Conversational humour in a Nigerian radio news programme:

Author(s): Blessing T. Inya,Onwu Inya / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2018

This paper investigates the Generic Structure Potential (GSP) of Lati inu aka aka Biodun/Kayode (LIABK), a Nigerian secondary gatekeeping radio news programme, with the aim of indicating the stages of the genre where conversational humour typically occurs, and then it analyses humour types in the data through the neo-Gricean concept of untruthfulness and pragmatic act theory. The data for the study constitute a ten hour audio recording of Lati inu aka aka Biodun/Kayode from two radio stations in Ekiti and Ondo States, South-Western Nigeria. The GSP of LIABK is constituted by five obligatory elements: Opening (O), Advertisement (A), Pre-news Presentation (PnP), News Presentation (NP) and Closing (C). The genre-based expectations for O, PnP and C, and then NP are to provide entertainment and information to the listeners respectively. Thus, humour typically occurs in the O, PnP, and C stages of the programme, and rarely occurs in NP. Four humour types are indicated: song-as-humour, absurdity, joint fantasising, and speaker-meaning-telic humour respectively. While song-as-humour resists being neatly categorised as autotelic humour, absurdity and joint fantasising are easily characterised as thus. The pragmatic act analysis reveals the incremental, sequential, and co-constructed nature of the humour types. Furthermore, the pragmemes of entertainment and offering of opinion by the news presenters constitute the affordances or genre-based expectations that constrain the social activities that constitute LIABK. The study contributes to the scholarship on secondary gatekeeping in Nigeria broadcast media, conversational humour, and pragmatics.

Sharing a laugh at others:

Author(s): Béatrice Priego-Valverde / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2018

The aim of this article is to clarify the fuzzy notion of “successful humour”. It focuses on humorous sequences in French face-to-face interactions which are both successful and have a same type of target: a collective “Other” (foreign culture, a French or foreign institution, a French or foreign socio-professional group). It will be shown that laughing about/at others (with all the aggressiveness this could imply) is not inconsistent with the necessary collaborative aspect of the conversation. On the contrary, the necessary collaboration between the participants will be highlighted through analysing humour in two different but complementary ways. Firstly, analysing humour through one specific target (the collective “Other”) will show that the participants rely on shared knowledge to display fictitious identities allowing them to construct humour. Secondly, a structural analysis of successful humorous sequences will deepen the notion of successful humour, highlighting two different structures: a two-part structure and a three-part structure. While the terms “successful humour” will be restricted to the former, the notion of “humorous convergence” will be proposed to refer to the latter. This study is based on 51 successful humorous sequences extracted from three face-to-face interactions audio- and video-recorded in an anechoic room at Aix-Marseille University, France.

Humour in online comments regarding Montenegro’s accession to NATO

Author(s): Milena Dževerdanović-Pejović / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

The empirical analysis in this paper deals with establishing humour examples based on script opposition patterns in online comments regarding Montenegro’s accession to NATO. It is established that the opposing scripts prevailing in the comments on political setting in Montenegro are heavily dependent on Montenegro’s turbulent history and dominant collective scripts such as pride and bravery. As online comments are an emerging genre, a reference to the influence of computer-mediated communication was also made, where pragmatic interpretation called for the help of critical discourse analysis. The results show that the script opposition parameters enable not only linguistic but also pragmatic revelations about Montenegrin people and their chief values or scripts. Script opposition examples within commenters’ standpoints are explained with reference to diachronic level and the modern values in Montenegro.

Academic event report

Author(s): Anna Krasowska / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

Book review

Author(s): María Angeles Ruiz-Moneva / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

Does religion shape people’s sense of humour?

Author(s): Karl-Heinz Ott,Bernard Schweizer / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Using an empirical approach, this study addresses the question whether followers of different religious beliefs (Christians, Muslims, and Hindus), as well as Atheists and Agnostics manifest different senses of humour when rating a variety of jokes. The study further investigates whether one’s religious background influences the threshold of what is considered offensive. And finally, it seeks to answer whether jokes targeting religions other than one’s own are always perceived as funnier. Analysing the results of a public survey (N=783) containing a blend of religious and non-religious jokes (including irreverent ones), we found that Hindus demonstrate overall the highest humour appreciation among all the groups, while Christians were the least amused by the jokes presented on the survey. Muslims had overall robust humour responses, despite reporting the highest incidence of being offended. Atheists were the least likely to be offended, and they generally enjoyed irreverent jokes. All groups agreed that if a joke was seen as offensive, its funniness was reduced.

“I get it, but it’s just not funny”:

Author(s): Adrian Hale / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Failed humour can be explained by communicative gaps, at either the semantic or pragmatic levels, but sometimes, after all is ‘said and done’, people resist humour for purely discursive reasons. Some may recognise the divisive nature of a humorous text, and experience conflicting feelings. Others may welcome humour purely because of its appeal to ideology, while the text itself may not be considered as being very funny. Then there are people who ‘go along with the joke’ purely to avoid losing face. Political humour is a site of great power, where the stakes are high. For example, Donald Trump rejected Baldwin’s SNL parody, finding his ‘alter ego’ “unwatchable” and “not funny”. Other politicians, and members of the public, however, choose to respond to political humour in diverse ways. The reception of humour, therefore, is more complex than it appears. We might resist humour because of a deficiency in linguistic competence, but we might also resist humour because of literacy competence. This paper will theorise that there exists a ‘default setting’ in a person’s discourse, such that when encountering an instance of humour, we all employ a Discursive Defence Mechanism (DDM), and that there are ‘triggers’ which provoke this DDM.

Why are you amused:

Author(s): Qiaoyun Chen,Guiying Jiang / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

This paper looks at multimodal humour through the lens of prototype theory in the framework of conventional incongruity theory of humour, aiming for a unified linguistic and semiotic approach to humour. From this perspective, humour can be achieved through the following three aspects of linguistic and non-linguistic categories: 1) prototypicality versus nonprototypicality of category members; 2) the family resemblance shared by category members; 3) vague inter-categorical boundary. The cognitive mechanisms behind this type of multimodal humour and its comprehension are discussed. The intermodal relationships involved are examined and categorised into two major types: complementary and noncomplementary ones.

Investigating the potential of humour in EFL classrooms:

Author(s): Talip Gonulal / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Studies on humour have indicated that humour has a lot to offer to both language teachers and learners. Creating a positive classroom environment and lowering affective barriers to language learning are among the several effects of humour. However, the appreciation of humour can be culture-specific and context-dependent. For example, greater values may lie in the employment of humour in English as a foreign language (EFL) settings such as Turkey where the communicative-oriented teaching methods are still in their infancy stage. The current study, therefore, examined the potentials of humour from Turkish EFL learners’ perspective to elicit their opinions regarding the importance and potent roles of humour in EFL classrooms. In this attitudinal study, a mixed-methods design was used. A comprehensive humour perception questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were employed. Two hundred and fifty college EFL students completed the humour survey and eight of them participated in the follow-up interviews. The results indicated that Turkish college-level EFL students have largely positive attitudes towards using humour in English classrooms. Additionally, students considered humour as an effective pedagogical tool that can increase their attentiveness, attention span, confidence in English classrooms, and teacher-student solidarity, as well.

Book review

Author(s): Spyridoula Gasteratou / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Editorial: laughter and humour in communication

Author(s): Sergey Troitskiy,Aleksandr Lavrentev,Alyona Ivanova,Liisi Laineste / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The editorial article for the special issue of EJHR “Laughter and Humour in Communication” provides an overview of all the presented articles and highlightsthe general idea of the issue.

Book review

Author(s): Annie Gerin / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

Book review

Author(s): Lina Molokotos-Liederman / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The progress of Australian humour in Britain

Author(s): Christie Davies / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

In this essay, reprinted from a 1997 collection, Christie Davies discussed the roots and the nature of Australian humour. The following article was first published as Davies, C. (1997). ‘The progress of Australian humour in Britain’, in Matte, G. and Milner Davis, J. (eds.), Readings from the International Conference on Humour (Australian Journal of Comedy 3:1). Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, pp. 15-32. It is reproduced with kind permission of NewSouth Publishing. With gratitude to Jessica Milner Davis for making this possible.

“Vivi Pericolosamente”:

Author(s): Delia Chiaro / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

This essay provides a brief overview of English jokes targeting Italians, and sets out to show how internet memes are a progression of traditional jokes in which Italians are the butts but with a modern twist.

Carabinieri?

Author(s): Giovannantonio Forabosco / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

Research was conducted using a series of light bulb jokes (Forabosco 1994). The original target of the jokes were the Poles, retargeted into “carabinieri” in Italy. A question is advanced: why carabinieri? An enlightening answer comes from comparative sociology.

“Make love, not war… get married and do both”:

Author(s): Anna T. Litovkina / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

In the present study I am going to explore negative aspects of marriage and the ways it is viewed and conceptualized in the body of Anglo-American anti-proverbs (i.e., deliberate proverb innovations (also known as alterations, parodies, transformations, variations, wisecracks, mutations, or fractured proverbs) and wellerisms (a form of folklore normally made up of three parts: 1) a statement, 2) a speaker who makes this remark, and 3) a phrase that places the utterance into an unexpected, contrived situation. The meaning of the proverb, proverbial phrase or other statement is usually distorted by being placed into striking juxtaposition with the third part of the wellerisms). Another aim of the study is also to depict those who adhere to the institution of marriage, that is, wives and husbands, and analyse their nature, qualities, attributes and behaviours as revealed through Anglo-American anti-proverbs and wellerisms. My discussion is organized in two parts. The anti-proverbs and wellerisms discussed in the present study were taken primarily from American and British written sources. The texts of anti-proverbs were drawn from hundreds of books and articles on puns, one-liners, toasts, wisecracks, quotations, aphorisms, maxims, quips, epigrams, and graffiti collected in two dictionaries of anti-proverbs compiled by Anna T. Litovkina and Wolfgang Mieder (see Mieder & Litovkina 1999; Litovkina & Mieder 2006). The texts of wellerims are primarily quoted from the dictionary of wellerisms (see Mieder & Kingsbury 1994).

Computational humour and Christie Davies’ basis for joke comparison

Author(s): Julia Taylor Rayz / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

While historically computational humour paid very little attention to sociology and mostly took into account subparts of linguistics and some psychology, Christie Davies wrote a number of papers that should affect the study of computational humour directly. This paper will look at one paper to illustrate this point, namely Christie’s chapter in the Primer of Humor Research. With the advancements in computational processing and big data analysis/analytics, it is becoming possible to look at a large collection of humorous texts that are available on the web. In particular, older texts, including joke materials, that are being scanned from previously published printed versions. Most of the approaches within computational humour concentrated on comparison of present/existing jokes, without taking into account classes of jokes that are absent in a given setting. While the absence of a class is unlikely to affect classification—something that researchers in computational humour seem to be interested in—it does come into light when features of various classes are compared and conclusions are being made. This paper will describe existing approaches and how they could be enhanced, thanks to Davies’ contributions and the advancements in data processing.

True German and phony English laughter:

Author(s): Christian F. Hempelmann / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

Schmidt-Hidding’s (b. 1903, d. 1967) lexical field study on the area of Humor und Witz [humour and wit/jokes] (1963b) receives attention in humour research to this day, especially in German-speaking countries. His diamond-shaped illustration of the two dimensions of the field of humour, not least in its aim to distinguish “earthy” German from “courteous” English humour, has become well-known. In view of this continued interest in the final write-up of Schmidt-Hidding’s work on humour (1963a, 1963b), in which he consistently ignores his earlier related publications under the name of Schmidt, this paper aims to discourage researchers from basing their work on it for two reasons. The more important one is the flawed, or at least muddled and definitely outdated, methodology of his study. The more delicate one that is focused on here is that the motivation for and the ideological direction of the study are strongly influenced by its author’s National Socialist ideology, which Schmidt-Hidding had possibly assumed for opportunistic reasons and abandoned after World War II. I will first document this ideological alignment with National Socialism from Schmidt’s earlier work, basically a prelude to his Schlüsselwörter (1963a). Then I briefly present the methodological flaws, to the degree that Schmidt-Hidding was sufficiently explicit about his method to make that possible. This approach of interpreting a complex issue in its historical and social contexts, along with showing what the issue is in contrast to analogous issues, is the important research agenda that Davies brought to humour research.

Humorous TV ads and the 3WD:

Author(s): Jennifer Hofmann,Willibald Ruch / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

Individuals differ in their appreciation of jokes and cartoons with respect to the structure of the humorous material (e.g., whether the jokes and cartoons are can be categorised in terms of incongruity-resolution or in terms of nonsense), as well as content (e.g., whether they contain sexual themes or not). While the 3WD (3 jokes dimensions) test allows for the measurement of such differences in a paper-pencil test of verbal jokes and visual cartoons, humour transported by other media, such as TV advertisements, has not been included so far. The current study aimed at assessing the appreciation of jokes and cartoons alongside the appreciation of humorous TV ads that were pre-categorized according to the structure and content factors of the 3WD. Moreover, relationships to personality and willingness to buy were also assessed. A sample of 134 adult participants completed the study. A joint factor analysis of the 3WD scores and humour appreciation in TV ads shows a five-factor structure, with three factors denominating the appreciation of incongruity-resolution humour, nonsense humour and sexual humour, a fourth factor denominating the liking of incongruity resolution humour with sexual themes (in both ads and jokes) and an advertisement specific factor. Thus, the 3WD dimensions can also be verified in humorous ads. Psychoticism and sensation seeking correlated negatively with the perceived funniness of incongruity resolution humour, replicating findings for the 3WD and additionally showing that the relationships are similar with respect to humour appreciation in TV advertisements. Moreover, the appreciation of humour predicted the willingness of the individual to buy the product or use the service. To conclude, the structure of humour appreciation is generalizable across media. Yet, there is also some advertisement specific variance and future studies may address the question of whether the 3WD covers all aspects of humour appreciation across media types. Moreover, knowing the target group of a product (and personality features of this group) may help to tailor the humour of the advertisement to match the “humour taste” of potential customers.