Abstract
Today’s infotainment clutter puts pressure on advertisers to come up with more surprising and more memorable ads. This need for novelty, creativity, and astonishment does set the expectation bar high, steering ads towards various means of eliciting surprise, including humour, shock, and taboo. In this paper, the author will try to investigate a set of multimodal advertising messages which use (debatable) humour and surprise, with a view to finding trans-cultural similarities and differences in terms of ad appreciation. The primary objective of this paper is to explore attitudinal responses of Taiwanese informants to controversial humorous advertisements in English; to this end, an online survey was conducted to ask them about their interpretations of and feelings towards a selection of ads. Its results will be compared with those obtained from Polish respondents, described in the author’s previous study (Stwora 2020).
References
Allan, K. & Burridge, K. (2006). Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Attardo, S. (2017). Humor in Language. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Retrieved July 10, 2018 from http://linguistics.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-342.
Barsoux, J.L. (1993). Funny Business: Humour Management and Business Culture. London: Cassell.
Brzozowska, D. & Chłopicki, W. (eds.) (2012). Polish Humour. Kraków: Tertium.
Brzozowska, D. & Chłopicki, W. (eds.) (2014). Humor polski. Kraków: Tertium.
Bussmann, H. (1998). Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. London and New York: Routledge.
Chen, L. (2016). A Socio-Pragmatic Analysis of Taiwanese and Polish Humor: Casual Conversations and Television Variety Shows. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Pragmatics, The University of Łódź, Poland.
Critchley, S. (2002). On Humour. Thinking in Action. London: Routledge.
Davies, C. (2008). ‘The Danish cartoons, the Muslims, and the new battle of Jutland’, in: Lewis, P., Davies, J.C.H., Kuipers, G., Martin, R.A., Oring, E. & Raskin, V. (eds.), ‘The Muhammad cartoons and humour research: A collection of essays’. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 21 (1), pp. 2–7.
Dynel, M. (2013). ‘Humorous phenomena in dramatic discourse’. The European Journal of Humor Research 1, pp. 22–60.
Gulas, C.S. & Weinberger, M.G. (2006). Humor in Advertising. Armonk, New York, and London: M.E. Sharpe.
Hale, A. (2018). ‘’I get it, but it’s just not funny’: Why humour fails, after all is said and done’. European Journal of Humour Research 6 (1), pp. 36–61.
Hall, E.T. (1959). The Silent Language. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett.
Hilliard, R.L. (2014). Writing for Television, Radio, and New Media. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Hurley, M.M., Dennett, D.C. & Adams Jr., R.B. (2011). Inside Jokes. Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press.
Jacoby, M. (2018). Chiny bez makijażu. Warszawa: Warszawskie Wydawnictwo Literackie MUZA SA.
Krikmann, A. (2009). ‘On the Similarity and Distinguishability of Humour and Figurative Speech’. TRAMES 13 (63/58) (1), pp. 14–40.
Kuipers, G. (2009). ‘Humour Styles and Symbolic Boundaries’. Journal of Literary Theory 3 (2), pp. 219–239.
Kyratzis, S. (2003). ‘Laughing Metaphorically: Metaphor and Humour in Discourse’, paper presented during the 8th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference held on July 20-25, 2003 at the University of La Rioja, Spain. Retrieved March 18, 2018 from: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.132.9689&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
Lewis, R. (2006). When cultures collide. Leading across cultures. Boston/London: Nicolas Brealey Publishing.
Liao, C.C. (2001). Taiwanese Perceptions of Humor: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Taipei: Crane.
Matusz, Ł. (2017). ‘Taboos and Swearing: Cross-Linguistic Universalities’ in: Gabryś-Barker, D., Gałajda, D., Wojtaszek, A. & Zakrajewski, P. (eds.), Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self: Studies in Linguistics and Language Learning, Berlin: Springer, pp. 33–47.
Michalik, U. & Sznicer, I. (2017). ‘The Use of Humor in the Multicultural Working Environment’ in: Gabryś-Barker, D., Gałajda, D., Wojtaszek, A. & Zakrajewski, P. (eds.), Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self: Studies in Linguistics and Language Learning, Berlin: Springer, pp. 19–32.
Morreall, J. (1983). Taking Laughter Seriously. New York: State University of New York Press Press.
Neuliep, J.W. (2016). Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Ott, K.H. & Schweizer, B. (2018). ‘Does religion shape people’s sense of humour? A comparative study of humour appreciation among members of different religions and nonbelievers’. European Journal of Humour Research 6 (1), pp. 12–35.
Palmer, J. (2004). Taking Humour Seriously. London: Routledge.
Pérez-Sobrino, P. (2016). ‘‘Shockvertising’: conceptual interaction patterns as constraints on advertising creativity’. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 65, pp. 257–290.
Pérez-Sobrino, P. (2017). Multimodal Metaphor and Metonymy in Advertising. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.
Sabri, O. (2012). ‘Taboo advertising: Can humour help to attract attention and enhance recall?’. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice 20 (4), pp. 407–422.
Simões, E. & Freitas, L. (2008). Taboo in Advertising. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Staley, R. & Derks, P. (1995). ‘Structural incongruity and humor appreciation’. Humor – International Journal of Humor Research 8 (2), pp. 97–134.
Stwora, A. (in press). ‘The Thin Invisible Line – Between Funny and Distasteful Multimodal Advertising Discourse’ in: Kuczok, M., Stwora, A. & Świerkot, M. (eds.), Explorations in Humor Studies: Humor Research Project, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 129–151.
Stwora, A. & Zemełka, G. (in press). ‘Towards enhancement, distraction or oblivion – studying the impact of humorous language in advertising’ in: Kuczok, M., Stwora, A. & Świerkot, M. (eds.), Explorations in Humor Studies: Humor Research Project, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 152–175.
Tsakona, V. (2017). ‘Humor research and humor reception: Far away, so close’ in: Chłopicki W. & Brzozowska, D. (eds.), Humorous Discourse, Boston and Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Inc, 179–201.
Vuorela, T. (2005). Approaches to a Business Negotiation Case Study: Teamwork, humour and teaching. Helsinki: Helsinki School of Economics Print.
Yus, F. (2016). Humour and Relevance. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.