Repetition in Telecinematic Humour
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Humour and repetition are in an interesting relationship. Humour depends on that moment when an unexpected incongruous thought surprises us – repetition depends on presenting again what has already been brought forward. Yet jokes often have repetitive structures and catchphrases occur again and again. The apparent tension between the new and the repeated are nowhere better explored than in the American sitcom with a laugh track, a genre of television comedy that is both full of humour and full of repetition. Although both elements are integral to this type of Telecinematic Discourse, the role repetition plays for humour in sitcoms has not previously been fully explored. In this book, a random sample of such US sitcom episodes with a laugh track – the first and second episodes of Anger Management, Better with you, The McCarthys, Retired at 35, Romantically Challenged, See Dad Run, Sullivan & Son and Undateable – are explored for the repetitive patterns their humour follows. From the microscopic analysis of the individual word that appears twice, to the composition of individual instances of humour, to scenes and to the structure of the narrative of the entire episode, this study discusses repetitive phenomena on different levels of language, taking into account the multimodal and layered context of television viewing as a communicative setting, and in so doing explores Repetition in Telecinematic the four C’s of sitcom humour: Constitutive, Cohesive, Constructional and Communicative repetition. These functions of repetition are approached based on an incongruity-resolution approach to sitcom humour and Humour informed by the detailed discourse analytic study and discussion of many examples from the data. How US American sitcoms employ Thomas C. Messerli is a researcher in linguistics and digital humanities based at the University of Basel. He has published on digital social Repetition in Telecinematic Humour formal and semantic repetition in the reading and evaluation and on linguistic pragmatic aspects of humour, telecinematic discourse, subtitling, and computer-mediated communi- construction of multimodal humour cation. More information on http://www.thomasmesserli.com Thomas C. Messerli Die Publikationsreihe NIHIN – New Ideas in Human Interaction – entstand 2010 und ist ein Kooperationsprojekt zwischen der Hermann Paul School of Linguistics (HPSL) und der Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg (UB). NIHIN bietet eine moderne, frei zugängliche Plattform für wissenschaftliche Essays erfahrener WissenschaftlerInnen sowie Prädikatsdissertationen, Text- sammlungen zum Thema Sprache in der Interaktion und multimodale Sprachkorpora. Thomas C. Messerli New Ideas in Human Interaction 2021 Repetition in Telecinematic Humour How US American sitcoms employ formal and semantic repetition in the construction of multimodal humour Dissertation zur Erlangung der Würde eines Doktors der Philosophie vorgelegt der Philosophisch-Historischen Fakultät der Universität Basel von Thomas C. Messerli aus Rüeggisberg, BE Freiburg 2021 Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg / Universitätsbibliothek Erstgutachten: Prof. Dr. Miriam Locher Zweitgutachten: Dr. habil. Andreas Langlotz Verteidigt in Basel am 26. Januar 2018 Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Object of the study and research questions 1 1.2 Can repetition be incongruous? 4 1.3 Sitcoms as data for a linguistic analysis 6 1.4 Structure of the study 10 2 Telecinematic Discourse 15 2.1 Introduction: What is Telecinematic Discourse? 15 2.2 Characters and Goffman’s (1979) participation framework 20 2.2.1 A fictional conversation in Seinfeld (1989–1998) 20 2.2.2 Goffman’s (1979) participation framework 25 2.2.3 Two communicative levels 28 2.3 Models of participation in telecinematic discourse 30 2.3.1 Screen-to-face communication 31 2.3.2 Participation, characterisation and multimodality 36 2.3.3 Communication between collective senders and (meta-)recipients 39 2.3.4 Participation slots for viewers 42 2.3.5 The communicative setting of the sitcom as ventriloquism 44 2.4 Television viewers as recognisers of telecinematic discourse 46 2.5 Summary: Communicative setting of telecinematic discourse 52 3 Humour 56 3.1 Introduction 56 3.2 Approaches to humour based on superiority 58 3.3 Approaches to humour based on relief 60 3.4 Approaches to humour based on incongruity 62 3.4.1 Incongruity-Resolution Theory (Suls, 1972) 63 3.4.2 General Theory of Verbal Humour (Attardo and Raskin, 1991) 67 3.5 Humour in context 74 3.5.1 The Benign Violation Hypothesis (McGraw and Warren, 2010) 75 3.5.2 Humour in a play frame 80 3.6 Humour and surprise 82 4 Humour in Telecinematic Discourse 86 4.1 Introduction 86 4.2 Incongruities in Telecinematic Discourse 87 4.3 Establishing a humorous frame in TCD 88 4.4 Viewer expectations 91 4.5 Surprise in TCD 96 4.6 Resolution of humorous incongruities in TCD 100 4.7 Laughter as a humour cue 102 4.8 Humour constellations in sitcoms 110 4.9 Telecinematic humour: A working definition 115 5 Repetition and Humour 118 5.1 Introduction 118 5.2 Repetition and humour: Literature review 119 5.3 Existing terminologies and broad definitions of repetition 127 5.4 A first classification and working definition of repetition 130 6 Data and Method: The AMSIL corpus 138 6.1 Introduction 138 6.2 Data selection: American television sitcoms in AMSIL 139 6.2.1 Introduction: Sitcoms and repetition 139 6.2.2 Data selection: US American sitcoms in AMSIL 141 6.3 The AMSIL corpus: Description of the data 145 6.3.1 Anger Management 146 6.3.2 Better with you 146 6.3.3 The McCarthys 147 6.3.4 Retired at 35 147 6.3.5 Romantically Challenged 147 6.3.6 See Dad Run 148 6.3.7 Sullivan & Son 148 6.3.8 Undateable 148 6.3.9 Common features of the sitcoms and sitcom episodes in AMSIL 149 6.4 Data preparation 150 6.5 Data analysis: Methodological steps 153 6.5.1 Identifying and categorising simple repeats 154 6.5.2 Coder agreement 161 6.5.3 Further analytical steps based on the typology of simple repeats in sitcom humour 163 7 Typology of simple repeats in the AMSIL corpus 166 7.1 Introduction: Intra- and inter-turn repetition 166 7.2 Intra-turn repetition 169 7.2.1 Intra-turn lexical repetition 170 7.2.2 Intra-turn phonetic repetition 177 7.2.3 Intra-turn structural parallelism 178 7.2.4 Intra-turn prosodic repetition 179 7.2.5 Kinesic intra-turn repetition (character multimodality) 180 7.2.6 Telecinematic intra-turn repetition (telecinematic multimodality)183 7.3 Inter-turn repetition 184 7.3.1 Inter-turn lexical repetition 185 7.3.2 Inter-turn structural parallelism 193 7.3.3 Inter-turn prosodic repetition 195 7.3.4 Kinesic inter-turn repetition (character multimodality) 198 7.3.5 Telecinematic inter-turn repetition (telecinematic multimodality)203 7.4 General Discussion: Simple repeats in AMSIL 206 8 The composition of humorous turns 208 8.1 Introduction 208 8.2 Correlations between simple repeats 209 8.2.1 Correlations of different types of intra-turn repetition 210 8.2.2 Correlations of different types of inter-turn repetition 217 8.2.3 Correlations between intra- and inter-turn repeats 222 8.3 Combining repeats into complex repetition 226 8.3.1 Complex intra-turn repetition 227 8.3.2 Complex inter-turn repetition 236 8.3.3 Combining intra-turn and inter-turn repetition 250 8.4 Summary 255 9 Functions of repetition in humorous sitcom turns 258 9.1 Introduction 258 9.2 Previous findings on the functions of repetition in humour 259 9.2.1 Constitutive repetition 260 9.2.2 Cohesive repetition 261 9.2.3 Constructional repetition 262 9.2.4 Communicative repetition 262 9.3 Functions of repetition in sitcom humour 262 9.3.1 Constitutive repetition 266 9.3.2 Cohesive repetition 275 9.3.3 Constructional repetition 297 9.3.4 Communicative repetition 300 9.4 Summary 303 10 Semantic Repetition: Humour cohesion and coherence 305 10.1 Introduction 305 10.2 Cohesion and coherence 306 10.3 Humour cohesion and semantic repetition 310 10.4 Semantic repetition and continuity 311 10.5 Semantic repetition in two adjacent turns 317 10.6 Semantic repetition in one scene 323 10.7 Summary 327 11 Humorous structure of a sitcom episode 329 11.1 Introduction 329 11.2 Repetition in comic narratives 330 11.3 Sitcoms as networks of humorous turns: a case study 337 11.3.1 Introduction: Adapting the transcription methodology for a larger excerpt 337 11.3.2 Overview and definitions 338 11.3.3 A look at individual scenes in sequence 1 of The McCarthys, S01E01 342 11.3.4 Sequences 2–7: Ties between more distant humorous turns 358 11.3.5 Hierarchy of semantic frames in the humour of The McCarthys, S01E01 363 11.3.6 The role of semantic repetition in the structure of The McCarthys, S01E01 370 11.3.7 The role of formal repetition in the structure of The McCarthys, S01E01 378 11.4 Summary 385 12 Humour in US Sitcoms: Overview and Discussion 387 12.1 Introduction 387 12.2 Formal and semantic repetition in sitcom humour 387 12.2.1 Summary of Chapters 1–11 387 12.2.2 Further discussion and interpretation of the findings 395 12.3 Humour variation between sitcoms and episodes 398 12.4 Humorous repetition beyond AMSIL 403 References 407 Television Series 425 Appendix A. Transcription conventions 427 A1. Transcription conventions Chapter 2 427 A2. Transcription conventions Chapters 4–12 428 Appendix B. Codebook 429 B1. Coding Instructions 429 B2. Individual Codes. 430 Appendix C. Humorous turns in The McCarthys, S01E01 438 Appendix D. Correlation tables 447 D1. Correlations intra-turn repeats 447 D2. Correlations inter-turn repeats 449 D3.