Interactional Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis and Humour Studies
April 29th, 2009
Vera Stadelmann: Interactional Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis and Humour Studies. Approaches, Methods, Applications
Despite the undoubtedly important role that humour and laughter play in our everyday lives, most of us know little about the secrets behind humour: Why do we find some things funnier than others? Why can an insult sometimes be a sign of friendship? And what does our “sense of humour” reveal about ourselves?
In this lecture, we will employ one branch of linguistics, Interactional Sociolinguistics, to shed light on these questions. First, we will investigate the theoretical foundations by discussing the work of John Gumperz to show how sociocultural and linguistic knowledge interact in the interpretation of meaning. We will then apply Discourse Analysis, one of the fundamental tools of linguistics, to determine how humour contributes to our performance(s) of identity and how we communicate cultural assumptions and beliefs in humorous remarks. We will thus see how language and culture interrelate and impact on our interpretation of meaning.
Vera Stadelmann studied English and History at the Universities of Innsbruck, New Orleans and New Mexico and was awarded her MA in 2004. She then went on to work as a Junior Lecturer at Innsbruck’s English Department, before joining the University of Sheffield (UK) as a Lector in German in 2005. She returned to the continent in 2008 where she embarked on a PhD in English Linguistics at Giessen’s International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture(GCSC) with a project on British verbal humour.