Publications

Publication details [#12723]

Papazachariou, Dimitris, Maria Giakoumelou, Villy Tsakona and Argiris Archakis. 2009. On prosody and humor in Greek conversational narratives. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 10 pp. URL
Publication type
Book – conference proceedings
Publication language
English

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence for the study of the turn-constructional component in conversational narratives which are considered to be humorous. More specifically, turn constructional units, or else TCUs, such as single words, phrases, clauses, or sentences were recorded from various humorous stories. Next, the paper distinguishes the turns which are intended as humorous from the surrounding non humorous narrative utterances and it analyzes their conversational and pragmatic function. The authors adopt the approaches of Duncan and Fiske (1977), Ford and Thompson (1996) and Schegloff (1996). The findings suggest that listeners are usually provided with cues to help them recognize the transition from non-humorous parts of a turn to humorous ones and back (i.e. pauses). Lastly, the authors show that humor and the various prosodic features create vividness and enhance audience involvement