Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness
A pragmatic analysis of social interaction
Author
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.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgements | pp. xi–11
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Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–9
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Chapter 2. Meanwhile in the world of (im)politeness | pp. 11–29
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Chapter 3. Data: From corpora to reality television to interviews | pp. 31–60
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Chapter 4. Conversational humour: Jocular verbal behaviours | pp. 61–90
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Chapter 5. Jocular verbal behaviours in Australian and British cultural contexts | pp. 91–124
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Chapter 6. Frontstage and backstage reactions to jocularity | pp. 125–148
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Chapter 7. Negative evaluations of jocularity | pp. 149–172
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Chapter 8. Interviewees’ attitudes to jocularity | pp. 173–244
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Chapter 9. Conclusions | pp. 245–249
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References | pp. 251–272
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Subject index | pp. 1–3
“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!”
Jonathan Culpeper, Lancaster University
“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.”
Marta Dynel, University of Lodz
“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.”
Jef Verschueren, University of Antwerp
“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.”
Alexandra Krendel, Lancaster University, Corpus Pragmatics 2020
“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.”
Rashad Ahmed, Miami University of Ohio, on Linguist List 31.2286 (16 July 2020)
“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!”
Alexandra Krendel, Corpus Pragmatics 4 (2020)
“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”
Vasia Tsami, University of Patras & National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, in The European Journal of Humour Research 9 (3)
Cited by
Cited by 13 other publications
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. 
Balakrishnan, Vinod & Vishaka Venkat
2023. Understanding Humour. In The Language of Humour and Its Transmutation in Indian Political Cartoons, ► pp. 1 ff.
Bell, Nancy D.
2023. Humor and Irony. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ► pp. 1 ff.
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.
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.
Dynel, Marta & Valeria Sinkeviciute
2021. Conversational Humour. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 408 ff.
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.
Orthaber, Sara
2023. On (Im)politeness. In (Im)politeness at a Slovenian Call Centre [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 11 ff.
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.
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.
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.
Sinkeviciute, Valeria
[no author supplied]
2021. Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 247 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 november 2023. 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