Skip to main content

Beyond Humour: Relevant Affective Effects

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Pragmatics of Internet Humour
  • 203 Accesses

Abstract

Despite not having traditionally aroused the attention of pragmatics and relevance theory, non-propositional effects (feelings, emotions…) become crucial when it comes to obtaining a fully satisfactory interpretation of the communicator’s utterance, and even more so on the internet. This chapter starts with comments on the need to account for feelings/emotions both offline and online, additionally focusing on those intended to be communicated (affective attitude) as well as the ones) derived by the addressee (affective effects), sometimes beyond the initial user’s intention, but which frequently end up being relevant. Several possible situations are portrayed. This chapter’s main contribution consists in an account of different non-propositional effects that may leak from humorous communication on the internet and occur at different levels: personal; interactive; middle-sized group; and large-sized group.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    In this chapter, feelings and emotions will be roughly treated as similar phenomena under the umbrella terms affective attitude (intended) and affective effect (derived). Caffi and Janney (1994) did propose a differentiation between feelings (broad, complex class of subjective personal sensations or states of inner physiological arousal); and emotions (a restricted subset of empirically investigable phenomena within this general class that are relatively transitory, of a certain intensity, and are attached to, or triggered by, particular objects, ideas, or outer incentive events). See also Downes (2000). Wharton (2016, 30), Wharton and Strey (2019, 265) and Wharton and de Saussure (2022) detach emotions from feelings and sensations on the grounds that emotions involve an interaction between three types of elements: cognitive; qualitative; and physiological.

  2. 2.

    This Section is an extension and update of the research carried out in Yus (2018a, 2018c).

  3. 3.

    An interesting approach in this direction is that of networked individualism (Wellman 2001, 2002), which stands somewhere in between the joy of being individual and that of feeling the group’s approval. Shifman (2014b, 33–34) summarises this idea as follows: we witness an era of accelerated individualisation, and hence people are expected to fashion a unique identity and image and by doing so actively construct their own unique selves. However, at the same time, individuals enthusiastically participate in the shaping of social networks, thus demonstrating an enduring human longing for community bonding. User-generated versions of a meme may serve both purposes: on the one hand, users who exhibit their individuality show their digital literacy, uniqueness, and creativeness. But at the same time, what they upload as individuals frequently relates to common, widely shared rules or formulas. As a result, users simultaneously indicate and construct their individuality and their affiliation to the larger community.

  4. 4.

    As Meikle (2016, 50–51) asserts, communication through social media is an unfinished process of circulation and connection, of relationships and associations. Each new sharing strategy thus opens up different kinds of connectivity and different possibilities for meaning, each one consequently affording various content circulation options to other people. Each connection both establishes new relations between individuals and reveals previously invisible connections. Internet memes are forms of easily remixed texts and images that are intrinsic to this social media environment.

  5. 5.

    In this sense, Arizzi (2019) focuses on users’ decisions to manipulate an existing image in the meme, with processes such as: (a) a change is made to one part of the image, usually without adding any text to it; (b) a part of the image is copied and pasted into another image, e.g. a well-known painting; (c) the image is changed and other elements, typically captions, are added; and (d) the image is not changed, but other elements, once again mostly captions, are included.

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Yus, F. (2023). Beyond Humour: Relevant Affective Effects. In: Pragmatics of Internet Humour. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31902-0_8

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics