[Students] humor research talk M 2/25/13 3:30pm HL203

[Kim Jefferies]

In conjunction with the 3rd North East Texas Humor Conference, Dr. Villy Tsakona will give the following talk on Monday, February 25th, 2013 at 3:30pm in the Hall of Languages theater (HL 203).

Metapragmatics and the normative communities of humor
 
Villy Tsakona
Democritus University of Thrace
 
The presentation is dedicated to what speakers think about humor when they spontaneously comment on it. More specifically, I will try to describe the main humor-related topics raised when speakers participate in public debates concerning the interpretation(s) of specific humorous texts. Diverse and competing perspectives and ideologies on these topics seem to set the boundaries between speakers who disagree on what can be considered
humor(ous) and how humor should be used.

The theoretical framework of the study involves concepts such as Agha¹s
(2007) metapragmatic stereotypes and Kuipers¹ (2008) normative communities of humor. The data examined comes from a political debate that erupted over a Greek television advertisement which was considered humorous and/or sexist by many viewers. A close look at this set of data reveals that the main topics discussed during the debate are the following: the content of humor (i.e. what can or cannot be considered funny), its function (in relation to the dissemination of bias), and its limits (i.e. whether or not some things should be joked about).

The point I wish to make is that speakers¹ assessments and negotiations over the content, functions, and limits of humor may highlight or downplay its positive or negative aspects in each context. Whenever speakers discuss about humor, their metapragmatic stereotypes on humor come to the surface, namely their ideologies on what humor is, how, when, why it is expected to be used, and how it is interpreted as part of social interaction. Thus, normative communities of humor are shaped which tend to set some norms concerning humor use and function as imagined communities which ³are not to be distinguished by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined² (Anderson 1991: 6), and which ³lead people to make concrete decisions and act in particular ways² (McBride 2005: 14).
 
 
References
Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and Social Relations [Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (revised edition). London/New York: Verso.
Kuipers, Giselinde. 2008. The Muhammad cartoon controversy and the globalization of humor. In ³The Muhammad cartoons and humor research: A collection of essays,² Paul Lewis (ed.), 7-16. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 21 (1): 1-46.
McBride, Keally D. 2005. Collective Dreams: Political Imagination and Community. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

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Christian F. Hempelmann, PhD
Assistant Professor of Computational Linguistics
Department of Literature & Languages
Texas A&M University­Commerce
(903) 886-5291