This article examines verbal humour in routine interactions within professional workplaces, using material recorded in four New Zealand government departments. The problem of defining humour is discussed, followed by a brief outline of the theoretical models which underpin the analysis of the various functions which humour serves in professional organizations. Humour can express positive affect in interaction. It can also facilitate or `licence' more negative interpersonal communicative intent. While politeness theory can account for the former, as a means of expressing (...) collegiality at work, or de-emphasizing power imbalances, in its standard form politeness theory does not explain barbed, competitive or confrontational humour. For this it is necessary to look to `the dark side of politeness'. An alternative perspective thus examines the extent to which humour functions, especially in unequal encounters, as an acceptable strategy to help superiors maintain a position of power but also as a strategy used by subordinates to licence challenges to the power structures within which they operate, and as a legitimizing strategy in attempts at subverting the repressive or coercive discourse of superiors. (shrink)

This study investigated the interconnected relationship between playful metaphors and sex jokes at the linguistic, conceptual, and discourse levels. Two ontological conceptual metaphors and two specific-level metaphors emerged. They demonstrated that variations in the form of empty metaphors and the creative invention of metaphors are still fundamentally iconic. The conceptual representation of sex acts is closely related to the cultural and ethnic specificity embedded in folk knowledge, such as food culture, the broader context of the physical environment and historical traditions, (...) and the conception of family relationships. Metaphors in sex stories showed that the shared values of Hakka people have pragmatic and socio-cultural implications. Seen as an in-between other by their blood family and their in-laws’ family, Hakka women are under dual strict cultural disciplines for their expected behaviors as women and for their expected roles as daughters-in-law. Metaphors in sex jokes serve as covert and humorous carriers to get around the uneasiness of socially tabooed and embarrassing topics regarding Hakka women and at the same time maintain relational and social harmony. (shrink)

Drawing on a corpus of telephone conversational data, this study examines a collection of self-deprecations in Korean conversations. Detailed analyses of self-deprecations in larger fragments than minimal adjacency pair sequences illustrate the multifaceted nature of self-deprecation. Self-deprecation entails not only deprecatory assessments, but complaint or trouble talk about one’s shortcomings, reenactment of experiences or moments that support the deprecation, and discussion of how to remedy problems. The study further shows that self-deprecation is not a solitary but an interactionally organized practice. (...) The speaker’s repeated self-deprecations elicit a series of different responses from the recipient, such as positive reframing, downgrading the deprecator’s problem, and recommending solutions to the deprecator’s problem. Many instances of self-deprecation suggest that it can be an important resource for building motivation, responsibility, and a sense of affiliation and solidarity with other social members. (shrink)

This study explores how disciplinary humor is deployed to shape and reshape social order in inter-generational encounters. Data are drawn from an ethnographic study of staff–resident encounters at a treatment home for boys, focusing on sequential patterns in the local design of jokes and teasing, analyzing language and multimodal interaction in detail. It was found that staff and boys recurrently laughed together and teased each other by invoking local hierarchical positions such as child–adult. The intrinsic ambiguity of humor and teasing (...) allowed staff members to engage in temporary breaches of social order, while simultaneously enforcing local rules of conduct. Similarly, the boys would joke with the staff, exaggerating or transgressing institutional and generational divides. But ultimately, the joking could also be seen to remind the participants of the very hierarchies that separate staff from residents and men from boys, or adults from children. (shrink)

In this essay we discuss a class of apparently metaphorical idioms, exemplified by “fine as frog's hair,” that do not afford any obvious interpretation, and appear to have originated, at least in part, in language play. We review recent trends in both play theory and metaphor theory, and show that a playful approach to language is often an important element in the use and understanding of metaphors (and idioms generally), even when metaphors can be readily interpreted by means of a (...) vehicle-to-topic mapping. Based on this evidence we call for a more deliberate inclusion of language play in metaphor theory and analysis. (shrink)

The practice of joint fantasizing concerns interacting participants’ collective construction of imaginary realities with internal consistency and coherence. Based on a corpus of conversations held by an informal Italian prayer community of elderly Catholic women, this contribution aims to show that joint fantasizing is not necessarily a humorous activity and is embedded in the participants’ social and personal background. The analysis also indicates that through joint fantasizing the participants conceptualize themselves as victims and idealized opponents of the unfair present and (...) past societies. Framing joint fantasizing as a cross-contextual activity of social criticism allows us to understand that the participants use this interactional practice as an activity endowed with moral suffering and responsibility. This rhetorical seriousness contrasts with other studies in which joint fantasies are generally connected with playful, jocular and laughable practices. (shrink)