The faces of humor: Humor as catalyst of face in the context of the British and the Spanish Parliament

Abstract

This study analyzes the use of humor in specific political contexts following different linguistic perspectives that deal with politeness (Leech, Principles of pragmatics, Longman, 1983; Brown and Levinson, Politeness: Some universals in language use, Cambridge University Press, 1987; Fraser, Journal of Pragmatics 14: 219–236, 1990; Givón, English grammar: A function-based introduction, John Benjamins, 1993) under a “social practices” view (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking critical discourse analysis, Edinburg University Press, 1999; Harri, Discourse & Society, 12: 451–472, 2001). Humor is not inherently polite or impolite, but rather, it can be viewed as a discursive strategy used by the speaker to achieve a particular goal in a particular context. However, the speaker is not completely free. S/he is conditioned by certain social and cultural factors that are not negotiable. The main aim of this study is to arrive at some of these cultural factors through the analysis of the use of humor and its application to the concept of face (Goffman, Interaction ritual: Essays in face to face behaviour, Doubleday, 1967; Brown and Levinson, Politeness: Some universals in language use, Cambridge University Press, 1987) in the context of a Parliamentary debate in Spain and Great Britain on a common topic: domestic violence.