Testing, stretching, and aligning: Using ‘ironic personae’ to make sense of complicated issues

Abstract

humor play an important role in both organizing and organizations, because they both help to collide and contrast ideas as well as mitigate and moderate criticism. Our empirical observations of a senior management team suggest participants frequently use verbal irony and aggressive conversational humor through ‘ironic personae’ – a cast of characters, real or imaginary – as a vehicle for pragmatically making  sense of complicated topics. We show how ironic personae perform three functions: (i) testing new positions on topics in a non-committal way; (ii) stretching the frame of comparison of a group; and (iii) aligning shared understanding and commitment. Thus, our analysis sheds light on an underexplored and undertheorised aspect of irony that serves as a pragmatic vehicle for the expression of humorous verbal irony and aggressive conversational humor.

‘The Enabling Role of Internal Organizational Communication in Insider Threat Activity – Evidence From a High Security Organization’

“…Critically, laughter can offer an important coping mechanism alleviating embarrassment and managing anxiety that can arise from moral threats, creating both a way to disengage and diminish the significance of these organizationally threatening actions (Page & Pina, 2015). Our critical incident team members registered the subtle corrective messaging of their ironic humour serving multiple functions, deflecting serious risk, reframing the SOI’s actions as benign and preserving both team and professional credibility (Kwon et al, 2020; McCreaddie & Harrison, 2018) without having to directly face its potentially negative security implications. Our findings support the significant role of humour, social influence and local loyalty (Desmond & Wilson, 2018) in reducing individuals’ internal whistleblowing, especially where risky behaviour is regarded as well intentioned (Hildreth & Anderson, 2018).…”

Examining Rhetorical Strategies in Humorous Discourses: A Systematic Review

“…However, they have minimum differences in specific analysis approaches. Most of them used content analysis and discourse analysis approaches (n = 17), while some of them used a discourse-historical approach (Kwon et al, 2020), discursive and linguo-cultural analysis (Stoyanova, 2021), and a complex linguistic-pragmatic approach (Chernyshova, 2021). A qualitative study is to understand what happened in some specific context (Croker, 2009); it emphasizes the process of the study.…”

“…At the same time, metaphors are considered an important means of creating humor in media discourse, which can help not only to produce humorous discourse but also to understand satirical news reports (Stoyanova, 2021;Droog et al, 2020). However, in everyday communication, rhetorical humor plays a role in regulating interpersonal relationships, resolving communicative crises, and promoting communicative efficiency (Vigsø, 2013;Kwon et al, 2020). Rhetorical strategies have a more singular role in jokes and comedy than in the previous types of humorous discourse, and their main purpose is to help create humor and make the audience laugh, but Weaver (2012Weaver ( , 2015 argues that rhetorical strategies are present in some racist jokes and disagreement humor.…”

“…The role of ironical humor in communication was further investigated by Kwon et al (2020) in the firm meeting situation. They discussed using -ironic personae‖ as a pragmatic tool to facilitate the discussion of complex and controversial topics within a multinational company.…”

Jokes and quarrels: a cross-cultural investigation of humor and conflict transformation in groups

“…Controlling humor is usually expressed through banter, teasing, sarcasm or satire and aims at promoting a feeling of superiority toward the others (Lang and Lee, 2010), as well as influence the group norms and maintain compliance with those norms (Fine and De Soucey, 2005; Kwon et al , 2020; Lynch, 2010). We argue that this controlling function of humor can act as a trigger for process conflicts in the context in which team members discuss the allocation of desired and undesired roles and responsibilities.…”