10 Humour and creativity in a family of strangers on Facebook
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Kerry Mullan
Abstract
This chapter will examine the creative and multimodal aspects of collaborative humour in a local community Facebook group, whose aim is to provide members of an inner suburb of an Australian city with the opportunity to request and offer help with recommendations for local services, house-, pet-, or babysitting, and/or to exchange free goods. The analysis focuses on the way in which multimodal “everyday creativity” (Carter 2015) and humour mechanisms (Norrick 2003) are employed in online interactions to foster a sense of belonging in this group of strangers. Particular aspects of linguistic play and discursive strategies will be examined in a selection of posts. These include puns, word play, joint fictionalisation, lexically creative terms of address for the group, and frequent references to certain recurring themes in the group, such as a popular local plumber and a particular group member who often requests a lift to/from the airport. The examples chosen - many of which are accompanied by emojis, images or memes - all illustrate how the jointly constructed humour is used to contribute to a sense of affiliation and belonging in this group of strangers.
Abstract
This chapter will examine the creative and multimodal aspects of collaborative humour in a local community Facebook group, whose aim is to provide members of an inner suburb of an Australian city with the opportunity to request and offer help with recommendations for local services, house-, pet-, or babysitting, and/or to exchange free goods. The analysis focuses on the way in which multimodal “everyday creativity” (Carter 2015) and humour mechanisms (Norrick 2003) are employed in online interactions to foster a sense of belonging in this group of strangers. Particular aspects of linguistic play and discursive strategies will be examined in a selection of posts. These include puns, word play, joint fictionalisation, lexically creative terms of address for the group, and frequent references to certain recurring themes in the group, such as a popular local plumber and a particular group member who often requests a lift to/from the airport. The examples chosen - many of which are accompanied by emojis, images or memes - all illustrate how the jointly constructed humour is used to contribute to a sense of affiliation and belonging in this group of strangers.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction 1
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Part 1: Face-to-face interactions
- 1 A multimodal approach to children’s development of humor in family life 15
- 2 On target. On the role of eye-gaze during teases in face-to-face multiparty interaction 53
- 3 Humorous Smiling: A Reverse Cross-Validation of the Smiling Intensity Scale for the Identification of Conversational Humor 87
- 4 Alternative conceptualizations of the Smiling Intensity Scale (SIS) and their applications to the identification of humor 109
- 5 Facial gestures and laughter as a resource for negotiating humor in conversation 131
- 6 Multimodal humor in human-robot interaction 169
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Part 2: Mediated interactions
- 7 Facial expressions as multimodal markers of humor: More evidence from scripted and non-scripted interactions 209
- 8 Emojis and jocular flattery in Chinese instant messaging interactions 231
- 9 More than laughter: Multimodal humour and the negotiation of ingroup identities in mobile instant messaging interactions 263
- 10 Humour and creativity in a family of strangers on Facebook 289
- 11 “Loanword translation and corrective acts are incongruous”: Debating metapragmatic stereotypes through humorous memes 319
- Index 355
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction 1
-
Part 1: Face-to-face interactions
- 1 A multimodal approach to children’s development of humor in family life 15
- 2 On target. On the role of eye-gaze during teases in face-to-face multiparty interaction 53
- 3 Humorous Smiling: A Reverse Cross-Validation of the Smiling Intensity Scale for the Identification of Conversational Humor 87
- 4 Alternative conceptualizations of the Smiling Intensity Scale (SIS) and their applications to the identification of humor 109
- 5 Facial gestures and laughter as a resource for negotiating humor in conversation 131
- 6 Multimodal humor in human-robot interaction 169
-
Part 2: Mediated interactions
- 7 Facial expressions as multimodal markers of humor: More evidence from scripted and non-scripted interactions 209
- 8 Emojis and jocular flattery in Chinese instant messaging interactions 231
- 9 More than laughter: Multimodal humour and the negotiation of ingroup identities in mobile instant messaging interactions 263
- 10 Humour and creativity in a family of strangers on Facebook 289
- 11 “Loanword translation and corrective acts are incongruous”: Debating metapragmatic stereotypes through humorous memes 319
- Index 355
