Raised eyebrows as gestural triggers in humour: The case of sarcasm and hyper-understanding

Abstract

The growing interest in humour within the field of Cognitive Linguistics during the past few years has led to the conclusion that humour exploits inferences through linguistic imagery

Conceptual blending in English and Serbian question-and-answer jokes: cultural transfer issues

“…Brône et al (2006) were the first to summarize the current cognitive linguistic approaches to studying humour. Furthermore, Brône (2008), as well as Tabacaru & Lemmens (2014) used examples from TV shows to expound on the phenomenon of hyper-understanding, a complex schema in interactional humour, first introduced by Veale et al (2006), who analyzed the cognitive mechanisms of adversarial humour. Hyper-understanding relies heavily on Fauconnier's notion of mental spaces, as well as on the concept of layering (Clarke 1996), and it refers to an exchange in which a second speaker reverses the first speaker's intended meaning by using an alternative meaning for the sake of humour, thus manipulating the original discourse space (Veale et al 2006: 305;Brône 2008Brône : 2028.…”

The power of metonymy in humour: stretching contiguous relations across different layers of meaning

“…Clark's (1996) model of layering can be applied to different types of situations, humour included (cf. Brône 2008;Tabacaru, 2014;Tabacaru and Lemmens, 2014). Figure 1 below shows the dynamics of the three-dimensional model proposed by Clark.…”

Humour production in face-to-face interaction: a multimodal and cognitive study

“…The chapter includes a detailed review of multimodal studies of humour, listing findings on the prosody of irony, sarcasm, and humour (Haiman, 1998;Rockwell, 2000;Attardo et al, 2003;Cheang & Pell, 2009;Bryant, 2010, etc. ), along with other multimodal cues in humorous communication (Attardo et al, 2003;Attardo, Pickering, & Baker, 2011;Tabacaru, 2014;Tabacaru & Lemmens, 2014;etc. ).…”

“…They are just used by the interlocutors as switches from non-humorous to humorous communication. Tabacaru and Lemmens (2014) argued that raised eyebrows are gestural triggers prompting the hearer to take the utterance as humorous, ironic, or sarcastic. Gestural triggers co-occur with humour and contribute to meaning making.…”

“…Both phenomenon imply a conflict between different viewpoints. Brône (2008), Feyaerts (2013), and Tabacaru and Lemmens (2014) resorted to Clark's layering model of communication (1996) (Fauconnier, 1994). Fauconnier's mental spaces are "small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk, for purposes of local understanding and action" (Fauconnier & Turner, 2003, p. 58 He defined intersubjectivity as the ability to figure out the mental spaces represented by our interlocutors.…”