Delia Chiaro

Playing with Food: Language, Humor, and Disgust is the first book to explore the interplay of food, humour, and disgust in multimodal media. Chiaro and Aarons note that, whenever food and comedy intersect, disgust is rarely far behind. Grounded in the theoretical framework of Carnival, the authors analyse the affective, cognitive, and corporeal responses to food, highlighting the central role of humor both in the way we talk about food and in our perception of the body and disgust. Through a rich array of texts, from everyday language and literature to video, advertising, music, politics, and beyond, this book advances a comprehensive examination of the wider notion of taste. With diverse, detailed case studies and an accessible, lively style, Playing with Food is an invaluable resource for students and researchers of Linguistics, Humour Studies, Food Studies, Psychology, Media Studies, Social Anthropology, and related fields.

Playing with Food: Language, Humor, and Disgust is the first book to explore the interplay of food, humour, and disgust in multimodal media. Chiaro and Aarons note that, whenever food and comedy intersect, disgust is rarely far behind. Grounded in the theoretical framework of Carnival, the authors analyse the affective, cognitive, and corporeal responses to food, highlighting the central role of humor both in the way we talk about food and in our perception of the body and disgust. Through a rich array of texts, from everyday language and literature to video, advertising, music, politics, and beyond, this book advances a comprehensive examination of the wider notion of taste. With diverse, detailed case studies and an accessible, lively style, Playing with Food is an invaluable resource for students and researchers of Linguistics, Humour Studies, Food Studies, Psychology, Media Studies, Social Anthropology, and related fields.

In this accessible book, Delia Chiaro provides a fresh overview of the language of jokes in a globalized and digitalized world. The book shows how, while on the one hand the lingua-cultural nuts and bolts of jokes have remained unchanged over time, on the other, the time-space compression brought about by modern technology has generated new settings and new ways of joking and playing with language. The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age covers a wide range of settings from social networks, e-mails and memes, to more traditional fields of film and TV (especially sitcoms and game shows) and advertising. Chiaro’s consideration of the increasingly virtual context of jokes delights with both up-to-date examples and frequent reference to the most central theories of comedy.This lively book will be essential reading for any student or researcher working in the area of language and humour and will be of interest to those in language and media and sociolinguistics.

In this accessible book, Delia Chiaro provides a fresh overview of the language of jokes in a globalized and digitalized world. The book shows how, while on the one hand the lingua-cultural nuts and bolts of jokes have remained unchanged over time, on the other, the time-space compression brought about by modern technology has generated new settings and new ways of joking and playing with language. The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age covers a wide range of settings from social networks, e-mails and memes, to more traditional fields of film and TV (especially sitcoms and game shows) and advertising. Chiaro’s consideration of the increasingly virtual context of jokes delights with both up-to-date examples and frequent reference to the most central theories of comedy.This lively book will be essential reading for any student or researcher working in the area of language and humour and will be of interest to those in language and media and sociolinguistics.

In this highly readable and thought-provoking book, Delia Chiaro explores the pragmatics of word play, using frameworks normally adopted in descriptive linguistics. Using examples from personally recorded conversations, she examines the structure of jokes, quips, riddles and asides. Chiaro explores degrees of conformity to and deviation from established conventions; the `tellability' of jokes, and the interpretative role of the listener; the creative use of puns, word play and discourse. The emphasis in her analysis is on sociocultural contexts for the production and reception of jokes, and she examines the extent to which jokes are both universal in their appeal, and specific to a particular culture.

In this highly readable and thought-provoking book, Delia Chiaro explores the pragmatics of word play, using frameworks normally adopted in descriptive linguistics. Using examples from personally recorded conversations, she examines the structure of jokes, quips, riddles and asides. Chiaro explores degrees of conformity to and deviation from established conventions; the `tellability' of jokes, and the interpretative role of the listener; the creative use of puns, word play and discourse. The emphasis in her analysis is on sociocultural contexts for the production and reception of jokes, and she examines the extent to which jokes are both universal in their appeal, and specific to a particular culture.