Verbal Humour in Communicative Situations of Informal Mediation: A Sociopragmatic Analysis in Casual Conversation

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the uses and functions of verbal humour in informal communicative situations of mediation from a sociopragmatic perspective (Norrick & Spitz 2008, Schnurr & Plester 2017). We start from the hypothesis that the speaker acting as mediator employs humour markers during their interaction with the parties in conflict in order to relativize the dispute, protect their image and re-establish interpersonal relationships (Jacobs 2002, Fraser 2007). In order to verify this conjecture, our research uses the Val.Es.Co. corpus (Briz et al. 2002, Pons 2022) and analyses the conversational sequences in which situations of informal mediation take place during conflict talk. The results show that humour is a pragmatic tool for mediation insofar as it minimises the illocutionary force of the message, reconceptualises issues in conflict and promotes the creation of bonds between the participants. Furthermore, the data show that the communicative success of verbal humour depends on the seriousness of the conflict, the social power relations between participants and their common knowledge.