What's in a laugh? [Elektronische Ressource] : humour, jokes and laughter in the conversational corpus of the BNC / vorgelegt von Ulrike Günther

Informations

• Publié par: albert-ludwigs-universitat_freiburg
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 16
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

What’s in a laugh?
Humour, jokes and laughter in the conversational corpus
of the BNC
Inaugural Dissertation
zur
Erlangung der Doktorwürde
der Philosophischen Fakultäten der
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität
zu Freiburg i. Br.
vorgelegt von
Ulrike Günther
aus EibelstadtErstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Mair
Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Bernd Kortmann
Vorsitzender des Promotionsausschusses
des Gemeinsamen Ausschussses der
Philosophischen Fakultäten: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Rebstock
Datum der Fachprüfung im Promotionsfach: 28. Juni 2002
Copyright © 2003 Ulrike K. Güntheriii
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Aims and scope of the study 2
1.2 The corpora 4
1.2.1 The ‘Conversational Corpus’ of the BNC 4
1.2.2 The Bergen corpus of London teenage language (COLT) 5
1.3 Theories of humour 6
1.3.1 Release Theories 7
1.3.2 Incongruity Theories 9
1.3.3 Superiority Theories 12
1.4 Functions of humour 13
1.4.1 Psychological and physiological functions 13
1.4.2 Social functions 15
1.4.3 Interpersonal functions 16
1.4.4 Summary 17
2 HUMOUR IN COMMUNICATION: THEORETICAL AND
METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES 21
2.1 Linguistic framework / model of communication 21
2.2 Conversation Analysis 26
2.2.1 Turn-taking structure 26
2.2.2 Turn-taking structure and conversational humour 27
2.3 Statistics and CA: two incompatible disciplines? 33
2.3.1 The micro-macro issue 33
CA ‘proper’ 33
Criticism 35
2.3.2 Integrating CA and quantitative procedures 36
2.3.3 Summary of statistical methods 38iv
3 CANNED JOKES IN THE BNC 41
3.1 Previous research 42
3.1.1 The sequential arrangement of joke performances 44
3.1.2 Internal joke structures 45
3.1.3 Verbal and referential humour 45
3.1.4 Functions 46
3.1.5 Extralinguistic parameters: gender, age, group composition and ethnicity 47
3.1.6 Contextualisation of canned jokes 49
3.1.7 Summary 50
3.2 Sociolinguistic aspects of joke performances 52
3.2.1 Overview 52
3.2.2 Analysis 57
Who tells jokes? 57
Referential and verbal humour 65
Joke format 69
Summary 73
3.3 Tripartite jokes 73
3.3.1 Previous research 74
3.3.2 Structural patterns of tripartite jokes 79
The jokes 79
Prospection and retrospection 80
Structural patterns 82
The role of the repetitive sequence 87
Summary and conclusion 90
3.4 Teenage joke performances: Josie’s joke session and other jokes 92
3.4.1 Joke profiles 93
3.4.2 Why Josie’s joke session? 95
3.4.3 Joke performance 99
Opening sequences 100
Variation of joke telling episodes in the joke session 103
Direct discourse 108v
4 LAUGHTER IN THE BNC 113
4.1 Previous research 113
4.2 Overall frequencies: laughter, gender, age group and group structure in the CC 122
4.2.1 Gender and age group 123
Discussion 124
4.2.2 Group structure 126
Gender and group composition 127
4.2.3 Laughter in the CC according to gender 129
4.2.4 Laughter in the CC according to age group 129
4.2.5 Laughter position in the CC 130
4.2.6 Summary 131
4.3 Study design 133
4.4 Humorous manoeuvres 135
Category 1: playing with words 138
Category 2: joking about the use of language (metalingual humour) 140
Category 3: telling a funny story 141
Category 4: using vulgar language 142
Category 5: putting others down: insult, criticism, teasing 143
Category 6: inventing funny scenarios (fantasy humour) 144
Category 7: against good manners: violating social conventions 145
Category 8: generating implicature 146
Category 9: quipping at what’s going on at the moment 150
Category 10: exaggerating 150
Category 11: performing 151
Category 12: noticing an incongruity (referential) 151
Category 13: other 152
Category 14: non-humorous examples 152
4.5 Types of laughter 153
4.5.1 Affiliative laughter (aff) 153
4.5.2 Contextualizing laughter (con) 155
4.5.3 Disaffiliative laughter (disaff) 156
4.5.4 Reflexive laughter (reflex) 157
4.5.5 Heterogeneous laughter (hetero) 158
4.5.6 Other (other) 160vi
4.6 Laughter position within turn sequence 162
4.6.1 Response moves (Rt) 165
4.6.2 Rj moves 166
4.6.3 F moves 169
4.6.4 Dyadic turns (R-I; F-I) 170
4.6.5 Initiating moves (I) 172
4.7 Extralinguistic variables 176
4.8 Gender, age and group composition 178
4.8.1 Gender and age 178
4.8.2 Gender and group composition 179
4.8.3 Age and group composition 180
4.8.4 Summary and discussion 181
4.9 Humorous manoeuvres 183
4.9.1 Overall distribution 183
4.9.2 Age and gender 185
4.9.3 Age and humorous manoeuvre 186
4.9.4 Gender and humorous manoeuvre 188
4.9.5 Summary 192
4.10 Laughter, humour support and targets 193
4.10.1 Laughter function and laughter position 193
4.10.2 Laughter function and some extralinguistic variables 196
Laughter function and gender 196
Laughter function and age 196
Miscellaneous 197
4.10.3 Humour support by laughter 198
4.10.4 Targets 200
tpa – targets 201
tpp/add - targets 202
4.10.5 Summary and discussion 203
Contextualizing laughter 204
Laughter responses 204
Targets 205vii

5 CONCLUSION 209
5.1 The role of social categories in determining humorous behaviour 209
5.2 Statistical significance and psychological salience 211
5.3 The ‘Conversational Corpus’ of the BNC as a resource for CA research 212
5.4 Humour theories revisited: the impact of conversational humour 213
5.4.1 Symmetrical vs. complementary relationships and the notion of superiority 213
5.4.2 Types of humorous manoeuvres and the notion of incongruity 215
REFERENCES 219
APPENDIX A: LOG-LINEAR MODELLING 235
APPENDIX B: TRANSCRIPTION NOTATION 237ix
Acknowledgements
Although none of the people mentioned below can be held liable for the faults and
shortcomings of the present work, they have nevertheless contributed – wittingly or
unwittingly – to it.
Firstly, I must express my gratitude to my fellow members of the English department
in Freiburg who have always somehow managed to keep an encouraging smile on
their lips although they may have considered my project infeasible or – at the least –
unrewarding. Special thanks are due to Marianne Hundt and Andrea Sand for always
having an open ear and for the occasional pat on the back when it was needed. They
also assisted in establishing contact with people working in fields related to this work.
A special debt is owed to Hanne Aas and Anna-Brita Stenström who were so kind as
to provide the revised material of the COLT transcripts before publication.
Many thanks go to Stefan Weber who eventually succeeded in installing the BNC
SARA software despite my assistance and advice. While on the subject of the BNC,
many thanks are due to Lou Burnard and his team who must have had a rather busy
time after the public release of the BNC but still found the time to answer my frantic
e-mails and guided me through some (technical) problems.
I have further received a great deal of help from Sebastian Hoffmann whose Perl
scripts provided information on BNC participant interaction.
Many thanks go to Jennifer Hay. Although we have never met, she never failed to
respond to my e-mails and let me into the mysteries of her data and log-linear
analysis. Her unpublished Master’s thesis on humour and gender based on New
Zealand spoken corpora greatly inspired the present investigation.
Special thanks are owed to my supervisor, Christian Mair, for his invaluable
observations, commentary and suggestions on various drafts of this work. I am
especially grateful for his apparently unshakeable confidence in my academic
capabilities and his patience when things seemed to be at a stand-still or progressed
only slowly.
The project of writing this PhD thesis could have never been completed without the
unwavering support of my family. I am immeasurably grateful to David whose part in
getting this PhD finished can hardly be overstated. Not only did he help with the
computing, statistics and cultural background, he also kept me going. Without him
this work may have never been completed.
I am indebted to my children, Robyn and Marc, for their good humour during the time
that I was writing this thesis and for being willing victims of an almost endless stream
of bad jokes.
Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their unflagging support and love. To
them I dedicate this book.