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In:Metapragmatics of Humor: Current research trends
Edited by Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 14] 2016
► pp. 147–175

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How do French humorists adapt across situations?

A corpus study of their prosodic and (dis)fluency profiles

 |  The VALIBEL Research Centre, Institute for Language and Communication (IL&C), Université catholique de Louvain (UCL)
Published online: 24 November 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.14.08gro
Abstract
The paradigm of humor studies has deemed prosody (rhythm and intonation) and (dis)fluencies (discourse markers, filled and unfilled pauses, repetitions, etc.) as relevant cues in conversational humor for expression of sarcasm and irony. However, they also make valuable (interactive) devices for discourse planning and structure since they carry both semantic and pragmatic information. After a summary on the study of humorists’ speech and its meta-pragmatic implications (Sections 1 & 2), a two-fold corpus-based analysis offers results on 8 humorists’ speech variations across 4 situations (theatre and radio sketches, radio and face-to-face interviews) and their relevant contextual features. Firstly on the continuum from hypo- to hyper-articulation (Lindblom, 1990), temporal and melodic variations reveal which discourse adaptation is motivated by a specific pragmatic determiner. Secondly, (dis)fluencies’ distribution within speakers and across situations reveal the importance of the individual’s Speaker Dis/Fluency Profile (SDFP). Discussion shall focus on the study’s contribution to humorists’ phonostyles and persona, as well as on the implication of native language SDFP for assessment of non-native speakers.
Article outline
  • 1.Studying the prosody and variation of humorists’ speech
    • 1.1Factors of prosodic registers and styles variations
    • 1.2Culturally integrated metapragmatic of Humor in French corpora
  • 2.The present study
    • 2.1Speech material and corpus treatment
    • 2.2Research question
    • 2.3Hypotheses
  • 3.Prosodic variation
    • 3.1Temporal variations
    • 3.2Intonative variations
    • 3.3Accentual density
    • 3.4Illustration of prosodic register and style variation
  • 4.(Dis)fluency analysis
    • 4.1Overall (dis)fluencies distribution
    • 4.2Complexity of (dis)fluency sequences
    • 4.3Types of sequences including pauses
  • 5.Conclusion and discussion
  • Notes
  • References
References (66)
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Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Crible, Ludivine
2017. Discourse markers and (dis)fluency in English and French. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22:2 ► pp. 242 ff. DOI logo
Crible, Ludivine, Liesbeth Degand & Gaëtanelle Gilquin
2017. The clustering of discourse markers and filled pauses. Languages in Contrast 17:1 ► pp. 69 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2018. Discourse Markers and (Dis)fluency [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 286], DOI logo

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