A co-construção do humor como macro-estratégia de envolvimento em um talk show

Abstract

The present work aims to investigate how involvement, solidarity and connection among participants of a given communicative encounter are sustained through the interactive use of humor. Building upon an interactional view of language (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 2001; Silveira, 2007) through which linguistic expressions are seen as co-constructed by interactants, emergent from use, situated, context-bound and adaptable to interactional demands (Duranti & Goodwin, 1992), we analyzed an interview which took place in a Brazilian talk show called “Programa do Jô”, hosted by the comedian and presenter Jô Soares, aired by Rede Globo. Building upon Beeman‟s (2000) model of humor production, the production of humorous discourse was understood here as a joint co-construction (Clark, 1996) developed in coordination by interactants. Through the involvement strategies proposed by Tannen (1989), it was found that the co-constitutive nature of humor enables it to work as a macro-strategy for involvement, helping establish and develop interpersonal relations among participants of a given interaction, taking into account the communicative aims of all of its members.