Humor as a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Spanish
Supporting Agencies
- MINECO-FEDER, UE
- Generalitat Valenciana
Abstract
The main aim of this paper is to analyze the metapragmatic ability of humor in Spanish. Taking into account that it is a pragmatic phenomenon (Ruiz Gurillo, 2006), such as metaphor or irony, this research delves into the metapragmatic abilities that promote not only its creation but also its comprehension (Ruiz Gurillo, 2016). Therefore, the speaker/writer’s perspective may be complemented with the listener/reader’s point of view. In order to illustrate these theoretical aspects, we will analyze some of the metapragmatic abilities that both comedians in monologues and speakers in conversation carry out while using humor. Firstly, a humorous genre, i.e. the monologue, will be described as a planned, public and interactional discourse. Secondly, a non-humorous genre, i.e. the spontaneous conversation, will be presented as an unplanned, private and interactive discourse. In sum, this research illustrates some contexts in which humor is used and inferenced in Spanish.
Downloads
References
Alvarado Ortega, M.ª Belén (2013): «Failed humor in conversational utterances in Spanish: a matter of (im)politeness», in Leonor Ruiz Gurillo and María Belén Alvarado Ortega (eds.), Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 191-217.
Alvarado Ortega, M.ª Belén (2016): «Variability, adaptability and negotiability in conversational humor: A question of gender», in Leonor Ruiz Gurillo (ed.), Metapragmatics of Humor: Current Research Trends, IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 192-214.
Archakis, Argiris and Villy Tsakona (2005): «Analyzing conversational data in GTVH terms: A new approach to the issue of identity construction via humor», Humor, 18-1, pp. 41-68.
Attardo, Salvatore (2001): Humorous texts: A semantic and pragmatic analysis, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter.
Attardo, Salvatore (2008): «A primer for the linguistics of humor», in Viktor Raskin (ed.), The Primer of Humor Research, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 101-155.
Attardo, Salvatore (2019): «Humor and mirth. Emotions, embodied cognition, and sustained humor», in Lachlan J. Mackenzie and Laura Alba-Juez (eds.), Emotion in Discourse, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 189-211.
Attardo, Salvatore and Viktor Raskin (1991): «Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model», Humor, 4(3-4), pp. 293-347.
Attardo, Salvatore and V. Raskin (2017): «Humor and Pragmatics», in Salvatore Attardo (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, London, Routledge, pp. 174-188.
Attardo, Salvatore, Christian F. Hempelmann and Sara Di Maio (2002): «Script oppositions and logical mechanisms: Modelling incongruities and their resolutions», Humor, 15-1, pp. 3-46.
Bell, Nancy (2009): «Responses to failed humor», Journal of Pragmatics, 41, pp.
Calsamiglia, Helena y Empar Tusón (1999): Las cosas del decir. Manual de análisis del discurso, Barcelona, Ariel.
Chovanec, Jan and Villy Tsakona (2018): «Investigating the dynamics of humor: Towards a theory of interactional humor», in Jan Chovanec and Villy Tsakona (eds.), The Dynamics of Interactional Humor. Creating and negotiating humor in everyday encounters, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 1-26.
Coates, Jennifer (2003): Men talk: Stories in the making of masculinities, Oxford, Blackwell.
Cortés, Luis y M.a Matilde Camacho (2003): ¿Qué es el análisis del discurso?, Barcelona, Octaedro.
Crespo, Nina y Pedro Alfaro (2009): «La conciencia metapragmática en la edad escolar», Boletín de lingüística, XXI (32), pp. 7-21.
Eisterhold, Jodi, Salvatore Attardo and Diana Boxer (2006): «Reactions to irony in discourse: evidence for the least disruption principle», Journal of Pragmatics, 38, pp. 1239-1256.
Gombert, Jean Émile (1992): Metalinguistic development, New York, Harverster Wheatsheaf.
Grupo Val.Es.Co. (2014): «Las unidades del discurso oral. La propuesta Val.Es.Co. de segmentación de la conversación (coloquial)», Estudios de Lingüística del Es- pañol, 35, pp. 13-73.
Hay, Jennifer (2000): «Functions of humor in the conversations of men and women», Journal of Pragmatics, 32, pp. 709-742.
Koch, Peter y Wulf Oesterreicher (2007): La lengua hablada en la Romania: español, francés, italiano, Madrid, Gredos.
Kotthoff, Helga (2011): «Co-creating fantastic pretense scenarios», Paper delivered at 12th International Pragmatics Conference (IPrA Association). (Manchester, 3-8 July 2011).
Lampert, Martin and Susan M. Ervin-Tripp (1998): «Exploring paradigms: The study of gender and sense of humor near the end of the 20th century», in Wil- libad Ruch (ed.): The sense of humor: Explorations of a Personality Characteristic, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 231-270.
Lampert, Martin D. and Susan M. Ervin-Tripp (2006): «Risky laughter: Teas- ing and self-directed joking among male and female friends», Journal of Pragmatics, 38, pp. 51-72.
Mura, G. Angela (2019): La fraseología del desacuerdo. Los esquemas fraseológicos en español, Sevilla, Editorial Universidad de Sevilla.
Partington, Alan (2006): The linguistics of laughter: A corpus-assisted study of laughter-talk, London, Routledge.
Pons, Salvador (2014): «Models of Discourse Segmentation in Romance Languages», in Salvador Pons (ed.), Discourse Segmentation in Romance Languag- es, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 1-21.
Raskin, Viktor (1985): Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Raskin, Viktor (2007): «The sense of humor and the truth», in Willibald Ruch (ed.), The sense of humor: Explorations of a personality characteristic, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, pp. 95-108.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor (2006): Hechos pragmáticos del español, Alicante, Universidad de Alicante.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor (2008): «Las metarrepresentaciones en el español hablado», Spanish in Context, 5(1), pp. 40-63.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor (2012): La lingüística del humor en español, Madrid, Arco/ Libros.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor (2013a): «El monólogo humorístico como tipo de discurso. El dinamismo de los rasgos primarios», Cuadernos Aispi, (2), pp. 195-218.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor (2013b): «Narrative strategies in Buenafuente’s humorous monologues», in Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo and M.a Belén Alvarado-Ortega (eds.), Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 107-140.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor (2014): «Infiriendo el humor. Un modelo de análisis para el español», Revista CLAC (Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación), 59, pp. 148-162.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor (2016): «Metapragmatics of humor: Variability, negotiability and adaptability in humorous monologues», in Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo (ed.), Metapragmatics of humor: Current Research Trends, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 81-104.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor (2019a): Humor de género. Del texto a la identidad en español, Madrid, Iberoamericana Vervuert.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor (2019b): «En modo humorístico: habilidades metapragmáticas en discursos de humor», en Antonio Briz, M.ª José Martínez Alcalde, Nieves Mendizábal, Mara Fuertes Gutiérrez, José Luis Blas, Margarita Porcar (coords.), Estudios lingüísticos en homenaje a Emilio Ridruejo (2 vol.), Valencia, Universitat de València, pp. 1231-1242.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor (en prensa): «Humor e ironía», en M.ª Victoria Escandell Vidal, José Amenós Pons y Aoife Ahern (eds.), Manual de pragmática, Madrid, Akal.
Ruiz Gurillo, Leonor and Esther Linares Bernabéu (en prensa): «Subversive humor in Stand-up comedy: Two case studies in Spanish», HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research.
Scarpetta, Fabiola and Anna Spagnolli (2009): «The interactional context of humor in stand-up comedy», Research on Language and Social Interac- tion, 42.3, pp. 210-230.
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (2007): Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis, Cambridge, CUP.
Shilikhina, Ksenia (2017): «Metapragmatic markers of the bona fide and non-bona fide modes of communication», in Wladyslaw Chlopicki and Do- rota Brzozowska (eds.), Humorous Discourse, Amsterdam, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 107-130.
Timofeeva Timofeev, Larissa (2014): «El humor verbal en niños de educación primaria: desarrollo de la conciencia metapragmática», Feminismo/s, 24, pp. 195-219.
Timofeeva Timofeev, Larissa y Leonor Ruiz Gurillo (en prensa): «Marcas e indicadores del humor en narraciones escritas de niños y niñas de 8 a 12 años», Spanish in Context.
Tsakona, Villy (2017): «Genres of humor», in Salvatore Attardo (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humour, Routledge, Taylor and Francis, pp. 489-503.
Verschueren, Jef (1999): Understanding Pragmatics, London, Arnold.
Wilson, Deirdre (2000): «Metarepresentation in linguistic communication», in Dan Sperber (ed.), Metarepresentations. A multidisciplinary perspective, Oxford, University Press, pp. 411–448.
Yus, Francisco (2016): Humour and Relevance, Amsterdam, John Benjamins.
The works published in this magazine are subject to the following terms:
1. The Publications Service of the University of Murcia (the publisher) preserves the economic rights (copyright) of the published works, and favors and allows the reuse of same under the license of use indicated in point 2.
2. The papers are published in the electronic edition of the magazine under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative 3.0 Spain license (legal text). Papers may be copied, used, disseminated, transmitted and publicly exhibited if the following requirements are met: i) The authorship and the original source of its publication (magazine, editorial and URL of the work) must be cited; ii) The works cannot be used for commercial purposes; iii) The existence and specifications of this user license must be explicitly mentioned.
3. Self-archiving conditions. Authors can electronically disseminate pre-print versions (version before being evaluated) and / or post-print versions (version evaluated and accepted for publication). This makes possible its circulation and diffusion earlier and with it a possible increase in its citation and reach among the academic community. RoMEO color: green.
