Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics, Humour and the Internet
Edited by Francisco Yus
[Internet Pragmatics 4:1] 2021
► pp. 111–130

When humour backfires

How do Whats­App users respond to humorous profile statuses as a self-presentation strategy?

| Complutense University of Madrid

The present study stems from previous work on self-presentation in Whats­App users’ profile status. However, its main goal is to gauge other users’ reactions to Whats­App “humorous” statuses. In other words, do other users find statuses intended as humorous “funny”? To this purpose, the methodological approach adopted is both quantitative and qualitative. For the quantitative stage, a survey was carried out where participants were presented with eight statuses intended (as reported by their creators) to be humorous. These eight statuses represented both male and female Whats­App users (four each) as well as different strategies to construct humour (e.g., intertextuality, wordplay, absurdity). After piloting the survey, it was launched online, and 142 participants carried it out. Findings show that humour does not always lead to the desired effect and can indeed trigger negative evaluations and/or perplexity on other interlocutors. As a result, the user’s intended self-presentation as a witty, funny individual fails to hit its target and may contribute to other users’ negative perception of their persona.

Keywords: humour, Whats­App status, self-presentation, Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Whats­App statuses and humour
  • 2.Defining self-presentation
  • 3.Digital humour
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Data-gathering procedure
  • 5.Results and discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00064.are
References
Akinola, Ayodele J.
2018 “Pragmatics of crisis-Motivated humour in computer mediated platforms in Nigeria.” Journal of Language and Education 4(3): 6–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore
2001 Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin
1991 “Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model.” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 4(3–4): 293–348.Google Scholar
Attrill, Alison
2012 “Sharing only parts of me: Selective categorical self-disclosure across Internet arenas.” International Journal of Internet Science 7(1): 55–77.Google Scholar
Baumeister, Roy F.
1982 “Self-esteem, self-presentation, and future interaction: A dilemma of reputation.” Journal of Personality 50(1): 29–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baumeister, Roy F., and Mark R. Leary
1995 “The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation.” Psychological Bulletin 117(3): 497–529. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baumeister, Roy F., and Dianne M. Tice
1984 “Role of self-presentation and choice in cognitive dissonance under forced compliance: Necessary or sufficient causes?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46(1): 5–13. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baym, Nancy K.
1995 “The performance of humor in computer-mediated communication.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 1(2): 0–0. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bronstein, Jenny
2012 “Blogging motivations for Latin American bloggers: A uses and gratifications approach.” In Blogging in the Global Society, ed. by Tatyana Dumova, and Richard Fiordo, 200–215. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “Creating possible selves: Information disclosure behaviour on social networks.” Information Research 19(1): 1–14.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Pamela, Kris Boyle, and David Stephan
2017 “The shared cultural experience: A comparison of religious memes created by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, religious media, and church members.” Journal of Media and Religion 16(2): 67–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chiaro, Delia
2018 The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age: Viral Humour. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dynel, Marta
2011 “Blending the incongruity-resolution model and the conceptual integration theory: The case of blends in pictorial advertising.” International Review of Pragmatics 31: 59–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “Garden-paths, red lights and crossroads: On finding our way to understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying jokes.” Israeli Journal of Humor Research: An International Journal 11: 6–28.Google Scholar
2013 “Humorous phenomena in dramatic discourse.” The European Journal of Humor Research 11: 22–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “ ‘I has seen image macros!’: Advice Animals memes as visual-verbal jokes.” International Journal of Communication 101: 660–688.Google Scholar
Forabosco, Giovannantonio
1992 “Cognitive aspects of the humor process: The concept of incongruity.” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 5(1–2): 45–68.Google Scholar
2008 “Is the concept of incongruity still a useful construct for the advancement of humor research?” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 41: 45–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García-Gómez, Antonio
2010 “Disembodiment and cyberspace: Gendered discourses in female teenagers’ personal information disclosure.” Discourse and Society 21(2): 135–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor.Google Scholar
Kotthoff, Helga
2006 “Gender and humor: The state of the art.” Journal of pragmatics 38(1): 4–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kowalski, Robin M., and Mark R. Leary
1990 “Strategic self-presentation and the avoidance of aversive events: Antecedents and consequences of self-enhancement and self-depreciation.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 26(4): 322–336. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen
2015 “Jocular mockery in computer-mediated communication: A contrastive study of a Spanish and English Facebook community.” Journal of Politeness Research 11(2): 289–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 “Emotional self-presentation on Whats­App: Analysis of the profile status.” Russian Journal of Linguistics 22(1): 144–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Manago, Adriana M., Michael B. Graham, Patricia M. Greenfield, and Goldie Salimkhan
2008 “Self-presentation and gender on MySpace.” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 29(6): 446–458. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marone, Vittorio
2017 “Looping out loud: A multimodal analysis of humour on Vine.” The European Journal of Humour Research 4(4): 50–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, Rod A.
2007 The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach. Burlington, MA: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McKenna, Katelyn Y. A., and John Bargh
2000 “Plan 9 from cyberspace: The implications of the Internet from personality and social psychology.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 4(1): 57–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newman, David M.
2019 Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life. New York: Sage.Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R.
1989 “Intertextuality in humor.” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2(2): 117–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1993 “Repetition in canned jokes and spontaneous conversational joking.” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6(4): 385–402. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palmer, Jerry
2003 Taking Humour Seriously. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Papacharissi, Zizi
(ed.) 2011 A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pennington, Natalie, and Jeffrey A. Hall
2014 “An analysis of humor orientation on Facebook: A lens model approach.” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 27(1): 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raskin, Victor
1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Sánchez-Moya, Alfonso, and Olga Cruz-Moya
2015a “ ‘Hey there! I am using Whats­App’: A preliminary study of recurrent discursive realisations in a corpus of Whats­App statuses.” Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 2121: 52–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015b “Whatsapp, textese, and moral panics: Discourse features and habits across two generations.” Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 1731: 300–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shifman, Limor
2007 “Humor in the age of digital reproduction: Continuity and change in internet-based comic texts.” International Journal of Communication 1(1): 187–2009.Google Scholar
2014 Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Shultz, Thomas R.
1972 “The role of incongruity and resolution in children’s appreciation of cartoon humor.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 13(3): 456–477. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, Grinell
2008 “Does gender influence online survey participation?: A record-linkage analysis of university faculty online survey response behavior.” ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 501717.Google Scholar
Suls, Jerry H.
1972 “A two-stage model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons: An information processing analysis.” In The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, ed. by Jeffrey H. Goldstein, and Paul E. McGhee, 81–100. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1983 “Cognitive processes in humor appreciation.” In Handbook of Humor Research: Basic Issues, Vol. 11, ed. by Paul E. McGhee, and Jeffrey H. Goldstein, 39–57. New York: Springer-Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toma, Catalina L., and Jeffrey T. Hancock
2010 “Looks and lies: The role of physical attractiveness in online dating self-presentation and deception.” Communication Research 37(3): 335–351. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “A new twist on love’s labor: Self-presentation in online dating profiles.” In Computer-Mediated Communication in Personal Relationships, ed. by Kevin B. Wright, and Lynne M. Webb, 41–55. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Van Dijck, Teun
2013 “ ‘You have one identity’: Performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn.” Media, Culture and Society 35(2): 199–215. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wen, Miaomiao, Nancy Baym, Omer Tamuz, Jaime Teevan, Susan T. Dumais, and Adam Kalai
2015 “OMG UR funny! Computer-aided humor with an application to chat.” In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC 2015), 86–93. Park City, Utah, 29 June-2 July.Google Scholar
Wyer, Robert, and James. E. Collins
1992 “A theory of humor elicitation.” Psychological Review 99(4): 663–688. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yang, Chia-chen, and B. Bradford Brown
2016 “Online self-presentation on Facebook and self-development during the college transition.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 45(2): 402–416. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yus, Francisco
2016 Humour and Relevance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 “Incongruity-resolution cases in jokes.” Lingua 1971: 103–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhao, Shanyang, Sherri Grasmuck, and Jason Martin
2008 “Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships.” Computers in Human Behavior 24(5): 1816–1836. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Cantos-Delgado, Clara & Carmen Maíz-Arévalo
2023. “I hear you like bad girls? I’m bad at everything”: a British-Spanish cross-cultural analysis of humour as a self-presentation strategy in Tinder profiles . The European Journal of Humour Research 11:3 ► pp. 31 ff. DOI logo
Dynel, Marta
2024. Do We Know Whether to Laugh or Cry? User Responses to at Ukraine’s Dark-humour Meme. Journal of Creative Communications DOI logo
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen
2023. Humour as a Self-Presentation Strategy. In The Power of Self-Presentation, ► pp. 101 ff. DOI logo
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen
2024. Sharing is caring: An ethnographic approach to Spanish WhatsApp groups. Journal of Pragmatics 226 ► pp. 78 ff. DOI logo
Pérez-Sabater, Carmen
2021. Moments of sharing, language style and resources for solidarity on social media: A comparative analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 180 ► pp. 266 ff. DOI logo
Pérez-Sabater, Carmen
2022. Mixing Catalan, English and Spanish on WhatsApp. Spanish in Context 19:2 ► pp. 289 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.