“That was really a productive segment, wasn’t it?” Nonverbal markers of humor in the American presidential debates of 2016 and 2020

These past few years have marked a growing interest in multimodality, interaction and eye-gaze in the interpretation and understanding of discourse. Eye-gaze, for example, plays a central role in face-to-face interaction and stance taking because it helps discourse participants coordinate with each...

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Main Author: Sabina Tabacaru
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2025-04-01
Series:Frontiers in Psychology
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Online Access:https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1453168/full
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author Sabina Tabacaru
Sabina Tabacaru
author_facet Sabina Tabacaru
Sabina Tabacaru
author_sort Sabina Tabacaru
collection DOAJ
description These past few years have marked a growing interest in multimodality, interaction and eye-gaze in the interpretation and understanding of discourse. Eye-gaze, for example, plays a central role in face-to-face interaction and stance taking because it helps discourse participants coordinate with each other. Such visual markers help the interlocutors/audience to intersubjectively connect to the same common ground on which they construe their meanings. The case of humor has also received more attention from a multimodal perspective since it follows the same patterns of meaning construction and coordination. Elements that are salient to the humorous interpretation will be emphasized using either prosodic cues or visual markers, such as facial expressions and head movements. In this paper, we explore the use of such nonverbal discourse markers with the use of humor in the American presidential debates of 2016 and 2020, analyzing their role on the humorous stance.
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spelling doaj-art-b5df581cc15c4bd89b5e8fe8efb2ec0e2025-08-20T02:16:22ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782025-04-011510.3389/fpsyg.2024.14531681453168“That was really a productive segment, wasn’t it?” Nonverbal markers of humor in the American presidential debates of 2016 and 2020Sabina Tabacaru0Sabina Tabacaru1Département d’Etudes des Pays Anglophones, UFR LLCER-LEA, Université Paris 8, Saint-Denis, FranceUR TransCrit, Saint-Denis, FranceThese past few years have marked a growing interest in multimodality, interaction and eye-gaze in the interpretation and understanding of discourse. Eye-gaze, for example, plays a central role in face-to-face interaction and stance taking because it helps discourse participants coordinate with each other. Such visual markers help the interlocutors/audience to intersubjectively connect to the same common ground on which they construe their meanings. The case of humor has also received more attention from a multimodal perspective since it follows the same patterns of meaning construction and coordination. Elements that are salient to the humorous interpretation will be emphasized using either prosodic cues or visual markers, such as facial expressions and head movements. In this paper, we explore the use of such nonverbal discourse markers with the use of humor in the American presidential debates of 2016 and 2020, analyzing their role on the humorous stance.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1453168/fullhumorsarcasmstancemultimodalitynonverbalpolitical debates
spellingShingle Sabina Tabacaru
Sabina Tabacaru
“That was really a productive segment, wasn’t it?” Nonverbal markers of humor in the American presidential debates of 2016 and 2020
Frontiers in Psychology
humor
sarcasm
stance
multimodality
nonverbal
political debates
title “That was really a productive segment, wasn’t it?” Nonverbal markers of humor in the American presidential debates of 2016 and 2020
title_full “That was really a productive segment, wasn’t it?” Nonverbal markers of humor in the American presidential debates of 2016 and 2020
title_fullStr “That was really a productive segment, wasn’t it?” Nonverbal markers of humor in the American presidential debates of 2016 and 2020
title_full_unstemmed “That was really a productive segment, wasn’t it?” Nonverbal markers of humor in the American presidential debates of 2016 and 2020
title_short “That was really a productive segment, wasn’t it?” Nonverbal markers of humor in the American presidential debates of 2016 and 2020
title_sort that was really a productive segment wasn t it nonverbal markers of humor in the american presidential debates of 2016 and 2020
topic humor
sarcasm
stance
multimodality
nonverbal
political debates
url https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1453168/full
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