Missing the Joke: A Reception Analysis of Satirical Texts

Investigating satirical discourse processing and comprehension: the role of cognitive, demographic, and pragmatic features

“…For instance, prior figurative language research has pointed out the need to consider the role of agreement and group membership during verbal irony comprehension (van Mulken, Burgers, & van der Plas, 2011), and the same may be true for satire comprehension. Indeed, agreeing with the satirical message has been mentioned as a prerequisite for evoking a humorous response (Simpson, 2003), but a lack of agreement (or humorous) response does not guarantee one did not understand the satirical message (Johnson et al, 2010), and the results here tend to support this viewpoint.…”

“…Therefore, although humor was not identified as a significant predictor of satire comprehension, these post-hoc tests do suggest that the two are still significantly associated with one another. These results further suggest that humor may be a sufficient but not necessary component of satire comprehension (Johnson et al, 2010).…”

“…It is somewhat surprising that perceptions of humor were not significantly associated with either satirical or non-satirical comprehension, running counter to the hypotheses of this study and results from previous studies of satire. However, as has been previously reported, hearers need not find an example of satire humorous in order to understand the satirical message, and finding satire humorous does guarantee that a hearer fully comprehended the satirical message (Johnson et al, 2010; LaMarre et al, 2014). As such, the same phenomena may have occurred in this data.…”

“…Other studies argue that a humorous response may serve as an imperfect proxy of satire comprehension (e.g., Skalicky & Crossley, 2019). At the same time, at least one study provided evidence suggesting that a humorous response is not necessary in order for a hearer to understand a satirical message (Johnson et al, 2010), and satire accompanied with a strong humorous delivery may serve to detract from the more serious and critical satirical message sought by an author (LaMarre et al, 2014). Therefore, it is important to continue investigating whether a humorous response is a necessary component of satire comprehension.…”

Understanding Variation in Audience Engagement and Response: An Application of the Composite Model to Receptions ofAvatar(2009)

“…Fragmentation in the field is further compounded by some general tendencies that can also be observed, such as the trend for ethnographic research to be conducted in the absence of any explicit analytical conceptualization of the different approaches to sense-making that can potentially be adopted by readers and viewers, often because researchers do not wish to impose predetermined categories on their data (e.g., see Johnson et al, 2010). In such cases, scholars frequently present interesting findings in great detail but also in isolation, as though they bore little or no relation to the wider body of evidence compiled to date.…”