Cover not available
Part of
Metapragmatics of Humor: Current research trends
Edited by Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 14] 2016
► pp. 147–175

How do French humorists adapt across situations?

A corpus study of their prosodic and (dis)fluency profiles

| The VALIBEL Research Centre, Institute for Language and Communication (IL&C), Université catholique de Louvain (UCL)

The paradigm of humor studies has deemed prosody (rhythm and intonation) and (dis)fluencies (discourse markers, filled and unfilled pauses, repetitions, etc.) as relevant cues in conversational humor for expression of sarcasm and irony. However, they also make valuable (interactive) devices for discourse planning and structure since they carry both semantic and pragmatic information. After a summary on the study of humorists’ speech and its meta-pragmatic implications (Sections 1 & 2), a two-fold corpus-based analysis offers results on 8 humorists’ speech variations across 4 situations (theatre and radio sketches, radio and face-to-face interviews) and their relevant contextual features. Firstly on the continuum from hypo- to hyper-articulation (Lindblom, 1990), temporal and melodic variations reveal which discourse adaptation is motivated by a specific pragmatic determiner. Secondly, (dis)fluencies’ distribution within speakers and across situations reveal the importance of the individual’s Speaker Dis/Fluency Profile (SDFP). Discussion shall focus on the study’s contribution to humorists’ phonostyles and persona, as well as on the implication of native language SDFP for assessment of non-native speakers.

Keywords: Humorists’ speech, Corpus Linguistics, Prosody, Disfluencies, Register and Style Variation, French.
Article outline
  • 1.Studying the prosody and variation of humorists’ speech
    • 1.1Factors of prosodic registers and styles variations
    • 1.2Culturally integrated metapragmatic of Humor in French corpora
  • 2.The present study
    • 2.1Speech material and corpus treatment
    • 2.2Research question
    • 2.3Hypotheses
  • 3.Prosodic variation
    • 3.1Temporal variations
    • 3.2Intonative variations
    • 3.3Accentual density
    • 3.4Illustration of prosodic register and style variation
  • 4.(Dis)fluency analysis
    • 4.1Overall (dis)fluencies distribution
    • 4.2Complexity of (dis)fluency sequences
    • 4.3Types of sequences including pauses
  • 5.Conclusion and discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 November 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.14.08gro
References
Adams, A. C.
(2014) Humor Markers. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. (pp. 359–361). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Astésano, C.
(2001) Rythme et accentuation en français: invariance et variabilité stylistique. L’Harmattan, Paris.Google Scholar
Attardo, S.
(Ed) (2014) Encyclopedia of humor studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Verbal Humor. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. (pp. 789–791). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bachy, S., Dister, A., Francard, M., Geron, G., Giroul, V., Hambye, P., Simon, A.-C., Wilmet, R.
(2007) Conventions de transcription régissant les corpus de la banque de données VALIBEL (p. 18). Université catholique de Louvain.Google Scholar
Bardiaux, A.
(2013) Indices prosodiques régionaux en français de Belgique. L’apport d’une catégorisation perceptive des données. In Proceedings of the Prosody-Discourse Interface Conference 2013 (IDP 2013) (p. 13). Leuven, Belgium.Google Scholar
Bertrand, R., & Priego-Valverde, B.
(2011) Does prosody play a specific role in conversational humor? Pragmatics & Cognition, 19(2), 333–356. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D. & Conrad, S.
(2009) Register, Genre and Style. NY: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bigi, B., Meunier, C., Nesterenko, I., & Bertrand, R.
(2010) Automatic detection of syllable boundaries in spontaneous speech. In Proceedings of the Language Resource and Evaluation Conference (LREC2010) (pp. 3285–3292). La Valetta, Malta.Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D.
(2015) Praat: doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.4.08,).Google Scholar
Bortfeld, H., Leon, S. D., Bloom, J. E., Schober, M. F., & Brennan, S. E.
(2001) Disfluency rates in conversation: Effects of age, relationship, topic, role, and gender. Language and Speech, 44(2), 123–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brodie, I.
(2014) Stand-up Comedy. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. (pp. 733–737). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Bryant, G. A.
(2011) Verbal irony in the wild. Pragmatics & Cognition, 19(2), 291–309. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crible, L.
(2015a) DisFrEn: a richly annotated dataset for the contrastive and variationist study of discourse markers in speech. Identification and Annotation of Discourse Relations in Spoken Language Workshop (DiSPoL 2015), October 1-2, Saarbrücken, GermanyGoogle Scholar
(2015b) Etude contrastive des marqueurs de discours français et anglais: approche onomasiologique sur corpus comparable. Presented at the 4th International Symposium « Discourse markers in romance languages: a contrastive approach», May 6-9, University of Heidelberg., Heidelberg, Germany.Google Scholar
Crible, L., Dumont, A., Grosman, I., & Notarrigo, I.
(2016) Annotation manual of fluency and disfluency markers in multilingual, multimodal, native and learner corpora. Version 2.0.” (Working paper). Université catholique de Louvain & Université de Namur.
De Cock, S.
(2004) Preferred Sequences of Words in NS and NNS Speech. Belgian Journal of English Language and Literature, 2, 225–46.Google Scholar
Degand, L., Simon, A. C., Tanguy, N., & Van Damme, T.
(2014) Initiating a discourse unit in spoken French: Prosodic and syntactic features of the left periphery. In S. Pons Bordería (Ed.), Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (Vol. 250, pp. 243–273). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Dumont, A.
(2015) Designing and implementing a multilayer annotation system for (dis)fluency features in learner and native corpora. Corpus Linguistic Conference 2015. Lancaster, UK.Google Scholar
Flamson, T., Bryant, G. A., & Barrett, H. C.
(2011) Prosody in spontaneous humor: Evidence for encryption. Pragmatics & Cognition, 19(2), 248–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fonagy, I.
(1980) L’accent français : accent probabilitaire. L’accent En Français Contemporain, Studia Phonetica, 8, 53–97.Google Scholar
Fonagy, I., & Fonagy, J.
(1976) Prosodie professionnelle et chcangements prosodiques. Le Français Moderne, 44, 414–420.Google Scholar
Forabosco, G.
(2014) Cognitive Aspects. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. (pp. 135–138). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Gilquin, G., De Cock, S., & Granger, S.
eds. (2010) LINDSEI. Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage. Presses universitaires de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve 2010.Google Scholar
Goffman, E.
(1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday.Google Scholar
Goldman, J.-P.
(2011) EasyAlign: an automatic phonetic alignment tool under Praat. In Proceedings of Interspeech’11, 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association. Firenze, Italy.Google Scholar
Goldman, J.-P., Auchlin, A., Roekhaut, S., Simon, A. C., Avanzi, M.,
(2010) Prominence perception and accent detection in French. A corpus-based account. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2010. Chicago, USA.Google Scholar
Goldman, J.-P., Auchlin, A., & Simon, A. C.
(2011) Discrimination de styles de parole par analyse semi-automatique. In H.-Y. Yoo & E. Delais-Roussarie (Eds.). In Proceedings of the Prosody-Discourse Interface Conference 20009 (IDP 2009) (pp. 287–301). Paris, France.Google Scholar
(2013) Les variables temporelles dans le dialogue. In Proceedings of the Prosody-Discourse Interface Conference 2013 (IDP 2013) (pp. 39–44). Leuven, Belgium.Google Scholar
Goldman, J.-P., Avanzi, M., Lacheret-Dujour, A., & Simon, A. C.
(2007) A methodology for the automatic detection of perceived prominent syllables in spoken French. In A Methodology for the Automatic Detection of Perceived Prominent Syllables in Spoken French (pp. 91–120).Google Scholar
Goldman, J.-P., Pršir, T., Christodoulides, G., Simon, A. C., & Auchlin, A.
(2014) Phonogenre Identification: A Perceptual Experiment with 8 Delexicalised Speaking Styles. Cahiers de Linguistique Française, (31), 51–62.Google Scholar
Götz, S.
(2013) Fluency in Native and Nonnative English Speech (Vol. 53). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grichkovtsova, I., Morel, M., & Lacheret, A.
(2012) The role of voice quality and prosodic contour in affective speech perception. Speech Communication, 54(3), 414–429. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grosman, Iulia
(2013) Variations Phonostylistiques et Patrons de Bipolarisations Rythmiques. Etude Sur Corpus : La Parole Des Humoristes Français. Mémoire de Master, Université catholique de Louvain.Google Scholar
Henry, S.
(2002) Étude des répétitions en français parlé spontané pour les technologies de la parole. In Actes des 4e Rencontres des étudiants Chercheurs en Informatique pour le Traitement Automatique des Langue (pp. 467–476). Nancy, France.Google Scholar
Hupin, B., & Simon, A. C.
(2007) Analyse phonostylistique du discours. La radio un mode de communication à vive voix. Recherche En Communication, 28, 103–122.Google Scholar
Koch, P., & Osterreicher, W.
(2001) Gesprochene Spracche und geschriebene Sprache / Langage parlé et langage écrit. In G. Holtus, M. Metzeltin, & C. Schmitt (Eds.), Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik (Vol. 1, pp. 584–627). Tübinge: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Labov, W.
(1972) Sociolinguistic Patterns. University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
(2010) Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume 3: Cognitive and Cultural Factors. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lacheret, A.
(2011) Le corps en voix ou l’expression prosodique des émotions. Evolutions Psychomotrices, 83–90.Google Scholar
Lacheret-Dujour, A., & Beaugendre, F.
(1999) La Prosodie du français. CNRS éditions.Google Scholar
Léon, P.
(1993) Précis de phonostylistique: Parole et expressivité. Paris: Nathan.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C.
(1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lindblom, B.
(1990) Explaining Phonetic Variation: A Sketch of the H&H Theory. In W. J. Hardcastle & A. Marchal (Eds.), Speech Production and Speech Modelling, 55, 403–439. Springer Netherlands. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Llisteri, J.
(1992) Speaking styles in speech research. In Proceedings ELSNET/ESCA/SALT Workshop on Integrating Speech and Natural Language. Dublin, Ireland.Google Scholar
Lockyer, S.
(2014) Identity. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. (pp. 377–378). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Meurant, L.
(2015) Corpus LSFB. A digital open access corpus of movies and annotations in French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB). Laboratoire de Langue des signes de Belgique francophone (LSFB-Lab). FRS-F.N.R.S et Université de Namur, [URL].
Mertens, P.
(2004) The prosogram: Semi-automatic transcription of prosody based on a tonal perception model. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2004. Nara, Japan.Google Scholar
Mills, B.
(2014) Sketch Comedy Shows. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. (pp. 698–700). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Moniz, H., Trancoso, I., & Mata, A. I.
(2009) Classification of disfluent phenomena as fluent communicative devices in specific prosodic contexts. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2009. (pp. 1719–1722). Brighton, UK.Google Scholar
Moniz, H., Batista, F., Mata, A. I., & Trancoso, I.
(2014) Speaking style effects in the production of disfluencies. Speech Communication, 65, 20–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morel, M.-A., & Danon-Boileau, L.
(1998) Grammaire de l’intonation l’exemple du français. Paris: Ophyrs.Google Scholar
Notarrigo, I., & Meurant, L.
(2015) Fluencemes across signer profile (Poster presentation). Presented at the 2nd International Conference on Sign Language Acquisition (ICSLA), Amsterdam, Netherlands.Google Scholar
Popa, D. E.
(2014) Humorist. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. (pp. 371–372). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Pršir, T., Goldman, J.-P., & Auchlin, A.
(2013) Variation prosodique situationnelle: étude sur corpus de huit phonogenres en français. In Proceedings of the Prosody-Discourse Interface Conference 2013 (IDP 2013) (pp. 107–111), Leuven, Belgium.Google Scholar
Ruiz Gurillo, L.
(2013) Narrative strategies in Buenafuente’s humorous monologues. In L. Ruiz Gurillo & M. B. Alvarado Ortega (Eds.), Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (Vol. 231, pp. 107–140). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Schmid, H.
(1994) Probabilistic Part-of-Speech Tagging Using Decision Trees. In Proceedings of International Conference on New Methods in Language Processing (pp. 44–49). Manchester, UK.Google Scholar
Shriberg, E. E.
(1994) Preliminaries to a Theory of Speech Disfluencies (Ph.D. Thesis). University of California, Berkeley, USA.Google Scholar
Simon, A. C.
(2004) La structuration prosodique du discours en français: une approche multidimensionnelle et expérientielle. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Simon, A. C., Auchlin, A., Avanzi, M., & Goldman, J.-P.
(2010) Les phonostyles: une description prosodique des styles de parole en français. In M. Abecassi & G. Ledegen (Eds.), Les voix des Français. En parlant, en écrivant. (pp. 71–88). Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Simon, A. C., & Grobet, A.
(2005) Interprétation des scansions rythmiques en français. In Proceedings of the Prosody-Discourse Interface Conference 2005 (IDP 2005) (p. 19). Aix-en-Provence, France.Google Scholar
Taylor, J. M.
(2014) Forms of Humor. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. (pp. 351–352). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
(2014) Linguistic Theories of Humor. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopaedia of Humor Studies. (pp. 455–457). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Verschueren, J.
(1999) Understanding Pragmatics. Arnold.Google Scholar
Voth, B.
(2014) Audience. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. (pp. 70–71). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Wennerstrom, A.
(2001) The Music of Everyday Speech: Prosody and Discourse Analysis. Oxford University Press, USA.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Crible, Ludivine
2017. Discourse markers and (dis)fluency in English and French. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22:2 ► pp. 242 ff. DOI logo
Crible, Ludivine, Liesbeth Degand & Gaëtanelle Gilquin
2017. The clustering of discourse markers and filled pauses. Languages in Contrast 17:1 ► pp. 69 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2018. Discourse Markers and (Dis)fluency [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 286], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 april 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.