Resisting categorization in interaction: Membership categorization analysis of sitcom humor

9 Using Racial Incompetence as a Comedic Device and Tacit Method of Anti-Racist Education

“…For viewers who recognize these types of incompetence from their own real-world observations and experience, their portrayal in exaggerated or parodied ways can serve as a comedic device (cf. Okazawa, 2021Okazawa, , 2022Stokoe, 2008), converting actions that might be experienced as awkward or harmful in real-world settings into occasions for humor. In order to appreciate the humor in these exchanges, however, viewers must themselves be sufficiently competent to recognize the expectations being breached by characters portrayed as racially incompetent.…”

“…Heritage, 1984a;Sacks, 1984;Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). However, in following a similar approach to that used by Stokoe (2008) and Okazawa (2021Okazawa ( , 2022, as noted above, we treat these shows as scripted but nonetheless naturallyoccurring products of writers' and actors' professional activities -as opposed to being generated by researchers, or for research purposes (cf. Potter, 2002;Speer, 2002).…”

“…More generally, there is long-standing recognition of incongruity between an expected action and an actually-produced one being a systematic device for the production of humor (see e.g. Glenn, 2003;Okazawa, 2021Okazawa, , 2022Stokoe, 2008).…”

“…In using interactions portrayed in television situational comedies ('sitcoms'), Stokoe (2008) and Okazawa (2021Okazawa ( , 2022 demonstrate how conversation analytic methods and findings can offer insights into how writers and actors of these scripted interactions display and exploit common-sense knowledge as devices for producing humorous incongruities. Specifically, Stokoe (2008) shows how sitcoms use portrayals of characters breaching the rules of turn-taking (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974) and the expectations associated with preference organization (Pomerantz, 1984); Okazawa (2021) examines portrayals of characters' resisting categorization before acting in recognizably category-bound (Sacks, 1972a(Sacks, , 1972b(Sacks, , 1992 ways; and Okazawa (2022) examines how characters' utterances that are ambiguous with respect to whether they serve to categorize others are used to portray humorous misunderstandings that implicate category-related moral orders.…”