Raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour: The case of sarcasm and hyper-understanding
The growing interest in humour within the field of Cognitive Linguistics during the past few years has led to the conclusion that humour exploits inferences through linguistic imagery and is highly creative. Following Yus (2003: 1299), we assume that humour uses discourse markers that allow the audi...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies
2014-10-01
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| Series: | The European Journal of Humour Research |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/56 |
| _version_ | 1818294007252385792 |
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| author | Sabina Tabacaru Maarten Lemmens |
| author_facet | Sabina Tabacaru Maarten Lemmens |
| author_sort | Sabina Tabacaru |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The growing interest in humour within the field of Cognitive Linguistics during the past few years has led to the conclusion that humour exploits inferences through linguistic imagery and is highly creative. Following Yus (2003: 1299), we assume that humour uses discourse markers that allow the audience to see that what is being said should not be taken seriously. In this study, based on a large corpus of examples extracted from two American television series (House M.D. and The Big Bang Theory), we add a yet unexplored multimodal perspective – that of facial expressions accompanying humorous utterances, particularly pertaining to sarcasm and hyper-understanding. More specifically, we present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of raised eyebrows used in interactional humour, arguing that they play a role in switching the context to a humorous interpretation. Our study analyses humorous utterances against the background of Clark’s layering model and Fauconnier’s mental spaces theory. We illustrate how raised eyebrows function as “gestural triggers” allowing the hearer to make the connection between explicature (i.e. what is explicitly communicated by an utterance; cf. Carston 2002, 2004) and implicature (i.e. assumptions that are not explicit and that the hearer has to infer from the contextual environment; cf. Grice 1989). As such, we show that raised eyebrows play an important role in the understanding of the humorous message because they guide the hearer to interpret utterances in a humorous way and they contribute to meaning construction.
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| first_indexed | 2024-12-13T03:24:54Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-87aa1a134f1940749933d8df44f69136 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2307-700X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-13T03:24:54Z |
| publishDate | 2014-10-01 |
| publisher | Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies |
| record_format | Article |
| series | The European Journal of Humour Research |
| spelling | doaj.art-87aa1a134f1940749933d8df44f691362022-12-22T00:01:18ZengCracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language StudiesThe European Journal of Humour Research2307-700X2014-10-0122Raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour: The case of sarcasm and hyper-understandingSabina Tabacaru0Maarten Lemmens1Université Charles de Gaulle, Lille 3 & Katholieke Universiteit LeuvenUniversité Lille 3, FranceThe growing interest in humour within the field of Cognitive Linguistics during the past few years has led to the conclusion that humour exploits inferences through linguistic imagery and is highly creative. Following Yus (2003: 1299), we assume that humour uses discourse markers that allow the audience to see that what is being said should not be taken seriously. In this study, based on a large corpus of examples extracted from two American television series (House M.D. and The Big Bang Theory), we add a yet unexplored multimodal perspective – that of facial expressions accompanying humorous utterances, particularly pertaining to sarcasm and hyper-understanding. More specifically, we present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of raised eyebrows used in interactional humour, arguing that they play a role in switching the context to a humorous interpretation. Our study analyses humorous utterances against the background of Clark’s layering model and Fauconnier’s mental spaces theory. We illustrate how raised eyebrows function as “gestural triggers” allowing the hearer to make the connection between explicature (i.e. what is explicitly communicated by an utterance; cf. Carston 2002, 2004) and implicature (i.e. assumptions that are not explicit and that the hearer has to infer from the contextual environment; cf. Grice 1989). As such, we show that raised eyebrows play an important role in the understanding of the humorous message because they guide the hearer to interpret utterances in a humorous way and they contribute to meaning construction. https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/56humourcognitive linguisticsraised eyebrowsgestural triggersgesturediscourse markers |
| spellingShingle | Sabina Tabacaru Maarten Lemmens Raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour: The case of sarcasm and hyper-understanding The European Journal of Humour Research humour cognitive linguistics raised eyebrows gestural triggers gesture discourse markers |
| title | Raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour: The case of sarcasm and hyper-understanding |
| title_full | Raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour: The case of sarcasm and hyper-understanding |
| title_fullStr | Raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour: The case of sarcasm and hyper-understanding |
| title_full_unstemmed | Raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour: The case of sarcasm and hyper-understanding |
| title_short | Raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour: The case of sarcasm and hyper-understanding |
| title_sort | raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour the case of sarcasm and hyper understanding |
| topic | humour cognitive linguistics raised eyebrows gestural triggers gesture discourse markers |
| url | https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/56 |
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