The tangled intercultural web we weave: Humour online
Humour, and especially language-based humour, is very much about ambiguity, about not being quite sure that our interlocutor is joking or being serious. A remark may lead us to wonder whether our interlocutor meant to say what they said, or whether it might have been a slip of the tongue. Misunderstanding that triggers humour is caused either by linguistic misinterpretation, because of a cultural gap or because a mixture of both. Using humour in interaction is heavily dependent on face work and politeness theory. This is all well and good within the same language, but it is a very different story when two speakers are from different linguacultural backgrounds, where pragma-linguistic failure is always lurking.
Humour plays a fundamental role in interpersonal relationships and for bilingual cross-cultural couples—where each partner is from a different linguacultural background—humour can be both a bridge and a barrier in communication. This talk explores the dynamics of humour in the performance of online interactions among intercultural social media influencers, focusing on how humour is used to showcase mostly socio-pragmatic norms, but sometimes pragma-linguistic elements too. Of course, we are in the realm of performance occurring in the digital sphere as opposed to the real world, yet the “accidentally but on purpose” stance of these couples, can be likened to naturally occurring interaction between bilingual cross-cultural couples in the real world.