Formulaic Humor and Humorous Formulae in Fictional Telecinematic Dialogue

This monograph presents the first book-length study to focus on formulaic humor and humorous formulae , situated at the crossroads of Pragmatics, Phraseology, and Conversational Humor Studies. Based upon a self-compiled corpus of 34 television series (4,214 episodes; 19.4 million words), it adopts a corpus-assisted, exploratory, mixed-method approach to analyze 13 types of humorous formulae across 146 samples. A conversation-analytical lens reveals how these formulaic patterns are systematically embedded in fictional dialogue and how they pragmatically shape scripted interaction.
The study’s key contributions include a typology of humorous formulae, an account of their discursive functions, and new insights into their role in the stylistics of telecinematic discourse. Of special interest is its demonstration of how scripted talk employs formulaicity to generate humor efficiently and effectively. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students in Linguistics, Pragmatics, Humor Studies, and media discourse, while extending existing knowledge on formulaicity in language use.