Cover not available
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. 205–228

Chapter 9
No child’s play

A philosophical pragmatic view of overt pretense as a vehicle for conversational humor

| University of Łódź

This chapter sheds some light on the different interpretations of the notion of pretense across disciplines. Attention is paid primarily to the pragmatic and philosophical literature where pretense is used with regard to two linguistic notions: irony and deception. These are here conceptualized as overt pretense and covert pretense respectively. Both of these may serve humorous purposes. The principal objective of this chapter is to examine the interface between overt pretense and conversational humor, including humorous irony. This is done by critically revisiting the relevant literature on humorous pretense and by elucidating a number of forms and specific mechanisms such humor may take, as well as functions it may perform. The discussion is illustrated with extracts taken from the American television series House. This chapter thus tacitly supports the idea of verisimilar language use in fictional interactions.

Keywords: covert pretense, irony, overt pretense, overt untruthfulness, pretense, fictional interaction, parody, impersonation, role play, absurdity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Covert pretense and humor
  • 3.Overt pretense and irony
    • 3.1Overt pretense and humorous irony
  • 4.Overt pretense and nonironic conversational humor
  • 5.Summary and final comments
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 January 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.7.09dyn
References
Anscombe, G. E. M.
(1958) Pretending. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary volume 32: 279–294. London: Harrison and Sons.Google Scholar
Austin, John
(1958) Pretending. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary volume, 32, 261–278. London: Harrison and Sons.Google Scholar
Brandom, Robert
(1983) Asserting. Noûs, 17, 637–650. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brône, Geert
(2008) Hyper- and misunderstanding in interactional humor. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 2027–2061. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Camp, Elizabeth
(2012) Sarcasm, pretense, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction. Noûs, 46, 587–634. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carruthers, Peter
(2006) Why pretend? In Shaun Nichols (Ed.), The architecture of imagination (pp. 8–109). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castelfranchi, Cristiano & Isabella Poggi
(1994) Lying as pretending to give information. In Herman Parret (Ed.), Pretending to communicate (pp. 276–291). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chovanec, Jan
(2012) Conversational humor and joint fantisizing in online journalism. In Jan Chovanec & Isabel Ermida (Eds.), Language and humor in the media (pp. 131–169). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert
(1996) Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert & Gerrig, Richard
(1984) On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 121–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert & Mija Van Der Wege
(2001) Imagination in discourse. In Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen & Heidi E. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 772–786). Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas
(2004) Stylized deception. In Adam Jaworski, Nikolas Coupland & Dariusz Galasiński (Eds.), Metalanguage: Social and ideological perspectives (pp. 249–274). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Currie, Gregory
(1990) The nature of fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010) Narratives and narrators: A philosophy of stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) Why irony is pretense. In Shaun Nichols (Ed.), The architecture of imagination (pp. 111–133). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dynel, Marta
(2009) Humorous garden-paths: A pragmatic-cognitive study. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
(2011a) Stranger than fiction. A few methodological notes on linguistic research in film discourse. Brno Studies in English, 37, 41–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011b) “You talking to me?” The viewer as a ratified listener to film discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 1628–1644. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011c) I’ll be there for you: On participation-based sitcom humor. In Marta Dynel (Ed.), The pragmatics of humor across discourse domains (pp. 311–333). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011d) Joker in the pack: Towards determining the status of humorous framing in conversations. In Marta Dynel (Ed.), The pragmatics of humor across discourse domains (pp. 217–241). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013a) Humorous phenomena in dramatic discourse. The European Journal of Humor Research, 1(1), 22–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013b) Impoliteness as disaffiliative humor in film talk. In Marta Dynel (Ed.), Developments in linguistic humor theory (pp. 105–144). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013c) Irony from a neo-Gricean perspective: On untruthfulness and evaluative implicature. Intercultural Pragmatics, 10, 403–431. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013d) When does irony tickle the hearer? Towards capturing the characteristics of humorous irony. In Marta Dynel (Ed.), Developments in linguistic humor theory (pp. 298–320). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Isn’t it ironic? Defining the scope of humorous irony. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 27, 619–639. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016) With or without intentions: Accountability and (un)intentional humor in film talk. Journal of Pragmatics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017a). But seriously: On conversational humor and (un)truthfulness. Lingua 197: 83–102. DOI logo
(2017b) Impoliteness and telecinematic discourse. In Miriam A. Locher & Andreas H. Jucker (Eds.), Pragmatics of fiction. Mouton de Gruyter handbooks of pragmatics, Volume 12. (pp. 455–487). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
(2017c) The irony of irony: Irony based on truthfulness. Corpus Pragmatics, 1(1), 3–36.Google Scholar
(to appear) Lying and humor. In Jörg Meibauer (Ed.), Oxford handbook of lying. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fein, Greta
(1981) Pretend play in childhood: An integrative review. Child Development, 52, 1095–1118. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Ori, Neary, Karen, Burnstein, Corinna & Leslie, Alan
(2010) Is young children’s recognition of pretense metarepresentational or merely behavioral? Evidence from 2- and 3-year-olds’ understanding of pretend sounds and speech. Cognition, 115(2), 314–319. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garmendia, Joana
(2013) Irony: making as if we pretend to echo. In Istvan Kecskes & Jesus Romero-Trillo (Eds). Research trends in intercultural pragmatics (pp. 85–104). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gendler, Tamar
(2003) On the relation between pretense and belief. In Matthew Kieran (Ed.), Imagination, philosophy, and the arts. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
(2013) Imagination. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition). URL = [URL].
Gerrig, Richard
(1993) Experiencing narrative worlds: On the psychological activities of reading. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
(1974) Frame analysis. An essay in the organization of experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Grice, Herbert Paul
(1989a) Logic and conversation. In Studies in the way of words, 22–40. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. [Grice, Herbert Paul 1975 Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & H. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and semantics, Vol. 3: Speech acts, 41–58. New York: Academic Press; Grice, Herbert Paul 1975 Logic and conversation. In D. Davison & G. Harman (eds.), The logic of grammar, 64–75. Dickenson: Encino.]Google Scholar
(1989b) Further notes on logic and conversation. In Studies in the way of words, 41–57. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Grice, Herbert Paul (1978) Further notes on logic and conversation. In P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and semantics, Vol. 9: Pragmatics, 113–127. New York: Academic Press.]Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael
(2016) “Just kidding”: Teasing and claims to non-serious intent. Journal of Pragmatics, 95, 120–136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hay, Jennifer
(1995) Gender and humor: Beyond a joke. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington. Unpublished MA thesis.Google Scholar
(2000) Functions of humor in the conversations of men and women. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 709–742. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2001) The pragmatics of humor support. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 14(1), 55–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Howes, Carollee, Olivia Unger & Catherine Matheson
(1992) The collaborative construction of pretend: Social pretend play functions. Albany: Suny Press.Google Scholar
Kapogianni, Eleni
(2011) Irony via ‘surrealism’. In Marta Dynel (Ed.), The pragmatics of humor across discourse domains (pp. 51–68). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kotthoff, Helga
(2007) Oral genres of humor: On the dialectic of genre knowledge and creative authoring. Pragmatics, 17, 263–296. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kumon-Nakamura, Sachi, Glucksberg, Sam & Brown, Mary
(1995) How about another piece of pie: The allusional pretense theory of discourse irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 3–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lampert, Martin & Susan Ervin-Tripp
(2006) Risky laughter: Teasing and self-directed joking among male and female friends. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 51–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langland-Hassan, Peter
(2012) Pretense, imagination, and belief: The Single Attitude Theory. Philosophical Studies, 159, 155–179. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) What it is to pretend. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 95(1): 397–420. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David
(1978) Truth in fiction. American Philosophical Quarterly, 15, 37–46.Google Scholar
Lillard, Angeline
(1994) Making sense of pretense. In Charlie Lewis & Peter Mitchell (Eds.), Children’s early understanding of mind: Origins and development (pp. 211–234). Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Nash, Walter
(1985) The language of humor: Style and technique in comic discourse. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Nichols, Shaun & Stich, Stephen
(2000) A cognitive theory of pretense. Cognition, 74, 115–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Norrick, Neal
(1989) Intertextuality in humor. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 2, 117–139. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1993) Conversational joking: Humor in everyday talk. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Oring, Elliott
(2003) Engaging humor. Urbana: University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Pagin, Peter
(2015) Assertion. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), URL = [URL].
Parret, Herman
(Ed.) (1994) Pretending to communicate. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Peirce, Charles
(1934) Belief and judgment. In Charles Hartshorne & Paul Weiss (Eds.), Collected papers, vol. 5, (pp. 376–387). Cambridge: Harvard.Google Scholar
Rakoczy, Hannes
(2008) Pretense as individual and collective intentionality. Mind & Language, 23, 499–517. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Recanati, François
(2004) Literal meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2007) Indexicality, context and pretense: A speech-act theoretic account. In Noel Burton-Roberts (Ed.), Advances in pragmatics (pp. 213–229). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rossen-Knill, Debora & Richard Henry
(1997) The pragmatics of verbal parody. Journal of Pragmatics, 27, 719–752. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rothbart, Mary & Diana Pien
(1977) Elephants and marshmallows: A theoretical synthesis of incongruity-resolution and arousal theories of humor. In Chapman, Antony J. & Hugh C. Foot (Eds.), It’s a funny thing, humor (pp. 37–40). Oxford: Pergamon. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ruch, Willibald
(1992) Assessment of appreciation of humor: Studies with the 3WD humor test. In Charles Spielberger & James N. Butcher (Eds.), Advances in personality assessment, vol. 9 (pp. 27–75). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Rudanko, Juhani
(2006) Aggravated impoliteness and two types of speaker intention in an episode in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 829–841. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ryle, Gilbert
(1949) The concept of mind. Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Searle, John
(1975a) The logical status of fictional discourse. New literary history, Vol. VI, No.2.Google Scholar
(1975b) A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In Keith Gunderson (Ed.), Language, mind and knowledge. Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science, Vol. VII, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Sherzer, Joel
(2002) Speech play and verbal art. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Sinkeviciute, Valeria
(2013) Decoding encoded (im)politeness: “Cause on my teasing you can depend”. In Marta Dynel (Ed.), Developments in linguistic humor theory (pp. 263–288). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Soames, Scott
(2008) Drawing the line between meaning and implicature – and relating both to assertion. Noûs, 42, 440–465. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sobel, David
(2009) Enabling conditions and children’s understanding of pretense. Cognition, 113(2), 177–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stokke, Andreas
(2013) Lying and asserting. Journal of Philosophy, 110, 33–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stallone, Leticia & Michael Haugh
(2017) Joint fantasizing as relational practice in Brazilian Portuguese interactions. Language & Communication 55: 10–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Neil
(2011) Imagination is where the action is. The Journal of Philosophy, 108(2), 55–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Veale, Tony, Kurt Feyaerts & Geert Brône
(2006) The cognitive mechanisms of adversarial humor. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 19, 305–340. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vincent Marrelli, Jocelyne
(2004) Words in the way of Truth. Truthfulness, deception, lying across cultures and disciplines. Napoli: Edizione Scientifiche Italiane.Google Scholar
Vincent, Jocelyne & Cristiano Castelfranchi
(1981) On the art of deception: How to lie while saying the truth. In Herman Parret, Marina Sbisà & Jef Verschueren (Eds.), Possibilities and limitations of pragmatics: Proceedings of the conference on pragmatics, Urbino, July 8–14, 1979 (pp. 749–777). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walton, Kendall
(1990) Mimesis as make-believe: On the foundations of the representational arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard
(2002) Truth and truthfulness: An essay in genealogy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 12 other publications

Dynel, Marta
2018. Theoretically onMock Politeness in English and Italian. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 6:1 ► pp. 149 ff. DOI logo
Dynel, Marta & Fabio I. M. Poppi
2020. Arcana imperii*. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8:1 ► pp. 57 ff. DOI logo
Dynel, Marta & Fabio IM Poppi
2018. In tragoedia risus: Analysis of dark humour in post-terrorist attack discourse. Discourse & Communication 12:4 ► pp. 382 ff. DOI logo
Dynel, Marta & Andrew S. Ross
2021. You Don’t Fool Me: On Scams, Scambaiting, Deception, and Epistemological Ambiguity at R/scambait on Reddit. Social Media + Society 7:3 ► pp. 205630512110356 ff. DOI logo
Gibbs, Raymond W., Patrawat Samermit & Christopher R. Karzmark
2018. Humor, irony, and the body. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 16:1 ► pp. 72 ff. DOI logo
Indìo Massimo Poppi, Fabio
2021. Sancte et sapienter. Pragmatics and Society 12:3 ► pp. 437 ff. DOI logo
Jörg Meibauer
2018. The Oxford Handbook of Lying, DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2018. Preface. In The Oxford Handbook of Lying, ► pp. ix ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2018. Copyright Page. In The Oxford Handbook of Lying, ► pp. iv ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2018. List of figures and tables. In The Oxford Handbook of Lying, ► pp. xiii ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2019. Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness [Topics in Humor Research, 8], DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. The Multimodal Performance of Conversational Humor [Figurative Thought and Language, 13], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 march 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.