Non-Natural Dialogue in Comedy: Language as Sound in the Creation of Multimodal Humour

Abstract

TV and film productions do not always show human spoken interaction as a polished product, but some make a point of including speech that is difficult to understand. Characters may mumble or rely purely on intonation and sequentiality. This paper explores such dephonemicised language use, which we call language as sound (LAS). Specifically, it investigates its use in humorous productions with a view towards the imagery simultaneously shown, considering humour theory from a multimodal perspective. By employing a CA-informed, multimodal approach in the analysis of scripted audio-visual data, this paper provides an account of the spatiotemporal unfolding of these interactions.