Conversational Humor Research Articles

Humour based on flouting Grice’s conversational maxims in Ali Douagi’s "The Star-Gazer"

Attardo (1993) argues that humour in conversation is partly created by flouting or violating Grice’s Conversational Maxims. A few studies have probed the validity of this claim by investigating humour in literary texts (Amianna & Putranti, 2017; Al-Zubeiry, 2020). However, to the best of our knowledge, not one study has probed this claim on the basis of a Tunisian literary text. Situated within the theoretical framework of Grice’s Cooperative Principle (henceforth CP), this qualitative and descriptive study tries to fill this gap, at least partially, by examining humour in dialogue in Ali Douagi’s short story “The Star-Gazer”. The text is based on an interactional dialogue between a man and a woman. The study’s results suggest that utterances in the dialogue in this story flout the Maxim of Quantity by giving too much or too little information to the hearer, and are found to flout the Maxim of Relation by stating things that are irrelevant to the topic of conversation. Utterances are found to flout the Maxim of Manner by stating things that are long, unclear and ambiguous, but no flouting of the Maxim of Quality is found. The humour in the text is found to be, at least partially, determined by flouting Grice’s Conversational Maxims. As such, the study corroborates the claim that humour in conversation is, partly, determined by flouting or violating Grice’s Conversational Maxims. It is argued that this work contributes to pragmatics, humour research and literary criticism.

Responses to conversational humour: An analytical framework

Conversational humour, which broadly encompasses (sequences of) utterances that are designed to ‘amuse’ participants or are treated as ‘amusing’ by participants across various kinds of social interaction, is an inherently social phenomenon involving not only the speaker but at least one recipient. An episode of conversational humour includes (at least) a humour bid proffered by the speaker and the response to it by the recipient. This study focuses on the recipient’s responses to humour and introduces a framework for analysing responses to humour bids which is grounded in a close analysis of the sequential trajectory of humour episodes. Drawing on data from intercultural initial interactions in English, and focusing on the sequential trajectory of humour episodes through the lens of interactional pragmatics, this study proposes a typology of responses to humour bids, offering a basis for operationalisation in talk-ininteraction. Within this framework, there are five sequentially distinct types of responses that can follow a humour bid: 1) disattending humour, 2) minimal response to humour: sequence closure, 3) minimal response to humour: serious response, 4) minimal response to humour: agreement, and 5) post-expanding humour.

HUMOR IN DEDDY’S CORBUZIER “SOMASI”

The purpose of this study was to find out the forms of humor in a stand-up comedy video titled "Somasi". It used the humor theory proposed by Martin to support this analysis. This study used the descriptive-qualitative method. The results of this study showed that the comics' utterances contain several forms of humor. These types include jokes, spontaneous conversational humor consisting of sarcasm, satire, overstatement and understatement, self-deprecation, ridicule, answers to rhetorical questions, and clever answers to serious statements.

Mock impoliteness in Spanish: evidence from the VALESCO.HUMOR corpus

Abstract Mock impoliteness is defined as a specific form of politeness, one in which participants in a conversation perceive acts such as jocular mockery, insults and banter as non-impolite (Haugh, Michael & Derek Bousfield. 2012. Mock impoliteness in interactions amongst Australian and British speakers of English. Journal of Pragmatics 44. 1099–1114). Following the model of the third wave of politeness and Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2019. Conversational humour and (im) politeness: A pragmatic analysis of social interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), the aim of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon in colloquial conversation. Second, it illustrates this in a language other than English, specifically Peninsular Spanish, using data on informal interactions. The database is composed of 148 humorous sequences from the VALESCO.HUMOR corpus (http://www.observahumor.com/corpus_valesco). 25.67 % of these were identified and analyzed as mock impoliteness, using a tentative procedure for exploring humor negotiation in mock impoliteness through the assessment of a number of elements. These included the issue of which linguistic and paralinguistic elements are used by participants, and the interpretation of the initial aggressive style focused on the target, be it the recipient in a conversation or an absent third party (Béal, Christine & Kerry Mullan. 2017. The pragmatics of conversational humour in social visits: French and Australian English. Language & Communication 55. 24–40). Finally, we considered the question of whether or not the humor introduced by mock impoliteness was sustained throughout a sequence. When a target is oriented to a recipient in the exchange, the data shows a trend towards strengthening social bonds with the group and sustaining humor across the sequence. In other cases, however, the recipient might feel offended or insulted and hence respond in a serious mode, the main effect of the humor then being to create social distance within the participant group. When the target is oriented to an absent third party, humor tends to serve to reinforce cohesiveness between the group at the expense of others.

Jocular self-deprecation in Japanese initial interactions

Research into conversational humour has found its significant role across a wide range of interactional settings, but to date, only a limited body of studies have investigated the use of conversational humour in initial interactions between interactants who are not previously acquainted. Moreover, no previous studies have investigated the use of conversational humour in Japanese initial interactions, perhaps due to the assumption that humour is only employed in interactions between people with close relationships in Japanese contexts. Preliminary inspections of a dataset of initial interactions in Japanese indicated the prevalence of jocular self-deprecation, where Japanese interactants humorously disparage themselves. Using the framework of interactional pragmatics, this study investigates how jocular self-deprecations are locally situated, co-constructed, and sequentially accomplished in Japanese initial interactions. This empirical study draws on a dataset of twenty face-to-face initial interactions between Japanese university students (approximately 6.5 hours of audio recordings) retrieved from BTSJ Corpus (Usami, 2022). Japanese interactants strategically construct jocular self-deprecations in achieving various relational goals. Given that study on conversational humour in both Japanese settings and initial interactional settings are still scarce, the findings contribute to the variability of this research body, thereby contributing to a broader understanding of the (socio)pragmatics of conversational humour.

“¿Cómo te sientes? – With my butt!”: code-choice-related humor in bilingual speakers living with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type

This study investigates data from three narrative interviews held with people living with early- and mid-stage dementia of the Alzheimer’s type (DAT) and their primary care partners speaking English and Spanish in informal settings; the analysis focuses on the humorous moves which are employed by the participants living with dementia in both languages. Drawing on the General Theory of Verbal Humor and the Cooperative Principle, this study sheds light on the conversational humor on a semantic (i.e. language-dependent) as well as pragmatic level (i.e. contextually situated) initiated by the people living with dementia in this dataset while investigating the interpersonal goals behind such moves. By analyzing the (intentional) humorous practices and their respective code choices, our aim is to gain a better understanding of the pragmatic abilities of speakers which are retained while experiencing communication challenges in the face of DAT. This study thus contributes with increased knowledge about people living with dementia as active conversational partners.

Hasan Minhaj’s Spontaneous Conversational Humor in Patriot Act

Grice's maxim of conversation becomes the main condition for a complete and ideal conversation. Spontaneous conversational humor is used in communicating with others, in light conversations with relatives, and in a broader public space, such as television shows and radio broadcasts. This linguistic phenomenon is often used as a speaker strategy in criticizing an action of an individual that is distorted but narrated in the form of humor that invites the audience's laughter. The researcher analysed Hasan Minhaj’s and his audience's spontaneous conversational humor in this study. Methodologically, the researcher adopted Grice's pragmatics study on the Theory of Cooperative Principle (1975), which aimed to make conversations cooperative. The researcher collected the data from Hasan Minhaj and his audience's utterances from September 2, 2019, to November 11, 2019. 21 data in the form of spoken transcripts containing spontaneous conversational humor, analysed by Martin's theory of spontaneous humor categorization (2007), which also contained non-observances (floating) based on the principle of conversation proposed by Grice (1975). The results showed that Hasan Minhaj deliberately and spontaneously expressed humorous conversations on his TV show "Patriot Act", which flouted the cooperative principle in conversation (Grice, 1975). The spontaneous conversational humor outlined by Hasan Minhaj in a broad outline showed that it aimed to criticize and comment on government policies that had violated the rights of the citizens. This study significantly contributed to expanding spontaneous conversational humor studies in linguistics.

Humor as a Political Act: Study of Indonesian Presidents’ Humor

This study aims to explain the use of humor by Indonesian presidents for political communication. Presidents’ use of humor is an interesting phenomenon, given that they are social subjects who wield great power within a country. Their social position leads to different characteristics and social impacts due to the humor used. This research uses a qualitative descriptive approach. Data was collected from books, news sites, and YouTube channels documenting the humor of the three Indonesian presidents. Data were then analyzed using pragmatic analysis. The results show that presidential humor varies according to personal preferences, speech objectives, and contexts. Presidents use joke, conversational humor, and pun to joke, tease, praise, satirize, criticize, and delegate power. Joking, teasing, and praising are used on friends and political allies. Meanwhile, satirizing and criticizing are applied to political opponents. Humor is a middle ground for presidents, enabling them to achieve speech objectives without explicitly expressing their intention. Politically, humor functions to (1) represent oneself positively and represent opponents negatively, (2) build relationships and positioning with opponents and allies, and (3) exercise control and discipline. However, the relationship between form, style, and illocutionary of presidential humor is often ambiguous. Such conditions seem related to political relations' dynamic and equal nature, where friends and foes are not always crystal clear.

Dissecting the types and functions of religious humor in Nasreddin Hoja short-stories

Humor is a significant element in funny stories. This study aims to analyze the types and functions of humor in selected Nasreddin’s short stories from the book Nasreddin’s Funniest Stories (2011) by Yusup Priyasudiarja and Y. Sri Purwaningsih. By using the descriptive qualitative method, the study adopts textual analysis to examine the materials. Based on the analysis result, the types of humor applied in the stories are that joke, sarcasm, satire, replies to rhetorical question, clever replies, and double entendres. However, these writings lack some other typical types of spontaneous conversational humor used in short stories’ texts: puns and self-deprecation. Meanwhile, unintentional humor is also not found in the Nasreddin short stories because it is raised from the speaker’s misspellings, mispronunciations, errors in logic, and Freudian slips. Further reading shows that the underlying usage of humor in these stories is for social management: to control and mediate readers.

Multimodal amusement resonance as a conversation interactional device

The incorporation of materials from the previous speaker in subsequent speaker talk has been variably characterised as repetition (Tannen, 1987), format tying (M. Goodwin, 1990), resonance (Du Bois, 2014) and so forth (henceforth “resonance”). Resonance has been shown to be a pervasive feature of everyday talk-in-interaction. This paper, with data from Mandarin Chinese and American English, shows first that resonance can manifest in multiple modalities, namely morphosyntax, prosody and embodied actions, often simultaneously. Second, it will be shown that the next speaker often does this in the service of creating an amusing effect, or conversational humour. It is proposed that multimodal resonance with amusing effects is an uplifting device in conversation that has a unique impact on the way interaction is managed. As such, investigating such a practice can further our understanding of resonance as a pervasive interactional phenomenon and how multimodality is deployed for coherent courses of action.

Humor in conversation among bilinguals

In this study, we analyse conversations recorded during ethnographic research in two bilingual communities on the island of Rhodes, Greece. We examine: (a) the bilingual in Greek and Turkish Muslim community of Rhodes (Georgalidou et al. 2010, 2013) and (b) the Greek-American/Canadian community of repatriated emigrant families of Rhodian origin (Kourtis-Kazoullis 2016). In particular, combining interactional and conversation analytic frameworks (Auer 1995; Gafaranga 2007), we examine contemporary approaches to bi-/multilingualism focusing on the pragmatics of humour in conversations among bilinguals. We scrutinise aspects of the overall and sequential organisation of talk as well as instances of humour produced by speakers of different ethnic origin, generation, and social groups. We focus on the construction of “otherness,” which reflects the dynamic interplay between the micro-level of conversational practices and the macro-level of discourse involving contrasting categorisations and identities pertaining to differently orientated ethnic and social groups. Based on the analysis, we will show a) how humorous targeting orients in-groups versus out-groups, and b) mediates the dynamic process of constructing the identity of speakers who, being members of minority linguistic communities, represent “otherness.”

Role of ‘familiarity’ in Mandarin Chinese speakers’ metapragmatic evaluations of Australian conversational humour

Although research on humorous practices of Anglo-Australians has received much attention, the understanding of those practices by members of various multilingual communities in Australia has not been much studied. In this paper, we look at metapragmatic comments on concept familiarity in relation to conversational humour, particularly focusing on Mandarin Chinese speakers’ perceptions of conversational humour in Australian English. In order to explore what role ‘familiarity’ plays in (inter-)cultural conceptualisation of humour, we analyse interview data where speakers of Mandarin Chinese provide their metapragmatic comments on humorous exchanges among Australians. Drawing on approximately 8.2 hours of interview data elicited by a segment from the reality television gameshow Big Brother 2012, i.e., a teasing sequence between two acquainted persons, it is suggested that the concept of familiarity is the one most frequently alluded to in the theme of how participants ‘draw the boundary’ between intimates and acquaintances. From the analysis it emerged that Mandarin Chinese speakers’ evaluations of humorous exchanges in Australian English are driven by their culturally-informed perceptions that are conceptualised through various emic notions, e.g. guanxi (‘interpersonal relationship’), various labels for classifying different relational distance, and qiji (‘opportune moment’). The findings of this exploratory paper suggest that the role of ‘familiarity’ in relation to humour is crucial in the perception of appropriateness of humorous practices in interaction, especially across cultures.

Patient-to-Patient Interactions During the Pain Management Programme: The Role of Humor and Venting in Building a Socially Supportive Community.

ObjectivesSocial support is most positively perceived when there is an optimal match between a patient's need for communication and the purpose of their interaction. Maladaptive communication patterns may inhibit social bonding or mutual support, negatively impacting clinical outcomes. This study aimed to identify how people with chronic pain naturalistically converse together about their pain in the context of a Pain Management Programme (PMP).MethodsSeven participants (4 females; 3 males) with ongoing chronic pain who were attending a PMP in a regional hospital in the United Kingdom were audio/video recorded during breaks in their PMP. Interactions were transcribed using Jeffersonian Transcription and analyzed using Conversation Analysis.ResultsTwo conversational mechanisms were identified: (1) Conversational humor; and (2) A venting cycle. Participants used their pain-related experiences construct a motive for a joke, then proceeded to deliver the joke, which initiated a joke return from observers. The sequence was completed by a collaborative punchline. In the venting cycle, an initial complaint was escalated by the sharing of comparable experiences, after which the vent was concluded through a joke punchline, acting as a pivot to move the conversation forwards, terminating the venting.ConclusionsHumorous interpersonal interactions about chronic pain provided a forum for social support-building within the PMP. Humor was affiliative and built social collaboration, helping individuals to together make sense of their pain in a prosocial atmosphere, approaching pain-related experiences with levity. Patient-to-patient interactions within the PMP were strongly prosocial and inclusive, potentially facilitating enhanced PMP clinical outcomes through collaboration.

Sinkeviciute, Valeria: Conversational humour and (im)politeness: a pragmatic analysis of social interaction

Article Sinkeviciute, Valeria: Conversational humour and (im)politeness: a pragmatic analysis of social interaction was published on July 1, 2022 in the journal Journal of Politeness Research (volume 18, issue 2).

Humor in intercultural interaction: A source for misunderstanding or a common ground builder? A multimodal analysis

AbstractThe present paper explores three situations of conversational humor in which not only gesture and prosody but also code-switching play a role in the process of co-construction of humor among participants in an intercultural interaction. Despite the long tradition of studying humor in interaction, there has been little research so far which includes gesture – especially manual gesture – from an embodiment perspective and concurrently draws attention to the intercultural impact of humor, including moments of code-switching. By looking at multi-party interactions between German and Brazilian speakers from a multimodal perspective, we will show how different semiotic resources such as gaze, posture, head and hand gesture, as well as prosody and code-switching are displayed in order to construct humor. Our aim is to reveal the interplay and complexity of the communicative resources in the co-construction of humor by presenting three examples with different degrees of successful humor: While the conversational humor is only understood by the German co-participants in the first example, in the second example, the humor is co-constructed successfully by the German and Brazilian participants. Yet the last example reveals that the humor is understood by everybody but taken up differently what could also be related to the institutional context in which the sequence is embedded.

Spontaneous humour and Malaysia’s democratic breakthrough in 2018

The 2018 Malaysian general election was the first democratic change of government in the nation’s modern history. The victory of the Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope – PH) coalition surprised several observers within and outside the country, especially considering the intensified repression employed by the outgoing Barisan Nasional (National Front – BN) ruling coalition leading up to the polls, including media censorship, the silencing of political opponents, and the manipulation of Islamism and ethnic Malay nationalism. This article examines the role of spontaneous, conversational humour in constructing a viable political identity for the PH. It does this by considering humorous moments during press conferences and similar media events held by the PH coalition, led by its designated choice for prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad. This article aims to contribute to the scholarship on the role of humour in identity construction and political campaigning.

The Study of Humor in Daily Conversations in Karo Language

This research is a study of humor in daily conversation in Karo language. This study aimed to describe the form of humor found in daily conversations in Karo language. This research used descriptive-qualitative to describe the humor that dominates daily conversations in Karo. The approach used was a pragmatic approach because the data analyzed was in the form of speech. The Data collection used a recording technique and it was taken from the daily speech of the participants. The Techniques for analyzing data were (1) data selection, (2) data grouping into tables, (3) data coding by providing code O1 for speakers, while code O2 referred to speech partners. The results of this study consisted of five techniques, namely exaggeration, literalness, definition, facetiousness and allusion. And the facetiousness technique was the greatest technique in the conversation.

Applying General Theory of Verbal Humour to the Suburban Community Conversation in ‘Kontrakan Rempong’ YouTube Content

The purpose of this research is to demonstrate how structural characteristics of conversational humour are related to the functions served by hilarious utterances and acts. Linguistically speaking, examining humour can provide us with a wealth of information about the society in which we live. Regrettably, not all linguists believe that researching humour is a wise approach. Additionally, this study will examine the suburban community's debate in one of the most popular YouTube videos, Kontrakan Rempong by Warintil official. Pamer provided the funny data (episode 69). The approach employed in this study is Fairclough's CDA model, which evaluates the dimensions of text, specifically the GTVH theory, interpretation, and explanation (social practice). As a result, it is discovered that residents' noticeable behaviors, in particular, become a regular topic of debate among the community's housewives. The theme is primarily concerned with how members of a particular family behave in the community and how women as homemakers identify as community members. The targeted behaviors include being chatty, materialistic, impolite and pompous, having an unconventional view of the world, and gossipmongers who spread tales about another person's debt.

Failed humor in conversation: disalignment and (dis)affiliation as a type of interactional failure

Abstract This article reports on research on failed humor in French conversation. The aim is to investigate disalignment and (dis)affiliation as a type of interactional failure. For this purpose, 1,345 instances of humor were identified within a corpus of eight interactions in French. Among them, 259 were instances of failed humor, 158 of which were produced by the recipient, i.e., the participant who had taken the turn to produce humor. These 158 instances were analyzed using a method combining Conversation Analysis and corpus-based approaches. Conversation is seen as intrinsically dynamic: participants constantly shift between serious and humorous frames, different activities and different roles within them. In this light, each instance of failed humor was analyzed in relation to the frame and the type of activity within which it was embedded. All of the instances were found to be either disaligned and affiliated or disaligned and disaffiliated. Viewing conversation through its dynamism thus brings to light the ways in which disalignment and (dis)affiliation are a type of interactional failure. The analysis of three examples of disaligned and (dis)affiliated humor illustrates this type of interactional failure.

Playful Subjects of Lack: The Underside of Humour in the Nigerian Unconscious

“We play too much in this country” is a popular and handy response to funny statements or events and an affirmation of Nigerians’ aptitude for humour. This comic impulse in the Nigerian unconscious has been variously seen as a means of releasing stress, coping with harsh realities, critiquing social and political situations, and even enhancing democracy. While acknowledging these observations, two more fundamental questions arise: Why does humour proliferate in Nigeria? And how does this tendency work against the nation? To attend to these questions, we explore three forms of humour: jokes, conversational humour, and accidental humour. The data analysed in this article were collected from Twitter, Facebook, and reports on national events in Nigerian newspapers. The analysis is anchored on Todd McGowan’s theory of the comic as a coincidence of lack and excess. The findings show that the increasing production of humour in various forms is a symptom of a fundamental lack, a defectiveness in the country’s socio-political and socioeconomic reality, and that these playful responses to situations trivialise the problems, weaken confrontational impulses, and heighten legal and moral laxity. Thus, as Nigerians we are “amusing ourselves to death”.