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Mock impoliteness in Spanish: evidence from the VALESCO.HUMOR corpus

  • Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo

    Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo is a full Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Alicante (Spain). She has research expertise in humor, irony, phraseology, spoken Spanish and pragmatics. She leads the GRIALE Research Group since 2002, devoted to the study of irony and humor in Spanish (https://griale.dfelg.ua.es/en/home/). She has also been the PI of seven R+D projects granted by Spanish and Valencian Autonomous Community Governments. She has published more than 130 books and articles in high impact journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Humor, European Journal of Humour Research and Lingvisticae Investigationes. She is also co-editor of Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013) and editor of Metapragmatics of Humor: Current Research Trends (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2016). She is currently working on interactional humor and the development of a pragmatic labelling for the OBSERVAHUMOR.COM platform.

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Published/Copyright: January 5, 2024
HUMOR
From the journal HUMOR Volume 37 Issue 1

Abstract

Mock impoliteness is defined as a specific form of politeness, one in which participants in a conversation perceive acts such as jocular mockery, insults and banter as non-impolite (Haugh, Michael & Derek Bousfield. 2012. Mock impoliteness in interactions amongst Australian and British speakers of English. Journal of Pragmatics 44. 1099–1114). Following the model of the third wave of politeness and Sinkeviciute, Valeria (2019. Conversational humour and (im) politeness: A pragmatic analysis of social interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), the aim of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon in colloquial conversation. Second, it illustrates this in a language other than English, specifically Peninsular Spanish, using data on informal interactions. The database is composed of 148 humorous sequences from the VALESCO.HUMOR corpus (http://www.observahumor.com/corpus_valesco). 25.67 % of these were identified and analyzed as mock impoliteness, using a tentative procedure for exploring humor negotiation in mock impoliteness through the assessment of a number of elements. These included the issue of which linguistic and paralinguistic elements are used by participants, and the interpretation of the initial aggressive style focused on the target, be it the recipient in a conversation or an absent third party (Béal, Christine & Kerry Mullan. 2017. The pragmatics of conversational humour in social visits: French and Australian English. Language & Communication 55. 24–40). Finally, we considered the question of whether or not the humor introduced by mock impoliteness was sustained throughout a sequence. When a target is oriented to a recipient in the exchange, the data shows a trend towards strengthening social bonds with the group and sustaining humor across the sequence. In other cases, however, the recipient might feel offended or insulted and hence respond in a serious mode, the main effect of the humor then being to create social distance within the participant group. When the target is oriented to an absent third party, humor tends to serve to reinforce cohesiveness between the group at the expense of others.

Keywords: mock impoliteness; humor; conversation; Spanish
Corresponding author: Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo, GRIALE Research Group, Department of Spanish Studies, General Linguistics and Literature Theory, Faculty of Arts, University of Alicante, E-03080, Alicante, Spain, E-mail:

Funding source: Valencian Government. Regional Ministry of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society

Award Identifier / Grant number: “Pragmatic labelling for an observatory of the identity of women and men through humour. The Observahumor.com platform”

Award Identifier / Grant number: PROMETEO/2021/079

Funding source: MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033

Award Identifier / Grant number: “Interactional humor in Spanish. Oral, written and technological genres”

Award Identifier / Grant number: PID2019-104980GB-I00

About the author

Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo

Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo is a full Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Alicante (Spain). She has research expertise in humor, irony, phraseology, spoken Spanish and pragmatics. She leads the GRIALE Research Group since 2002, devoted to the study of irony and humor in Spanish (https://griale.dfelg.ua.es/en/home/). She has also been the PI of seven R+D projects granted by Spanish and Valencian Autonomous Community Governments. She has published more than 130 books and articles in high impact journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Humor, European Journal of Humour Research and Lingvisticae Investigationes. She is also co-editor of Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013) and editor of Metapragmatics of Humor: Current Research Trends (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2016). She is currently working on interactional humor and the development of a pragmatic labelling for the OBSERVAHUMOR.COM platform.

  1. Research funding: This research was supported through the grants PID2019-104980GB-I00 “Interactional humor in Spanish. Oral, written and technological genres” (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and PROMETEO/2021/079 “Pragmatic labelling for an observatory of the identity of women and men through humour. The Observahumor.com platform” (Generalitat Valenciana. Conselleria de Innovación, Universidades, Ciencia y Sociedad Digital [Valencian Government. Regional Ministry of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society]).

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Received: 2023-04-03
Accepted: 2023-10-27
Published Online: 2024-01-05
Published in Print: 2024-02-26

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. From the Editor 37-1 (2024)
  4. Full Length Articles
  5. Why cartoons make (some of) us smile
  6. Mock impoliteness in Spanish: evidence from the VALESCO.HUMOR corpus
  7. From I to we in humor research: a systematic review of the antecedents and consequences of humor in groups
  8. Conventional metaphorical scenarios of humor in Romanian
  9. Humor styles in the classroom: students’ perceptions of lecturer humor
  10. Stand-up for integration: stand-up comedy and its effects on social integration of expats and other migrants
  11. Book Reviews
  12. Cosse, Isabella: Mafalda: A Social and Political History of Latin America’s Global Comic (translated by L. Pérez Carrara)
  13. Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana: Punching up in stand-up comedy: speaking truth to power
  14. Patrice A. Oppliger and Eric Shouse: The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy
  15. Paul Bouissac: The End of the Circus: Evolutionary Semiotics and Cultural Resistance
  16. Massih Zekavat and Tabea Scheel: Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises
https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2023-0097
Keywords for this article
mock impoliteness; humor; conversation; Spanish

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. From the Editor 37-1 (2024)
  4. Full Length Articles
  5. Why cartoons make (some of) us smile
  6. Mock impoliteness in Spanish: evidence from the VALESCO.HUMOR corpus
  7. From I to we in humor research: a systematic review of the antecedents and consequences of humor in groups
  8. Conventional metaphorical scenarios of humor in Romanian
  9. Humor styles in the classroom: students’ perceptions of lecturer humor
  10. Stand-up for integration: stand-up comedy and its effects on social integration of expats and other migrants
  11. Book Reviews
  12. Cosse, Isabella: Mafalda: A Social and Political History of Latin America’s Global Comic (translated by L. Pérez Carrara)
  13. Rashi Bhargava and Richa Chilana: Punching up in stand-up comedy: speaking truth to power
  14. Patrice A. Oppliger and Eric Shouse: The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy
  15. Paul Bouissac: The End of the Circus: Evolutionary Semiotics and Cultural Resistance
  16. Massih Zekavat and Tabea Scheel: Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises
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