This article proposes a "pedagogy of riffing" and examines how satire and some earlier forms of metacommentary can help first-year composition students appreciate the mediated nature of contemporary current-events discourse. Beginning with comic news and working back to those pioneers of cultural riffing, "Mystery Science Theater…

This paper analyses laughter in spoken academic discourse, with the aim of discovering why lecturers provoke laughter in their lectures. A further purpose of the paper is to identify episodes in British data which may differ from those in other cultural contexts where other lecturing practices prevail, and thus to inform the design of study skills…

Argues that since technical and prose writing are both rhetorical discourse, technical writers should use the same devices as prose writers (such as metaphor and humor) and should be as aware of the political, ethical, and moral context of their writing as writers of prose. (ARH)