Managing Humor in Conversation
Dialogue sounds best when it sounds the most like natural conversation
Sep 17, 2006
Managing humor implies managing the conversation in general or the performance, depending on the situation, by introducing and maintaining humor. Conversation management with specific regard to humor is related to involvement. Humorous conversation management focuses on how involvement is demonstrated through laughter and silence in particular.
Let us look first at laughter as management. Laughter is especially important to maintain a conversation when the speaker is telling a funny story or a joke for example, because the listener's laughter demonstrates involvement and interest. Involvement indicated by marginal features such as laughter or questions such as "Then what happened?" are more important to humor than to other conversations where the listener may only be listening, because they really need the information. Listeners involve themselves in humor, because they want to, so the speaker must be constantly reassured of their involvement in order to keep speaking.
Next, I will take a look at silence as management. Much of managing conversation in general and humor specifically involves silence, listening to others and waiting your turn or in the case of humor, waiting for the perfect set up. In a previous example, I also mentioned the fact that silence, especially after telling a joke or during a performance, indicates that the joke had an infelicitous outcome.
Silence in such cases could indicate one of two things. First, it might mean that the listener or audience did not understand the joke and cannot respond in a negative or positive way. Second, it could mean that the listener or audience did not find humor in the joke and is not moved to laugh. Chances are that if the listener or audience disapproved of the joke or found it offensive, they might voice their disapproval or disgust by jeering or booing the jokester.
