"The girl is on fire!" : Interactional humour in YouTube comments on the Notre Dame disaster

CHOVANEC, Jan and Villy TSAKONA. "The girl is on fire!" : Interactional humour in YouTube comments on the Notre Dame disaster. In Linares Bernabéu, Esther. The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts. 1st ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2023, p. 87-107. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 335. ISBN 978-90-272-1387-7. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.335.04cho.

Basic information

• Original name: "The girl is on fire!" : Interactional humour in YouTube comments on the Notre Dame disaster
• Authors: CHOVANEC, Jan (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution) and Villy TSAKONA (300 Greece).
• Edition: 1. vyd. Amsterdam, The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts, p. 87-107, 21 pp. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 335, 2023.
• Publisher: John Benjamins

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Chapter(s) of a specialized book
• Field of Study: 60203 Linguistics
• Country of publisher: Netherlands
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Publication form: printed version "print"
• WWW: URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14210/23:00129958
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• ISBN: 978-90-272-1387-7
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.335.04cho
• UT WoS: 001195410800005
• Keywords (in Czech): humor; černý humor; náboženský humor; sociální média; YouTube; vtipy; vlákno s vtipy; internetový diskurz; pragmatika
• Keywords in English: humour; disaster humour; religious humour; social media; YouTube; jokes; joking thread; online discourse; pragmatics
• Tags: rivok
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

The article deals with online interactional humour in user comments on YouTube. Drawing on an extensive dataset of verbal reactions to a video discussing the (in)appropriateness of joking about the 2019 burning of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, the analysis traces how online commenters recontextualise the disaster and how they jointly produce humorous interaction on a sensitive topic. The analysis focuses on the emergence of joking threads, which consist of jokes shared by the commenters and additional (non-)humorous metapragmatic comments that develop the interaction in various directions. The data reveal that commenters cooperatively engage in a rich range of humour-related practices on a socially sensitive topic, which oscillate between disaster humour and religious humour.

Links

• MUNI/FF-DEAN/1766/2021, interní kód MU: Name: Language, humour and communication: Sociopragmatic perspectives

Investor: Masaryk University, FA Dean's program