Background/Purpose: Indonesian Stand-up Comedy (SUCI) Comics use comedy to articulate concerns on societal issues, hence offering social critique. Abdurrahim Arsyad presented a social critique regarding schooling at the special program "Pahlawan Perlu Tanda Jasa 'Heroes Need Honors' (HNH)". An effective SUCI encompasses the comedians'…

With a runtime of 47 years, Saturday Night Live has long served as a societal mirror that captures and creates popular culture. In recent years the show has been criticized for its lack of diverse hosts, cast and staff. Out of 930 episodes only seven episodes have been hosted by an Asian host, four of whom identify as Chinese. This research…

Background: Speakers use sarcasm to criticize others and to be funny; the indirectness of sarcasm protects the addressee's face (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Thus, appreciation of sarcasm depends on the ability to consider perspectives. Purpose: We investigated development of this ability from late childhood into adulthood and examined effects of…

As documented in the National Academies' 2020 astronomy decadal survey report, harassment and discrimination continue to be problems in astronomical employment and educational settings. In order to document the types of harassment and discrimination in astronomy and the context in which these behaviors occur, this report describes an analysis of…

In the context of texts that depicted either a minimally confrontational conversation (study 1) or a more confrontational argument (study 2) with a close friend, the use of ironic criticism was rated as being more humorous, polite, and positive, yet also as more sarcastic and mocking than direct criticism. Although our results were consistent with…

Incongruity between a positive statement and a negative context is a cue to verbal irony. Two studies examined whether school-age children and adults recognized that listeners require knowledge of context to detect irony. Specifically, the studies investigated whether participants could inhibit their own context knowledge to appropriately gauge…

Humorous communication is extremely complex in both its forms and functions (e.g. Norrick, 1993; 2003). Much of the previous work that has put forth suggestions for incorporating humor into the language classroom (e.g. Trachtenberg, 1979; Deneire, 1995; Schmitz, 2002) has not examined these complexities in the detail necessary for the target…