The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and negotiating humor in everyday encounters(7 Topics in Humor Research)

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.

Review :
Indeed a dynamic collection, this volume presents a view of humor from a number of disparate perspectives. It is a useful and well-balanced collection of pragmatic approaches illuminating the multifaceted nature of humour. The organisation of the volume into oral face-to-face and electronically mediated humorous interactions enables the reader to engage with both the striking similarities but also the differences engendered by the choice of modality. Bringing together philosophical, pragmatic and sociolinguistic approaches to humorous phenomena, while developing theoretical perspectives using case studies, the volume is a worthy contribution to a burgeoning and complex field of enquiry. A significant contribution to the study of humor performance (as opposed to competence) within a broad interactionist framework. Applications to a variety of genres, contexts, and situations mean that the book will be of interest to most researchers in humor studies. The volume should be read by humour scholars and even humour producers, as it reunites valuable insights from different theoretical perspectives (pragmatics, sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, philosophy, etc.). The well-balanced and coherent construction of the volume highlights the importance of broadening the notion of interaction in humour studies: according to Bakhtin’s dialogic principle, any communicative form, be it written or oral, presupposes an interaction between producer/speaker and receiver/hearer. By taking seriously the notion of humor as a social practice that is embedded in and inextricable from its sociocultural context, this volume sets the stage for future inquiry into the joint construction of playful communication in face-to-face, as well as mediated, interaction. This collection ambitiously envisions an integrated, dynamic treatment of humorous interactions in diverse contexts, and it contributes significantly to this goal. Must reading for humor scholars.