Epistemics and conversational humour in intercultural first conversations

Abstract

In this paper, we examine conversational humour in intercultural initial interactions, in which participants not only do not know each other, but also come from different cultural backgrounds, through the lens of epistemics. Our analysis examines episodes of conversational humour identified in the Video-Mediated English as a Lingua Franca Conversations (ViMELF) corpus (ViMELF 2018). The analysis focuses on the design of these humour episodes, the negotiation of shared knowledge prior to and during these episodes, and responses to humour bids. Results indicate that whether and how an attempt at humour is responded to reflects the epistemic stance/status of participants in that conversation. When the speaker assumes K- status for the recipient or there is no local negotiation of relevant knowledge, the laughable is generally disattended. On the other hand, when K+ status is assumed for the recipient or the laughable is based on locally co-constructed shared knowledge and/or knowledge is negotiated, the humour episode is expanded upon by the recipient. We conclude that the role of epistemics needs to be more explicitly attended to in the theorisation of humour more broadly.