Marta Dynel

Beyond a Joke: Types of Conversational Humour

The main objective of this article is to list and briefly characterise several semantic and pragmatic types of verbal humour, primarily those which cannot be reduced to (canned) jokes. First of all, a distinction is drawn between jokes and conversational humour, an umbrella term covering a variety of semantic and pragmatic types of humour, which recur in interpersonal communication, whether real-life (everyday conversations or TV programmes) or fictional (film and book dialogues). On a different axis representing formal structure, stylistic figures are distinguished, such as irony, puns and allusions.

NO AGGRESSION, ONLY TEASING: THE PRAGMATICS OF TEASING AND BANTER

No Aggression, Only Teasing: The Pragmatics of Teasing and Banter A bone of contention among researchers is whether the primary function of humour is the expression of aggression against the hearer or the promotion of solidarity between the interlocutors. It is commonly averred that teasing boasts a dichotomous nature, i.e. malignant and benevolent. The former coincides with the potential for criticising, mocking and ostracising the interlocutor, whereas the latter accounts for playfulness and bonding capacity. The overriding goal of the paper is to expound the rapport-building function, which is here postulated to be inherent to teasing. First and foremost, I will determine the scope of interest differentiating between putdown humour and teases, which may assume the form of retorts and develop into multi-turn teases, i.e. banter. Subtypes of teasing will be discussed with a view to proving that it is inherently devoid of genuine aggressiveness. The underlying premise is that teases, even if ostensibly aggressive, i.e. face-threatening, are geared towards solidarity, in conformity with the framework of politeness, including mock impoliteness, holding between intimates. Also, teases fulfil a few subordinate functions such as defunctionalisation or mitigation of face-threatening messages they may carry.

Revisiting Goffman’s postulates on participant statuses in verbal interaction

Goffman’s work on participation marks a watershed in linguistic studies on speaker and hearer roles in interaction, both in everyday conversations and in media discourse. Goffman is thus widely credited for having expanded the dyadic (speaker – hearer) model of communication. Albeit not elaborated in detail, his classification of speaker roles, as well as listeners, the latter divided into ratified hearers (addressed and unaddressed recipients) and unratified hearers (bystanders, overhearers and eavesdroppers), is the departure point for various classifications of participants propounded by contemporary researchers. This article proposes an exegesis of Goffman’s work on participation, typified by talk, a strand which reverberates in his essays devoted to distinct topics, with special attention paid to non-speaking participant statuses. Only a bird’s-eye-view approach to Goffman’s writings guarantees a full picture of his conceptualisation of multi-party verbal encounters.

There Is Method in the Humorous Speaker's Madness: Humour and Grice's Model

There Is Method in the Humorous Speakers Madness: Humour and Grices Model The interdependence between humour and the Cooperative Principle (CP) (Grice 1975/1989b, 1978/1989b, 1989a) appears to be a bone of contention in pragmatic studies on verbal humour. The wellentrenched approach advocated by Raskin and Attardo is that jokes (and also other forms of intentionally produced humour) constitute the non-bona-fide mode of communication standing vis-à-vis the Gricean model and governed by a humour-CP (Raskin 1985, 1987, 1998; Raskin and Attardo 1994; Attardo 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996, 2006), and that they violate, not merely flout, the maxims and even the CP (Attardo 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996, 2006). The aim of the article is to shed new light on the interdependence between humour and the CP with a view to substantiating that the authors who regard humour as an independent communicative mode and as an intrinsic violation of maxims and the CP appear to labour under a serious misapprehension. It will be argued that the Gricean model of cooperative rationality does allow for humorous verbalisations, which normally rely on maxim flouts.