Impoliteness and humour interaction in improvised TV discourse

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2015

Öğrenci: ÇAĞLA KARATEPE

Danışman: HALE IŞIK GÜLER

Özet:

Although impoliteness and humour are not two terms that sound related anyhow, this thesis focuses on impoliteness and humour interaction. The conversations from the TV show ‘Arkadaşım Hoşgeldin’are extracted based on the idea that each conversation involves impoliteness and humour in itself. The analysis involves how such conversations are initiated and closed, how humour and/or impoliteness is triggered in conversations, and some remarks about the conventional strategies and formulae used as well as the length of laughter as a reliability check in these conversations. Impoliteness and power phenomena are a particular area of interest in research on impoliteness. According to Bousfield (2008b), for a face-attack to be successful, the interactant should be offended. Although Arkadaşım does not seem to be offended, his sarcastic jokes invoke more laughter and applause. Arkadaşım, the butt, not being offended and the audience being amused by his humiliation by the Director are suggested to be related to the genre of such TV talk (see Uçar & Yıldız, 2015), namely: Entertaining Impoliteness (Culpeper, 2011b) or Disaffiliative Humour (Dynel, 2013b). However, neither of these terms fully explains the nature of the talk on this show. In order for these terms to prevail, the audience should be safe and superior. Yet, the audience in the hall is neither safe nor superior. The Director sounds superior to them as well, and they might be humiliated or they are being told what to do, which is an infringement on their personal spaces. Thus, their enjoyment by the show can be related to two concepts of social psychology: authority and obedience.