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Is there a specifically ‘Taiwanese’ or ‘Polish’ humor? Do people from Taiwan and Poland share the same sense of humor? How is humor related to politics, religion and the LGBT community? These questions represent the starting point of investigation of this book. Some of the central issues explored here include: (1) how Taiwanese and Polish friends use various discourse strategies to construct humor; and (2) how different types of humor are employed on television variety shows to attract laughter. This book also provides an explanation of the prevalence of wúlítóu ‘nonsense’ in the Taiwanese society and how Polish ‘directness’ is reflected in humor. To understand how humor is culturally shaped and how it contributes to a talk-in-interaction, the three methodological approaches of conversation analysis, multimodal discourse analysis and interactional linguistics are adopted and combined here. This book will be of interest to both linguists and non-linguists who are interested in the social and cultural construction of humor.
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Jews and humor is, for most people, a natural and felicitous collocation. In spite of, or perhaps because of, a history of crises and living on the edge, Jews have often created or resorted to humor. But what is humor? And what makes certain types, instances, or performances of humor "Jewish"? These are among the myriad queries addressed by the fourteen authors whose essays are collected in this volume. And, thankfully, their observations, always apt and often witty, are expressed with a lightness of style and a depth of analysis that are appropriate to the many topics they cover. The scholars who contributed to this collection allow readers both to discern the common features that make up "Jewish humor" and to delight in the individualism and eccentricities of the many figures whose lives and accomplishments are narrated here. Because these essays are written in a clear, jargon-free style, they will appeal to everyone—even those who don't usually crack a smile!
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