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Book review: Delia Chiaro, The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age

Article  in  Discourse & Communication · April 2019

DOI: 10.1177/1750481318820614b

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Delia Chiaro, The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age. Oxford: Routledge, 2017, xii + 166 pp.
Price: $XX, ISBN 135137995X

Reviewed by: Lorenzo Logi, School of Arts & Media, University of New South Wales, Australia

The field of humour studies is characterised by multidisciplinarity, with theories and

approaches emanating from psychology, philosophy, linguistics and media studies, among
others. Cutting across this rich but at times hard to reconcile diversity, Chiaro’s The Language of
Jokes in the Digital Age offers an adroit synthesis of relevant strands of scholarship, exploring
how humour functions in contemporary modalities and addresses present issues. The book
begins with a summary of scholarship on the language of humorous discourse to date, then
proceeds to extend the discussion across specific genres and cultural themes, often pairing
linguistic observation with critical commentary.

The introduction discusses the dichotomy between our physical and digital realities, the impact
this has on our communication, and the pervasiveness of humorous discourse in digital media.
Chiaro then gives an overview of the following chapters, which focus on how the language of
humorous discourse interacts with translation, gender and online discourses, and touches on
the rising status of comedy and satire both as a barometer for public opinion, and as
commentary on current affairs.

The first chapter begins by questioning whether the language of humorous discourse has
changed since the author’s first book on humorous discourse The Language of Jokes: Analyzing
Verbal Play was published in 1992. The proliferation of smartphones and accompanying
explosion in digital communication is flagged as the primary cause for any change. Chiaro
makes a point of adopting a broad definition of humorous discourse that encompasses the
various registers and genres afforded by digital texts and presents a synthesized account of key
points of discussion in humour studies, such as Rod Martin’s definition of humour as ‘a form of
mental play comprising cognitive, emotional, social and expressive components’ (cited in
Chiaro, 2017, p.8) . She also presents some initial observations on how digital media might
interact with issues such as laughter, timing and audience. Chiaro then reviews the most widely
accepted theory for linguistic humour, Attardo and Raskin’s General Theory of Verbal Humour
(Attardo & Raskin, 1991), summarizes Norrick’s notions of the three-part narrative joke
structure (Norrick, 2000) and lists the archetypical joke themes/targets identified by Davies
(2011), including the stupid underdog, the canny protagonist, sex, religion, disasters and the
suspension of disbelief. The first chapter thereby anchors the following discussion in the
relevant scholarly tradition and cultural context.

The second chapter discusses the impact film, television and digital technology have had on
humorous discourse over the past century and the emergence of the United States as the
world’s primary media exporter. Chiaro observes that these developments have resulted in
non-anglophone audiences having to consume humorous texts in translation. This topic is
explored across reality and unscripted television, films and scripted television, instances of
combined visual and verbal humour and even instances where humour arises out of the act of
translation itself. Recurring humorous motifs in each of these contexts are identified, including
insightful discussions on humour’s relationship with social transgression, how to translate
physical and culturally specific humour, to what extent physical humour is universal and
audiences’ appreciation for humour based on poor translation. In particular Chiaro’s analysis of
the interaction of physical and verbal elements in filmic texts illuminates the intricacy of the
challenges posed to translators, with her comparison of the original and translated transcript of
a scene from the 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda revealing the blend of phonological, semantic
and cultural resources a translator must employ to render translation successful.

In chapter three the tone of the book becomes more critical as the focus shifts to how issues
surrounding gender are reflected in humorous discourse. After exploring gendered associations
to humour itself, including an analysis of lexis associated with male and female laughter in the
British National Corpus, the author progresses to sexist humour. Here, she surveys discourse
targeting symbolic female figures such as wives and mothers-in-law and themes such as sex,
rape, feminism and gender identity. While the discussion illustrates how historic patterns of
sexism and misogyny persist across the humorous discourse found in new media, it also
demonstrates that the same kinds of texts can be manipulated to subvert these patterns. In the
discussion of self-deprecatory humour by female comedians, for instance, Chiaro points out
that despite the structure and targets of these jokes echoing their overtly sexist counterparts,
irony, sarcasm and even the contextual factor of being told by women render the humour
subversive to the sexism it references.

The final chapter addresses how humorous discourse has evolved in the dynamically interactive
communicative environment of Web 2.0. Themes touched on earlier in the book are expanded
upon in more detail here. The first section looks at conversational humour online and explores
the differences between face-to-face conversational humour and its digital counterpart of
comment threads. In her discussion of discourse such as ‘ping-pong-punning’ (threads of
comments dominated by ‘speakers’ exchanging puns) and linguistic devices such as hashtags
(e.g. Zappavigna, 2018), Chiaro not only identifies elements of humour in digital media that
both reflect and diverge from that of face-to-face communication, but also demonstrates that
the two registers reciprocally influence each other.

The main achievement of The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age is its marriage of an engaging
style with the author’s comprehensive knowledge of the subject. Excepting some of the finer
points of linguistic theories of humour, the discussion is accessible to scholars across disciplines
and even informed readers outside of academia. While results are not rigorously representative
(except perhaps for those arising from corpus analysis methods), readers familiar with the
media and genres discussed will find the author’s conclusions convincing. The inclusion of
relevant references from fields spanning psychology, sociology and linguistics further enrich the
discussion, offering a compelling, three-dimensional interpretation of humour’s role in the
contemporary media landscape.
While this breadth contributes to the book’s value for readers interested in an overview of how
various themes and new media interact with humorous discourse, inevitably it also precludes
the kind of fine-grained linguistic analysis some readers may be seeking. Chiaro’s discussion of
the underlying themes and structures of the humorous texts is largely based on textual
interpretation rather than linguistic evidence, with divergent potential readings not
entertained. The notable exception is her discussion of ‘ping-pong punning’, where her analysis
unpacks a number of examples in detail. As such, readers interested in how semiotic resources
interact with humour may not be satisfied.

Relatedly, the discussion of cultural issues in the book is to an extent ad hoc. As a result, while
Chapter 3 discusses the theme of the language of jokes and gender in some depth, issues such
as race or religion are only briefly touched on in other chapters. Both of these limitations reflect
the challenges of exploring a topic as broad as humorous discourse in a systematic or
comprehensive fashion in a single volume. This is, however, a minor concern, as the book is
clearly intended more as a collection of commentaries spanning a curated set of issues than as
a manual on how to approach research into humorous discourse across media or as an
encyclopaedic review of how humour interacts with every facet of culture.

Overall, Chiaro’s book is an informative and at times even wryly funny overview of how humour
has been affected by new media which delves into a number of genres and cultural themes. Its
conclusion, that the language of jokes itself remains unchanged, but the rate at which humour
is produced, disseminated and consumed has accelerated, is an illuminating one, especially in
light of alarmist rhetoric regarding the impact of digital communications on contemporary
language use. It thus offers a valuable update on issues surrounding both the study of humour
and its cultural relevance and makes for rewarding reading for anyone interested in these
areas.

Bibliography
 Attardo, Salvatore and Victor Raskin. 1991. “Script theory (re)visited: Joke similarity and joke
representation model”. Humor, International Journal of Humor Research 4: 293–347.Chiaro D.
(1992). The language of jokes: Analyzing verbal play: Routledge.
Chiaro, D. (2017). The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age: Viral Humour. Oxford: Routledge.
Davies, Christie. 2011. Jokes and Their Targets. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press.
Martin, Rod M. (2007). The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach. Burlington, MA: Elsevier
Academic Press.
Norrick, Neal R. 2000. Conversational Narrative: Storytelling in Everyday Talk. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
The British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition). 2007. Distributed by Bodleian Libraries,
University of Oxford, on behalf of the BNC Consortium. URL: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/
Zappavigna, M. (2018). Searchable Talk: Hashtags and Social Media Metadiscourse: Bloomsbury
Publishing.

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