This monograph explores the diverse sociopragmatic functions and meanings of humorous discourse in various online contexts affecting its use. To this end, an analytical model is proposed which takes into consideration the aspects of context which are relevant to the production and reception of humor, and hence to its sociopragmatic analysis. The model is employed for addressing research questions such as the following: Why may an utterance/text be intended and perceived as humorous by some speakers and fail for others? How and why may speakers attempt to regulate language use through humor? Why and how may the same humorous utterance/text engender diverse and contradictory interpretations? How do speakers create social groups and project social identities through humor? How could the sociopragmatic analysis of humor form the basis for teaching about humor within a critical literacy framework?

The ongoing migration ‘crisis’ in European countries (2015 to date) has fostered different stances and practices within European nation-states, ranging from xenophobia to solidarity. In this context, two contradictory discourses seem to coexist: the national racist discourse and the humanitarian, antiracist one. This volume brings together studies investigating diverse semiotic strategies through which liquid racism emerges, which consists of ambiguities and contradictory interpretations due to the fact that racist views infiltrate discourse intended as antiracist. The volume includes critical and pragmatic analyses of texts coming from various sources, such as news articles, parliamentary discourse, political cartoons, video clips, advertising campaigns based on personal stories, and jokes. It is an outcome of the research project “TRACE: Tracing Racism in Anti-raCist discoursE: A critical approach to European public speech on the migrant and refugee crisis” (HFRI-FM17-42, HFRI 2019-2022, Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation).

Language and Humour in the Media provides new insights into the interface between humour studies and media discourse analysis, connecting two areas of scholarly interest that have not been studied extensively before. The volume adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, concentrating on the various roles humour plays in print and audiovisual media, the forms it takes, the purposes it serves, the butts it targets, the implications it carries and the differences it may assume across cultures. The phenomena described range from conversational humour, canned jokes and wordplay to humour in translation and news satire. The individual studies draw their material for analysis from traditional print and broadcast media, such as magazines, sitcoms, films and spoof news, as well as electronic and internet-based media, such as emails, listserv messages, live blogs and online news. The volume will be of primary interest to a wide range of researchers in the fields of discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, intercultural studies, pragmatics, communication studies, and rhetoric but it will also appeal to scholars in the areas of media studies, psychology and crosscultural communication.

Metapragmatics of Humor: Current research trends contributes to a new area in the pragmatics of humor: its conception as a metapragmatic ability. The book collects thirteen chapters organized into three parts: Revisions and applications of General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) in a metapragmatic context; Metapragmatic awareness of humor across textual modes; and Metapragmatic practices within the acquisition of humor. Thus, this book provides an up-to-date panorama of this field, where metapragmatic abilities are described in adults as well as in children, on humorous and non-humorous genres — jokes, cartoons, humorous monologues, parodies, conversation, Twitter —, and using several approaches, such as GTVH, multimodality, conversational analysis, eye-tracking methodology, etc.

This book provides a first thorough analysis of internet humour from a cognitive-pragmatic perspective, covering a wide range of discourses that are pervasive online and focusing especially on messaging interactions, social networking sites and memes. Its chapters describe the inferential strategies implemented to turn online coded discourses into meaningful interpretations, which in turn can be devised and manipulated for the sake of humour. Furthermore, and apart from the typical object of pragmatic research (humorous discourses), the book emphasises the importance of the interfaces’ design and of the qualities of the users engaged in humorous interactions (called contextual constraints), additionally highlighting the parallel significance of the various effects, shaped as feelings and emotions, that stem from humorous communication on the internet. In sum, the book delivers a rich and detailed account of humorous internet discourses through dissecting their affordances as a medium, tracking the users’ intentions, and predicting the audiences’ interpretive strategies, with the goal of helping the reader obtain a better understanding of internet humour and its role in today’s online interactions.

This book deals with the construction of diverse forms of humor in everyday oral, written, and mediatized interactions. It sheds light on the differences and, most importantly, the similarities in the production of interactional humor in face-to-face and various technology-mediated forms of communication, including scripted and non-scripted situations. The chapters analyze humor-related issues in such genres as spontaneous conversations, broadcast dialogues, storytelling, media blogs, bilingual conversations, stand-up comedy, TV documentaries, drama series, family sitcoms, Facebook posts, and internet memes. The individual authors trace how speakers collaboratively circulate, reconstruct, and (re)frame either personal or public accounts of reality, aiming –among other things– to produce and/or reproduce humor. Rather than being “finished” products with a “single” interpretation, humorous texts are thus approached as dynamic communicative events that give rise to diverse interpretations and meanings. The book draws on a variety of up-to-date approaches and methodologies, and will appeal to scholars in discourse analysis, conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, pragmatics, ethnography of communication, and social semiotics.