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An analysis of Akpos jokes and the readers’ responses
Studies on humour have acknowledged that responses to jokes are important aspects of a joking exchange; however, investigation of joke recipients’ responses has received little attention from humour scholars. Moreover, the linguistic investigations of jokes have been limited to native speakers’ contexts, leaving ESL contexts out. Therefore, this study examines readers’ responses to a genre of jokes in Nigerian online spheres, Akpos jokes, with a view to characterising their forms and functions. Akpos jokes are humorous narratives created around an imaginary character called Akpos. Jokes are randomly collected from a blog and readers’ responses were derived from a Facebook page in which Akpos jokes are published. Using computer paralanguage and language mixing in writing the jokes and the responses, the jokes and the reactions to them mirror the online and the Nigerian ESL contexts in which they are situated. Readers use their responses to indicate affiliation, disaffiliation with the joke, or to introduce something that has nothing to do with the subject of the joke or humour. Readers also use their responses to argue for and/or against the humorousness the jokes.
More...from the “latent narratives” to the groupal bond
The purpose of this paper is to propose a psychosociological approach to the configuration of human bonds, on the one hand, and a methodological reflection on the analysis, on the other. The bonds are analyzed in their less explicit side, in order to reveal those emotional and representational elements which tend to express themselves an unclear and obscure way. The empirical research material has been a set of jokes told in different focus groups, with participants located in similar social positions. We analysed the associative chains developed in group dynamics, presenting methodological schemes for each particular analysis. The “latent accounts” arising from the analysis of each discussion group exhibit significant differences which are expressive of link models specific to each social context. Additionally, the phenomenon of the joke is confirmed as a valuable tool for social research.
More...Bell, Nancy (2015). We Are Not Amused: Failed Humor in Interaction. Humor Research 10. Berlin, Boston, Munich: De Gruyter Mouton. 184 pp.
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Researchers from the GRIALE group (Irony and Humour Research Group) have developed a theoretical method that can be applied to humorous ironic utterances in different textual genres, depending on the degree of the violation of conversational principles in conversation. In addition to this, the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo and Raskin, 1991) will be taken into account in the analysis. Therefore, I will study irony and humour in conversational utterances in real examples of Peninsular Spanish obtained from the COVJA, (Corpus de conversaciones coloquiales [Corpus of Colloquial Conversations]) and CREA, (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual [Reference Corpus of Present-Day Spanish]). The focus of this paper is then the application of the aforementioned theories to humorous ironic statements which arise in conversation. I will also examine the positive or negative effects caused by them, which will additionally verify if irony and humour coexist in the same conversational exchange, and if this has a communicative goal.
More...an example of Nigerian stand-up comedy
The primary focus of this paper is to apply Discourse Type theory to stand-up comedy. To achieve this, the study postulates two contexts in stand-up joking stories: context of the joke and context in the joke. The context of the joke, which is inflexible, embodies the collective beliefs of stand-up comedians and their audience, while the context in the joke, which is dynamic, is manifested by joking stories and it is made up of the joke utterance, participants in the joke and activity/situation in the joke. In any routine, the context of the joke interacts with the context in the joke and vice versa. For analytical purpose, the study derives data from the routines of male and female Nigerian stand-up comedians. The analysis reveals that stand-up comedians perform discourse types, which are specific communicative acts in the context of the joke, such as greeting/salutation, reporting and informing, which bifurcates into self-praising and self denigrating.
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This article examines the uses and functions of humour in an online community of gamers and nonprofessional game designers who present and critique user-generated artefacts created with the popular game series LittleBigPlanet. Findings show that participants use humour and “good humour” to achieve a variety of social goals: to veil statements of ability and effort, alleviate negative comments, present user-generated content, attract new players, support other participants, and overall engender a smiling atmosphere that incentives collaboration, peer feedback, and social cohesion. Far from being a trivial ornament, humour emerges as a community building “cushioning glue” that connects, seals, and buffers different gears of computer-mediated interaction, contributing to defining the boundaries and the identity of the analysed online space.
More...Zolczer, P., Litovkina, T., Barta, A., Puskás, A. (eds.) Humour in Contemporary Societies. Eruditio – Educatio 2014/3. Volume 9. 144 pp.
More...“Anything goes?”
This special issue arises out of an annual conference of the Australasian Humour Studies Network (AHSN). These have been held for two decades, but despite that longevity and the fact that the word Australasian refers to Australia and New Zealand, it was not until 2014 that the first AHSN conference was held in New Zealand, with the theme “Anything Goes?”.
More...A case study of when attempts at humour go wrong
In 2010, Brother a well-known local identity living on a busy street corner in Wellington, told court appointed psychiatrists he boogied with the dead and was enjoying life in 1984. Though academic writing on the homeless experience unanimously proposes that street life existence is essentially ‘no laughing matter’, and while Brother’s talk could be dismissed as the ramblings of a mad man, here I argue that his banter can be understood as displaying an acute sense of underdog humour (Coser 1959). Drawing from participant observational research spanning a three-year period and forming the empirical component of my doctoral work, I examine humour as a “quintessentially social phenomenon” (Kuipers 2008: 361) that is often particular to a specific time and place. Speaking to broader themes of sociality, spatiality, embodiment, domination and resistance, I reveal how humour is used by Brother to manage a life lived in public. I also consider how Brother’s jovial talk and actions disrupt mundane understandings of ‘normal’ boundaries. In arguing “agency and structure” collide in the case of Brother, I look at how this evokes a simultaneous “making, remaking, and unmaking” of the person (Hacking 2004).
More...Political humour, internet memes, and play in the 2012 US Presidential Election (and beyond)
This paper examines the phenomenon of humorous Internet memes within the context of news and political culture, sometimes referred to as LOLitics. LOLitics are a category of digital texts created by ordinary individuals that, like most political humour, are usually responses to news events or gaffes committed by political figures. The analysis situates LOLitics as popular culture products that exist within the intersection between pleasure-driven ‘play’ and (arguably) genuine political discourse. LOLitics are prominent due to their spreadability and replicability, and the amount of texts being produced has visibly risen over the last election cycle. Internet memes have become one of the default ways to respond to particular situations online, and this certainly reflects the reaction towards news and political culture. The 2012 US Presidential election is applied as a case study in examining the significance of these Internet memes to everyday citizen discourse, and the relationships between ordinary citizens, the mainstream media, and politics. The results argue that humorous viral texts, both visual and verbal, reveal the potential power that ordinary people have in setting the agenda for newsmakers, and to communicate political criticism through popular culture.
More...The birth of a local political cartoonist in post-3.11 Japan
This paper introduces the Disaster Picture-Diary political cartoons of Asakura Yūzō which appear in the Japanese regional newspaper Fukushima Minpō. After the so-called 3.11 disaster’s triple blow of earthquake, tsunami, and multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns in 2011, intense public and media interest and debates erupted over: how to help the victims; how to rebuild; what to do about the ongoing nuclear problem; and what should be the future of direction the nation. Yet, cartoonists in national daily newspapers failed to get involved in much of this debate. They basically continued on as they had done before the disaster merely lightly mocking politicians, their eyes closed to wider problems. In contrast, Asakura’s cartoons which began in the wake of 3.11 in the disaster affected region, broke away from this mainstream form of cartoon discourse to comment on a much greater variety of post-3.11 issues using a much more diverse range of drawing styles. In this sense, though still seemingly restrained to an outside observer from a country with a more aggressive satirical cartooning, for Asakura it is definitely a case of “anything goes”. This paper gives an overview of the disaster, and mainstream political cartooning before and after 3.11. It then introduces examples of Asakura’s Disaster Picture-Diary political cartoons, contrasting them with mainstream national cartoons to underscore how his work differs. In concluding, a number of reasons for these differences are provisionally forwarded.
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In a career that lasted over eighty years, the performances of Mae West were famous, or infamous, for their power to shock, their transgression of boundaries of class, gender, sexuality and propriety, and for the frequent opprobrium that West seemed to attract. Moreover, there was no subject matter considered “off-limits” within Mae West’s work, and her plays and films were marked by her fearless approach to topics that even today are often seen as problematic (substance abuse, abortion, rape, and the idea of the “expiry date” of the female performer and her sexuality). West also broke new ground by both bringing taboo subjects into mainstream view, and by combining a sympathetic and humorous treatment of serious topics. Despite her reputation as a screen icon with a rapier wit, her work as a writer, and indeed, the effort she put into creating and maintaining the style and content of her act is frequently overlooked. Throughout her plays, films, radio appearances and written work, she consistently pushed the envelope in terms of what was deemed acceptable, normal or humorous for her age (and her era). When castigated for going “too far”, she simply edited her material and tried again, inching forward and gradually setting a precedent for later generations of comics and comic writers, while situating herself within an extant framework of shocking and subversive performers. This paper is intended as an exploration not only of West’s much-publicised transgressive use of humour, or the subversiveness of her humour itself, but also the way in which her career trajectory embodied the notion of going “too far” with her final films, and how Mae West’s life so frequently imitated her art.
More...Chiaro, D. (ed). (2010). Translation, Humour and the Media, Volume 2. London and New York: Continuum. 259 pp.
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Socialism produces distinct forms of humorous ridicule that are relatively rare in capitalist, bourgeois democracies. These forms are arranged in a hierarchy that reflects the distribution of power in this type of social and political order, one which differs markedly from a bourgeois democracy or indeed even a traditional or dictatorial authoritarian society. Merely authoritarian societies lack the kind of over-riding ideology and central control of economic and cultural life that are the defining characteristics of socialism. Socialist humorous ridicule is cruel at the top; then comes an aggressive and admonishing, but in intention humorous, official ridicule employed by the state in pursuit of centrally defined political ends. Finally, there is the ridicule by ordinary people of the elite and the social order they have imposed on the masses who respond by spontaneously and autonomously inventing and circulating innumerable jokes and anecdotes. This pattern is a product of the exercise of a monopoly of political and economic power by the leaders of the Communist Party and the distinctive political inequality that characterises socialism, an inequality based not on ownership but on differential access to the power of the state. The rulers of merely authoritarian societies that were not socialist such as Franco’s Spain, Pinochet’s Chile or Afrikaner South Africa did not and could not attain the same kind of hegemony that was possible under socialism because there existed economic, religious, scientific and even legal institutions that enjoyed a substantial degree of independence from their political rulers. Accordingly, they did not exhibit to anything like the full extent the patterns of humour to be found under socialism. The aggregate patterns of humour in socialist societies must be treated not as interactions between individuals but as ‘social facts’ to be understood in relation to other social facts, notably the nature of political power, with both sets of social facts being contrasted with those to be found in the capitalist democracies that are the antithesis of socialism.
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A corpus of 750 product reviews extracted from Amazon.com was analyzed for specific lexical, grammatical, and semantic features to identify differences between satirical and non-satirical Amazon.com product reviews through a statistical analysis. The corpus contained 375 reviews identified as satirical and 375 as non-satirical (750 total). Fourteen different linguistic indices were used to measure features related to lexical sophistication, grammatical functions, and the semantic properties of words. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) found a significant difference between review types. The MANOVA was followed by a discriminant function analysis (DFA), which used seven variables to correctly classify 71.7 per cent of the reviews as satirical or non-satirical. Those seven variables suggest that, linguistically, satirical texts are more specific, less lexically sophisticated, and contain more words associated with negative emotions and certainty than non-satirical texts. These results demonstrate that satire shares some, but not all, of the previously identified semantic features of sarcasm (Campbell & Katz 2012), supporting Simpson’s (2003) claim that satire should be considered separately from other forms of irony. Ultimately, this study puts forth an argument that a statistical analysis of lexical, semantic, and grammatical properties of satirical texts can shed some descriptive light on this relatively understudied linguistic phenomenon, while also providing suggestions for future analysis.
More...Ruiz Gurillo, L. & Alvarado Ortega, M. B. (eds). (2013). Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. vi+270 pp.
More...The case of sarcasm and hyper-understanding
The growing interest in humour within the field of Cognitive Linguistics during the past few years has led to the conclusion that humour exploits inferences through linguistic imagery and is highly creative. Following Yus (2003: 1299), we assume that humour uses discourse markers that allow the audience to see that what is being said should not be taken seriously. In this study, based on a large corpus of examples extracted from two American t elevision series ( House M.D. and The Big Bang Theory ), we add a yet unexplored multimodal perspective that of facial expressions accompanying humorous utterances, particularly pertaining to sarcasm and hyper understanding. More specifically, we present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of raised eyebrows used in interactional humour, arguing that they play a role in switching the context to a humorous interpretation. Our study analy ses humorous utterances against the background of Clark’s layering m odel and Fauconnier’s mental spaces theory. We illustrate how raised eyebrows function as “gestural triggers” allowing the hearer to make the connection between explicature (i.e. what is explicitly communicated by an utterance; cf. Carston 2002, 2004) and implicature ( i.e. assumptions that are not explicit and that the hearer has to infer from the contextual environment cf. Grice 1989). As such, we show that raised eyebrows play an important role in the understanding of the humorous message because they gu ide the hearer to interpret utterances in a humorous way and they contribute to meaning construction.
More...Subversion, caricature, and humanity in Three Men in a Boat
Through characters who openly express distress over imagined pains, “Jerome at the BBC” treats BBC’s Three Men in a Boat as a playful critique of heroic masculinity, or what the paper defines as confident cognisant agency. Air ing in 1975, BBC’s ad aptation is released after the media ascension of James Bond and in the heyday of tough Hollywood heroes, bold figures who refuse to complain about, let alone give in, to physical pain unlike Jerome’s men. Jerome’s original and its BBC adaptation are lay ered comical texts. By channelling Jerome’s critique of the colonial, seafaring male into contemporary notions of the Hollywood hero type, this paper examines the BBC film’s boisterous lack of masculine agency, the quiet parody of action sequences, and the gingerly movement towards a conclusion that does not bang, but whimpers. Moreover, the paper asserts that the humour also functions on a less grand level, by being an effective caricature of human behaviour a healthy dose of cultural self mockery. Furth ermore, through revealing moments, by the telefilm’s end, the characters do not simply remain caricatures to be laughed at, but become identifiable and relatable human beings.
More...Roemer, M. (2012). Shocked but Connected: Notes on Laughter. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 288pp.
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