Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness

A pragmatic analysis of social interaction

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ISBN 9789027204134 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
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ISBN 9789027262110 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
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Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness is the first systematic study that offers a socio-pragmatic perspective on humorous practices such as teasing, mockery and taking the piss and their relation to (im)politeness. Analysing data from corpora, reality television and interviews in Australian and British cultural contexts, this book contributes to cross-cultural and intercultural research on humour and its role in social interaction. Although, in both contexts, jocular verbal practices are highly valued and a positive response – the ‘preferred reaction’ – can be expected, the conceptualisation of what is seen as humorous can vary, especially in terms of what ‘goes too far’. By examining how attempts at humour can occasion offence, presenting a distinction between ‘frontstage’ and ‘backstage’ perceptions of jocularity and looking at how language users evaluate jocular behaviours in interaction, this study shows how humour and (im)politeness are co-constructed and negotiated in discourse. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in pragmatics, conversational humour, (im)politeness, intercultural communication, discourse analysis, television studies and interaction in English-speaking contexts.
[Topics in Humor Research, 8] 2019.  xi, 274 pp.
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Table of Contents
“There are far too many studies that talk the talk (blind us with yet more theoretical notions and terms) without walking the walk (doing the necessary empirical footwork). This study, couched in lucid prose, brilliantly does both. Focusing on humour in interactions, it eclectically combines theory from (im)politeness and humour research, and drives it all robustly forward with data from corpora, reality television discourse and qualitative interviewing. Trailblazing, to say the least!”
“This book offers fascinating insights into British and Australian jocular practices based on interviews and the discourse of reality television shows, an excellent source of publically available natural language data. I highly recommend Valeria Sinkeviciute’s work to everybody interested in cross-cultural and inter-cultural studies on conversational humour and (im)politeness.”
“In this thoroughly empirical study of phenomena at the crossroads of humor and politeness, Valeria Sinkeviciute shows how interpretations of verbal behavior can go in different directions, even at the same time, and for the same participants, at different levels of publicness. Her work makes it impossible for pragmaticians to avoid thinking about meaning in terms of meaning potential.”
“To conclude, this work is a very welcome addition to the field of interactional pragmatics, and constitutes an engaging, well-structured discussion of the data at hand. This book will be of interest to those who study pragmatics or intercultural communication, whether they be seasoned academics or undergraduate students who are new to either linguistics or media studies.”
“The volume covers a wide range of relevant issues that may ring a bell for other researchers in the field to further investigate building on its invaluable findings. The book is highly recommended as a resource to departments that include pragmatic and sociolinguistic studies in their programs. It is useful for those who seek elaborative writing on humor and its interpretation across cultures. The book also has a rich reference list of numerous related studies, which are worthwhile to read on the topic.”
“To conclude, this work is a very welcome addition to the field of interactional pragmatics, and constitutes an engaging, well-structured discussion of the data at hand. This book will be of interest to those who study pragmatics or intercultural communication, whether they be seasoned academics or undergraduate students who are new to either linguistics or media studies. The work may also appeal to fans of Big Brother, who may enjoy reading about the show in a way that they had not come across before!”
“Overall, this book constitutes a cutting-edge study on the interplay of humour and impoliteness in media discourse, and is highly recommended to all researchers in the fields of discourse analysis, pragmatics, humour and (im)politeness research, intracultural and intercultural communication and media studies”
Cited by (19)

Cited by 19 other publications

Béal, Christine
2024. Review of the Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts. Corpus Pragmatics 8:2  pp. 167 ff. DOI logo
O’Driscoll, Jim
2024. The complexity of non-seriousness: a case study of a (mock?) mock impolite utterance. Journal of Politeness Research 0:0 DOI logo
Alvarado Ortega, M. Belén
2023. Communicative strategies in interactional male humour. In The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 335],  pp. 152 ff. DOI logo
Balakrishnan, Vinod & Vishaka Venkat
2023. Understanding Humour. In The Language of Humour and Its Transmutation in Indian Political Cartoons,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Bell, Nancy D.
2023. Humor and Irony. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Orthaber, Sara
2023. On (Im)politeness. In (Im)politeness at a Slovenian Call Centre [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ],  pp. 11 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
Ruiz-Gurillo, Leonor
2023. Humor negotiation in interactional sequences in Spanish. In The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 335],  pp. 133 ff. DOI logo
Ruiz-Gurillo, Leonor
2024. Mock impoliteness in Spanish: evidence from the VALESCO.HUMOR corpus. HUMOR 37:1  pp. 23 ff. DOI logo
Chang, Wei-Lin Melody & Valeria Sinkeviciute
2022. role of ‘familiarity’ in Mandarin Chinese speakers’ metapragmatic evaluations of Australian conversational humour. The European Journal of Humour Research 10:2  pp. 74 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Luyu & Milad Mehdizadkhani
2022. Disney’s Two Versions of Mulan (1998, 2020) and Twitter: A Reception Study in Terms of (Im)politeness. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 51:6  pp. 595 ff. DOI logo
Dynel, Marta & Valeria Sinkeviciute
2021. Conversational Humour. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics,  pp. 408 ff. DOI logo
Kostadinova, Viktorija, Marco Wiemann, Gea Dreschler, Sune Gregersen, Beáta Gyuris, Ai Zhong, Maggie Scott, Lieselotte Anderwald, Beke Hansen, Sven Leuckert, Tihana Kraš, Shawnea Sum Pok Ting, Ida Parise Alessia Cogo, Elisabeth Reber & Furzeen Ahmed
2021. I English Language. The Year's Work in English Studies 100:1  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Parvaresh, Vahid & Tahmineh Tayebi
2021. Taking offence at the (un)said:Towards a more radical contextualist approach. Journal of Politeness Research 17:1  pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
Sinkeviciute, Valeria
2020. “Hey BCC this is Australia and we speak and read English:” Monolingualism and othering in relation to linguistic diversity. Intercultural Pragmatics 17:5  pp. 577 ff. DOI logo
Sinkeviciute, Valeria
2022. Teasing. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ],  pp. 156 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics,  pp. 247 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 september 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.

Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis

Main BISAC Subject

LAN009030: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Pragmatics
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2019028750 | Marc record