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Article published In:
Pragmatics, Humour and the Internet
Edited by Francisco Yus
[Internet Pragmatics 4:1] 2021
► pp. 52–86

Humour in multimodal times

Insights from online interactions among senior users of a WhatsApp group

| Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla
| Harvard University

WhatsApp groups have become a popular way of communication among relatives, colleagues, friends and acquaintances regardless of different backgrounds, such as culture, education or age. When conveyed in digital settings, humour is usually evoked through multimodal elements that can modify the illocutionary force of the text or send complete hilarious messages that sparkle conversations. This paper seeks to analyse the expression of humour in a WhatsApp group made up of users over 65, a cohort that has not yet attracted considerable attention from research in the field. This is part of a broader research project that aims to investigate communicative exchanges in WhatsApp groups from a cross-generational perspective.

Keywords: humour, multimodality, digital discourse analysis, WhatsApp, senior users, sociolinguistics, digital literacy
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1WhatsApp, online discourse and digital group conversation
    • 2.2The multimodal expression of humour in a WhatsApp setting
    • 2.3Research gap
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Objectives and research questions
    • 3.2Corpus description: Participants, data selection and data collection
    • 3.3Methodological approach and analytical framework
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Absurd / unusual scenes
    • 4.2Cartoon strips
    • 4.3Plays on words / puns
    • 4.4Ironic statements
    • 4.5Memes
    • 4.6Standard/conversational jokes
    • 4.7Self-made humour
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 31 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00061.cru
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