Teasing

Valeria Sinkeviciute
The University of Queensland
Table of contents

In the field of humour research and, more specifically, in research on conversational humour in pragmatics, teasing has been the most extensively studied type of humorous behaviour. This is not surprising, as teasing – an umbrella term for potentially offensive but jocular interactional practices – is a ubiquitous and recognisable interactional practice across different cultural contexts. Nevertheless, due to its complex double-edged sword nature, it is a rather paradoxical phenomenon. This can be seen in numerous studies that attempt to determine what constitutes teasing in conversation (it captures a range of diverse practices) and to explore a variety of emic (laymen) conceptualisations of teasing in different languages.

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