The pragmatics of conversational humour in social visits: French and Australian English

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

“…A form of mock-impoliteness occurring in the ACE data set is jocular mockery (Goddard, 2006;Haugh, 2010Haugh, , 2014, wherein a producer makes a mocking or diminishing remark to a recipient, often in response to some error or faux pas by the latter (Norrick, 1994). Crucially, mock-impoliteness has also been identified as a characteristic feature of Anglo-Australian humour (Béal and Mullan, 2017;Goddard, 2017;Haugh, 2010Haugh, , 2014Haugh and Bousfield, 2012;Sinkeviciute, 2019).…”

“…The ability to self-denigrate is claimed to be highly valued in Anglo-Australian discourse (Béal and Mullan, 2017;Goddard, 2006Goddard, , 2009Goddard, , 2017Haugh, 2012;Peters, 2007;Sinkeviciute, 2014Sinkeviciute, , 2019: it reflects a cultural principle emphasising ordinariness, familiarity and friendliness, along with the admonishment to play down one's admirable characteristics, abilities or achievements (Goddard, 2006), and deflect or reject praise of these. It may also appease interlocutors' negative face, since it suggests (albeit humorously) that any face threat to a recipient is the fault of the producer.…”

“…S1 then laughs, projecting appreciation of S2's humorous retort and confirming the jocular nature of her original mock-impolite utterance. Example 1.2 is an illustrative instance of mock-impoliteness (again in the form of jocular mockery) in Australian English (example from Béal and Mullan, 2017).…”

“…In Example 2.2 from Australian English (from Béal and Mullan, 2017), participant S1 has just arrived at researcher S2's house for a recorded interview. She spots the recording device to be used for the interview and (after confirming that the tape is rolling) utters a witticism: (Ex.…”

“…to bore you to death with ours yeah Guest S1 humorously denigrates the interest value of the photos he has brought along by describing them diminutively as boring happy snaps. His utterance constitutes self-denigrating deadpan irony, both of which devicesself-denigration and deadpan irony -have been framed as features of Anglo-Australian humour (Béal and Mullan, 2017;Goddard, 2006Goddard, , 2009Goddard, , 2017Haugh, 2012;Peters, 2007;Sinkeviciute, 2014Sinkeviciute, , 2019. The self-denigration lies in S1's characterisation of his own photos as boring, while the irony is that S1 mentions them because of their presumed interest value to others.…”