, a multiple layering of comic effects that can attenuate offensiveness in two possible ways: either by increasing a sense of ridiculousness, or by being so tangled as to make it difficult for viewers to identify with any certainty the point of the comedy. Referring to aspects of conversation analysis like politeness and facework theory, and to facets of mediated interaction, chiefly participation framework, this paper considers how the writers exploit workplace interactions, service encounters and media interactions in the docucomedy format to multiply the convolutions round this sensitive subject.