Po-faced receipts of teases

No Aggression, Only Teasing: The Pragmatics of Teasing and Banter

“…Contrary to the stipulation propounded by most of the authors quoted in this paper (e.g. Drew 1987;Boxer and Cortés-Conde 1997;Lennox-Terrion and Ashforth 2000), it is here argued that the degree of aggression and criticism is gradable and can even be non-existent, depending on the form teasing assumes, i.e. a playful comment (ex.…”

“…From a broader perspective, Drew (1987) defines teasing as mocking but playful jibes which speakers produce with twofold intention, both malignant and Brought to you by | MIT Libraries Authenticated Download Date | 5/13/18 7:14 AM benevolent. In this view, it is thanks to this dichotomous nature that teasing can serve either as a benign attempt to joke or as an aggressive act meant to hurt another person's feelings or ostracise them from a group (Kowalski 2000).…”

“…It is particularly important for the aggressive type that teasing should necessarily be a dialogic construct determined by the communicative behaviour of both the speaker and the direct hearer (Scarborough Voss 1997, Drew 1987, Tholander and Aronsson 2002, Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998, optionally also overheard by a metarecipient, i.e. a third party present or audiences, in the case of media discourse.…”

“…Nevertheless, speakers can resort to teasing as a vehicle for playful mitigation of threatening propositional meaning, viz. criticism, in order not to enforce hostility (Drew 1987) and without an overt attack (Mulkay 1988). Freedom to do thus is possible thanks to closeness between conversationalists, immanently associated with teasing, which may convey some grain of truth, simultaneously retaining its humorous potential.…”

On understandings of intention: A response to Wedgwood

“…Some of this was shown in the excerpt I analyzed, although Emma had in fact been talking about acupuncture for most of their conversation. As Drew (1987) points out in a study of teasing and tease responses in English, mockery may be locally occasioned in response to the target "over doing" or exaggerating a particular action, in this case, extolling the virtues of acupuncture. Indeed, we can find an example of Emma and Chris recognizably achieving a jocular tease in response to Emma extolling the virtues of her acupuncture teacher later in that same conversation (Haugh 2010a(Haugh : 2113(Haugh -2114.…”