The role of ‘familiarity’ in Mandarin Chinese speakers’ metapragmatic evaluations of Australian conversational humour
The role of ‘familiarity’ in Mandarin Chinese speakers’ metapragmatic evaluations of Australian conversational humour

Summary/Abstract: Although research on humorous practices of Anglo-Australians has received much attention,the understanding of those practices by members of various multilingual communities inAustralia has not been much studied. In this paper, we look at metapragmatic comments onconcept familiarity in relation to conversational humour, particularly focusing on MandarinChinese speakers’ perceptions of conversational humour in Australian English. In order toexplore what role ‘familiarity’ plays in (inter-)cultural conceptualisation of humour, we analyseinterview data where speakers of Mandarin Chinese provide their metapragmatic comments onhumorous exchanges among Australians. Drawing on approximately 8.2 hours of interview dataelicited by a segment from the reality television gameshow Big Brother 2012, i.e., a teasingsequence between two acquainted persons, it is suggested that the concept of familiarity is theone most frequently alluded to in the theme of how participants ‘draw the boundary’ betweenintimates and acquaintances. From the analysis it emerged that Mandarin Chinese speakers’evaluations of humorous exchanges in Australian English are driven by their culturallyinformedperceptions that are conceptualised through various emic notions, e.g. guanxi(‘interpersonal relationship’), various labels for classifying different relational distance, andqiji (‘opportune moment’). The findings of this exploratory paper suggest that the role of‘familiarity’ in relation to humour is crucial in the perception of appropriateness of humorouspractices in interaction, especially across cultures.

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