Divided by a common language? Jocular quips and (non-)affiliative responses in initial interactions among American and Australian speakers of English

Abstract

Studies of conversational humor in intercultural settings have focused largely on illustrating how participants can successfully draw on humor to build rapport. However, it is nevertheless clear that attempts at humor can also go awry in settings in which participants come from different cultural backgrounds. In this paper, we focus on the responses of American and Australian participants to playful or light-hearted comments on, or responses to, another speaker’s just prior serious talk, which are designed to initiate a non-serious side sequence, or what we term “jocular quips”. Drawing from a comparative analysis of thirty recordings of initial interactions involving participants from ostensibly the same (AmAm; AusAus) and different (AmAus) backgrounds, we report our finding that affiliative responses to jocular quips are more prevalent in the “intracultural” dyads (AmAm, AusAus), while non-affiliative responses are more frequent in the “intercultural” dyads (AmAus). We suggest this is due to troubles in accomplishing particularistic co-membership and shared critical, mocking attitudes that are attributed to, or directed at that category. We conclude that Americans and Australians are not “divided by a common language” as such, but rather that affiliating with jocular quips in initial interactions is contingent on the locally situated accomplishment of particular membership categories and predicates associated with these categories.

‘We Want Fork but No Pork’: (Im)Politeness in Humour by Asian Users of English as a Lingua Franca and Australian English Speakers

“…Language play has also been identified as occurring in Australian discourse (e.g. by Haugh, 2017;Haugh and Weinglass, 2018).…”

role of ‘familiarity’ in Mandarin Chinese speakers’ metapragmatic evaluations of Australian conversational humour

“…Furthermore, the importance of common ground proves crucial in establishing interpersonal relationships through humorous practices. This is illustrated in Haugh & Weinglass (2018) who, exploring responses to jocular quips in intracultural and intercultural contexts, notice that while the interactants in the former situations display more affiliative responses, the participants in the latter predominantly show nonaffiliative reactions. This, undoubtedly, can have implications for the process of rapportbuilding and the construction of interpersonal relationships.…”

“…Interestingly, the situated context of being 77 days in house is not treated as the sufficient time to gain familiarity and, thus, engage in teasing. This conceptualisation shows, thus, a robust contrast with Australian cultural context where teasing can be strategically deployed as a way to invite intimacy between people who are not yet well acquainted (Haugh & Pillet-Shore 2018), and commonly understood as a social practice involving non-serious intent among Australian speakers of English (Haugh 2011;Haugh & Weinglass 2018;Sinkeviciute 2014Sinkeviciute , 2017b.…”

Humour and belonging

“…Reflecting the fact that belonging is an accepted human motive, studies originating within the belongingness hypothesis postulate that "human beings have a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships" (Baumeister & Leary 1995: 497). This becomes important for numerous studies showing how, at least in some societies, unacquainted people and new members of a group frequently initiate interaction by making humorous remarks (Haugh 2011(Haugh , 2017Haugh & Pillet-Shore 2018), such as quips (Haugh & Weinglass 2018) or bantering (Plester & Sayers 2007).…”