Cover not available

Article published In: Advances in the Study of Social Action in Online Interaction
Edited by Valeria Sinkeviciute
[Internet Pragmatics 7:1] 2024
► pp. 101–136

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

Multimodal joint fantasising as a category‑implicative and category‑relations‑implicative action in online multi‑party interaction

 | The University of Queensland
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with The University of Queensland.

Published online: 28 May 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00110.sin
Abstract
Drawing on interactional pragmatics and membership categorisation analysis, with a focus on (un)accomplished intersubjectivity, categories and social action, this paper explores some new aspects of multimodal joint fantasising in online interaction. The data for this study comes from the public Facebook event page regarding the ‘ski field opening’ in Brisbane, a sub-tropical city in Australia. The first part of the analysis examines how intersubjectivity is accomplished through joint fantasising co-constructed among the posters, serving entertainment purposes. Invoking their membership in the category ‘fantasisers’, this is done in two ways: (1) flat co-construction gradient; and (2) upgraded co-construction gradient. The second part focusses on the instances wherein intersubjectivity in relation to the fantasy world is unaccomplished. It is indexed through (1) metapragmatic labels of humour types; (2) treating the event as real; and (3) doubting the authenticity of the event and challenging the joint fantasising posts. As a result, additional categories emerge, thereby constructing category relations, namely, oppositional categories such as ‘fantasisers’-‘the gullible’ and ‘fantasisers’-‘sceptics’. This in situ change, I argue, creates a shift in the pragmatic function of joint fantasising, moving from a category-implicative action (serving entertainment) to a category-relations-implicative action (serving jocular criticism). This paper adds to the research on joint fantasising, categorial work and social action, and broadly contributes to our understanding of how members of the society orient to contexts and categories in and through talk-in-interaction.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Joint fantasising
  • 3.Data and methods
    • 3.1Methodological approaches to data analysis and the key analytical concepts
  • 4.Multimodal joint fantasising, categories and (un)accomplished intersubjectivity
    • 4.1Joint fantasising as a category-implicative action: A case of entertainment
      • 4.1.1Flat co-construction gradient
      • 4.1.2Upgraded co-construction gradient
    • 4.2Joint fantasising as a category-relations-implicative action: A case of jocular criticism
      • 4.2.1Metapragmatic labelling of ‘doing humour’
      • 4.2.2Treating the event as real
      • 4.2.3Doubting the event authenticity/challenging joint fantasising
  • 5.Concluding remarks: Multimodal joint fantasising, categories and social action
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (88)
References
Arundale, Robert B. 2008. “Against (Gricean) intentions at the heart of human interaction.” Intercultural Pragmatics 51: 231–260. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Béal, Christine, and Kerry Mullan. 2013. “Issues in conversational humour from a cross-Cultural perspective: Comparing French and Australian corpora.” In Cross-culturally Speaking, Speaking Cross-Culturally, ed. by Christine Béal, Kerry Mullan, and Bert Peeters, 107–140. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolden, Galina B., and Jeffrey D. Robinson. 2011. “Soliciting accounts with why-interrogatives in conversation.” Journal of Communication 611: 94–119. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cekaite, Asta. 2013. “Child pragmatic development.” In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ed. by Carol A. Chapelle, 1–7. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chang, Wei-Lin Melody, and Michael Haugh. 2021. “Teasing and claims to non-serious intent in Chinese talk shows.” East Asian Pragmatics 6(2): 135–159. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chang, Wei-Lin Melody, and Valeria Sinkeviciute. 2022. “The role of ‘familiarity’ in Mandarin Chinese speakers’ metapragmatic evaluations of Australian conversational humour.” The European Journal of Humour Research 10(2): 74–95. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chovanec, Jan. 2012. “Conversational humour and joint fantasizing in online journalism.” In Language and Humour in the Media, ed. by Isabel Ermida, and Jan Chovanec, 139–161. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Mija M. Van der Wege. 2001. “Imagination in discourse.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton, 772–786. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, Catherine E. 1984. “Joint joking: Improvisational humorous episodes in conversation.” Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 101: 360–371. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf. 2018. “Inferential practices in social interaction: A conversation-analytic account.” Open Linguistics 41: 35–55. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Djordjilovic, Olga. 2012. “Displaying and developing team identity in workplace meetings.” Discourse Studies 141: 111–127. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dynel, Marta. 2011. “Joker in the pack: Towards determining the states of humorous framing in conversations.” In The Pragmatics of Humour Across Discourse Domains, ed. by Marta Dynel, 217–241. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017a. “But seriously: On conversational humour and (un)truthfulness.” Lingua 1971: 83–102. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017b. “‘Is there a tumour in your humour?’: On misunderstanding and miscommunication in conversational humour.” In Doing Pragmatics Interculturally: Cognitive, Philosophical, and Sociopragmatic Perspectives, ed. by Rachel Giora, and Michael Haugh, 55–78. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018a. “No child’s play: A philosophical pragmatic view of overt pretense as a vehicle for conversational humor.” In The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and Negotiating Humor in Everyday Encounters, ed. by Villy Tsakona, and Jan Chovanec, 205–228. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018b. Irony, Deception and Humour: Seeking the Truth about Overt and Covert Untruthfulness. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. “Memefying deception and deceptive memefication: Multimodal deception on social media.” In From Lying to Perjury: Linguistic and Legal Perspectives on Lies and Other Falsehoods, ed. by Laurence R. Horn, 139–161. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2024. “The pragmatics of sharing memes on Twitter.” Journal of Pragmatics 2201: 100–115. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elder, Chi-Hé, and Michael Haugh. 2018. “The interactional achievement of speaker meaning: Toward a formal account of conversational inference.” Intercultural Pragmatics 15(5): 593–625. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Richard. 2015. “Membership categorization analysis.” In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, ed. by Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie, and Tood Sanders, 1–11. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Richard, and William Housley (eds). 2015. Advances in Membership Categorisation Analysis. Los Angeles: Sage. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Geyer, Naomi. 2010. “Teasing and ambivalent face in Japanese multi-party discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 421: 2120–2130. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giles, David, Wyke Stommel, Trena Paulus, Jessica Lester, and Darren Reed. 2015. “Microanalysis of online data: The methodological development of ‘digital CA’.” Discourse, Context & Media 71: 45–51. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goddard, Cliff. 2006. “‘Lift your game Martina!’: Deadpan jocular irony and the ethnopragmatics of Australian English.” In Ethnopragmatics: Understanding Discourse in Cultural Context, ed. by Cliff Goddard, 65–97. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael. 2010. “Jocular mockery, (dis)affiliation, and face.” Journal of Pragmatics 42(8): 2106–2119. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. “Humour, face and im/politeness in getting acquainted.” In Situated Politeness, ed. by Bethan L. Davies, Michael Haugh, and Andrew John Merrison, 165–184. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. “Conversational interaction.” In: The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Keith Allan, and Kasia M. Jaszczolt, 251–274. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “Implicature, inference and cancellability.” In Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy, ed. by Alessandro Capone, Franco Lo Piparo, and Marco Carapezza, 133–151. Cham: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Jocular mockery as interactional practice in everyday Anglo-Australian conversation.” Australian Journal of Linguistics 34(1): 76–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. “Jocular language play, social action and (dis)affiliation in conversational interaction.” In Multiple Perspectives on Language Play, ed. by Nancy Bell, 143–168. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. “Mockery and (non-)seriousness in initial interactions amongst American and Australian speakers of English.” In Handbook of Communication in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. by Donal Carbaugh, 104–177. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael, and Derek Bousfield. 2012. “Mock impoliteness in interactions amongst Australian and British speakers of English.” Journal of Pragmatics 441: 1099–1114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer. 2001. “The pragmatics of humour support.” Humor 141:55–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 2011. “Territories of knowledge, territories of experience: Empathic moments in interaction.” In The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation, ed. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 159–183. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hester, Stephen, and Peter Eglin. 1997. Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis. Lanham: International Institute for Ethnomethodology & University Press of America.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hester, Sally, and Stephen Hester. 2010. “Conversational actions and category relations: An analysis of a children’s argument.” Discourse Studies 12(1): 33–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hester, Stephen, and Sally Hester. 2012. “Category relations, omnirelevance, and children’s disputes.” In Disputes in Everyday Life: Social and Moral Orders of Children and Young People, ed. by Susan Danby, and Maryanne Theobald, 1–25. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Housley, William, Helena Webb, Adam Edwards, Rob Procter, and Marina Jirotka. 2017. “Digitizing Sacks? Approaching social media as data.” Qualitative Research 17(6): 627–644. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Inya, Onwu. 2021. “‘Egungun be careful, na Express you dey go’: Socialising a newcomer-celebrity and co-constructing relational connection on Twitter Nigeria.” Journal of Pragmatics 1841: 140–151. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Inya, Blessing T., and Onwu Inya. 2018. “Conversational humour in a Nigerian radio news programme: A case study of Lati inu aka aka Biodun/Kayode.” European Journal of Humour Research 6(4): 75–94. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kotthoff, Helga. 1999. “Coherent keying in conversational humour: Contextualising joint fictionalisation.” In Coherece in Spoken and Written Discourse: How to Create It and How to Decsribe It, ed. by Wolfram Bublitz, Uta Lenk, and Eija Ventola, 125–150. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. “Oral genres of humor: On the fialectic of genre knowledge and creative authoring.” Pragmatics 17(2): 263–296.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, David. 1987. “The semantics of just.” Journal of Pragmatics 111: 377–398. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen. 2013. ““Just click ‘Like’’’: Computer-mediated responses to Spanish compliments.” Journal of Pragmatics 511: 47–67. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. “Jocular mockery in computer-mediated communication: A contrastive study of a Spanish and English Facebook community.” Journal of Politeness Research 11(2): 289–327. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meredith, Joanne. 2019. “Conversation analysis and online interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 52(3): 241–256. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meredith, Joanne, and Elizabeth Stokoe. 2014. “Repair: Comparing Facebook ‘chat’ with spoken interaction.” Discourse & Communication 8(2) 181–207. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mullan, Kerry. 2020. “Pile of dead leaves free to a good home: Humour and belonging in a Facebook community.” In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication: Ethnopragmatics and Semantic Analysis, ed. by Kerry Mullan, Bert Peeters, and Lauren Sadow, 135–159. Singapore: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. 2012. “Listening practices in English conversation: The responses responses elicit.” Journal of Pragmatics 44(5): 566–576. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Okazawa, Ryo. 2021. “Resisting categorization in interaction: Membership categorization analysis of sitcom humor.” Journal of Pragmatics 1861: 33–44. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Page, Ruth. 2012. “The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: The role of hashtags.” Discourse & Communication 6(2): 181–201. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita. 1986. “Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims.” Human Studies 91: 219–229. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021b. “Pro Domo Sua: Narratives of sexual abstinence.” Sexuality & Culture 251: 540–561. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Poppi, Fabio Indìo Massimo, and Heith Copes. 2024. “Identitas per fabulam: Joint fantasising in the construction of criminal group identities.” Critical Criminology. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Priego-Valverde, Beatriz. 2006. “How funny it is when everybody gets going! A case of co-construction of humor in convesation.” CÍRCULO de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación (clac) 271: 72–100.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey, and John Heritage. 2006. “The epistemics of social relationships: Owning grandchildren.” Language in Society 351: 677–705. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raymond, Chase Wesley. 2019. “Intersubjectivity, normativity, and grammar.” Social Psychology Quarterly 82(2): 182–204. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Raymond, Chase Wesley, and Tanya Stivers. 2016. “The omnirelevance of accountability: Off-record account solicitation.” In Accountability in Social Interaction, ed. by Jeffrey D. Robinson, 321–353. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni, and Tanya Stivers. 2021. “Category-sensitive actions in interaction.” Social Psychology Quarterly 84(1): 49–74. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1974. “An analysis of the course of a joke’s telling in conversation.” In Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, ed. by Richard Bauman, and Joel Sherzer, 337–353. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1992. Lectures on Conversation. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sawyer, Keith. 1993. “The pragmatics of play: Interactional strategies during children’s pretend play.” Pragmatics 3(3): 259–282.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, Kate. 2015. “The pragmatics of hashtags: Inference and conversational style on Twitter.” Journal of Pragmatics 811: 8–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sidnell, Jack. 2011. “The epistemics of make-believe.” In The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation, ed. by Stivers, Tanya, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 131–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinkeviciute, Valeria. 2013. “Decoding encoded (im)politeness: ‘Cause on my teasing you can depend’.” In Developments in Linguistic Humour Theory, ed. by Marta Dynel, 263–288. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “‘When a joke’s a joke and when it’s too much’: Mateship as a key to interpreting jocular FTAs in Australian English.” Journal of Pragmatics 601: 121–139. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. “‘Everything he says to me it’s like he stabs me in the face’: Frontstage and backstage reactions to teasing.” In Multiple Perspectives on Language Play, ed. by Nancy Bell, 169–198. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. “What makes teasing impolite in Australian and British English? ‘Step[ping] over those lines […] you shouldn’t be crossing’.” Journal of Politeness Research 13(2): 175–207. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019a. “Juggling identities in interviews: The metapragmatics of ‘doing humour’.” Journal of Pragmatics 1521: 216–227. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stallone, Letícia, and Michael Haugh. 2017. “Joint fantasising as relational practice in Brazilian Portuguese interaction.” Language & Communication 551: 10–23. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth. 2012. “Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: Methods for systematic analysis.” Discourse Studies 14(3): 277–303. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tsakona, Villy. 2018. “Online joint fictionalization.” In The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and Negotiating Humor in Everyday Encounters, ed. by Villy Tsakona, and Jan Chovanec, 229–255. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vandergriff, Ilona, and Carolin Fuchs. 2012. “Humor support in synchronous computer-mediated classroom discussions.” Humor 25(4): 437–458. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Winchatz, Michaela R., and Alexander Kozin. 2008. “Comical hypothetical: Arguing for a conversational phenomenon.” Discourse Studies 10(3): 383–405. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Xie, Chaoqun, and Francisco Yus. 2018. “Introducing internet pragmatics.” Internet Pragmatics 1(1): 1–12. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yu, Guodong, and Yaxin Wu. 2021. “Managing expert/novice identity with actions in conversation: Identity construction & negotiation.” Journal of Pragmatics 1781: 273–286. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ziv, Avner. 1984. Personality and Sense of Humor. New York: Springer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Chovanec, Jan & Camilla Vásquez
2025. Experiencing Digital Discourses: From Engagement and Multimodality to Social Action. In Experiencing Digital Discourses, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Inya, Onwu
2025. “I am a baby-friendly doctor, but…”. Narrative Inquiry DOI logo
Krug, Maximilian
2025. Inconsequential female autonomy in misogynic hate communication: male dominance, dehumanization, and sexualization in digital collaborative storytelling. Frontiers in Communication 10 DOI logo
Poppi, Fabio Indìo Massimo & Heith Copes
2025. Visio Colletiva: The Role of Joint Fantasizing in Qualitative Social Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 24 DOI logo
Sinkeviciute, Valeria
2025. The ‘parent’ category as an interactional resource in a sibling dispute over sharing. Discourse Studies DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue