Cover not available
Part of
Participation in Public and Social Media Interactions
Edited by Marta Dynel and Jan Chovanec
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 256] 2015
► pp. 27–47

Participation frameworks and participation in televised sitcom, candid camera and stand-up comedy

In order to reconstruct the participation frameworks of three TV comedy subgenres, this article follows the common differentiation into the fictitious characters’ communication and the discourse between a comedy’s production crew and the television audience. The TV viewer is conceptualised as the central and ratified empirical recipient. At the same time, it is argued that a fictitious overhearer’s position is created for her/him on the level of the characters’ communication, using camera position, sound and other technical means. Participation frameworks are reconstructed for sitcom, candid camera and stand-up comedy, which differ considerably from each other and are definitive for their respective sub-genre. Some manipulations of the basic constellations are also analysed, including meta-humour.

Published online: 12 February 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.256.02bro
References
Bergson, Henri
1948 Das Lachen. Meisenheim am Glan: Westkulturverlag Anton Hain.Google Scholar
Brock, Alexander
2004 Blackadder, Monty Python und Red Dwarf – eine linguistische Untersuchung britischer Fernsehkomödien. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.Google Scholar
2006 “Vergnügliche Aggressionen. Zur analytischen Erfassung aggressiver Komik in Fernsehkomödien.” In Das Vergnügen in und an den Medien. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, ed. by Michael Klemm and Eva-Maria Jakobs, 49–65. Frankfurt (Main) et al.: Lang.Google Scholar
2009 “Zur Variation komischer Textsorten – der Fall britischer Fernseh-Comedies.” In Schlüsselqualifikation Sprache: Anforderungen – Standards – Vermittlung, ed. by Friedrich Lenz, 235–253. Frankfurt (Main) et al.: Lang.Google Scholar
2010 “The Mighty Boosh – ein Comedyformat zwischen Muster und Variation.” In Muster und Variation. Medienlinguistische Perspektiven auf Textproduktion und Text, ed. by Martin Luginbühl and Daniel Perrin, 189–215. Bern: Lang.Google Scholar
Bubel, Claudia M
2008 “Film Audiences as Overhearers.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 55–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burger, Harald
2005 Mediensprache. Eine Einführung in Sprache und Kommunikationsformen der Massenmedien, 3., völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert, and Edward Schaefer
1992 “Dealing with Overhearers.” In Arenas of Language Use, ed. by Herbert Clark, 248–273. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert
1996 Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dynel, Marta
2010 “Not Hearing Things – Hearer/Listener Categories in Polylogues.” mediAzioni 9. [URL], ISSN 1974-4382.Google Scholar
2011a “ ‘I’ll be there for You!’ On Participation-based Sitcom Humour.” In The Pragmatics of Humour across Discourse Domains, ed. by Marta Dynel, 311–333. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011b “Stranger than Fiction? A Few Methodological notes on Linguistic Research in Film Discourse.” Brno Studies in English 37 (1): 41–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011c “ ‘You talking to Me?’ The Viewer as a Ratified Listener to Film Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1628–1644. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor/Random.Google Scholar
1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Gülich, Elisabeth, and Wolfgang Raible
1979 “Überlegungen zu einer makrostrukturellen Textanalyse.” In Linguistische Textanalyse: Überlegungen zur Gliederung von Texten, 2., durchgesehene und ergänzte Auflage, ed. by Elisabeth Gülich, Klaus Heger, and Wolfgang Raible, 73–126. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
Keith-Spiegel, Patricia
1972 “Early Conceptions of Humor: Varieties and Issues.” In The Psychology of Humor. Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, ed. by Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee, 3–39. New York, San Francisco and London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kozloff, Sarah
2000 Overhearing Film Dialogue. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen
1996 Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kühn, Peter
1995 Mehrfachadressierung. Untersuchungen zur adressatenspezifischen Polyvalenz sprachlichen Handelns. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C
1988 “Putting Linguistics on a Proper Footing: Explorations in Goffman’s Concept of Participation.” In Erving Goffman. Exploring the Interaction Order, ed. by Paul Drew and Anthony Wootton, 161–227. Oxford: Polity.Google Scholar
Mills, Brett
2009 The Sitcom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Piazza, Roberta, Monika Bednarek, and Fabio Rossi
(eds.) 2011 Telecinematic Discourse. Approaches to the Language of Films. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rutter, Jason
1997 Stand-up as Interaction: Performance and Audience in Comedy Venues. Manuscript: University of Salford.Google Scholar
2000 “The Stand-up Introduction Sequence: Comparing Comedy Comperes.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 463–483. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson
1974 “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-taking for Conversation.” Language 50: 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Short, Mick
1989 “Discourse Analysis and the Analysis of Drama.” In Language, Discourse and Literature. An Introductory Reader in Discourse Stylistics, ed. by Ronald Carter and Paul Simon, 139–168. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
1994 “Discourse Analysis and Drama.” In The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. 2, ed. by R. E. Asher, 949–952. Oxford, New York, Seoul and Tokyo: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson
1981 “Irony and the Use–Mention Distinction.” In Radical Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 295–318. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney and San Francisco: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 9 other publications

Cao, Ying, Chong Han, Xiangdong Liu & Adrian Hale
2021. ‘She is like a Yakshini’. The European Journal of Humour Research 9:4 ► pp. 110 ff. DOI logo
Fiadotava, Anastasiya
2020. “The Path of the Comedian is Always Going to be a Lonely One”: Comedians’ Mediation Between Family Humour and Public Performance. Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics 14:2 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Khafaga, Ayman
2023. Beyond relational work: a psycho-pragmatic analysis of impoliteness in Shakespeare’s King Lear. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10:1 DOI logo
Linares Bernabéu, Esther
2023. Co-constructing humour and gender identity in live stand-up comedy. In The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 335], ► pp. 200 ff. DOI logo
Messerli, Thomas C.
2019. Subtitles and cinematic meaning-making: Interlingual subtitles as textual agents . Multilingua 38:5 ► pp. 529 ff. DOI logo
Messerli, Thomas C.
2020. Subtitled artefacts as communication – the case ofOcean’s ElevenScene 12. Perspectives 28:6 ► pp. 851 ff. DOI logo
Sunday, Adesina B. & Ganiu A. Bamgbose
2021. A pragmatic analysis of humour strategies and functions in 'Jenifa's Diary' and 'Professor JohnBull'. The European Journal of Humour Research 9:4 ► pp. 20 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2018. The Discourse of Online Sportscasting [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 297], DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. Language and Characterisation in Television Series [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 106], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 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.