The spontaneous co-creation of comedy: Humour in improvised theatrical fiction

Landert, Daniela

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2020.12.007

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The participation structure of improvised theatre is different from that of scripted theatre in some crucial respects (Landert 2021a). For instance, for improvised theatre, the roles of author, principal and animator fall together.…”

Section: Performed Fictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fiction and Pragmatics

Locher

Jucker²,

Landert³

et al. 2023

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This Element outlines current issues in the study of the pragmatics of fiction. It starts from the premise that fictional texts are complex and multi-layered communicative acts which deserve attention in pragmatic research in their own right, and it highlights the need to understand them as cultural artefacts rich in possibilities to explore pragmatic effects and pragmatic theorising. The issues covered are (1) the participation structure of fictional texts, (2) the performance aspect of fictional texts, (3) the interaction between readers and viewers and the fictional texts, as well as (4) the pragmatic effects of drawing on indexical linguistic features for evoking ideologies in characterisation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

show abstract

Section: Performed Fictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fiction and Pragmatics

Locher

Jucker²,

Landert³

et al. 2023

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In other cases, the interactions appear to be more stylised, for instance in a play in which characters talk in rhymed verses. But generally speaking, fictional language is scripted language, except for improvisation theatre, in which the actors themselves spontaneously create their fictional interactions as they go along (see Landert 2021). If fictional language sounds natural and life-like, it has been designed that way by the authors, scriptwriters and characters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Features of orality in the language of fiction: A corpus-based investigation

Jucker

2021

Language and Literature

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper explores the pervasiveness of features of orality in the language of performed fiction. Features of orality are typical of spontaneous spoken conversations where they are the result of the ongoing planning process and the interaction between the interlocutors, but they also occur in the context of performed fiction (movies and plays) and in narrative fiction (e.g. novels). In these contexts, they are not the result of the spontaneous planning process but are generally produced to imitate such processes. In this paper, I explore a small range of such features (contractions, interjections, discourse markers, response forms and hesitators) in four corpora of performed fiction that have recently become available ( Corpus of American Soap Operas, TV Corpus, Movies Corpus and Sydney Corpus of Television Dialogue) and compare their frequency patterns with spontaneous face-to-face conversations in the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English and with narrative fiction and academic writing in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The results confirm that the selected features of orality are used regularly in performed fiction but less frequently than in spontaneous face-to-face interactions while they are rare in narrative fiction and almost entirely absent in academic writing. The results also show that the status of the transcriptions contained in these corpora needs to be assessed very carefully if they are to be used for a study of pragmatic features.

show abstract

“…Improv is supposed to involve communication, flexibility, memory, language, creativity, problem solving, and co-construction (Bermant, 2013). Although teachers, learners and many qualitative studies reported these supposed benefits of improv (Sawyer, 2004(Sawyer, , 2011Landert, 2021), little scientific evidence using quantitative methods support these supposed benefits.…”

Section: Introduction Improvmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teenagers Tell Better Stories After Improvisational Theater Courses

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Improvisational theater (improv) is a booming theatrical practice, applying in many fields (teaching, medicine or entrepreneurship). Its effects on cognitive and behavioral processes are beginning to be demonstrated, despite scientific publications that are still rare, particularly about language. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of improv on adolescent narrative skills. Twenty-seven middle school students were recruited and divided into two groups: an IMPRO group (n = 13), composed of novice and intermediate improvisers, and a CONTROL group (n = 14), composed of middle school students doing theater. The evaluation took place in two experimental times spaces 3 months apart (11 sessions). It consisted in the creation of a written narrative resulting from previously observed images. We used quantitative criteria to carry out the analysis of this story (coherence, cohesion, lexicon, and syntax), according to the methodologies of PELEA and EVALEO. We showed an effect of the improv on coherence, which suggests that the practice of improv introduces teenagers to improve the narrative skills and the planification of a story, unlike written theater.

show abstract

The spontaneous co-creation of comedy: Humour in improvised theatrical fiction

Cited by 8 publications

References 13 publications

Fiction and Pragmatics

Fiction and Pragmatics

Features of orality in the language of fiction: A corpus-based investigation

Teenagers Tell Better Stories After Improvisational Theater Courses

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About