The relationship between irony and sarcasm: insights from a first-order metalanguage investigation

The relationship between irony and sarcasm has been much discussed and yet there is still little agreement on how the two relate at a theoretical level, as Attardo (2000: 795) notes “there is no consensus on whether irony and sarcasm are essentially the same thing […] or if they differ significantly”. The aim of this paper is to take a user-perspective and report on how participants in everyday conversations in the UK and Italy talk about irony and sarcasm and what kinds of authentic behaviors are described using these labels. These findings are discussed with reference to the academic concepts of irony and sarcasm to investigate how the lay and academic perspectives relate

You Don’t Fool Me:On Scams, Scambaiting, Deception, and Epistemological Ambiguity at R/scambait on Reddit

With a focus on the online phenomena of scamming and scambaiting, this article explores users’ communicative activities on Reddit’s r/scambait subreddit. Drawing on a representative corpus viewed through grounded theory, we establish the basic categories of posts and then unpack those further to reveal the deceptive practices being undertaken by both scammers and scambaiters, as well as Redditors’ untruthfulness in their fabricated posts. The analysis reveals that the r/scambait subreddit exists as a site of humorous entertainment arising from various forms of deception. Scammers’ deceptive strategies are depicted as amusingly naïve and inefficient, while scambaiters’ deceptive messages targeted at scammers demonstrate great creativity and wittiness. In both cases, scammer-victims are disparaged for being immensely gullible or downright stupid; and Redditors earn online plaudits for submitting the most upvoted posts. Our significant finding is that posts such as those at r/scambait should never be taken at face value due to their inherent epistemological ambiguity, to which the users choose to remain oblivious or indifferent. Furthermore, on a general plane, this study indicates a potential shift in the emic understanding of the concept of “scambaiting” from a punitive measure and an educational instrument to a creative practice geared toward posters’ kudos and users’ joint humorous experience through “baitertainment” and “scamusement.

Beyond sarcasm: the metalanguage and structures of mock politeness

This paper aims to cast light on the somewhat neglected area of mock politeness. The principle objectives are to describe the ways that mock politeness is talked about and performed. In order to investigate such usage, I analyse data from informal, naturally occurring conversations in a UK-based online forum. The paper introduces a range of metalinguistic expressions which are used to refer to mock polite behaviours in lay interactions and describes the different structures of mock polite behaviours. The analysis shows that both metalanguage and structure are more diverse than anticipated by previous research and, as a result, the paper argues against equating mock politeness with sarcasm and calls for further research into mock politeness as an important strategy of impoliteness

Żarty na bok: Kognitywne mechanizmy w dowcipach

Celem badaczki w niniejszym artykule jest przedstawienie nowej propozycji kategoryzacji dowcipów zależnie od sposobu, w jaki dokonuje się ich analizy linearnej. Autorka wyróżnia trzy typy dowcipów określonych metaforycznie jako: „czerwone światło”, „skrzyżowanie” oraz „ślepa uliczka”.Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00

On a Cross-Cultural Memescape: Switzerland through Nation Memes from within and from the Outside

This paper offers a cross-cultural contrastive study of what we term ‘nation memes’. These are humorous internet memes which refer to a particular country/nation. Our analysis of cultural scripts in memes related to Switzerland is based on a tripartite corpus of digital items shared by Polish, Swiss and international communities. By adopting a grounded-theory approach, we examine the prevalent scripts that represent the Swiss and Switzerland from each of the three perspectives. The results of our qualitative study indicate that Swiss memes are based on experiential knowledge of life in Switzerland, as well as a few stereotypes adopted by the Swiss about their own nation. The Polish subcorpus addresses Switzerland from an outsider perspective by invoking well-known cultural scripts, similar to those on international websites, on which Polish users sometimes scavenge. However, the Polish memescape uses scripts about Switzerland to address problems and scripts specific to Poland. Importantly, nation memes do not necessarily involve humorous disparagement, i.e. they do not always take Switzerland/the Swiss to be the target at which to poke fun when building humorous superiority. Moreover, by referring to their own national vices, the Swiss and Poles sometimes use cultural scripts as the basis for self-deprecating humour

Ad libidinem: Forms of female sexualisation in RoastMe humour

This article reports the findings of a qualitative and quantitative study of seemingly aggressive but inherently benevolent humorous jibes that involve the sexualisation of women in the RoastMe practice performed by a growing social media community on Reddit. Based on a corpus of jocular insults, six forms of sexualisation comments are proposed: hyper-sexualisation, de-sexualisation and meta-sexualisation, each concerning the female body or practices. We account for the distribution of these categories, offering conclusions about humour and sexist ideologies, which RoastMe insults jocularly echo. Although the RoastMe community operates with a humour mindset, producing and recognising sexualisation jibes as a playful activity within a humorous frame, RoastMe insults speak volumes about the contemporary sexist ideologies and the salience of sexuality as a topic arbitrarily invoked in humour performance.This work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland (Project number 2018/30/ E/HS2/00644)

PENGARUH LATIHAN SPLIT SQUAT JUMP DAN BOX JUMP TERHADAP PENINGKATAN DAYA LEDAK OTOT TUNGKAI PADA EKSTRAKURIKULER BOLA VOLI DI SMKN 3 MALANG

ABSTRAK: Tujuan penelitian adalah untuk: 1) mengetahui pengaruh latihan pliometrik split squat jump terhadap daya ledak otot tungkai, 2) mengetahui pengaruh latihan pliometrik box jump terhadap daya ledak otot tungkai, 3) mengetahui perbedaan antara latihan pliometrik split squat jump dan   box jump terhadap  daya ledak otot tungkai. Penelitian  ini  merupakan  penelitian eksperimen  lapangan  dengan  desain  penelitian pretest-posttest group design. Berdasarkan analisis data, diperoleh tiga kesimpulan yaitu 1) berdasarkan uji-t didapatkan nilai thitung sebesar 4,461 > ttabel (0.05;14) = 2,14 sehingga H0 ditolak dan hipotesis penelitian diterima yaitu ada pengaruh latihan split squat jump terhadap peningkatan daya ledak otot tungkai, 2) berdasarkan uji-t didapatkan nilai thitung sebesar 8,404 > ttabel (0.05;14) = 2,14 sehingga H0 ditolak dan hipotesis penelitian diterima yaitu ada pengaruh latihan box jump terhadap peningkatan daya ledak otot tungkai, 3) terdapat perbedaan antara thitung posttest vertical jump split squat jump dan box jump terhadap peningkatan daya ledak otot tungkai. Box jump memberikan pengaruh lebih tinggi terhadap peningkatan daya ledak otot tungkai jika dibandingkan dengan split squat jump, dilihat selisih peningkatan latihan split squat jump hanya 1,33, sedangkan selisih peningkatan latihan box jump adalah 1,74.Kata Kunci: latihan, split squat jump, box jump, daya ledak oto

Factors Associated With Intention to Report Child Abuse among District Hospital Nurses in Iloilo, Philippines

Background: Cases of child abuse are increasing. To report known and suspected child abuse is within the professional duty and legal responsibility of nurses. However, nurses’ intention to report child abuse in the Philippines has not been widely investigated. Objective: This self-report, cross-sectional survey was designed to determine the factors relating to nurses’ intention to report child abuse in the Philippine setting. Methods: 146 nurses assigned in the pediatric and emergency room of district hospitals in Iloilo participated in this study and data were collected using Feng & Levine’s (2005) Child Abuse Report Intention Scale (CARIS). Spearman’s rho was utilized to determine if there were significant associations between factors identified and nurses’ intention to report child abuse. Results: More than half of staff nurses reported that they did not have pre-service education and in-service training regarding child abuse. There was underreporting of suspected child abuse among staff nurses and feeling uncertain of the evidence was the main reason stated. While nurses had low level of knowledge about child abuse and the reporting law, nurses had a positive attitude against child abuse. Nurses’ intention to report child abuse was highly influenced by the opinions of people significant to them. They also had high perceived behavioral control in reporting child abuse. Attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control were significantly related to nurses’ intention to report child abuse. Conclusion: This study highlights that more attention is required for the nurses’ professional preparation, education, and training in managing child abuse. In addition, the results of this study support the Theory of Planned Behavior in determining factors associated with the intention to report child abuse among nurses in the Philippine setting