Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses findings from the analysis of conversational humour used by two young male friends. It shows that they have developed a specific humour style and focuses on two types of highly ritualized conversational activities that emerged from the analysis as particularly salient.

Paper long abstract:

Conversational humour is a prime example of an interactional achievement. It is essentially based on the co-participants' group-specific knowledge and crucially depends on their joint efforts and collaboration. As such, it may not only add enjoyment and pleasure to the ongoing conversation, but also promote solidarity, enhance rapport, and reinforce the sense of affiliation and cohesiveness among the group members. Individual groups develop their own ways of and rules for achieving humour together, which, among other things, reflect the group members' social relations, positioning vis-à-vis one another, common values, and interactional history. Exploring the ways that humour is achieved and used by particular groups can thus yield invaluable insights into their worlds.

The present paper presents and discusses findings from a close analysis of the instances of conversational humour found in three audio-recorded spontaneous conversational interactions of two Japanese young men who identify as close friends. It demonstrates that the two friends have developed a specific humour style which manifests itself through distinguishable types of conversational activities that they routinely engage in so as to achieve humour together. The paper focuses on two types of highly ritualized conversational activities that emerged from the analysis as particularly salient and constitutive of the conversational interactions of the two friends. It is shown that in their structure they strongly resemble the humorous exchanges characteristic of Japanese duo stand-up comedy manzai and that they make the two friends fundamentally interdependent and inseparable, as one of them consistently assumes and is positioned as having the role of a 'fool', whereas the other consistently assumes and is positioned as having the role of a 'straight man'.

The study is theoretically and methodologically informed primarily by interactional linguistics and interactional sociolinguistics. The subject matter it considers forms a part of the author's larger scale research on the ways that Japanese young people 'do friendship' in and through conversational interaction. Even though scholarly interest in conversational humour has burgeoned over the past two decades or so, Japanese conversational humour remains seriously underexplored.