Negotiating Im/politeness via Humor in the Greek Parliament

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to examine how humor serves as a means for negotiating im/politeness in the discourse of Greek parliamentarians (Harris 2001; Morreall 2005; Bippus 2007; Tsakona and Popa 2011; Georgalidou 2011). Humor has been approached as a positive politeness strategy, in the sense that it mitigates the straightforward targeting of persons, situations or ideas and serves as a means of indirect criticism (Haugh 2016). However, humor -and irony- in parliamentary discourse is used to launch attacks against adversaries and serves as a means for the construction of damaging political identities for political opponents (Tsakona 2011; Nuolijärvi and Tiittula 2011). In the context of the Greek economic crisis, drawing on data from the Minutes of Plenary Sessions of the Hellenic Parliament for a period of 10 years (2009- 2019), the present study investigates the connection of humor to verbal aggression in Greek political discourse. The theoretical issues tackled concern humor as facethreatening communication in the light of cases of conflict that exceed the limits of expected political rivalry in parliamentary discourse (Corranza-Marquez 2010; Georgalidou 2016; Frantzi, Georgalidou and Giakoumakis 2019). The analytic approach is emic, based on the analysis of discourse units as there and then social actions. Thus, episodes of aggressive parliamentary discourse are analyzed for the sequential organization of humorous turns-in-interaction. Moreover, a combination of interactional and critical frameworks is applied so that complicated distinctions between expected political rivalry and verbal abuse can be approached. Analysis highlights how immediate recipients and fellow parliamentarians construct humorous jab-lines as +/-abusive. Rejective contributions, intense protests and the temporary breakdown of formal procedures, but also applause by opposing parties, bring forth the point of view of multiple, but not necessarily aligned, recipients as the critical factor in the contextualization of political humor as im/polite.