Within organizations, the communicative phenomenon of humor is commonplace. Humorous talk is just as important and frequent to regular discourse that takes place between organizational members. In this inquiry we examine humor as a particular way of communicating between members of a small Midwestern United States organization. Specifically, we…

This article provides a theoretical framework for a pedagogy of comedy that aids evaluation or instruction of the linguistic and social literacies that are part of speech act implicature and context. By understanding comedy's embeddedness in (an incongruence with) social and linguistic relationships and expectations, comedic texts and episodes can…

This study compared the communication of two older male adolescents (aged 17 and 19 years) with each other (peer interaction) and with a teacher (non-peer interaction) in three different types of activity (casual conversation, providing/listening to a recount and collaborative problem-solving). Conversation analysis, selected analyses from the…

This paper describes how irony is used to negatively evaluate student behaviour in sequences where students disrupt or resist the official business of the lesson and thus challenge the teacher's authority. Irony-implicative utterances, i.e. utterances hearable as ironic in their context, are examined from two complementary perspectives: (i) the…

This study used a social presence construct derived from the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework, with cohesive, affective, and interactive components, to explore online discussion in an Advanced Placement course for rural high school students. The COI is based on the underlying theoretical framework of social constructivism, where interaction is…

In order to extend previous early years humor research into early adolescence, the authors adapted an innovative ecological research method such that at-risk adolescents could be filmed during an entire waking day in their life. Community youth advocates nominated one 15-year-old female and one 14-year-old male as doing well despite adverse…

In this article, three students share how performing in Shakespearean plays have helped them appreciate his work. Orubba Almansouri describes how acting out the play "Romeo and Juliet" allowed him to understand the whole story better. While rehearsing and performing "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Aram S. Balian became a true Shakespeare fan,…

This study investigated vocal cues that differentiate sarcastic utterances from non-sarcastic utterances. Utterances were drawn from videotapes of participant interviews and arranged on a master tape for analysis. Utterances that were identified as sarcastic by speakers and recognized as sarcastic by listeners were randomly arranged with…

Objectives: To measure relative effectiveness of tobacco countermarketing advertisements by category and emotive execution style among young adults. Methods: Participants (n = 1011) from 2 US 4-year colleges, one southern and one northern were surveyed before and after viewing advertisements in one of 3 categories: social norms, health…

Purpose: This study was aimed at determining the role of prosody and situational context in children's understanding of expressive utterances. Which one of these 2 cues will help children grasp the speaker's intention? Do children exhibit a "contextual bias" whereby they ignore prosody, such as the "lexical bias" found in other studies (M. Friend…

Bullies come in all sizes, shapes, ages, genders, and ethnicities. Bullies generally attack that which they do not understand, what is strange, different from their perception of the norm or someone whom they resent. Their motivation has to do with making themselves feel stronger, more secure or to compensate for their own sad experiences.…

Two experiments compared the abilities of third and sixth graders and adults to recognize sarcasm given context and intonation cues. Children recognized sarcasm only when given a speaker's sarcastic intonation cue, even when context strongly indicated a nonliteral interpretation. (BC)

In an experiment designed to explore the immediate disconfirming effects of strong and mild incongruent messages and the impact of certain contextual constraints on disconfirming effects, 192 male undergraduates evaluated videotaped examples of strong and mild sarcasm and joking and the complementary congruent forms of straightforward positive and…

Closed head injury (CHI) is associated with communication difficulties in everyday social interactions. Previous work has reported impaired comprehension of sarcasm, using sarcastic remarks where the intended meaning is the opposite of the sincere or literal meaning. Participants with CHI in the present study were assessed using two types of…

Four teachers discuss benefits of humor and the disadvantages of sarcasm. Includes a humorous piece on teaching cheating in the classroom. (EL)