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. 229–256

Chapter 10
Online joint fictionalization

| Democritus University of Thrace

Genres are dynamic discoursal structures which are frequently subject to change so as to adapt to speakers’ new communicative goals and exigencies. The present paper explores the particularities of a quite recent genre of humor, online joint fictionalization, which seems to have emerged from oral joint fictionalization involving the collaborative construction of humorous fictional scenarios in informal face-to-face interactions among peers. The present case study reveals significant similarities between the new digital genre and the initial oral one. Furthermore, it appears that the new genre incorporates other humorous genres such as memes, which are typical of online communication and, in this new context, contribute to the construction of the fictional scenario at hand.

Keywords: humor, joint fictionalization, genre, online interaction, Facebook, fictional scenarios, meme, status update, online networks
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Joint fictionalization as a humorous genre
  • 3.Humor in online contexts
  • 4.The data of the study
  • 5.The analysis of the data
    • 5.1The structure of online joint fictionalization
    • 5.2Constructing Sifis the Cretan crocodile and his story
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Primary sources
  • References
Published online: 5 January 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.7.10tsa
References

Primary sources

Facebook communities [in Greek]

Manolios
[Ο Μανωλιός] (2015) Retrieved from [URL]
Sifis Crocodilakis
[Σήφης Κροκοδειλάκης] (2015) Retrieved from [URL]
Sifis the Crocodile
[Σήφης ο κροκόδειλος] (2015) Retrieved from [URL]
Sifis the Crocodile and His Friends
[Ο Σήφης ο κροκόδειλος και οι φίλοι του] (2015) Retrieved from [URL]
The Crocodile of Amari Should Remain in the Potami Dam
[Να παραμείνει ο κροκόδειλος του Αμαρίου στο Φράγμα των Ποταμών] (2015) Retrieved from [URL]

News articles cited in the study

Crete: “Sifis” originates in the Nile and he is… well-fed
(2014) Skai.gr, August 29th. Retrieved from [URL] [in Greek]
Crete’s crocodile found dead after cold snap
(2015) Sky News, March 30th. Retrieved from [URL]
Crocodile almost two meters long in a dam in Crete
(2014) To Vima, July 4th. Retrieved from [URL] [in Greek]
Herpetologist Olivier Behra is here for Sifis the crocodile
(2014) Newsbomb.gr, August 26th. Retrieved from [URL] [in Greek]
In Crete stays “Sifis” the crocodile (?), who may not be alone
(2014) Skai.gr, July 10th. Retrieved from [URL] [in Greek]
Mystery 6ft crocodile appears in middle of Greek lake – leaving local farmers terrified
(2014) The Independent, July 9th. Retrieved from [URL]
Mystery croc turns up in Greek lake in Crete
(2014) News.com.au, July 9th. Retrieved from [URL]
Sifis the Cretan crocodile is found dead – defying his hunters to the last
(2015) The Guardian, March 30th. Retrieved from [URL]
Sifis the crocodile to be part of Epiphany celebration on Crete
(2015) Independent, January 5th. Retrieved from [URL]
Tokyo is interested in the crocodile of Crete
(2014) Real.gr, July 18th. Retrieved from [URL] [in Greek]
Tourist snap: Crocodile on the loose in Crete sparks visitor rush to island
(2014) The Guardian, July 9th. Retrieved from [URL]
“Uncatchable” crocodile who terrorized Greek island and evaded world’s greatest hunters is found dead
(2015) Mirror, March 30th. Retrieved from [URL]
“World’s greatest crocodile hunter” fails to catch “Sifis” – Crete’s fugitive reptile
(2014) The Guardian, September 2nd. Retrieved from [URL]
Archakis, Argiris & Tsakona, Villy
(2010) “The wolf wakes up inside them, grows werewolf hair and reveals all their bullying”: The representation of parliamentary discourse in Greek newspapers. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(4), 912–923. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012) The narrative construction of identities in critical education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore
(1994) Linguistic theories of humor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
(2001) Humorous texts: A semantic and pragmatic analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baym, Nancy K.
(1993) Interpreting soap operas and creating community: Inside a computer-mediated fan culture. Journal of Folklore Research, 30(2/3), 143–176.Google Scholar
(1995) The performance of humor in computer-mediated communication. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 1(2). Retrieved from DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bell, Allan
(1991) The language of news media. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika & Caple, Helen
(2012) News discourse. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Bhatia, Vijay K.
(1997) The power and politics of genre. World Englishes, 16(3), 359–371. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolander, Brook & Locher, Miriam A.
(2015) “Peter is a dumb nut”: Status updates and reactions to them as ‘acts of positioning’ in Facebook. Pragmatics, 25(1), 99–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boxman-Shabtai, Lillian & Shifman, Limor
(2015) When ethnic humor goes digital. New Media & Society, 17(4), 520–539. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chovanec, Jan
(2012) Conversational humor and joint fantasizing in online journalism. In Jan Chovanec & Isabel Ermida (Eds.), Language and humor in the media (pp. 139–161). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Chovanec, Jan & Dynel, Marta
(2015) Researching interactional forms and participant structures in public and social media. In Marta Dynel & Jan Chovanec (Eds.), Participation in public and social media interactions (pp. 1–23). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Coogan, Peter
(2012) Genre: Reconstructing the superhero in All-Star Superman . In Matthew J. Smith & Randy Duncan (Eds.), Critical approaches to comics: Theories and methods (pp. 203–220). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Das, Anupam
(2010) Social interaction process analysis of Bengalis’ on Okrut®. In Rotimi Taiwo (Ed.), Handbook on research on discourse behavior and digital communication: Language structures and social interaction (pp. 66–87). Hershey: Information Science Reference. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frank, Russell
(2009) The forward as folklore: Studying e-mailed humor. In Trevor J. Blank (Ed.), Folklore and the internet: Vernacular expression in a digital world (pp. 98–122). Logan: Utah State University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Freedman, Aviva & Medway, Peter
(1994) Locating genre studies: Antecedents and prospects. In Aviva Freedman & Peter Medway (Eds.), Genre and the New Rhetoric (pp. 2–18). London: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Georgalou, Mariza
(2010) “Pathfinding” discourses of self in social network sites. In Rotimi Taiwo (Ed.), Handbook on research on discourse behavior and digital communication: Language structures and social interaction (pp. 39–65). Hershey: Information Science Reference. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goutsos, Dionysis
(2005) The interaction of generic structure and interpersonal relations in two-party e-chat discourse. language@internet, 2. Retrieved from [URL]
Hay, Jennifer
(2001) The pragmatics of humor support. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 14(1), 55–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holcomb, Christopher
(1997) A class of clowns: Spontaneous joking in computer-assisted discussions. Computers and Composition, 14(1), 3–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johns, Ann M.
(2002) Introduction: Genre in the classroom. In Ann M. Johns (Ed.), Genre in the classroom: Multiple perspectives (pp. 3–13). Mahwah: Laurence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Kotthoff, Helga
(1999) Coherent keying in conversational humor: Contextualizing joint fictionalization. In Wolfram Bublitz, Uta Lenk & Ejia Ventola (Eds.), Coherence in spoken and written discourse. How to create it and how to describe it. Selected papers from the International Workshop on Coherence, Augsburg, 24–27 April 1997 (pp. 125–150). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) Pragmatics of performance and the analysis of conversational humor. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 19(3), 271–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2007) Oral genres of humor: On the dialectic of genre knowledge and creative authoring. Pragmatics, 17(2), 263–296. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LeBlanc, Tracy R.
(2010) Impoliteness as a model for virtual speech community building. In Rotimi Taiwo (Ed.), Handbook on research on discourse behavior and digital communication: Language structures and social interaction (pp. 523–539). Hershey: Information Science Reference. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
North, Sarah
(2006) Making connections with new technologies. In Janet Maybin & Joan Swann (Eds.), The art of English: Everyday creativity (pp. 209–260). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, The Open University.Google Scholar
(2007) “The voices, the voices”: Creativity in online conversation. Applied Linguistics, 28(4), 538–555. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oh, Changhoon, Lim, Hajin, Koh, Kyle, Seo, Jinwook & Suh, Bongwon
(2014) Oppan internet meme style: A case study of internet memes through digital artifacts on social media. Paper presented at the TVX2014 Conference, Newcastle, UK, 25–27 June. Retrieved from [URL]
Peck, Andrew M.
(2014) A laugh riot: Photoshopping as vernacular discursive practice. International Journal of Communication, 8, 1638–1662.Google Scholar
Pennington, Natalie & Hall, Jeffrey A.
(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
Priego-Valverde, Beatrice
(2006) How funny it is when everybody gets going! A case of co-construction of humor in conversation. CÍRCULO de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación (CLAC), 27, 72–100.Google Scholar
Ramoz-Leslie, Nigel J.
(2011) Doin’ it for the LULZ: A contemporary analysis of internet humor. Graduate thesis, Whitman College, USA. Retrieved from [URL]
Raskin, Victor
(1985) Semantic mechanisms of humor. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.Google Scholar
Ren, Yuqing, Kraut, Robert & Kiesler, Sara
(2007) Applying common identity and bond theory to design of online communities. Organization Studies, 28(3), 377–408. 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, 187–209.Google Scholar
(2014a) Memes in digital culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
(2014b) The cultural logic of photo-based meme genres. Journal of Visual Culture, 13(3), 340–358. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thurlow, Crispin, Lengel, Laura & Tomic, Alice
(2004) Computer mediated communication: Social interaction and the internet. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Tsakona, Villy
(2017) Genres of humor. In Salvatore Attardo (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and humor (pp. 489–503). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vandergriff, Ilona
(2010) Humor and play in CMC. In Rotimi Taiwo (Ed.), Handbook on research on discourse behavior and digital communication: Language structures and social interaction (pp. 235–251). Hershey: Information Science Reference. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vandergriff, Ilona & Fuchs, Carolin
(2009) Does CMC promote language play? Exploring humor in two modalities. CALICO Journal, 27(1), 29–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012) Humor support in synchronous computer-mediated classroom discussions. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 25(4), 437–458. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wiggins, Bradley E. & Bowers, G. Bret
(2015) Memes as a genre: A structurational analysis of the memescape. New Media & Society, 17(1), 1886–1906. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winchatz, Michaela R. & Kozin, Alexander
(2008) Comical hypothetical: Arguing for a conversational phenomenon. Discourse Studies, 10(3), 383–405. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yates, Joanne & Orlikowski, Wanda J.
(1992) Genres of organizational communication: A structurational approach to studying communication and media. Academy of Management Review, 17(2), 299–326.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 11 other publications

Baider, Fabienne & Maria Constantinou
2020. Covert hate speech. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8:2 ► pp. 262 ff. DOI logo
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
Chovanec, Jan
2023. ‘Bigger than football’: racist talk on and off the soccer pitch. Soccer & Society 24:7 ► pp. 942 ff. DOI logo
Chovanec, Jan & Villy Tsakona
2023. “The girl is on fire!”. In The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 335], ► pp. 87 ff. DOI logo
Dynel, Marta
2020. Camilla Vásquez, Language, creativity and humour online. London: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 190. Pb. £29.. Language in Society 49:1 ► pp. 149 ff. DOI logo
Dynel, Marta
2023. Irony and Humor. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 237 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
Linares Bernabéu, Esther
2023. Introduction. In The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 335], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Mullan, Kerry
2020. Pile of Dead Leaves Free to a Good Home: Humour and Belonging in a Facebook Community. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, ► pp. 135 ff. DOI logo
Yus, Francisco
2023. Beyond Humour: Relevant Affective Effects. In Pragmatics of Internet Humour, ► pp. 309 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. Irony, Affect, and Related Figures. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 235 ff. 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.