“One of the last vestiges of gender bias”: The characterization of women through the telling of dirty jokes in Ally McBeal

Abstract

Based on an audience-centered model of television discourse, we show that verbal interaction is one of the principal means of characterization in film. One of the linguistic phenomena screenwriters exploit and manipulate to develop their characters is verbal humor. For instance, the ways in which interactants on screen produce and respond to jokes is critical in their characterization. We look at an episode of the US American sitcom Ally McBeal, in which two women tell dirty jokes. We show that although the structure of both jokes as well as their respective performance equally meet the demands of good (tellings of) jokes, the screenplay is constructed in such a way that one of them fails to elicit laughter. This is achieved through creating expectations in the viewer prior to the telling of the jokes and through having the women frame their jokes dierently. This research has implications for the study of both gender and humor in conversation, for even though we look at constructed dialogue, it yields insight into underlying knowledge about real conversation.