Dialogic resources in interactional humour

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a social semiotic analysis of a stand-up comedy text. Its aim is to explore how dialogic resources contribute to humour. The research is informed by the concept of affiliation in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and work on interactional humour. Laughter is treated as a marker for the deferral of social values that create non-threatening tension with interactants shared community affiliation. Dialogic resources such as projected speech are shown to play an important role in positioning the comedian s alignment to social values, and function to amplify the tension created. The analysis also shows how the bonds negotiated in the text can be grouped into hierarchies of specificity, with more specific bonds sustaining more general bonds across phases of discourse.