Evaluating experience in funny ways: how friends bond through conversational hum
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Naomi K. Knight
Naomi K. Knight is a postdoctoral research assistant at Simon Fraser University currently working on research into psychotherapy communication with Peter Muntigl. She received her PhD from the University of Sydney and has also published in conversational humor and interspecies communication. Naomi is the co-creator of the Free Linguistics Conference and co-editor of its annual proceedings. Address for correspondence: 193 Dorchester Boulevard Unit 203, St. Catharines, ON L2M 7V8 Canada 〈naomik@sfu.ca 〉.
Abstract
This paper explores conversational humor between friends and demonstrates through a systemic functional linguistic (SFL) perspective how friends play with evaluative meanings in their humor to achieve bonding and affiliation. Sequences of talk that feature shared laughter are analyzed and it is shown that speakers make humorous contrasts between social values related to their friendship groups and community memberships. Using SFL tools like appraisal, the examples reveal contrasts as well as layering of evaluations of experiences, people, and things in the speakers' lives with underlying community values known to be shared with those with whom they are joking. It is argued that this “convivial conversational humor” is one kind of affiliation process in which friends manage their connections to each other and to the social world. This paper contributes to SFL theory by providing new insights into humor and conversational talk, and also builds on the theory by offering connections between humorous uses of appraisal and affiliation as a model for social bonding. By doing so, this paper aims to highlight the value of a systemic functional linguistic perspective on conversational humor.
About the author
Naomi K. Knight is a postdoctoral research assistant at Simon Fraser University currently working on research into psychotherapy communication with Peter Muntigl. She received her PhD from the University of Sydney and has also published in conversational humor and interspecies communication. Naomi is the co-creator of the Free Linguistics Conference and co-editor of its annual proceedings. Address for correspondence: 193 Dorchester Boulevard Unit 203, St. Catharines, ON L2M 7V8 Canada 〈naomik@sfu.ca〉.
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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- Masthead
- Editorial: The Halliday potential
- Introduction
- Applying systemic functional linguistics in healthcare contexts
- Users in uses of language: embodied identity in Youth Justice Conferencing
- Using systemic functional linguistics to explore digital technologies in educational contexts
- What do texts do? The context-construing work of news
- Evaluating experience in funny ways: how friends bond through conversational hum
- Interlingual re-instantiation – a new systemic functional perspective on translation
- Clause complex manifestation in depression
- Systemic functional linguistics, corpus linguistics, and the ideology of science
- Hallidayan systemic-functional semiotics and the analysis of the moving audiovisual image
- Multimodal digital semiotics: the interaction of language with other resources
- Visualizing patterns of appraisal in texts and corpora
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Editorial: The Halliday potential
- Introduction
- Applying systemic functional linguistics in healthcare contexts
- Users in uses of language: embodied identity in Youth Justice Conferencing
- Using systemic functional linguistics to explore digital technologies in educational contexts
- What do texts do? The context-construing work of news
- Evaluating experience in funny ways: how friends bond through conversational hum
- Interlingual re-instantiation – a new systemic functional perspective on translation
- Clause complex manifestation in depression
- Systemic functional linguistics, corpus linguistics, and the ideology of science
- Hallidayan systemic-functional semiotics and the analysis of the moving audiovisual image
- Multimodal digital semiotics: the interaction of language with other resources
- Visualizing patterns of appraisal in texts and corpora
