Denat 1 Comparisons and name-calling in 21st Century political satire: Late-Night shows under the Trump Era Aurélie Denat Mémoire M2R 2020 Jury: Patrice Larroque, Andrew McMichael et Blandine Pennec Denat 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to Patrice Larroque and Andrew McMichael for their precious advice and constructive guidance. I am also profoundly thankful to Blandine Pennec for her time provided into reading this paper. I would also like to thank Natalie Vincent-Arnaud and Natalie Rivère de Carles of Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès for their insight and sources on satire and irony. Deepest gratitude to Zacharie Baqué and Françoise Coste, also from the Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, for their precious help on American Civilsation. Special thanks to Graeme Ritchie of the University of Edinburgh for his precious insight on humour study and verbal humour theories. And last but not least a profound thank you (and apologie) to Marie-Christine, my sister for her time spent nodding her head, while I was explaining my research to her. Denat 3 Table of contents 1. INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................7 1.1 Corpus data................................................................................................................................8 1. 2 Secondary sources and theoretical background.....................................................................10 1.3 Structure of the dissertation.....................................................................................................11 2. METAPHORIC LANGUAGE.......................................................................................................12 2.1 Encyclopedic meaning in the profile/frame relationship........................................................12 2.2 Humourous bisociation and the suspension of disbelief.........................................................14 2.3 Presupposed messages, implicature and Grice's cooperative principle..................................16 2.4 Summary.................................................................................................................................18 3. THE LANGUAGE OF HUMOUR................................................................................................19 3.1 Incongruity Resolution and the violation of Grice's cooperative principle.............................19 3.2 The Human Humour Rules.....................................................................................................20 3.3 Humour as a communication tool: "basically, jokes are fine"................................................22 3.4 Summary.................................................................................................................................23 4. SATIRE IN PRESIDENT TRUMP'S AMERICA.........................................................................25 4.1 Bias in humour and satire in the post-truth era.......................................................................25 4.2 Forms and characteristics of satire..........................................................................................27 4.3 Satire in Donald Trump's America..........................................................................................28 4.4 Summary.................................................................................................................................30 5. NEWS AND SATIRICAL NEWS.................................................................................................32 5.1 Journalism versus satire..........................................................................................................32 5.2 Journalists and satirists............................................................................................................34 5.3 Independant or partisan...........................................................................................................38 5.4 Summary.................................................................................................................................40 6. MAIN THEMES............................................................................................................................41 6.1 Television culture....................................................................................................................41 6.2 Political and historical references...........................................................................................43 6.3 Sex...........................................................................................................................................45 6.4 Summary.................................................................................................................................47 7. DEVICES USED...........................................................................................................................49 7.1 Comparing events....................................................................................................................49 7.2 Political parallels.....................................................................................................................51 7.3 Simple structures.....................................................................................................................52 Denat 4 7.4 Summary.................................................................................................................................54 8. COMPLEX COMPARATIVES STRUCTURES...........................................................................55 8.1 Simple name-calling versus complex name-calling................................................................55 8.2 Uneven comparisons...............................................................................................................57 8.3 Multi-comparisons..................................................................................................................59 8.4 Summary.................................................................................................................................60 9. DONALD TRUMP AND THE WORLD OF CHILDHOOD.......................................................61 9.1 Name-calling or comparison...................................................................................................61 9.2 Donald Trump as a fairy tale character...................................................................................63 9.3 Children's doctrine..................................................................................................................65 9.4 Summary.................................................................................................................................66 10. CREATIVE COMPARISONS.....................................................................................................68 10.1 Narrative comparisons..........................................................................................................68 10.2 Idiom misuse.........................................................................................................................69 10.3 The creativity of humour.......................................................................................................71 10.4 Summary...............................................................................................................................74 11. TOWARDS MODELLING SPEAKERS' STYLES....................................................................76 11.1 Summary of this dissertation.................................................................................................76 11.2 The speaker's style so far.......................................................................................................77 11.2.1 Bill Maher......................................................................................................................78 11.2.2 Samantha Bee................................................................................................................78 11.2.3 John Oliver....................................................................................................................78 11.2.4 Stephen Colbert.............................................................................................................79 11.3 Towards a humouristic identity model..................................................................................79 APPENDIX A: EXAMPLES.............................................................................................................80 APPENDIX B: CORPUS SATISTICS..............................................................................................83 B.1 Comparisons and Name-Calling in the corpus.......................................................................83 B.1.1 Individual videos.............................................................................................................83 B.1.2 Individual speakers.........................................................................................................83 B.1.3 Synthesis.........................................................................................................................84 B.1.4 Comparisons and name-calling proportion for each speaker..........................................85 B.2 Specificities............................................................................................................................85