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"Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness is the first systematic study that offers a socio-pragmatic perspective on humorous practices such as teasing, mockery and taking the piss and their relation to (im)politeness. Analysing data from corpora, reality television and interviews in Australian and British cultural contexts, this book contributes to cross-cultural and intercultural research on humour and its role in social interaction. Although, in both contexts, jocular verbal practices are highly valued and a positive response - the 'preferred reaction' - can be expected, the conceptualisation of what is seen as humorous can vary, especially in terms of what 'goes too far'. By examining how attempts at humour can occasion offence, presenting a distinction between 'frontstage' and 'backstage' perceptions of jocularity and looking at how language users evaluate jocular behaviours in interaction, this study shows how humour and (im)politeness are co-constructed and negotiated in discourse. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in pragmatics, conversational humour, (im)politeness, intercultural communication, discourse analysis, television studies and interaction in English-speaking contexts"--.

• Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness
• Editorial page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Table of contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 The scope of this book
    • 1.1.1 Why analyse two English-speaking cultural contexts?
  • 1.2 A note on the transcription conventions
  • 1.3 A note on the terminology used
  • 1.4 The research questions
  • 1.5 The structure of the book
• 2. Meanwhile in the world of (im)politeness
  • 2.1 Traditional approaches to politeness and impoliteness
    • 2.1.1 Classic politeness theories and major critique of Brown and Levinson’s model
    • 2.1.2 A note on the onset of linguistic impoliteness research
  • 2.2 (Im)politeness in the era of discursive approaches
    • 2.2.1 In search of a definition of (im)politeness
    • 2.2.2 First-order and second-order concepts
    • 2.2.3 The metapragmatics of (im)politeness
  • 2.3 The view of (im)politeness taken in this research
• 3. Data: From corpora to reality television to interviews
  • 3.1 Corpora: The British National Corpus (‘BNC’) and the ‘Macquarie Dictionary’ database of Australian English (‘Ozcorp’)
  • 3.2 Reality television: Introducing ‘Big Brother’
    • 3.2.1 ‘Big Brother’: The format and some local differences
    • 3.2.2 ‘Big Brother’ Australia 2012 and ‘Big Brother’ UK 2012
  • 3.3 Reality television, performance and real life
  • 3.4 Reality television, (genuine) impoliteness, entertainment and (failed) humour
    • 3.4.1 ‘Big Brother’: An impoliteness-oriented context?
  • 3.5 Qualitative interviewing
    • 3.5.1 The use of qualitative interviewing in this research
  • 3.6 Summary
• 4. Conversational humour: Jocular verbal behaviours
  • 4.1 Overview of approaches to teasing – the epitome of jocular verbal behaviours
  • 4.2 A note on the intracultural and intercultural research into humour
  • 4.3 Jocular face-threatening and face-supportive acts
    • 4.3.1 Potentiality and genuineness (context and non-verbal cues)
  • 4.4 Production-evaluation model
    • 4.4.1 Impolite jocular behaviour
    • 4.4.2 Non-impolite jocular behaviour
    • 4.4.3 Non-polite jocular behaviour
    • 4.4.4 Polite jocular behaviour
  • 4.5 A corpus-assisted study of teasing: Evidence from the ‘BNC’ and ‘Ozcorp’
    • 4.5.1 Teasing how? Ways of doing teasing
    • 4.5.2 Teasing why? Functions of teasing
    • 4.5.3 Teasing and what then? After-teases
  • 4.6 Summary
• 5. Jocular verbal behaviours in Australian and British cultural contexts
  • 5.1 Jocularity, cultural values and interactional preferences
    • 5.1.1 ‘Not taking yourself too seriously’
    • 5.1.2 Self-deprecation
    • 5.1.3 ‘Taking the piss/mickey out of someone’ and ‘rubbishing your mates’
  • 5.2 Public offence and/vs personal offence
    • 5.2.1 The preferred reaction
    • 5.2.2 Laughter and funniness in relation to public offence
  • 5.3 Summary
• 6. Frontstage and backstage reactions to jocularity
  • 6.1 Goffman, the presentation of self and reality television
  • 6.2 Frontstage and backstage in the ‘Big Brother’ house
  • 6.3.2 ‘Big Brother’ UK: “[S]he keeps winding me up about what happened the other day”
    • 6.3.2.1 Frontstage I (1)
    • 6.3.2.2 Backstage I
    • 6.3.2.3 Backstage II
    • 6.3.2.4 Frontstage I (2)
    • 6.3.2.5 Frontstage II
  • 6.3.1 ‘Big Brother’ Australia: “Everything he says to me it’s like he stabs me in the face”
    • 6.3.1.1 Frontstage I (1)
    • 6.3.1.2 Backstage I
    • 6.3.1.3 Backstage II
    • 6.3.1.4 Frontstage II
    • 6.3.1.5 Frontstage I (2)
  • 6.4 Summary
• 7. Negative evaluations of jocularity
  • 7.2 Specific issues
    • 7.2.1 Similarities in the Australian and British ‘Big Brother’ houses
      • 7.2.1.1 Association with a negative name/person/group/activity
      • 7.2.1.2 Breach of ‘social norms’/taboo topics
      • 7.2.1.3 Shifting the facts
    • 7.2.2 Differences between the Australian and British ‘Big Brother’ houses
      • 7.2.2.1 Excluding (AU)
      • 7.2.2.2 Being better (AU)
      • 7.2.2.3 Criticising one’s body/personal items (UK)
      • 7.2.2.4 Reminding of a painful experience (UK)
    • 7.2.3 Division of the specific issues into categories
  • 7.3 Summary
• 8. Interviewees’ attitudes to jocularity
  • 8.1 The metapragmatics of jocular verbal behaviours
  • 8.2 Different perspectives in the interviewees’ evaluations
    • 8.2.1 From the target’s point of view
    • 8.2.2 From the instigator’s point of view
    • 8.2.3 From the non-participant’s point of view
  • 8.3 Funnyp vs funnyn-p
  • 8.4 Tendencies in interviewees’ evaluations of jocularity and impoliteness in the ‘Big Brother’ houses
    • 8.4.1 Two-party Australian interaction: “The treadmill”
      • 8.4.1.1 Evaluations of the instigator’s comment
      • 8.4.1.2 Evaluations of the target’s reaction
      • 8.4.1.3 Interviewees’ feelings
      • 8.4.1.4 Interviewees’ reaction
    • 8.4.2 Multi-party British interaction: “McDonald’s on the pyramid”
      • 8.4.2.1 Evaluations of the instigator’s comment
      • 8.4.2.2 Evaluations of the target’s reaction
      • 8.4.2.3 Interviewees’ feelings
      • 8.4.2.4 Interviewees’ reaction
  • 8.5 Multi-party Australian-British interaction: Intracultural and intercultural evaluations
    • 8.5.1 Intracultural evaluations
      • 8.5.1.1 Australians about Australians
      • 8.5.1.2 The British about the British
    • 8.5.2 Intercultural evaluations
      • 8.5.2.1 The British about Australians
      • 8.5.2.2 Australians about the British
  • 8.6 Summary
• 9. Conclusions
  • 9.1 Contributions to the field
  • 9.2 Future research directions and raised questions
• References
• Subject index