English Linguistics
Sociolinguistic and cognitive-linguistic approaches to humour
Sociolinguistic and cognitive-linguistic approaches to humour
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Flashcards
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
The essence of CA in a nutshell?
[…], CA analyses of the use of conversational practices are simultaneously analyses of action, meaning, context management and inter-subjectivity because all of these features are simultaneously, if tacitly, the objects of the actors’ actions. The procedures that inform these activities are normative in that actors can be held morally accountable both for departures from their use and for the inferences which their use, or departures from their use, may engender.
(Heritage 2001: 53)
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Sequential analyses vs.distributional analyses?
- Sequential analyses:
- Focus on the sequential organisation of different types or parts of spoken discourse
→ greetings, class-room interactions, question-answer patterns, tourist-information transactions, humour!
- Distributional analyses:
- Focus on specific features that frequently occur in
conversations:
→ e.g. oh, well, erm, like, I mean, I know
→ such features often function as DISCOURSE MARKERS, i.e. markers that indicate how a speaker relates to previous or subsequent parts of the conversation
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Turns and turn-taking?
• The conversation is set up by turns
• The conversational partners engage in turn-taking
• CA is interested in
a) the design of the individual turns
b) the rules that underlie their turn-taking
c) the sequential order of the turns
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Turn design?
• Turns may consist of several turn construction units
= tone units (i-iii)
• The turn is designed for the officer = recipient design
recipient design reflects the accountability of action
• The effort of designing the turn is reflected by the
hesitation marker.
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Self-repairs and false starts?
• Speakers often self-repair their turns to find better
formulations
• Often the repair is preceded by a false start.
• Like hesitations, self-repair and false starts reflect
recipient design.
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Back channels: Signalling understanding?
• Back channels are used by the hearer to signal attention, understanding, and that he/she does not wish to take a turn yet.
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Turn-transition places?
• X = TURN-TRANSITION PLACES.
= places where the other is invited OR selected to take
a turn, marked by syntactic closure, intonational
boundary, and/or propositional completion
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Adjacency pairs?
• Adjacency pair is a two-part sequence between two turns.
• Both turns are necessary two complete a joint speech
event, e.g. greeting, question-answer, request-offer.
• The first part sets up strong expectations for the
second part to appear too = PREFERENCE
ORGANISATION
--> Hello, Hello
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Narrative jokes vs. conversational joking?
- What characterizes jokes conversationally? (Norrick 2003: 1339)
- Narrative jokes are announced through pre-openings: Do you know this one?, Have you heard the one about? or I have got a joke for you.
- Sacks (1974) calls such phrases “prefaces”. According to him, laughter is the typical take-up of a joke.
- Jokes are characterized by narrating a fictional joke world. The characters of this joke world are not usually “real people or even realistic characters, but […] caricatures or types like ‘this travelling salesman’ or simply ‘this guy’” (Norrick 2003: 1339).
- Constituting a hermetic narrative, canned jokes are not directly connected to the surrounding conversation. The content of the joke world “becomes irrelevant as soon as the joke ends” (Norrick 2003: 1339).
• Narrative jokes are expected to have a punchline.
• The punchline is expected at the end of the joke.
•The punchline always triggers a script-switch, which is expected by the listener.
The semantic reversal between the build-up and the punchline is a feature of the joke text which relates to joke timing, because it is often accompanied by a shift in voice quality, speaking tempo, and fluency with significance for the perception of timing in the joke performance. While the semantics of the joke suggests specific teller strategies, these strategies determine the form of verbalization which ultimately guides audience perception of the text.
(Norrick 2003: 1353)
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Conversational differences between narrative jokes and puns?
- Norrick (2003: 1335) distinguishes canned jokes from spontaneous conversational joking.
- Boxter and Cortés-Conde (1997: 275): “draw a distinction between conversational joking (CJ), or situational humor, and joke telling (JT).”
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Types of conversational joking
•Anecdotes
•Wordplays/puns
•Irony
- Anecdotes:
- embedded as narratives in the conversation
- series of jab lines
- jocular and exaggerated content about real experiences
Personal Anecdotes: Jocular and exaggerated content about narrator
Interpersonal Anecdotes: Jocular content about the interactional partners & co-construction of jocular narration of funny experiance
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Types of conversational joking
•Anecdotes
•Wordplays/puns
•Irony
- Wordplay/punning
- unannounced and not embedded in general conversation, but disruptive of the topical development of the transaction
- individual jab lines
- exploit or create structural and semantic ambiguities
- trigger a parallel layer of meaning parallel to the conversation
- Humorous riddles:
Jocular question-guess-answer pattern
Often used to lead the listener up a garden path
Listener often suspect a humorous riddle to come but cannot anticipate the correct answer
- Roleplays
Speaker quotes another person
Use of paralinguistic features to immitate speech style
Can develop into more extensive jocular plays by the conversational patterns
- Jocular abuse
Jocular insult or negative put-down remark aimed at someone present
- Terms of adress and reference
Play with adress terms to subvert roles of interactional partners
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Types of conversational joking
•Anecdotes
•Wordplays/puns
•Irony
- Irony
- Unnannounced but not necessarily disruptive of the topical development of the transaction
- Individual jab lines
- Often not being recognized as jocular
- Quips
Short witty comment about on-going actions
Challenges or subverts one aspect of the on-going action or the current situation
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
A clear demarcation between the types and subtypes is not always possible!
The discussion so far has suggested that we already possess discrete definitions of jokes, anecdotes, the various types of wordplay, and irony, or could at least separate them in practice. In fact, I have argued that a clear distinction is neither possible nor sensible, because the forms naturally fade into each other in conversation (Norrick, 1993), […]. The flexibility and protean character of conversational joking forms is an integral part of their attraction: joke punchlines turn into wisecracks, witty repartees grow into anecdotes develop into jokes, and so on.
(Norrick 2003: 1338)
LECTURE 3
Conversational humour
Social effects of different types of (conversational) joking
- Aggression in humour
Sherzer (1985) […] [identifies] a twofold aggression in jokes: against the hearer, who is subjected to a little intelligence test, and against the butt of the joke – perhaps a person or group the teller and hearer conspire to laugh at.
(Norrick 2003: 1342)
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
A creative act of social positioning?
Positioning, ... , is the discursive process whereby selves are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines. There can be interactive positioning in which what one person says positions another. And there can be reflexive positioning in which one positions oneself.
(Davies and Harré 1990, quoted according to Wetherell et al. 2001: 264)
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
Image-schemas (Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Johnson 1987)
- Image schemas are:
- relatively abstract mental representations such as CONTAINMENT, UP-DOWN ORIENTATION, BLOCKAGE, COMPULSION, SOURCE-PATH-GOAL, etc.
- derived from basic embodied experience.
- representations of physical force-dynamics.
- inherently meaningful due to internal physical ‘logic’.
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
Solidarity/sharing – The bright side of humour?
Perhaps the most obvious is its function as a means of expressing friendliness, solidarity or ‘positive politeness’ (Brown and Levinson 1987). Indeed, humour could be described as the glue of relationships between friends.
(Holmes and Marra 2002a: 65-66)
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
Doing power – The dark side of humour?
The playful nip denotes the bite, but it does not denote what would be denoted by the bite.
(Bateson 1987: 180)
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
Hay’s (2000) study of the sociolinguistic functions of humour in friendship groups?
[…] every attempt at humor is an attempt to both express solidarity with the audience and to construct a position of respect and status within the group. Tannen (1993: 167) points out that, although solidarity and power may on first consideration appear to be opposites, each entails the other. This is particularly true in the case of humor. Whenever you attempt humor and it succeeds, your status within the group is positively affected. You have amused the audience and so illustrated that you share with them a common idea of what is funny. This serves to create or maintain solidarity. Some instances of humour will have this general function and no other, beyond the creation of a positive self-identity.
(Hay 2000: 716)
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
The aims of Hay’s study?
•Hay’s paper explores the functions of humour in friendship groups.
•How does the composition of the group affect humour usage? Do male and female groups differ in their use of humour?
•Based on PhD on 18 groups of friends.
•Data are used to develop a taxonomy of humour functions
•Taxonomy is used to explore the way humour tends to be used by mean and women in mixed and single-sex groups
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
What will serious research reveal about gendered uses of humour?
In this study, I investigate differences between men and women statistically. I do not intend to produce any startling or categorical conclusions about how men and women use humor, but rather provide the ground work which has been lacking in this area. I point to some interesting trends, and identify areas of humor and gender research which could benefit from closer examination.
(Hay 2000: 714)
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
Hay’s data?
•18 audio-recorded conversations between friends.
ü6 groups = female only
ü6 groups = male only
ü6 groups = mixed
•Pakeha, New Zealanders of European descent. Aged between 18 and 35.•
•From every conversation a 20-minute extract is analysed for humour instances.
•Humour = what the speaker intends to be funny. (Hay is aware of the fact that take up is also important!)
•Corpus of 815 examples/instances of humour
ü216 = female only
ü333 = male only
ü163 = by males in mixed groups, 103 by females in mixed groups
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
The most important insights from the study (see Hay 2000: Section 8)?
• Both men and women use humour for doing power, e.g. through jocular abuse. Both of them do more so in single-sex than in mixed-sex groups.
=> Clear falsification of the stereotype!
•Women used humour considerably more often for sharing funny personal experiences to create and maintain solidarity.
•Men are more likely to highlight previous interpersonal experiences. They capitalize on joint experiences.
=>This is consistent with previous findings on gender-specific uses of humour in comparable social groups.
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
More creative social positioning on the net
- Context
• Blended e-learning course in English linguistics
• 75 Swiss BA students, 4th semester
• MOODLE (LMS), asynchronous discussion forum (forum postings)
Students could also meet face-to-face!
• Collaborative paper writing task, group research-paper
→ in-house publication
• Groups have to elect a group moderator (social challenge: peer-
group)•
• Topic for group paper: Gangsta, yo, sez - Hip-hop and spelling
change
- Overall instrumental, relational,and identity goals
Group: elect a moderator to fulfil requirement
Moderator: adopt new role but keep positive face with peer group
Group members: raise one student to moderator status while giving him/her the feeling “you are one of us”, “we are one group”
=> how can the student become the leader but still be a peer?
• role re-allocation
• construction of group identity
LECTURE 4
Sociolinguistic functions of humour
Phases
- Phase 1 –Jocular definition of moderator role and election process
Turn 1: - invitation to become moderator as ‘gang leader’ roleplay through imitation of Hip-hop language
Turn 2: - jocular definition of moderator role by taking up stereotypical HIP-HOP language
→ MODERATOR AS CRIMINAL GANGSTA
Turn 3: - role rejection by distancing from MODERATOR-AS-A-CRIMINAL-GANGSTA roleplay
Turn 4: - volunteer, jocular self-definition as gang leader
Turn 5: - friendly expression of acceptance and support
- social definition of moderator as peer acceptance emphasized by imitation of gang language
- Phase 2 – Defining the group identity
Turn 6: - Group identification by self-glorification by imitation of self-glorification in Hip-hop
- projection of positive group result: killa presentation
Turn 7: - Group identification relative to the roleplay: brothas and sistahs
- Strengthening of novel social identity: us vs. them
- Acceptance of moderator as leader, expression of “we are one group”
- Phase 3 – Closing relational work and starting business
Turn 9: - End of identity play: the roleplay is abandoned as indicated by the shift of style
- Moderator conducts business relative to his accepted, novel role within the group.
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
Small talk and verbal grooming?
- What is small talk?
1.The term ‘small talk’ suggests a trivial communicative activity → social talk
“This negative perception of small talk, and more generally of social chat and gossip, as marginal and purposeless reflects the fact that such talk is often defined, explicitly or implicitly, as talk which is not concerned with serious information and which is not task oriented. Small talk is, at least officially, banished to the peripheries of work time and formally confined to breaks.” (Holmes & Stubbe 2003: 88).
2. Social talk is quintessential for social cohesion
“[…], social talk is an important means by which we negotiate the dimensions of politeness and power in interpersonal relationships at work; a crucial function of talk with significant implications for ongoing and future interactions.” (Holmes & Stubbe 2003: 88).
→ solidarity & positive politeness
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
The distribution of social talk in the workplace
(unmarked)
1.Social talk occurs at work breaks (coffee corner, lunch, smokers’ corner, etc.)
BUT: It does not only occur there;
It is not only social talk that is exchanged in work breaks.
2.Small talk, like greeting!, is a boundary marker.
a) softens the transition to work.
b) way to include new participants into a meeting, etc.
4.Small talk is obligatory with the first encounter of the day between colleagues. Otherwise, it may be dispensed with (at work!)
6.Time filler before meetings.
8.Small talk also occurs at the end of meetings to bring people ‘back to earth’.
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
The social functions of non-task-oriented talk?
1.‘Doing collegiality’ and ‘doing solidarity’ → managing positive face, catering for the self of the other
= VERBAL GROOMING, increases motivation for work
group forming phase!
3.Doing power in the workplace
→ power to finish small talk
→ minimization of overt status differences (conversationalization)
3.Small talk is socially distributed in the workplace: subordinates respond and engage more positively in small talk, while superiors often try to channel and restrict such talk.
5.Small talk is a site of resistance and challenge.
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
The functions of humour in the workplace?
Humour is a “multifunctional resource in workplace interaction”. (Holmes & Stubbe 2003: 109)
1.Humour occurs at strategic points:
a) boundary marker
b) openings and closings of meetings
c) topic transition points
3.Most importantly, it is a excellent means to release tension
a) after a difficult or complex discussion
b) in a socially challenging situation
c) ‘momentary mental vacation’ (Eastman 1936)
3. A joint culture of humour at the workplace reaffirms group solidarity
4. Humour constructs participants as equals: we have to share the joke
together; this can also be dangerous!
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
The social functions of humour at work?
1.‘Doing collegiality’ and ‘doing solidarity’ by “nurturing harmonious work relationships” (Holmes & Stubbe 2003:110)
a) amusing workmates
b) maintaining good work relations
c) jocular abuse, winding up
2.Doing power in the workplace
a) softening directives (conversationalization)
3.Resistance and challenging authority (what a rotten trick to play on a little girl, don’t be a bullyboy, slave-driver, etc.)
4.Humour is a defining element of a workplace culture (more vs. less). Type of humour (irony, self-irony, etc.) is an indicator of group cohesion.
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
From instances of humour to humour cultures?
- Humour as a social regulator in communities of practice
In creating the group as an arena in which individuals wish to invest time, a joking culture cements members to the group, even in the face of the costs involved in social solidarity. Informal groups without a publicly acknowledged power system or explicit set of rules need mechanisms to regulate the behaviors of members. One of the most effective of these, in part because of its subtlety, is humor […].
(Fine and de Soucey 2005: 8)
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
What is a community of practice?
A CoP is centrally defined by its members’ “mutual engagement in an endeavour” as well as the corresponding knowledge of the typical “[w]ays of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations” that are associated with the practice.
(Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992: 464)
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
Sharing an idioculture
[…] a system of knowledge, beliefs, behaviours, and customs shared by members of an interacting group to which members can refer that serve as the basis of further interaction. Members recognize that they share experiences, and these experiences can be referred to with the expectation that they will be understood by other members.
(Fine 1987: 125)
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
Characteristics of a community of practice and their idioculture (see Wenger 1998: 125-126)
•Mutual engagement: the members have sustained relationships that range from being harmonious to conflictual.
•A joint negotiated enterprise: the interactors are cooperating for a specific purpose and rely on shared ways of doing so.
•A shared repertoire of joint resources for negotiating meaning: the group members’ joint repertoire consists of local lore, shared stories, inside jokes, etc.
•Certain styles recognized as displaying membership: the CoP depends on characteristic practices of symbolic scaffolding to display both the practice and the identity of the ‘group’.
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
Holmes and Stubbe’s workplace studies in New Zealand
- General background
•Data taken from Victoria University of Wellington Language in the Workplace Project
•Approximately 1000 workplace interactions
•Workplace interactions in a wide range of New Zealand workplaces, including government agencies, private organisations, small businesses, and factories
•More than 350 participants, women and men from a range of ages and levels of responsibility within each organisation
•Pakeha and Maori New Zealanders, some other ethnic groups (Samoan and Chinese)
- The case studies
CASE STUDY 1:
•White-collar ‘knowledge industry’, predominantly female Pakeha’s
•Tighly knit community of practice
•Mainly daily interactions (formal meetings, informal problem-solving sessions social chat at breaks)
•Typically supportive communicative style
HUMOUR TYPES & STYLE:
•doing collegiality, hierarchy is played down
•jointly constructed and collaborative humour
•jocular conversations, anectdotes
•When conflict arises, humour is used to mask the threats and highlight the solidarity in the group.
CASE STUDY 2:
•blue-collar factory team within manufacturing industry
•female leader, male-dominated team
•very tightly-knit and cohesive community of practice, also meet outside the workplace
•12-hour shifts: mutual engagement is not very high at work (factory work!)
•BUT: daily briefing meetings and smoking and coffee breaks
HUMOUR FREQUENCY TYPES & STYLE:
•high amount of humour, twice as much as in white-collar environment!
•sparky, contestive, competitive
•in-your-face strategies, swearing, jocular abuse, irony, sarcasm
•butt = 1 member out of a larger group
CASE STUDY 3:
•white-collar, team of IT specialists with shared expertise
•predominantly male
•loosely-knit, only brought together to work on projects of 10 weeks
•weekly meetings
•speak the same technical language
•power centred about expertise
HUMOUR TYPES & STYLE:
•contestive, one-at-a-time, non-collaborative
•individual style
•competing for the floor and hierarchical position
•irony, sarcasm, one-liners
LECTURE 5
The social functionality of humour at work
Humour culture in the student e-learning groups
- Symbolic play
Symbolic play is […] an instance of “virtual cognition”, in which the imaginary and the real fuse or blend into an experiential arena in which the “mental” and the “physical” are, as it were, dissociated from the customary, conventional or canonical correlations, and reassembled in a new, blended space. The characteristics of the play space are primarily governed by the knowledge of the player(s) about the “play domain”, and this knowledge over-rides the immediate and conventional affordances of the physical setting.
(Sinha 2005: 1547)
LECTURE 6
Giora’s marked informativeness and optimal innovation hypotheses
Psycholinguistics; Problems of inductivism?
- Conclusions based on induced theories can never be guaranteed to be true.
➞ We can never be sure that we did not miss to observe a flying penguin.
- We cannot observe data “objectively” without making preconceived assumptions about what might be relevant to observe.
➞Observations are always guided by an implicit theory of the world of phenomena.
➞There is no “objective” basis for deciding what is relevant to observe.
LECTURE 6
Giora’s marked informativeness and optimal innovation hypotheses
Remarks Deductivism
- Foundations of science are not based on objectivity and the idea that observation must always precede hypothesis formulation.
➞ BUT: Hypotheses must be clearly formulated and testable (based on deductive logic).
- We can never verify a hypothesis, but we can
falsify it.
➞Falsification is the basis for theory refinement.
➞Produce a more differentiated, testable and falsifiable hypothesis.
LECTURE 6
Giora’s marked informativeness and optimal innovation hypotheses
Words in the mind? Lexical decision experiments (see O’Grady et al. 1997: 392-394)
- Design:
•Subjects sit in front of computer screen.
•They are presented a word on the screen: e.g. glove vs. blove.
•Decide as quickly as possible whether it is an English word or not.
- Stimulus variables: different words: nlibs vs. limbs
- Dependent variables: response latency (= response time)
response accuracy (= correctness)
- Results: e.g. frequency effects, phonotactic effects
