The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age

Viral Humour

Delia Chiaro

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351379953
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Lingue e linguistica
• Sous-sujet: Linguistica

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.

1

THE LANGUAGE OF JOKES

Several years on

DOI: 10.4324/9781315146348-2

In 1992, I wrote The Language of Jokes: Analysing Verbal Play, a book that I look back on with fondness. This book, like many first publications, was the result of a dissertation, the subject of which, jokes, was meant to be a provocation and a way of highlighting my being different from my fellow postgraduate applied linguists who preferred to tackle aspects of language that were supposedly of more pith and moment. Jokes set out to amuse and thus, presumably, were not worthy of serious consideration, a premise that I wished wholeheartedly to challenge. Moreover, if Wittgenstein could claim that “A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes”, then surely the subject was worth pursuing in its own right. Therefore, with the tacit support of one of the world’s greatest philosophers I went on to dedicate much time and effort both to the subject of jokes and, by extension, to humour in general. Today, more than two decades on, I cannot help but smile at my former naivety. Older and wiser, my attempt at creating a taxonomy in The Language of Jokes now makes me wince, especially in the face of so many of my betters who had also produced their own classifications – not to mention those who were still to do so. As far as taxonomies went, I was in the company of those devised by scholars such as Richard Alexander 1997; Walter Nash 1985; Walter Redfern 1984; Graeme Ritchie 2004 and many others. Recently, linguist Debra Aarons, also inspired by Wittgenstein’s well-known remark, produced a book in which she illustrates how “many crucial concepts of linguistics” are illustrated entirely through jokes (2012: 1) simultaneously demonstrating how, on a technical level, jokes exploit every possible option available in a language to humorous ends. However, in The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age, I will be dealing neither with taxonomies nor with detailed analyses of verbal humour. Neither will I attempt to insert a joke or a gag into a linguistic category or to explain its underlying mechanisms as I had done previously. Instead, my aim is to look at jokes on a wider, macroscopic level and examine their place in contemporary society.

The question that I set out to address in this book is whether the language of jokes has changed since the 1990s. If it is true that the past is a foreign country, so much has changed and so rapidly between the close of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st that the answer at first sight must surely be yes, jokes have indeed changed. After all, like everything else in life, change simply happens; it is inevitable. As we become older, along with the world that surrounds us, we change; similarly, both as individuals and as members of a wider society, our language and our tastes change too. It therefore makes perfect sense that jokes and especially the language in which they are couched should change along with everything else. If language has changed since the 1990s, which it has, then it must follow that the language in which the jokes are cast has also changed. The geopolitical changes that have occurred since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, coupled with the onset of digitalized communication that allows us to interact in real time with people on the other side of the planet, have had a considerable effect in all areas of life. Massive shifts in population have rendered inner cities multilingual with an increasing number of bilingual and bicultural residents, while, in the meantime, English has become a truly global language. Not only has English strengthened its position as a vehicular language in the traditional areas of science, technology, commerce and trade, but it has also firmly established itself as the foremost language of emails, texting and, above all, social networking. It is becoming increasingly clear that the English language dominates both the real and the virtual world of the World Wide Web. Furthermore, technology now plays a significant role in our daily lives. For instance, there has been a significant shift in the way we use mobile phones. If at first we used mobiles in the same way as we used landline phones, i.e. to speak to someone at a distance albeit while we were on the move, now speaking on a mobile has been largely replaced by texting and above all, instant messaging. It would appear that texting, sort of speech in writing, has replaced much oral communication via mobile technology. It may well be that it is mainly the elderly who use mobile phones to actually speak to someone, while younger people prefer to text. In fact, the use of texting via “smart” phones that are in fact, actually pocket-sized computers, highlights several language changes as this modality relies on the use of short cuts where acronyms replace words and emoji and emoticons can replace whole sentences. Texting, sending emails, posting messages on social media – these are all means of communicating that privilege reading and writing rather than speech and listening. So, it would seem that such virtual communication has restored a certain status to the written word that was seemingly lost previously with the prominence of landline telephony and media such as TV and radio. What I aim to examine in this volume is whether these changes have had any effect on jokes, and if so, in what way. The answer to my quest may well turn out to be surprising.

Jokes and humorous discourse

Although the title of this book refers to the language of jokes, discussion will not be limited to the joke form alone. While being perfectly aware that jokes may well be the most studied form of verbal humour by linguists, psychologists, philosophers and many other kinds of researchers, in all likelihood jokes are the least common form of verbal humour. It is more likely that instances of verbal humour occur in books, articles and newspaper headlines, as good lines in film, theatre and television, or as quips, asides and wisecracks in everyday conversation rather than within the framework of the joke form proper. Furthermore, in the 21st century, a joke is likely to be embedded in a virtual post, in a tweet or else circulated by means of a smartphone via instant messaging. Most probably, the reason why the joke has traditionally been the most researched form of verbal humour is simply the ease of collectability. Apart from collections of jokes in book form and those performed by professional comedians, there are entire websites dedicated to jokes. In fact, googling the word “jokes” alone results in 257 million hits, compared to 4.97 million for “quips” and a mere 199,000 for “witty asides”.¹ This volume instead sets out to explore diverse areas of verbal humour, which while including jokes, will not exclude other forms of non-serious discourse ranging from witticisms and one-liners to “ping-pong-punning”, i.e. sequences of semantically related puns produced by different participants in a conversation (Chiaro 1992: 113), and to internet memes and beyond. What follows are some operational definitions that aim to put some order in the intricate web that embraces what I shall loosely label “humorous discourse”.

Humour

Jokes and humour are natural companions. However, while we all know what humour is, the concept itself is not only difficult to pin down, but also to unequivocally define. It is unlikely that there is or has ever been an eminent philosopher or intellectual who has not attempted to produce a definition of humour (for an extensive overview, see Attardo 1994). As with other complex concepts such as intelligence, identity and art, humour is multi-faceted and consequently yields a multitude of definitions, in keeping with its intricate nature. To wit: according to psychologist Rod Martin, humour “may be viewed as a form of mental play comprising cognitive, emotional, social and expressive components” (2007). Another way of conceptualizing humour is found in one of the most prominent theories of humour, Incongruity Theory, which follows in the tradition of a set of ideas long ago proposed by the philosophers, Aristotle and Kant. Additionally, this theory incorporates a cognitive aspect in the production and reception of humour. Incongruity Theory is based upon the ability to recognize incongruity, or what Koestler called “bisociation” (1964). The recognition of incongruity is certainly fundamental to the processing of humour, although not all that is incongruous is necessarily funny.

Laughter, too, although it may be a response to a playful stimulus, is not an essential manifestation of either understanding or appreciating a humorous stimulus because it can reflect emotions other than humour (Chafe 2007; Glenn and Holt 2013; Provine 2000). For example, Provine claims that it is quite common to laugh because of nervousness or anxiety, although it would appear that most laughter simply punctuates natural breaks in the conversation (Provine 1996). Consequently, psychologists of humour have adopted various labels for the emotional reaction to a humorous stimulus. McGhee labels it as simply the “humor response” (1971); Ruch, however, linking the response to some kind of pleasure or amusement adopts the term “exhilaration” (1993a) while Martin prefers the word “mirth” (2007). Even though laughter and smiling may be visible responses to an amusing stimulus, notably, all three labels avoid including the display of physical reactions as the sine qua non of humour appreciation, recognizing that humour can exist in the absence of such reactions. Furthermore, linguist Wallace Chafe points out that the terms “mirth” and “exhilaration” are limited as they are restricted to euphoria and pleasure alone, which themselves may not be the essential reaction to humour, neither do they describe other emotional reactions to humorous stimuli. Chafe therefore opts for the expression the “feeling of non-seriousness” to describe the sensation that everyone recognizes but cannot be unequivocally described (2007: 1). This raises the question of what “non-seriousness” actually refers to and what we mean when we use terms such as “amusing” and “funny”. Something can be “funny ha-ha” in that it is amusing, but it can also be “funny peculiar” in the sense of odd and strange – incongruous. Thus, we come full circle as we return to the importance of the role of incongruity, apparently an essential feature of humour that additionally evokes the recognition of a playful frame, one of non-seriousness.

To complicate matters further, we should be wary of confusing the notion of humour with sense of humour. Unlike humour per se, sense of humour is linked to characteristics of an individual’s personality, and different people have a different sense of humour; in other words, we are not all amused by the same things or to the same degree. However, not even a person with a very good sense of humour is likely to be in a permanent state of light-heartedness. Appreciating a humorous stimulus depends on a combination of both an individual’s personality and their frame of mind in a certain situation and at a certain moment in time (see Ruch 1993b).

Openness towards humour is considered to be a positive personality trait. For example, a person looking for a partner on a dating site will tend to seek someone with “a good sense of humour”, and there is research that shows that “a good sense of humour” can enhance marital relationships (Hall 2013; Lauer and Lauer 1986; Ziv 1988, 2010). So, as well as involving cognition and emotion, humour also exerts a variety of social functions. Amongst its assorted purposes, humour can, for example, serve as a societal gelling agent by enhancing affiliation amongst people; it may alleviate tension in stressful or awkward situations; it can be a coping strategy. In this view, whatever its function at a given moment, the fact remains that humour leads to beneficial effects on people’s minds and bodies. Humour may not necessarily allow us to live longer, but it will certainly allow us to live better (Martin 2007: 332), bearing in mind, however, that just as it can calm and appease, humour also has the power to offend, criticize and control. In this regard, Billig (2005) suggests that ridicule, an aggressive form of humour, may well play a part in maintaining social order.

As is obvious, humour also functions as a major form of expression, manifested in entertainment contexts such as film, television sitcoms, theatrical performances and stand-up comedy as well as in literary works and the visual arts. The use of humour is prominent in marketing, advertising and newspaper headlines. Importantly and noticeably, a significant new location for humour is the World Wide Web rife with entire sites devoted not only to jokes, but also to comic video clips and memes. However, what is interesting about much humorous material online is that so much of it is actually produced by users themselves. During the first decade of the 21st century, comic PowerPoint presentations frequently travelled from laptop to laptop in the form of email attachments. Gradually these comic PowerPoints were generally replaced by amusing video clips, cartoons, memes and witty chain text messages that are spread (hence the adjective “viral”) by means of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices – the name of the popular instant messenger WhatsApp is in itself a play on words.

It is thanks to the technology involved in Web 2.0 that people may now actively engage with internet content. If at first we had to make do with witty PowerPoint attachments, now we can create and upload our own clips, gifs, selfies, etc. For example, YouTube hosts countless videos uploaded by members of the public. Anyone can produce and post a homemade video on YouTube, just as they may post a scene they themselves have extracted from a professionally made film or a TV series or even create a compilation of different scenes by a certain actor or on a particular topic. And much of what peo...