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Intercultural strategies to co‐construct and interpret humor
Author(s) -
Moalla Asma
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
international journal of applied linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.712
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1473-4192
pISSN - 0802-6106
DOI - 10.1111/ijal.12074
Subject(s) - psychology , accommodation , construct (python library) , meaning (existential) , interpretation (philosophy) , natural (archaeology) , intercultural communication , social psychology , linguistics , cognitive psychology , communication , computer science , philosophy , programming language , archaeology , neuroscience , psychotherapist , history
This paper investigates the way humor is co‐constructed and negotiated in talk‐in interaction among speakers of A merican E nglish and T unisian learners of E nglish. Participants' audio‐recorded data of natural conversations, and in‐depth and playback interviews revealed that interactional difficulties in interdiscourse humor did exist. Those difficulties, however, did not lead to communication breakdowns and conflicts as much as they contributed to strengthening relationships and developing relational identities through the accommodation strategies participants made to their speech and to their interpretation of meaning. Accommodation strategies were found to be jointly used to facilitate and attenuate communication and to overcome differences and avoid misunderstandings.