‘Stop kidding, I’m serious’: Failed humor in French conversations
-
Béatrice Priego-Valverde
Abstract
This article investigates humor as non-bona-fide communication, in the case of humor produced by the recipient, while the main speaker is engaged in a serious storytelling, i.e. bona-fide communication. Taking into account the various interactional constraints weighing in on participants’ roles and actions (humor included), and considering that these constraints are even more active in serious storytelling, the aim of this article is to investigate the switch from BFC into NBFC as a reason of failed humor. To do so, 105 instances of failed humor were collected from three audio and video recorded conversations taken from the CID corpus. Among them, 56 instances of failure are due to a switch from BFC into NBFC. And among those, 38 were produced in a storytelling context.
Abstract
This article investigates humor as non-bona-fide communication, in the case of humor produced by the recipient, while the main speaker is engaged in a serious storytelling, i.e. bona-fide communication. Taking into account the various interactional constraints weighing in on participants’ roles and actions (humor included), and considering that these constraints are even more active in serious storytelling, the aim of this article is to investigate the switch from BFC into NBFC as a reason of failed humor. To do so, 105 instances of failed humor were collected from three audio and video recorded conversations taken from the CID corpus. Among them, 56 instances of failure are due to a switch from BFC into NBFC. And among those, 38 were produced in a storytelling context.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- Introduction 1
-
Part 1: Script-based semantics
- Scripts, frames, and other semantic objects 11
- Script-based approach towards taxis connectors 43
- Ontological and grammatical constraints on metaphor productivity 55
- Meaning amalgamation, phrasal stress, and earning money 77
-
Part 2: Humor
- Knowledge about humor 93
- Domains of humor: Challenges from psychology 115
- Victor Raskin’s overlooked analysis of political jokes 139
- Joke construction and joke structure 167
- ‘Stop kidding, I’m serious’: Failed humor in French conversations 191
-
Part 3: Ontological semantics
- Scripts in the Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor 229
- Which fuzzy logic operations are most appropriate for ontological semantics: Theoretical explanation of empirical observations 257
- Decoding intricacies of human nature from social network communications 269
-
Part 4: Other applications
- A creative approach for linguistic funny business: Using linguistic paradigms and taxonomies 281
- Tourism after the Arab Spring in Tunisia: An analysis of advertising campaigns 305
- Names Index 315
- Subject Index 321
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- Introduction 1
-
Part 1: Script-based semantics
- Scripts, frames, and other semantic objects 11
- Script-based approach towards taxis connectors 43
- Ontological and grammatical constraints on metaphor productivity 55
- Meaning amalgamation, phrasal stress, and earning money 77
-
Part 2: Humor
- Knowledge about humor 93
- Domains of humor: Challenges from psychology 115
- Victor Raskin’s overlooked analysis of political jokes 139
- Joke construction and joke structure 167
- ‘Stop kidding, I’m serious’: Failed humor in French conversations 191
-
Part 3: Ontological semantics
- Scripts in the Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor 229
- Which fuzzy logic operations are most appropriate for ontological semantics: Theoretical explanation of empirical observations 257
- Decoding intricacies of human nature from social network communications 269
-
Part 4: Other applications
- A creative approach for linguistic funny business: Using linguistic paradigms and taxonomies 281
- Tourism after the Arab Spring in Tunisia: An analysis of advertising campaigns 305
- Names Index 315
- Subject Index 321
