Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023) 31e40

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Pragmatics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Humorous mockery: How to amuse and be polite at the same

time
Lin He a, *, Rong Chen b, c, Ming Dong a
a
School of English Studies, Xi'an International Studies University, China
b
Dalian University of Foreign Languages, China
c
California State University, San Bernardino, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, we analyze humorous mockery in terms of politeness. Using data from a
Received 6 May 2022 Chinese standup comedy competition, Rock and Roast, we demonstrate that politeness is a
Received in revised form 21 March 2023 determining factor in the contestants’ selection of targets for their mockeries (primarily
Accepted 14 April 2023
those close to them), in the characteristics of the targets being mocked (primarily those
that reflect the targets’ persona as opposed to the person), and in the fact that, when
individuals are expressly mocked, they are very often vehicles for parodic or sarcastic
Keywords:
criticisms of specific social issues. By looking at how politeness interacts with the play
Humor
Roast
frame of the standup comedy genre, our paper contributes to both humor research and
Mockery politeness theorizing.
(im)politeness © 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Face
Face-threatening acts

1. Introduction

Humor is an effect of what is said by the speaker on the hearer (Chen, 2022, Chapter 8). That effect can be achieved by the
use of several linguistic devices: teasing (Dynel, 2008; Gibbs, 2000; Gong and Ran, 2020; Haugh, 2017), mocking (Haugh,
2010, 2014), sarcasm (Chen, 2022), irony (Chen, 1992), parody (Dynel, 2017; Hyon, 2018), and joking (Dynel, 2009). While
different from each other, these non-literal uses of language share the uncertainty of meaning, i.e., the speaker may or may
not mean what they say in each case. In fact, the speaker does not mean what they say in most cases. As such, humor has been
a favorite topic in pragmatics.
Studies of humor in pragmatics have focused on its functions to build camaraderie (Zappavigna, 2014; Varis and
Blommaert, 2015; V asquez, 2019), to help the speaker to appear creative (Dynel, 2020; Carter, 2016; Carter and McCarthy,
2004; Jones, 2016), and to enhance the image of the speaker (Dynel, 2020). In this paper, we explicitly study humor in
terms of politeness. We will show that politeness is an important factor in the way humor is created.
The data we use for our study come from a national Chinese TV standup comedy competition, Rock and Roast. The purpose
of the show is to amuse and entertain, with the expressed expectation that its contestants roast people or phenomena in
society. To roast, by definition, is to criticize, to mock, or to poke fun. These things have the potential to cause offense, leading
to impoliteness (Culpeper, 1996, 2011, 2012). However, our data will show that contestants try to be polite e and very often

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: helin@xisu.edu.cn (L. He), RChen@csusb.edu (R. Chen), dongming@xisu.edu.cn (M. Dong).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2023.04.007
0378-2166/© 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V.
L. He, R. Chen and M. Dong Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023) 31e40

are polite in subtle ways e to the targets of their roast, although the politeness that emerges is confined to the preset confines
of the genre.
In Section 2, we review the literature on humor e particularly mockery e and (im)politeness and outline our theoretical
positioning. In Section 3, we describe the collection of data. In Section 4, we analyze our data to see how the show's con-
testants achieve politeness in a genre in which politeness is not expected. In Section 5, we discuss the interface between
humorous mockery and politeness before we conclude the paper.

2. Theoretical prerequisites

2.1. The functions of humor

Humor, first of all, has been shown to be a mechanism for the building of camaraderie between the speaker and hearer, as
is widely recognized in the literature. Dynel (2008) examines the functions of teasing and banter and finds that “teases, even if
ostensibly aggressive, i.e. face-threatening, are geared towards solidarity” (Dynel, 2008: 241). Analyzing mockery sequences
among a group of friends, Robles (2019) shows how nonserious tearing down or jocularly teasing/mocking participants
within a peer group manages the practical problem of in-group difference by reaffirming shared stances and norms around
masculinity. Gong and Ran (2020: 64) demonstrate how teasing can be a useful tool to get an interview guest to disclose
information and to achieve “audience involvement” in Chinese entertainment TV programs. Kwon et al. (2020) demonstrate
how ironic personae e created via the expression of humorous verbal irony and aggressive conversational humor e can help
participants to become a member of the “in-group” (Kwon et al., 2020: 50). Lastly, Yang and Ren (2020) provide evidence for
the use of jocular mockery for the purpose of managing relationship with interactants of different social statuses on a national
TV show in China.
Another function of humor is to help the speaker to appear creative and clever, hence helping them to establish, maintain,
or enhance their self-image. This function is commented on in most of the studies cited above. We cite below some examples
from Dynel's (2020) study of roasting by the U.S. fast-food chain restaurant Wendy's, involving snappy posts mocking fun at
individuals or businesses who ask to be roasted.1
(1) Firefox: Fire away.
Wendy’s: Sorry it took so long. Firefox encountered a problem with Windows.
(2) User: I set a notification for this moment. DO YOUR WORST! [with a profile picture of
himself sitting on weights]
Wendy’s: Most people lift weights. They don’t just sit on them.
(3) User: McDonald’s is better.
Wendy’s: At freezing beef.

In (1), Firefox, an internet browser, is being ‘smart’ by playing on its brand name (“Fire away”). Wendy's responds with an
insincere apology and a possible falsehood (“Firefox encountered a problem with Windows”) that is clearly intended to be
seen through but implies that the browser is unsatisfactory. In (2), the user challenges Wendy's with “DO YOUR WORST”, only
to be outdone by being mocked for sitting on weights (instead of lifting them) in his profile picture. In (3), the user provokes
Wendy's by stating that its fierce competitor is ‘better’. Wendy's dovetails with the challenging statement “McDonald's is
better”: “at freezing beef” (freezing beef being a perpetual motif Wendy's uses to disparage McDonald). In all of these,
Wendy's image comes through as witty, perceptive, aggressive yet in good taste, and able to turn the table on the opponent
without appearing mean-spirited.
Dynel (2020: 10e11) points out several aspects of Wendy's tweets. Many of these tweets are “benevolent jocular insults.”
Its roasting of ordinary persons brings them “popularity if a creative roasting tweet should go viral.” For brands, being roasted
means “free advertising through building a positive self-image.” When teasing Wendy's, users wish to be outwitted or, at
least, test the social manager's wits, “with evident intent to cause public amusement” (Dynel, 2020: 11).

2.2. Humorous mockery and (im)politeness

Due to its function of building solidarity and in-groupness, humor is treated as a positive politeness strategy by Brown and
Levinson (1987: 101e128). To appear creative, on the other hand, is a self-politeness strategy (Chen, 2001). The link between
(im)politeness and humor is also seen in a few specific studies in the literature. Holmes (2000), for instance, demonstrates
that humor may function as a means of positive politeness in the workplace and Culpeper (2011) calls certain types of humor
“entertaining impoliteness.” Our study is a continuation of this line of inquiry, with a special focus on humorous mockery:
mockery for amusement. Humorous mockery, thus seen, is similar to Haugh and Bousfield's (2012) notion of jocular mockery,
defined as mockery that “amuses without intended aggressiveness or offensiveness.”
The notion of politeness that we shall use for analysis is from Brown and Levinson's (1987) work and its spin-off theoretical
constructs of impoliteness (Culpeper, 1996) and self-politeness (Chen, 2001). We will also adopt the bifurcation of the notion

1
According to Dynel (2020), the roasting by Wendy's started out accidently. Due to the cleverness of the initial roast of its competitor, individuals and
businesses began to ask Wendy's to roast them for the purpose of testing Wendy's creativity.

32
L. He, R. Chen and M. Dong Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023) 31e40

of Chinese face e that Chinese face is manifested in two major aspects: one that refers to the person and the other that refers to
the persona of a person.
As is well-known, Brown and Levinson's theory is based on the fact that speakers have to perform speech acts of various
sorts in society. Many of these speech acts, however, threaten face, defined as public image. Face, further, is categorized into
negative (the desire to be left alone) and positive (the want to be appreciated). To get out of the bind between the need to
perform speech acts and the need to be polite, speakers adopt politeness strategies that will ‘get things done’ and get them
done in the least face-threatening way possible.
As for face, we will show that it is invariably positive face that is being threatened in the kind of humorous mockery
studied in our paper, as negative face e the want that one's freedom of action being unimpeded e is largely irrelevant: since
there is no action involved, there is no imposition. As for politeness, we highlight Brown and Levinson's position that
politeness is a relative, not absolute, notion. As a set of strategies to mitigate face threat, politeness refers to the choice
speakers make in context, and there is no a priori judgment about the (im)politeness of an utterance in isolation. The
imperative construction in English, for instance, is assumed by many to be a construction of impoliteness (Ide, 1989). But that
may not be what Brown and Levinson have in mind. In fact, Brown and Levinson demonstrate that imperatives can be used as
politeness strategies in at least two situations. The first is emergency, where “maximum efficiency is very important, and this
is mutually known to both S and H”, as seen in (4) through (7).
(4) Help!
(5) Watch out!
(6) Your pants are on fire!
(7) Give me the nails.
(Brown and Levinson, 1987: 95).

The context of humorous mockery is what can be best described as a play frame (Attardo, 1994, 2015). In such a context,
the speaker and hearer enter a special reality whereby language is expected to be non-literal, in the form of hyperbole, irony,
sarcasm, and others (Chen, 2022, Chapter 8). Any of these things may seem offensive on the surface, but the play frame
typically serves to “erase” the offense so that the actual utterance is taken to be a positive politeness strategy, as noted in
Brown and Levinson (1987). However, things do not always go as intended. The 2011 White House Correspondence Dinner, an
occasion for journalists to mock politicians, is widely believed to have caused offense to the former US president Donald
Trump,2 causing him to not attend future dinners, even during his presidency. In other words, there is always the danger an
utterance be taken literally. It is here, as we demonstrate in the rest of the paper, that politeness comes into play: the speaker
will choose the least face-threatening strategies available to them in a play frame context.
As our data comes from Chinese, we invoke two aspects of Chinese face and politeness in our analysis. The first is what has
been dubbed “family culture” by Chen (2019) or “society of intimates” by Ye (2019). In their respective works, Chen and Ye
argue that family and intimates play a crucial role in Chinese politeness. Due to the close relationship, one has with their
family members and close friends, one can be more “imposing” (e.g., requesting or demanding directly) and less “thankful”
(e.g., accepting a favor without expressing gratitude). We will demonstrate below that speakers in our data indeed “take
advantage of” those close to them, leveling their mockeries at them most of the time.
The second aspect of Chinese politeness that is relevant to our analysis is the distinction between 脸 lian and 面(子)
mian(zi), two equivalents to the English notion of face (Chen, 2018, 2023; Gu, 1990; Hu, 1944; Mao, 1994; Zhou and Zhang,
2017, 2018). For the sake of convenience, we call 脸 lian FACE 1 and 面(子) mian(zi) FACE 2 (Chen, 2018, 2023), and offer a
few explanations here.
(8) 孩子上了北大, 给他们长了脸.
Their child has been admitted to Peking University. That helped them gain lian [FACE 1].
(9) 他性格软弱, 别人让他干啥就干啥, 所以他觉得人前没脸.
He has a weak character and will do whatever he is told. So, he feels he has lost his lian [FACE 1].
(10) 朋友一起走地时候, 朋友突然大喊大叫, 我感觉有点丢面子.
I was walking with a friend. The friend burst into shouting in public. I felt I lost my mianzi [FACE 2].
(11) 父母不应该在公共场合对孩子指手画脚. 孩子们会觉得没面子.
A parent should not boss their children around in public. The children may feel that their mianzi [FACE 2] is hurt.

FACE 1 refers to those aspects of face that are fundamental to a person's being: character, intelligence, morality, and ethics.
In Example (8), for instance, the referent of 他们 tamen ‘they’ gain FACE 1 because their child is admitted to one of the top
universities in China, an accumulation of intelligence, hard work, and family support. In (9), the referent of 他 ta ‘he or she’
losses FACE 1 for not having a strong character.
FACE 2, on the other hand, refers to the persona of a person: how they are reviewed by others (whether they are courteous,
respectful, sensitive, and considerate). As such, FACE 2 can be the requisite for a speech act: to offer advice requires the status
in the form of FACE 2, for instance. It is also sized: one person's FACE 2 can be ‘bigger’ than another person's so that the former
will be more effective in the doing of a speech act. Third, the loss of FACE 2 is more temporary and less damaging to self-image,
as is seen above. In (10), the loss of FACE 2 is due to someone else's inappropriate behavior in public. In (11), the loss of FACE 2
results from being “bossed around” in public.

2
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-white-house-correspondents-dinner-trump-20170226-story.html.

33
L. He, R. Chen and M. Dong Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023) 31e40

The key difference between FACE 1 and FACE 2 is that the former is internal-facing, more fundamental and more per-
manent (Mao, 1994; Zhou and Zhang, 2018), thus it refers to aspects of face that defines the person (Chen, 2023). The latter is
external-facing (Zhou and Zhang, 2018), temporary, and refers to aspects of face that make up the persona of a person (Chen,
2018, 2023). Although the distinction between FACE 1 and FACE 2 is not always clear cut, one can tease them apart in most
cases. In (8) and (9), for example, the lexeme 脸 lian (FACE 1) cannot be replaced by 面(子) mian(zi) (FACE 2). Similarly, 面(子)
mainzi in (10) and (11) cannot be replaced by 脸 lian. This isomorphic relationship between 脸 lian and FACE 1 and 面(子)
mian(zi) and FACE 2 has been recognized by previous scholars (Chen, 2023; Yu, 2001; Zhou and Zhang, 2017). As will be seen
below, speakers in our data achieve politeness by threatening FACE 2 overwhelmingly.
It is crucial to note that the Chinese notions of FACE 1 and FACE 2 are culture specific. As such, they complement with
rather than replace Brown and Levinson's positive and negative face. The two systems cut across each other, as is seen in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Face relationships.

In other words, positive and negative face apply to FACE 1 as well as FACE 2; FACE 1 and FACE 2 can be positive as well as
negative. Of the two examples for FACE 1 above e (8) and (9) e for instance, the former belongs to positive face and the latter,
to negative face. Similarly, of the two examples for FACE 2 e (10) and (11) e the former is positive face and the latter, negative
face. In our analysis below, we will demonstrate that mockeries in our data target (the positive) FACE 2 far more than FACE 1.

3. Data collection and findings

The data for our study come from a Chinese national TV show Rock and Roast, which is essentially a showcase of the best
standup comedians in China. We note that while genres such as standup comedy and late-night talk shows in the U.S. started
in the mid-20th Century, the quasi-institutionalization of humor such as Rock and Roast is a recent occurrence, emerging in
the present decade.
Rock and Roast is a competition program produced by Tencent Video and co-produced by Penguin Film and Shanghai
Xiaoguo Culture Media Co., Ltd. Since 2017, Rock and Roast had broadcasted four (annual) seasons by the time we collected our
data. Each season focuses on specific themes, such as “Life is humor.” Each season lasts for about ten weeks. In each weekly
competition, contestants deliver their mockery performances based on scripts they have created, and their performances are
ranked by a group of judges. Contestants are eliminated along the way until the last one standing, who is granted the title
‘Mockery King.’
Our data is from Season 4, broadcasted in 2021. The performances we obtained are from Tencent Video, not from
contemporaneous recordings. We manually transcribed the entirety of the 59 shows (by 11 solo contestants) in the Tencent
Video collection.3 The total airtime of these shows is 365 min, resulting in 76,199 words of transcription. The contestants
range from the mid-twenties to early thirties in age.
From this database, we identified 454 tokens of mockery. Typically, an instance of a mockery involves a ‘lead in’ e a
narrative of a mini event e and a punch line. A punch line is signaled by a brief pause after it for reaction from the audience.
The reaction is usually laughter, cheers, and enthusiastic expressions of the judges. This “structure” of a mockery made it quite
easy for us to count the number of instances of mockery for analysis.
Different from actual conversations in which a mockery is often directed at the listener, a mockery in a standup comedy
show such as Rock and Roast seldom targets its audience. Instead, the mockeries target either some third party (other-
directed) or the contestants themselves (self-directed). The distribution of the 454 mockeries based on direction is seen in
Table 1.

Table 1
Self- and other-directedness.

Other-directed 308 (68%)

Self-directed 146 (32%)
Total 454

The coding of the tokens into the types in Table 1 and subtypes in Table 2 and Table 3 (both below) were conducted in two
steps. First, two of the three authors coded the 454 tokens independently, which resulted in an interrater reliability of 95%.
Second, all three authors met to resolve different cases. We found few tokens to be difficult to categorize.

3
The show had an elimination system e with the “losers” being eliminated after each show and the winner going to the next round e which is why the
11 contestants performed a total of 59 times.

34
L. He, R. Chen and M. Dong Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023) 31e40

4. Analysis

The analysis of the data, to reiterate, is conducted with the play frame of the genre in mind. When a humorous mockery
occurs in everyday speech, its occurrence is often unpredictable: the listener generally does not know it before it arrives
(Attardo, 2002; Chen, 2022; Tsakona, 2018). Rock and Roast is different. An institutionalized genre, it sets up the play frame
right away: the contestants are expected to mock, which often ostensibly threatens face, and the audience tune in to be
amused by the threat of face. The question for us, therefore, is to analyze whose face is being threatened, what aspects of face
are threatened, and how the threat is actualized. As we will demonstrate in the rest of the paper, politeness plays a part in all
three.
The first level of distinction we make in this section is the direction of the mockery: whether it is other-directed or self-
directed. The former is discussed in Section 4.1 and the latter, in Section 4.2.

4.1. Other-directed mockeries

The term ‘other’ herein refers to anyone or anything that is not the speaker. The 308 other-directed mockeries in our data
fall under three categories: individuals, groups, and social issues, as is seen in Table 2.

Table 2
Other-directed mockery.

Type 1: Participants 46
Individuals 111 (36%) Type 2: Family and friends 31
Type 3: Others 34
Groups 146 (47%)
Social issues 51 (17%)
Total 308

4.1.1. Individuals
As is seen in Table 2, the 111 tokens in the ‘Individual’ category, further, can be broken down to three types. Type 1 are
participants in the show e fellow contestants and judges. Type 2 are family members and friends. The third type are in-
dividuals who belong to neither of the first two types. We discuss these three types in that order below and make some
summary arguments at the end of the section.
Of the 46 Type 1 tokens, 38 are targeted at eight fellow contestants and eight are targeted at three panel judges. Some of
the contestants are present at the show and others are not. All the panel judges are present. Both Example (12) and Example
(13) mock fellow contestants.

(12) 别人都喜欢杨笠会骂人，我奶奶说杨笠会疼人，是，杨笠骂人是挺疼的.
People like Li Yang for her harsh comments. But my granny thinks otherwise. She thinks Li Yang is so considerate of others that she feels your pain. Yes,
indeed. Li Yang will cuss you until you feel the pain.
(13) 我第一次看见徐志胜，我的感受就是，当时我害怕极了. 这是三体人打过来了吗？
When I saw Zhisheng Xu for the first time, I was so terrified. I felt I saw an alien coming.

In Example (12) the contestant mocks fellow contestant Li Yang's verbal harshness in treating others. The propensity to
cuss others is relational and external-facing; it is hence part of FACE 2. In (13), the contestant mocks Xu's looks by comparing
him to the alien in the fiction, The Three-Body Problem. Looks of a person are external-facing and are a part of their persona,
but they are such an important part of the persona that they seem off-bound for negative commentary in daily interaction.
However, Xu's looks appear to be an exception. In our data on Xu's performance, out of his nineteen self-directed mockery
tokens, eighteen are about his own looks and most looks-target mockeries by other contestants are also about his looks. This
may be more than sheer coincidence: we suspect that Xu's openness with his looks may serve as a tacit permission for others
to do the same, hence reducing the offense such mockeries would otherwise cause.
The fact that all specifically named public figures targeted for mockery in the data are participants of the show cannot be
accidental. In the play frame of the show, one seems to have the freedom of mocking anyone in the public sphere, such as
politicians and celebrities in business and entertainment, as is the case in similar standup comedies or talk shows in the U.S.
However, doing so would entail risks, as an ostensible face threat may be taken literally. Aiming mockery at fellow contestants
could reduce such risk. First, there seems to be the principle of reciprocity at work (Culpeper and Tantucci, 2021): if a
contestant is licenced to mock others, they lend themselves to be mocked by others. Second, standup comedians in China,
particularly those at the top, form a tightly-nit circle in which they know each other well. This translates into a short social
distance per Brown and Levinson (1987), long recognized to be a prerequisite for teasing and jokes (Brown and Levinson,
1987; Chen, 2022; Culpeper, 2011). Third, in most mockeries in our data, it is FACE 2, not FACE 1, that is being picked up
for mockery, a point we will turn to later.

35
L. He, R. Chen and M. Dong Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023) 31e40

The close relationship between the mocker and the mocked is also seen in the second type of targets: family and friends. Of
the 31 tokens in this type, 14 are targeted at girlfriends (including ex-girlfriends), eight at parents, two at wives, one at
relatives, one at friends, and five at siblings.

(14) 我是觉得我们家里即使来了个贼，我女朋友都会很淡定地说，“来来来，把外边的衣服换掉吧，都注意点儿.”
It seems that even when a burglar breaks into our house, my girlfriend would say to the burglar calmly: “Come here! Your coat is not clean. Change it to
make yourself representable.”
(15) 我妈特别爱砍价，小时候她带我出去，对方说3000. 我妈说200. 不行就下一个. 我说, “妈，要么就3000，咱已经走四家医院了，我撑不住了.” 我妈说, “别着
急.”
My mom loves bargaining. She once took me to a place. They asked for 3,000 yuan. My mom offered 200 yuan and threatened to go to someone else if
her offer was rejected. I said, “Mom, why don’t we do it for 3,000? This is the fourth clinic we have visited today, and I cannot stand it anymore.” She
replied, “No hurry.”

In these two examples, a girlfriend and a mother are targeted, respectively. The girlfriend, in Example (14), is said to be
such a clean freak that she would even want the burglar to be representable. The mother, in Example (15) is said to bargain
over the fee for the contestant's medical visits with four clinics and counting. These are all exaggerations aiming to provoke
laughter and they do, as our video data show.
These mockeries threaten the positive face of the mocked e the girlfriend and the mother e if taken literally. Example (14)
threatens the FACE 1 of the target, as it is about the target's attention to cleanness. Example (15) seems to threaten the FACE 1
of the mother, as it invokes a character treat (treating money as more important than her son's health). This is one of the very
rare examples of FACE 1 threat. However, it seems that the play frame in which the mockeries take place and the close
relationship between the mocker and the mocked helps reduce the face threat of the mockeries. First, the events for which the
targeted are mocked about are obviously fictitious: it is difficult to believe as true, for instance, that a mother going from one
clinic to another bargaining for a much lower fee (200 vs. 3000) for a medical treatment for her child. Second, the girlfriend
and mother are virtually unknown to the audience. In fact, it is not verifiable if the contestant of (14) has a girlfriend. Third, the
Rock and Roast competition has a national audience. To be thusly used as material for humor may instead help increase the
visibility of the girlfriend and the mother to the audience.
Equally importantly and as will be discussed below, the real targets of these mockeries are specific social phenomena. The
over-zealous devotion to cleanness of some people and the propensity to endlessly bargain,4 are all known social realities that
are frequently talked about (and criticized) in social media. In light of the notion of “family culture” discussed in Section 2.2, it
seems possible that the speaker takes advantage of the close relationship with his girlfriend and mother, using them as
vehicles to make critical commentary on the social issues.
There are also a few tokens of mockery in our data whose targets are neither fellow contestants nor family and friends.
However, these targets are not identified as specific persons but referred to by the indefinite article “a,” such as “a friend,” “a
boss,” or “a woman.”
(16) 有一次我跟一个闯红灯的大妈说,“大妈，这不是红灯吗？” “啊呀，小伙子，你走着走着就绿啦！”
Once I saw a middle-aged woman crossing the street when the red light was on. I warned her: “Da Ma, the light is red.” “Yes, but just wait! It will turn
green as you walk unhurriedly across.”
(17) 我一个同学，他的梦想就是去美国留学，他从大一就开始努力，每天非常努力地倒时差，他就认为他和美国之间，就差12个小时.
My friend’s dream is to go to the U.S. to further his study. He started preparing since the freshmen year in college by adjusting to the time zones in the
U.S. He believes that the time difference is the only difference between his dream and the U.S.

The target of (16) is “a woman” who crosses a street on a red light. The woman is thus a representative of those who do not
follow traffic laws, a behavioral trait that belongs to FACE 2. Similarly, “my friend” in (17) is a representative of those college
students who dream of studying in the U.S. Because a specific individual is not identified, there cannot be a direct threat to
FACE 1.

4.1.2. Groups
As is seen in Table 2, contestants of Rock and Roast mock groups of people the most (146, 47%). We present two examples
below.
(18) 我就特别讨厌一种人, 就是那种点餐特别慢, 他会活活把一个快餐店变成慢餐店.
I especially hate the kind of people who order food so slowly that they turn a fast-food restaurant into a slow-food restaurant.
(19) 碰到那种路怒的司机，什么表现呢？就是车堵在路上一动不动的时候，这个车里回荡的全是他的喘息声，感觉快要分娩. 他分娩的不是孩子，而是一个想
法.
What would you do if you meet a road-rage driver? When the car is stuck in the traffic, the vehicle is filled with the sound of the driver’s violent
breathing. He seems to be in labor. What he ends up delivering is not a child, but an idea.

Example (18) mocks those restaurant diners who are very slow at ordering and plays on the contrast between fast-food
and slow-food. Example (19) mocks both the congested traffic and the misbehavior of some frustrated drivers. The ‘idea’ that
he gives birth to is understood to be some unacceptable behavior. Both are FACE 2, as they project the persona of the mocked.

4.1.3. Social issues

In the above, many mockeries implicitly target social issues. In this section, we discuss mockeries that expressly do so.

4
https://www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/bargaining-tips/.

36
L. He, R. Chen and M. Dong Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023) 31e40

(20) 大家可能知道啊, 在电梯里有一项潜规则, 谁的地位越低, 他就应该按这个电梯按键.

As you may know, the unspoken rule for elevator behavior is the person in the lowest social status is the person to press the button.
(21) 咱们女人啊，到哪儿都得伺候人.
We women: we serve others wherever we go.

Example (20) is a sarcastic commentary on the hierarchical social structure, such that the social status carries itself even in
an elevator. Example (21) is the blunter, pointing out a social reality in which women are supposed to serve men. These
mockeries do not cause offense to any person explicitly, as the targets are phenomena that are supposed to be observable to
most audience.
In sum, other-directed mockeries target fellow contestants, family and friends, unidentified individuals, and groups of
people. In terms of face, FACE 2 seems to be more of a target than FACE 1. In the play frame of the genre, these choices serve to
reduce the face-threat inherent in mockery. The choice of fellow participants and family and friends is based on the close
relationship the contestant has with them. The choice of unidentified individuals and groups of people avoids offence being
taken by particular persons, and the choice of FACE 2 as the target softens the offence. As emphasized in Section 2.2, Brown
and Levinson's politeness is mitigation of face threat. The mockeries analyzed above are therefore realizations of contestants'
politeness strategies.
Also relevant is the opposite side of mockery. While the semantics of mockery such those discussed in this section are face-
threatening, the actual doing of it may be face-enhancing, as joking and teasing are positive politeness strategies per Brown
and Levinson (1987).

4.2. Self-directed

As Table 1 reveals, only about one-third of the mockeries in our data are self-directed (146, 32%). Table 3, below, offers a

Table 3
Self-directed mockery.

Color-blindness/weakness 5 (3%)
Appearance 19 (13%)
Self-image (e.g., identity, reputation, and visibility) 67 (46%)
Social issues 55 (38%)
Total 146

further breakdown of these 146 tokens.

4.2.1. Color-blindness/weakness
Consider Example (22), about color blindness, and (23), about color-weakness.
(22) 我的同学就直接以我为中心，把我围成了一个圈，我当时站在圈儿中间，看着大家那么期待的眼神，我就觉得我自己是一个色盲表演艺术家，你看那是什
么颜色？你看这是什么颜色？
My classmates encircled me. I was standing in the center, with others looking at me expectantly and admiringly. I felt like a color-blind performing
artist. “What color do you see there? What color do you see here?”
(23) 我还在解释我是色弱，跟色盲不一样啊. 别的班的小朋友已经过来了，听说你们班有色狼？
While I was explaining the difference between color-weakness and color-blindness, students from other classes came in and asked, “We heard you
have a pervert in your class. Who is it?”

In Example (22), the contestant pokes fun at his own color-blindness: enjoying being the center of attention of his fellow
classmates. In Example (23), the speaker e a different contestant from the speaker of (22) e plays on the near homophonic
relationship between selang 色狼 ‘pervert’ and semang 色盲 ‘color-blindness’: when the speaker was explaining that he is
color-blind (semang), pupils from other classes came to see a self-acclaimed ‘pervert’ (selang).
Color-blindness/weakness is a health issue, the revealing of which threatens the person's positive self-face. But there
seems to be something special about the inability to distinguish color: a color-blind person cannot keep the defect easily; they
may even want to make it known to others at times. For example, a color-blind driver might use the defect to explain away a
traffic violation (e.g., running a red light) to a policeperson. Therefore, color-blindness/weakness is not as embarrassing as
many other health conditions and can be used as an advantage.

4.2.2. Looks
A significant number of self-directed mockeries in our data target the contestants’ purportedly unattractive looks. Of the
19 tokens in this category, most are about looks in general, with a small minority about parts of the body that contribute to
looks (hair, height, and teeth).
(24) 我有时候看到我这个长相，我都在想，我这个长相还有什么能失去的. 直到我开始脱发，随着发际线越来越高，脸还越来越长，我就感觉我的脸在和头发抢
地盘.
When I looked into the mirror, I decided I had nothing else to lose with regard to looks. But then I started losing hair. My face gets longer as my hairline
recedes. I feel like my face and hair are fighting a territorial war with each other.

37
L. He, R. Chen and M. Dong Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023) 31e40

(25) 就我这长相，要是喜欢一个辣妹的话，我就是个坏人.
With my looks, I will be considered a pervert for liking hot girls.

In Example (24), the contestant thought that he had nothing else to lose in his looks (His looks are bad as they can be), only
to experience hair loss later. He takes advantage of that loss and moves into what appears to be a creative simile: the
movement of the receding hairline is likened to the result of a territorial war between his hair and face. In Example (25), the
contestant's opinion about his looks is so low that he cannot even “like hot girls.” Looks, part of a persona, are therefore an
attribute of FACE 2. We again see that even when self-mocking, FACE 2 is favored by contestants.

4.2.3. Self-image
Self-image refers to things such as visibility in the public eye, perceptions of a good person or a capable professional by
others, and the reputation of wealth, education, or social status. The mockeries that directed at the contestants themselves
typically state that the contestant lacks one of these.
(26) 我为了让我自己看上去经常消费这种品牌的样子，还故意专门穿了一件那个品牌的衣服，然后再去逛这个品牌的店，结果进去直接就被当成了店员.
To make myself look like a frequent customer of the brand, I wore a coat of that brand that day. When I went into the shop, I was immediately taken as
a salesperson.
(27) 自从我说脱口秀以后，我冬天出门再也不觉得冷，因为我头上扣的全是帽子. 我妈说以我现在的名声催我结婚，无异于逼我送死.
Since I start doing talk show, I don’t feel cold when I go out in winter: my head is covered with all the hats [name calling] that have been put on me. My
mom says with my reputation as a standup comedian, pushing me to marry is no different from pushing me to death.

In Example (26), the contestant mocks himself for not having the image and charisma of a wealthy person: wearing an
expensive brand in the store (of the said brand), he is treated as a sales representative rather than a customer. The contestant
of (27) has been called names due to her previous performances. In Chinese, name-calling is metaphorized into hat putting: to
call some X is said to be putting Hat X on them. She therefore plays on the ambiguity of the word, saying that she has so many
hats that she does not even feel cold in winter, leading her mother to the declaration that it is impossible for her (the
contestant) to find a partner for marriage.
In all these examples, what is mocked, again, is not FACE 1, the personhood of the speakers themselves, but FACE 2, their
persona, the perception others have of them. The threat of self-face is therefore not the threat of the speakers’ fundamental
being.
The kind of self-mockery we have discussed so far is analogous to self-denigration (Ka da
r and Zhou, 2020). Self-
denigration threatens self-face (Chen, 2001). However, in the context of an institutionalized genre in which mockery is
expressly sanctioned, the threat of self-face seems to be suspended. Moreover, such self-denigration may actually enhance
self-face by making the contestant appear strong and open-minded (e.g., having the courage to be critical of self). This il-
lustrates the double-sword nature of many speech acts in relation to politeness. Apologies, for instance, can both hurt the face
of the apologizer (via an admission of a wrongdoing) and enhance it (via the courage it requires to admit a fault).
Lastly, many of the examples we have thus far discussed offer commentary about society, something we discussed in the
last section on other-directed mockeries and are now turning to once more below.

4.2.4. Social issues

In our data, there are 55 tokens of self-directed mockeries that target social issues.
(28) 而且招聘要求呢？一个个还在那儿写着，要求五官端正，普通话标准，可有点太有针对性了.
What about the recruitment requirements? It is written there: “good looking,” “perfect Mandarin.” These are really designed to exclude me!
(29) 隔壁邻居的孩子才三岁，去学马术. 我就打听了一下，哇，一学期好多万. 我们家马上开了一个家庭会议，决定不能让孩子输在起跑线上，让我当马给孩子
骑.
My neighbour’s child was in a horse-riding club, so I went to find out how much it cost to join. It was more than 10,000 yuan a term [too high for his
family to afford]. We had a family meeting and decided that we would not let our child lose at the starting line. So, I became the horse for our child’s
family-run horse-riding lessons.

Although the contestant in each example appears to mock themselves, they are in reality mocking a social issue, much akin
to the examples presented in the last section. In (28), the contestant indirectly criticises the hiring practice that requires good
looks and the ability to speak standard Chinese. In (29), similarly, the mockery appears to be about the contestant serving as a
horse for his child. However, what is being ridiculed is the social reality of fierce competition among parents for their chil-
dren's education and the helplessness of those who cannot afford it. Three points can be made about our discussions of
mockeries directed at self. First, as is the case with other-directed mockeries, the aspects of face that are selected to self-mock
are those that belong to FACE 2. Second, they provide the contestants a forum to be creative (Moody, 2019; Yu, 2013). Third,
these self-mockeries serve as a springboard to critiques of social realities, something that seems to resonate with the
audience, as is seen by the enthusiastic reaction from them (e.g., loud applause, laugher, and cheers). All these, we contend,
are motivated by politeness.

5. Discussion and conclusion

In this paper, we have analyzed humorous mockeries used by contestants in a standup comedy competition Rock and
Roast. Our major findings are the following. First, when mocking others, contestants target only those who are close to them:
fellow contestants, judges, family, and friends. When they mock those of others that are outside that circle, they are found to

38
L. He, R. Chen and M. Dong Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023) 31e40

mock groups of people rather than identified individuals. Second, when self-mock, contestants target their own looks and
public image, with a few cases of color blindness/weakness. But the most often target of these mockeries are social issues. In
both, social issues have turned out to be a common target. Not only do they form a large and distinctive category but also are
the implicit targets in many of the mockeries that appear to ridicule individuals.
Our study contributes to the field in three ways. First, it demonstrates that politeness is very much at work in humorous
mockeries. We have argued that, in order to consider humorous mockery in terms of politeness in standup comedies, one
must take into account the context of such shows. Billed as a speech event of mockery for the purpose of amusement, the
contestants have to mock. This play frame gives the contestants the license to mock. However, the semantics of a mockery,
often if not always, threatens face, hence creating a conflict for contestants. The contestants therefore adopt the afore-
mentioned strategies to do both: to be humorous in a way that mitigates the face-threat entailed in mockery. This is seen in
several aspects. The first is the target of mockery. If specifically identified (e.g., named), targets are invariably the contestants
themselves or those who are close to them. Such a choice may have to do with “family culture” (Chen, 2019) and “society of
intimates” (Ye, 2019). In addition, the closeness of relationship, according to Brown and Levinson (1987), form a foundation
for positive politeness whose strategies include joking and teasing that help build solidarity and camaraderie. When mocking
those who are outside the circle of closeness, the contestants target groups of people rather than named individuals, thus
greatly reducing the offense of the mockery at hand. Second, in both other-directed and self-directed mockeries, the con-
testants favor those aspects of face that are related to their persona (FACE 2) e appearance for which they have no control
(e.g., looks and color-blindness) and perceptions by others e over their personhood (FACE 1). Third, there are a large number
of tokens in which the contestants mock social issues. Since social issues are not personal and hence has the potential to
resonant with the audience, mocking them provides an opportunity for contestants to create an image of being observant,
creative, and insightful, which is itself a self-politeness strategy (Chen, 2001).
Second, our study demonstrates the situatedness of Brown and Levinson's theory. In the beginning of the paper, we picked
out one aspect of Brown and Levinson's (1987) theory of politeness e that politeness is not a preset notion but is intimately
embedded in context. To recap, we cited the authors' discussion that an imperative, which is viewed as ‘impolite’ out of
context, can be polite when used to invite someone into the speaker's home (e.g., “Do come in”). Although mocking is
generally face-threatening in its semantics, in the context of a standup comedy where mockery is required, doing it ‘right’
could actually be polite.
Third, our paper may contribute to politeness theorizing with its application of the demarcation between FACE 1 and FACE
2 in Chinese. While this distinction has been recognized in the literature, our paper may be the first to explicitly demonstrate
its utility in actual analysis. In the sense that the notion of Chinese politeness is one of the foundations of Brown and Lev-
inson's theory, our paper points to need for further exploration of the relationship between Chinese face and face per Brown
and Levinson.
Lastly, we note that the findings of the present study may or may not be applicable to similar genres in other cultures. In
the U.S., for example, standup comedies and late-night talk shows are also meant to mock. However, a cursory look at these
shows reveals that their hosts can be frontal in their attacks of targets. Is politeness at work in the mockeries of these shows?
We subject the question to further research.

Funding

This research is partially funded by The Shaanxi Provincial Social Science Fund (2018M06) to Lin He.

Declaration of competing interest

This work was supported by The Shaanxi Provincial Social Science Fund (2018M06), which was granted to the corre-
sponding author Lin He.
There is no financial/personal interest or belief that could affect the author's objectivity in this manuscript.

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

References

Attardo, Salvatore, 1994. Linguistic Theories of Humor. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin.

Attardo, Salvatore, 2002. Humor and irony in interaction: from mode adoption to failure of detection. In: Anolli, L., Ciceri, R., Riva, G. (Eds.), Say Not to Say:
New Perspectives on Miscommunication. IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp. 159e179.
Attardo, Salvatore, 2015. Humor and laughter. In: Tannen, D., Hamilton, H.E., Schiffrin, D. (Eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. John Wiley, Chichester,
U.K., pp. 168e188
Brown, Penelope, Levinson, Stephen, 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Carter, Ronald, 2016. Language and Creativity: the Art of Common Talk, second ed. Routledge, London.
Carter, Ronald, McCarthy, Michael, 2004. Talking, creating: interactional language, creativity, and context. Appl. Linguist. 25 (1), 62e88.
Chen, Rong, 1992. Verbal Irony as a Conversational Implicature. Ball State University. Ph.D. Dissertation.
Chen, Rong, 2001. Self-politeness: a proposal. Journal of Politeness 33 (1), 87e106.

39
L. He, R. Chen and M. Dong Journal of Pragmatics 211 (2023) 31e40

Chen, Rong, 2018. Face and politeness. In: Keynote Speech at the Fourth China Forum on Pragmatics, July 26. Xi’an International Studies University.
Chen, Rong, 2022. Toward a Motivation Model of Pragmatics. De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin/New York.
Chen, Rong, 2023. Chinese Politeness: Diachrony, Variation, and Universals in Linguistic Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Chen, Xinren, 2019. ‘Family-culture’ and Chinese politeness: an emancipatory pragmatic account. Octa Linguistica Academia 66 (2), 251e270. https://doi.
org/10.1556/2062.2019.66.2.6.
Culpeper, Jonathan, 1996. Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. J. Pragmat. 25 (3), 349e367.
Culpeper, Jonathan, 2011. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offense. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Culpeper, Jonathan, 2012. (Im)politeness: three issues. J. Pragmat. 44 (9), 1128e1133.
Culpeper, Jonathan, Tantucci, Vittorio, 2021. The principle of (im)politeness reciprocity. J. Pragmat. 175, 146e164.
Dynel, Marta, 2008. No aggression, only teasing: the pragmatics of teasing and banter. Lodz Pap. Pragmat. 4 (2), 241e261.
Dynel, Marta, 2009. Beyond a Joke: types of conversational humour. Language and Linguistics Compass 3 (5), 1284e1299.
Dynel, Marta, 2017. But seriously: on conversational humour and (un)truthfulness. Lingua 197, 83e102.
Dynel, Marta, 2020. On being roasted, toasted and burned: (Meta)pragmatics of Wendy's Twitter humour. J. Pragmat. 166, 1e14.
Gibbs, Raymond W., 2000. Irony in talk among friends. Metaphor Symbol 15, 5e27.
Gong, Lili, Ran, Yongping, 2020. Discursive constraints of teasing: constructing professionality via teasing in Chinese entertainment interviews. Chin. J. Appl.
Ling. 43, 64e82.
Gu, Yueguo, 1990. Politeness phenomena in modern Chinese. J. Pragmat. 14 (2), 237e257.
Haugh, Michael, 2010. Jocular mockery, (dis)affiliation, and face. J. Pragmat. 42 (8), 2106e2119.
Haugh, Michael, 2014. Jocular mockery as interactional practice in everyday Anglo-Australian conversation. Aust. J. Ling. 34 (1), 76e99.
Haugh, Michael, 2017. Teasing. In: Attardo, S. (Ed.), Handbook of Language and Humor. Routledge, London, pp. 204e218.
Haugh, Michael, Bousfield, Derek, 2012. Mock impoliteness, jocular mockery and jocular abuse in Australian and British English. J. Pragmat. 44 (9),
1099e1114.
Holmes, Janet, 2000. Politeness, power and provocation: how humor functions in the workplace. Discourse Stud. 2 (2), 159e185.
Hu, Hsien Chin, 1944. The Chinese concept of “face”. Am. Anthropol. 46 (1), 45e64. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1944.46.1.02a00040.
Hyon, Sunny, 2018. Introducing Genre and English for Specific Purposes. Routledge, London & New York.
Ide, Sachiko, 1989. Formal forms and discernment: two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness. Multilingua 8, 223e248.
Jones, Rodney H., 2016. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Creativity. Routledge, London.
K r, Daniel, Zhou, Ling, 2020. Self-Denigration in 21st century Chinese. J. Politeness Res. 17 (2), 265e289.
ada
Kwon, Winston, Mackay, Rowan, Clarke, Ian, Wodak, Ruth, Vaara, Eero, 2020. Testing, stretching, and aligning: using ‘ironic personae’ to make sense of
complicated issues. J. Pragmat. 166, 44e58.
Mao, Robert LuMing, 1994. Beyond politeness theory: “Face” revisited and renewed. J. Pragmat. 21 (5), 451e486.
Moody, Stephen J., 2019. Contextualizing macro-level identities and constructing inclusiveness through teasing and self-mockery: a view from the
intercultural workplace in Japan. J. Pragmat. 152, 145e159.
Robles, Jessica S., 2019. Building up by tearing down. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 38 (1), 85e105.
Tsakona, Villy, 2018. Online joint fictionalization. In: Tsakona, V., Chovanec, J. (Eds.), The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and Negotiating Humor
in Everyday Encounters. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 229e255.
Varis, Piia, Blommaert, Jan, 2015. Conviviality and collectives on social media: virality, memes, and new social structures. Multilingual Margins: A Journal of
Multilingualism from the Periphery 2 (1), 31e45.
Vasquez, Camillia, 2019. Language, Creativity and Humor Online. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Yang, Na, Ren, Wei, 2020. Jocular mockery in the context of a localised playful frame: unpacking humour in a Chinese reality TV show. J. Pragmat. 162,
32e44.
Ye, Zhengdao, 2019. The politeness bias and the society of strangers. Lang. Sci. 76, 1e11.
Yu, Changrong, 2013. Two interactional functions of self-mockery in everyday English conversations: a multimodal analysis. J. Pragmat. 50 (1), 1e22.
Yu, N., 2001. What does face means to us? Pragmat. Cognit. 9 (1), 1e36.
Zappavigna, Michele, 2014. Enacting identity in microblogging through ambient affiliation. Discourse Commun. 8 (2), 209e228.
Zhou, Ling, Zhang, Shaojie, 2017. How face as a system of value-constructs operates through the interplay of mianzi and lian in Chinese: a corpus-based
study. Lang. Sci. 2017 (64), 152e166.
Zhou, Ling, Zhang, Shaojie, 2018. Reconstructing the politeness principle in Chinese: a response to Gu's approach. Intercult. Pragmat. 15 (5), 693e721.

Lin He is an associate professor in the School of English Studies at Xi'an International Studies University. Her research interests include pragmatics and
second language learning and teaching.

Rong Chen has published several books and more than sixty articles in pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. His newest monographs are Toward a Motivation
Model of Pragmatics (De Gruyter 2022) and Chinese Politeness: Diachrony, Variation, and Universals in Politeness Theory (Cambridge University Press,
forthcoming)..

Ming Dong is an associate professor in the School of English Studies at Xi'an International Studies University. His research interests include pragmatics,
applied linguistics, and language education.

40