Defines why women have been blocked from participating in the mainstream of American comedy yet have overcome hurdles to produce a humor that is sustaining and spells survival for women in society.
Vituperation, disparagement, and debasement seem to have become part of the mainstream discourse in contemporary US-American media culture. Zooming in on a distinct televisual comedy genre, Katja ...Schulze explores the formal principles, media-specific realizations, and the cultural work of disparagement in contemporary female-led situation comedies. Subsequently, larger patterns of (gender-based) invective strategies and conventions that define the dynamism of this comedic genre come into view. Her study outlines case studies of popular sitcoms, like Parks and Recreation, Mike & Molly, and the revival of hit-sitcom Roseanne, thereby unearthing how the shows are able to stage humor as mass-mediated deprecation - a signifying practice with its own poetics and politics.
This study investigates international users’ reception of a dark-humour meme tweeted by Ukraine’s governmental Twitter (X) account on 7 December 2021 as part of its exceptional cultural practice of ...posting humorous memes. Tweeters’ responses to the ‘headaches meme’ are examined through a discourse-analytic lens. An emphasis is placed on the appreciation of the humour (emanating from the meme or its contextual embedding) and other forms of humour support demonstrated by its online indicators. The overarching aim is to distil and compare user reactions to the meme in two sociopolitical contexts—before and after the invasion of Ukraine that Russia mounted on 24 February 2022—based on two equal quote tweet samples. While the findings reveal a relative decrease in humour appreciation after the invasion, the same diversified reactions encompassing humour support or its lack and politically polarised discourses making for participatory digital warfare are detected in both parts of the dataset.
This article highlights the civic role of humour as revealed by the analysis of two Romanian online satirical publications (Times New Roman and Cațavencii). The analysis will emphasise different ...humorous strategies and the crisis narratives deployed by the journalists, in accordance with the profile of the publication. While a ludic frame is preferred for the Times New Roman authors, the authors from Cațavencii use aggressive humour or articles with humorous insertion in order to make accusations against public or private power structures. Satirical publications are not only meant to entertain the public, but also to raise awareness to critical issues such as the environmental aspects (for example, climate change, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, etc.). The analysis will also tackle the appraisal of humorous articles by the public and the risk entailed by the lens of humour on the public’s perception of the topic: illegal logging in Romania.
In this accessible book, Delia Chiaro provides a fresh overview of the language of jokes in a globalized and digitalized world. The book shows how, while on the one hand the lingua-cultural nuts and ...bolts of jokes have remained unchanged over time, on the other, the time-space compression brought about by modern technology has generated new settings and new ways of joking and playing with language. The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age covers a wide range of settings from social networks, e-mails and memes, to more traditional fields of film and TV (especially sitcoms and game shows) and advertising. Chiaro’s consideration of the increasingly virtual context of jokes delights with both up-to-date examples and frequent reference to the most central theories of comedy. This lively book will be essential reading for any student or researcher working in the area of language and humour and will be of interest to those in language and media and sociolinguistics.
Self-referential third-person predications functioning as stand-alone virtual performatives, such as ∗shrugs∗, abound across modes of computer-mediated communication and interactive multimodal ...platforms. Their continued use, commonly involving manual addition of typographic elements, testifies to non-trivial communicative needs not satisfied by easy access to graphical icons, like the shrug emoji. This study investigates their contributions to the construction of face in mass messaging. Focusing on face-work practices on Twitter, the aim is to account for ways in which users employ virtual performatives in that noisy, opaque, and socially complex environment. Virtual performatives are examined in a sample of publicly visible tweets which are not retweets or replies to other users and do not contain names of people. Manifesting minimal addressivity, the constructions are shown to rely on self-reference for face-work, inviting imagined audiences of the like-minded to treat the action or emotion thus enacted virtually by an externalized self as something they can relate to. Virtual performatives are inherently playful, and the humour conveyed in the tweets including them is predominantly benevolent and tolerant. A central finding is the conspicuous presence of benign self-deprecating humour: as users seek social acceptance at their own expense, they seem not to take themselves too seriously.
•Virtual performatives contribute to face-work practices on Twitter.•Users post self-referential microplays for others to relate to.•Virtual performatives convey playfulness and humour.•What is conspicuously present is benevolent self-deprecating humour.
In this study, we investigate the relationship between affiliative and aggressive humour of the leader and the quality of relationship between leader and follower in terms of leader–member exchange ...(LMX), assuming identification with the leader to mediate this relationship. We conducted a 2‐wave survey study with a time lag of 6 weeks (N = 152). We found affiliative humour of the leader rated at Time 1 to be positively related to LMX at Time 2, even after controlling for LMX at Time 1, whereas aggressive humour was negatively related to LMX at Time 2. Identification with the leader mediated the relationship between affiliative humour of the leader and LMX but did not mediate the relationship between aggressive humour and LMX. Our results contribute to the understanding of leader behaviours that contribute to a positive professional relationship between leader and follower as well as to the understanding of the relational processes that may explain the effects of humour in leadership.
Practitioner points
Leader humour may help establish high‐quality relationships between leaders and followers. Leaders could use affiliative humour and should avoid aggressive humour to improve the quality of leader–follower relationships.
Affiliative humour may be developed by an established humour training programme focusing on the so‐called humour habits. Aggressive humour could be prevented by establishing organizational non‐aggression norms.
Formal humour training for leaders should be used with care to prevent potential downsides such as emotional exhaustion.
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