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Failed humor in conversation

A double voicing analysis
  • Béatrice Priego-Valverde
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Humor in Interaction
This chapter is in the book Humor in Interaction

Abstract

While humor in everyday conversation has been acknowledged widely as an area of linguistic research, failed humor has not received much linguistic attention. This paper describes unperceived humor and rejected humor, analyzing several examples from a conversational corpus using the double voicing approach according to Bakhtin. Unperceived humor can quickly lead to misunderstandings such as a joke being understood as a verbal attack. Rejected humor, on the other hand, is perceived but purposely ignored by one or several of the listeners, for instance in order to continue the discourse as planned. In both cases, the difference in mode of speech (bona fide communication versus non-serious communication) can be considered a major reason for the failure of humor.

Abstract

While humor in everyday conversation has been acknowledged widely as an area of linguistic research, failed humor has not received much linguistic attention. This paper describes unperceived humor and rejected humor, analyzing several examples from a conversational corpus using the double voicing approach according to Bakhtin. Unperceived humor can quickly lead to misunderstandings such as a joke being understood as a verbal attack. Rejected humor, on the other hand, is perceived but purposely ignored by one or several of the listeners, for instance in order to continue the discourse as planned. In both cases, the difference in mode of speech (bona fide communication versus non-serious communication) can be considered a major reason for the failure of humor.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents vii
  3. Contributors ix
  4. Introduction: Humor and interaction xiii
  5. Part I: Conversation among friends and family
  6. The occasioning of self-disclosure humor 3
  7. Direct address as a resource for humor 29
  8. An interactional approach to irony development 49
  9. Multimodal and intertextual humor in the media reception situation 79
  10. Part II: Doing gender with humor in talk at work
  11. Using humor to do masculinity at work 101
  12. Boundary-marking humor 125
  13. Part III: Failed humor and its interactional effects
  14. Impolite responses to failed humor 143
  15. Failed humor in conversation 165
  16. Part IV: Humor in bilingual interactions
  17. Humor and interlanguage in a bilingual elementary school setting 187
  18. Cultural divide or unifying factor? 211
  19. Name index 233
  20. Subject index 237
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.182.08pri

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents vii
  3. Contributors ix
  4. Introduction: Humor and interaction xiii
  5. Part I: Conversation among friends and family
  6. The occasioning of self-disclosure humor 3
  7. Direct address as a resource for humor 29
  8. An interactional approach to irony development 49
  9. Multimodal and intertextual humor in the media reception situation 79
  10. Part II: Doing gender with humor in talk at work
  11. Using humor to do masculinity at work 101
  12. Boundary-marking humor 125
  13. Part III: Failed humor and its interactional effects
  14. Impolite responses to failed humor 143
  15. Failed humor in conversation 165
  16. Part IV: Humor in bilingual interactions
  17. Humor and interlanguage in a bilingual elementary school setting 187
  18. Cultural divide or unifying factor? 211
  19. Name index 233
  20. Subject index 237
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