Negotiating Im/politeness via Humor in the Greek Parlament

Main Article Content

Marianthi Georgalidou

El objetivo de este estudio es examinar la manera en la que el humor sirve como medio de negociación des/cortés en el discurso de los parlamentarios griegos. (Harris 2001; Morreall 2005; Bippus 2007; Tsakona and Popa 2011; Georgalidou 2011). El humor ha sido abordado como una estrategia de cortesía positiva, en el sentido de mitigar el ataque directo a personas, situaciones o ideas y sirve como medio de crítica indirecta (Haugh 2016). No obstante, el humor -y la ironía- en el disrcurso parlamentario se usa para lanzar ataques contra adversarios y sirve como un medio de construcción de identidades políticas perjudiciales para los adversarios políticos (Tsakona 2011; Nuolijärvi and Tiittula 2011). En el contexto de la crisis económica que atravesó Grecia, el presente estudio basado en datos recopilados de las Actas de las Sesiones Plenarias del Parlamento Helénico durante un período de 10 años (2009-2019), analiza la relación entre el humor y la agresión verbal en el discurso político griego. Las cuestiones abordadas conciernen al humor como modo de comunicación en casos de conflictos que superan los límites de la rivalidad política en el discurso parlamentario (Corranza-Marquez 2010; Georgalidou 2016; Frantzi, Georgalidou and Giakoumakis 2019). La aproximación analítica es émica, basada en el análisis de unidades discursivas como acciones sociales. Por tanto, se analizan episodios de discurso parlamentario agresivo por la organización secuencial de interacción humorística. Es más, se aplica una combinación de modelos interaccionales y críticos de modo que se puedan abordar complicadas distinciones entre la rivalidad política esperada y el abuso verbal. El análisis destaca cómo receptores inmediatos y colegas parlamentarios utilizan los chistes como +/-abusivos. Rechazos, intensas protestas e interrupciones temporales de procedimientos formales, así como los aplausos de los partidos contrarios, sacan a luz el papel de múltiples receptores, aunque no necesariamente del mismo alineamiento, como factor crítico en la contextualización del humor político como des/cortés.

Paraules clau
humor, ironía, des/cortés, agresión, discurso parlamentario

Article Details

Com citar
Georgalidou, Marianthi. «Negotiating Im/politeness via Humor in the Greek Parlament». Estudios de lingüística del español, 2021, vol.VOL 43, p. 99-121, http://raco.cat/index.php/Elies/article/view/391875.
Referències
Archakis, Argyris, and Tsakona, Villy. 2011. Informal talk in formal settings: Humorous narratives in Greek parliamentary debates. In V. Tsakona and D. E. Popa (eds), Studies in Political Humor: In between Political Critique and Public Entertainment. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 61-81.
Arundale, Robert B. 2010. Constituting Face in Conversation: Face, Facework and Interactional Achievement. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2078-2105.
Attardo, Salvatore. 2000. Irony as relevant inappropriateness. Journal of Pragmatics 32- 6: 793-826.
Bippus, Amy. 2007. Factors predicting the perceived effectiveness of politician’s use of humor during a debate. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 20: 105-121.
Brown, Penelope, and Levinson Stephen. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bull, Peter, Fetzer, Anita and Kádár, Dániel Z. 2020. Calling Mr Speaker ‘Mr Speaker. Pragmatics 30-1: 64-87.
Christie, Christine. 2005. Politeness and the Linguistic Construction of Gender in Parliament: An Analysis of Transgressions and Apology Bebaviour. Working Papers in the Web 3. Corranza-Marquez, A. 2010. The faces of humor: Humor as catalyst of face in the context of the British and the Spanish Parliament. Humor 23-4: 467-504.
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2005. Impoliteness and Entertainment in the Television Quiz Show: The Weakest Link. Journal of Politeness Research 1: 35-72.
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Culpeper, Jonathan. 1996. Towards an Anatomy of Impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25: 349–367.
Eelen, Gino. 2001. A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing.
Frantzi, Katerina, Georgalidou, Marianthi and Giakoumakis, Giorgos. 2019. Greek Parliamentary Discourse in the Years of the Economic Crisis: Investigating Aggression Using a Corpus-Based Approach. In E. Jakaza (ed.), Argumentation and Appraisal in Parliamentary Discourse. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 1-30.
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar. 2013. Introduction: Face, identity and im/politeness. Looking backward, moving forward: From Goffman to practice theory. Journal of Politeness Research 9-1: 1-33.
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2013. Small Stories and Social Media, The Role of Narrative Stancetaking in the Circulation of a Greek News Story. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, Paper 100.
Georgalidou, Marianthi, Frantzi, Katerina and Giakoumakis, Giorgos. 2019a. “Κοινοβουλευτικός λόγος, ευγένεια και επιθετικότητα στο ελληνικό κοινοβούλιο”. (Parliamentary speech, politeness and aggression in the Greek Parliament). Studies in Greek Linguistics 39: 273-290.
Georgalidou, Marianthi, Frantzi, Katerina and Giakoumakis, Giorgos. 2019b. “Addressing adversaries in the Greek Parliament: a corpus-based approach”. In M. Chondrogianni, S. Courtenage, G. Horrocks, A. Arvaniti and I. Tsimpli (eds.). Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Greek Linguistics. London: University of Westminster, pp. 106-116. Georgalidou, Marianthi. 2017. Addressing Women in the Greek Parliament: Institutionalized Confrontation or Sexist Aggression?. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 5 (1): 30-57.
Georgalidou, Marianthi. 2011. Stop caressing the ears of the hooded: Political humor in times of conflict. In V. Tsakona and D. Popa (eds.), Studies in Political Humor. Amsterdam/ Philadlphia: John Benjamins, pp. 83-108.
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J.L. Morgan (eds), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, pp. 41–58.
Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual. New York: Pantheon. Harris, Sandra. 2001. Being politically impolite: Extending politeness theory to adversarial political discourse. Discourse in Society 12: 451-472.
Haugh, Michael. 2016. Just kidding: Teasing and claims to non-serious intent. Journal of Pragmatics 95: 120-136.
Haugh, Michael. 2014. Im/politeness Implicatures. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Haugh, Michael. 2013. Disentangling face, facework and im/ politeness. Sociocultural Pragmatics 1-1: 46-73.
Hirsch, Galia. 2011. Between humor and irony. A pragmatic model. Pragmatics and Cognition 19.3: 530-561.
Ilie, Cornelia. 2001. Unparliamentary language: Insults as cognitive forms of ideological confrontation. In R. Dirven, R. M. Frank and C. Ilie (eds), Language and Ideology. Volume II: Descriptive Cognitive Approaches. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 235-263.
Leech, Geoffrey, 1983. The Principles of Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman. Mitchell, Nathaniel, and Haugh, Michael. 2015. Agency, accountability and evaluations of impoliteness. Journal of Politeness Research, 11-2: 207-238.
Morreall, John. 2005. Humor and the conduct of politics. In S. Lockyer and M. Pickering (eds). Beyond the Joke. The Limits of Humor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 63- 78.
Murphy, James. 2014. (Im)politeness during Prime Minister’s Questions in the UK Parliament. Pragmatics and Society 5: 76–104. Nuolijärvi, Pirkko and Tiitula, Liisa. 2011. Irony in political television debates. Journal of Pragmatics 43: 572-587.
Pomerantz, Anita. 1984. Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson, and J. Heritage (eds). Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, pp. 57-101.
Raskin, Victor and Attardo, Salvatore. 1994. Non-literalness and non-bona-fide in language: An approach to formal and computational treatments of humor. Pragmatics and Cognition 2(1): 31–69.
Searle, John. R. 1976. A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society 5(1): 1- 23. Sifianou, Maria. 2008. Κοινοβουλευτικός λόγος και ευγένεια. (Parliamentary discourse and politeness). In A. Mozer, E. Bakakou-Orphanou, Ch. Charalambakis and D. Chila8 Markopoulou (eds.), Glosses Kharin: Volume Dedicated to Professor George Babiniotis by the Department of Linguistics. Athens: Ellinika Grammata, pp. 464-474.
Tsakona, Villy. 2009. Humor and image politics in parliamentary discourse: A Greek case study. Text and Talk 29: 219–237.
Tsakona, Villy. 2011. Irony beyond criticism. Evidence from Greek parliamentary discourse. Pragmatics and Society 2-1: 57-86. Tsakona, Villy and Chovanec Jan (eds.). 2018. Creating and Negotiating Humor in Everyday Interactions. Amsterdam/ Philadlphia: John Benjamins.
Tsakona, Villy, and Popa, Diana. (eds). (2011). Studies in Political Humor. Amsterdam/ Philadlphia: John Benjamins. Watts, Richard J. 1992a. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watts, Richard J. 1992b. Linguistic Politeness and Politic Verbal Behavior: Reconsidering Claims for Universality. In R. J. Watts, S. Ide and K. Ehlich (eds), Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 43-70.
Watts, Richard J. 2010. Linguistic Politeness Theory and its Aftermath: Recent Research Trails. In M. A. Locher and S. L. Graham (eds), Interpersonal Pragmatics. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 43-70.