Article published in:
Multimodality and Cognitive Linguistics
Edited by María Jesús Pinar Sanz
[Benjamins Current Topics 78] 2015
► pp. 181–194

Multimodality in Conversational Humor

The paper presents the analysis of the humor found in four dyadic conversations. The results of the conversational data match those of previous studies (Pickering et al., 2009): no differences were found in volume or speech-rate between humorous pause units and non-humorous ones. Similarly, pauses were not found to mark humorous turns. However, the result that punch-lines showed lower pitch than non-humorous parts of the text was not replicated: humorous pause units showed no significant differences in pitch from non-humorous ones. Smiling is found to mark humor only in a general sense of “setting the frame” and is not integrated (i.e., co-extensive) with the humor.

Keywords: conversation, humor, laughter, multimodality, prosody, smiling
Published online: 15 October 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.78.12att
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