Description
In this accessible book, Delia Chiaro provides a fresh overview of the language of jokes in a globalized and digitalized world. The book shows how, while on the one hand the lingua-cultural nuts and bolts of jokes have remained unchanged over time, on the other, the time-space compression brought about by modern technology has generated new settings and new ways of joking and playing with language. The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age covers a wide range of settings from social networks, e-mails and memes, to more traditional fields of film and TV (especially sitcoms and game shows) and advertising. Chiaro’s consideration of the increasingly virtual context of jokes delights with both up-to-date examples and frequent reference to the most central theories of comedy.
This lively book will be essential reading for any student or researcher working in the area of language and humour and will be of interest to those in language and media and sociolinguistics.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Language of jokes several years on
Jokes and humorous discourse
Humour
The Joke Form
The General Theory of Verbal Humor
Form and content
Verbal ambiguity
Joke Structure
Joke Targets
The stupid underdog
Canny jokes
Sex
Religion
Disasters
Suspending disbelief
Chapter 2 The Language of Jokes Goes Global
Humour in unscripted TV entertainment
Presenting with humour
The teasing scold
Behaving badly for a laugh
Translating humour for the movies and television
Non-verbal humour
Visual humour
Acoustic humour
Verbal humour
Purely linguistic orally conveyed verbal humour
Visually conveyed verbal humour
Culture specific verbal humour
Verbal/visual Humour
Verbal humour
Translation as a Humorous Device
Chapter 3 The Language of Jokes and Gender
Male, Female Humour and Laughter
Targeting Gender
Sexist humour
Specific sexist jokes
Wives
Mothers-in-law
The Dirty Joke
Rape Jokes
Feminist Jokes
Women and Self-deprecatory Humour
Gender Bending
Chapter 4 The Language of Jokes On-Line
Conversational Humour on-line
Signalling laughter on-line
Ping-pong-punning
Ping-pong-punning Below the Line
Below the Line Communities
Hashtaggery
When the verbal meets the visual - In and around Internet memes
Real life moments
Manipulated content
Memes as Ethnic jokes
Exclusive to the Internet
Criss-cross humour
Meme Transference
