Humor in Interaction

This book is the first edited volume dedicated specifically to humor in interaction. It is a rich collection of essays by an international array of scholars representning various theoretical perspectives, but all concerened with interactional aspects of humor. The contributors are scholars active both in the iniredisciplinary area of humor studies and in adjacent studies such as linguistic pragmatics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, gender and translation studies. The volume effectively offers an overview of the range of phenomena falling into the broad category of "conversational humor" and convincingly argues for the many different functions humor can fulfill, bypassing simplistic humor theories reducing humor to one function. All the articles draw on empirical material from different countries and cultures, comprising conversations amnog friends and family, talk in workplace situations, humor in educational settings, and experimental approaches to humor in interaction.