Nancy Dolores Bell

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at Washington State University

This study is a corpus-assisted investigation concerning the functions of the formulaic sequence just kidding and its variants (e.g., only kidding, just joking, JK) in spoken and written American English. We identified 1200 instances of this phrase from multiple corpora representing a range of modalities (Contemporary Corpus of American English, Gl...

Formal language education is often predicated on a series of modernist fictions that greatly simplify the nature of language and the process of communication. Acts of linguistic creativity involving humor and language play are frequently either ignored or considered deviant. In this paper, we contribute to ongoing efforts to re-conceptualize langua...

Humor and language play have been recognized as important aspects of second language (L2) development. Qualitative studies that have documented the forms and functions of language play for adult and child L2 users have taken place largely in classroom settings. In order to gain a fuller understanding of such creative manipulations by L2 users, it i...

Humor may fail for many reasons and the ways in which this happens are just beginning to be explored. 0015 and 0020 used an unfunny joke to elicit responses in order to describe reactions that an attempt at humor receives when the joke is not appreciated. The present paper adopts those methods to explore responses to a joke that failed because it w...

Since the late 1990s, the field of applied linguistics has seen a revival of interest in the topic of linguistic creativity and language play, with several theoretical works spawning a variety of empirical studies of (second language) L2 learners. This chapter reviews recent literature in order to examine the reciprocal relationship between formula...

Analyses of second language (L2) classroom interaction often categorize joking and other humorous talk by students as disruptive, off-task behavior, thereby rendering it important only from a classroom management perspective. Studies of language play, however, have illustrated that such jocular talk not only allows students to construct a broader a...

Despite research demonstrating a certain degree of incompatibility between humor and religion, church marquees in the United States frequently use humor, and especially puns, as a way of advertising religious messages. Is the wordplay found in this context different from wordplay in general? Our comparison of the puns found on church billboards ver...

Current evidence demonstrating the importance of language play in second-language (L2) development rests largely on qualitative analyses of L2 discourse. Although these rich descriptions have illustrated a number of important functions of language play, further study of the phenomenon is necessary to understand its potential to facilitate learning....

Research in the areas of second language (L2) pragmatics and of conversational humor has increased in recent decades, resulting in a strong base of knowledge from which applied linguists can draw information for teaching purposes and undertake future research. Yet, whereas empirical findings in L2 pragmatics are beginning to find their way into tex...

Research in the areas of second language (L2) pragmatics and of conversational humor has increased in recent decades, resulting in a strong base of knowledge from which applied linguists can draw information for teaching purposes and undertake future research. Yet, whereas empirical findings in L2 pragmatics are beginning to find their way into tex...

What is it that makes humor difficult to understand and appreciate in a second language (L2)? Despite advances in research in both L2 pragmatics and humor studies, scholars have as yet had little to say on this topic. In interviews, learners themselves pinpoint culture, vocabulary, and the speed at which playful talk often takes place as difficulti...

Although research on the pragmatics of humor has increased, the study of failed humor has continued to be neglected. The purpose of the present paper is to open the discussion of this phenomenon through the examination of a corpus of 186 responses to failed humor. These responses, which were elicited through the telling of a joke found to be lackin...

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 audien...

This is the first edited volume dedicated specifically to humor in interaction. It is a rich collection of essays by an international array of scholars representing various theoretical perspectives, but all concerned with interactional aspects of humor. The contributors are scholars active both in the interdisciplinary area of humor studies and in...

In line with recent critiques of communicative language teaching (Byrnes and Maxim 2004; Byrnes 2006), this paper considers how instances of spontaneous, creative language play can afford access to a range of linguistic practices that are often devalued or ignored in classrooms. To this end, it examines how university students in an advanced Spanis...

Humor in a second language (L2) can present an intimidating linguistic and cultural challenge for L2 speakers, yet it is a crucial means by which friendships are developed. In this article, I report on the humorous narratives constructed by 4 bilingual women in interaction with native English speakers. Unlike previous studies, which have pointed to...

Although microteaching has been found to be an effective way of helping preservice teachers learn about what it means to teach and while students themselves find it useful, researchers have not yet examined the task itself to discover exactly what it means to “microteach,” thus the purpose of this study was to learn more about the interactional str...

Humor can often carry an implicit negative message and thus be potentially dangerous to use. In addition, it is culturally and linguistically complex and sophisticated. Because of these things, it poses a challenge for L2 (second language) speakers and we might expect to see attempts at humor failing and causing offense in intercultural interaction...

Research on humor has tended to focus on its production. The understanding of humor, perhaps because it is more difficult to document, has received somewhat less attention, especially from a sociolinguistic perspective. The present paper addresses this gap by using examples of humor in crosscultural interaction to propose ways in which two earlier...

Research has shown that native speakers (NSs) are generally capable of adjusting their language to make it appropriate for a non-native speaker (NNS) interlocutor's proficiency. Very little is known in general about humorous interaction in intercultural communication, and in particular little is known about whether, how, and what types of conversat...

The increasingly diverse student population makes every teacher a teacher of English.

The ways in which L2 learners develop acid gain communicative competence in their target language in interaction with native speakers (NSs) is a topic that has received increasing attention from L2 scholars. Specifically, the examination of L2 verbal humor, or language play, is an area in which little research has been conducted, yet which promises...

This paper makes a contribution to the field of second language prag-matics by examining the production of three speech acts by a group of high beginning Korean learners of English. In comparing disagreements to requests and suggestions, it was found that, although the students dem-onstrated the ability to increase the level of politeness, their di...