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Part of
The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and negotiating humor in everyday encounters
Edited by Villy Tsakona and Jan Chovanec
[Topics in Humor Research 7] 2018
► pp. 57–76

Chapter 3
Discourse markers as guides to understanding spontaneous humor and irony

| Voronezh State University

The paper addresses the issue of categorizing and interpreting utterances as either serious or non-serious in spontaneous discourse. The research is based on real-life dialogues and samples of computer-mediated interactions in which discourse participants need to discuss the mode of communication due to unexpected insincerity, use of jokes, humorous or ironic remarks in otherwise earnest and sincere interactions. In this context, the aim of the paper is twofold: firstly, it shows how the mode of communication can be negotiated with the help of discourse markers and, secondly, it demonstrates multiple functions of these markers in dialogue. By explicating the speaker’s intention, these phrases guide the process of understanding and indicate how the meaning of the utterance can be integrated in discourse. Discourse markers can also function as signals of social meaning, for example, as signals of implicit conflict or competition.

Keywords: mode of discourse, sincerity, metadiscourse, humor, irony, discourse markers
Article outline
  • 1.Negotiating the discourse mode
  • 2.On the variety of modes of discourse: What makes them different?
  • 3.Discussing the mode of discourse in spontaneous communication
  • 4.Discourse markers as tools for the negotiation of the discourse mode
    • 4.1Initiation of a specific mode of communication
    • 4.2Negotiating the mode of discourse
    • 4.3Putting the dialogue back on the serious track
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Data sources
  • References
Published online: 5 January 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.7.03shi
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Chovanec, Jan
2018. Chapter 9. Irony as counter positioning. In The Pragmatics of Irony and Banter [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 30], ► pp. 165 ff. DOI logo
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor
2023. La pragmática de un etiquetaje pragmático para la plataforma observahumor.com. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 96 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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