This is the first edited volume dedicated specifically to humor in interaction. It is a rich collection of essays by an international array of scholars representing various theoretical perspectives, but all concerned with interactional aspects of humor. The contributors are scholars active both in the interdisciplinary area of humor studies and in adjacent disciplines such as linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, gender and translation studies. The volume effectively offers an overview of the range of phenomena falling in the broad category of ‘conversational humor’, and convincingly argues for the many different functions humor can fulfill, bypassing simplistic humor theories reducing humor to one function. All the articles draw on empirical material from different countries and cultures, comprising conversations among friends and family, talk in workplace situations, humor in educational settings, and experimental approaches to humor in interaction. The book is sure to become an important reference and source of inspiration for scholars in the various subfields of humor studies, pragmatics and (socio-)linguistics.
Table of contents
Introduction: Humor and interaction
Neal R. Norrick and Delia Chiaro
ix–xvii
Part I: Conversation among friends and family
The occasioning of self-disclosure humor
Susan M. Ervin-Tripp and Martin Lampert
3–28
Direct address as a resource for humor
Neal R. Norrick and Claudia Bubel
29–48
An interactional approach to irony development
Helga Kotthoff
49–78
Multimodal and intertextual humor in the media reception situation: The case of watching football on TV
Cornelia Gerhardt
79–98
Part II: Doing gender with humor in talk at work
Using humor to do masculinity at work
Stephanie Schnurr and Janet Holmes
101–124
Boundary-marking humor: Institutional, gender and ethnic demarcation in the workplace
Bernadette Vine, Susan Kell, Meredith Marra and Janet Holmes
125–140
Part III: Failed humor and its interactional effects
Impolite responses to failed humor
Nancy Bell
143–164
Failed humor in conversation: A double voicing analysis
Beatrice Priego-Valverde
165–184
Part IV: Humor in bilingual interactions
Humor and interlanguage in a bilingual elementary school setting
Kristin Kersten
187–210
Cultural divide or unifying factor? Humorous talk in the interaction of bilingual, cross-cultural couples