Banter as a discursive norm

Abstract

Banter, being a form of mock impoliteness and, hence, creating ambivalence in speaker meaning, is viewed as a normative discursive strategy creatively and manipulatively exploited by the speaker in pursuit of certain communicative goals. In fact, strategical ambivalence embedded in banter can be in full compliance with unwritten and discursively negotiated norms of certain communities of practice which favour potentially impolite behavior as a default mode of interaction. Given that, the study focuses on the discursive rationale behind banter in given communities of practice and its intrinsic characteristics which set banter apart from similar forms of impoliteness, both genuine and mock in nature. Empirical evidence for the study is obtained from intra-office talk as featured in the UK’s mockumentary “The Office”. Since banter is approached as a solely interpretive construct with interactants’ evaluations playing a major role in assessing its expediency and appropriateness, the study draws on the interactants’ frame-based evaluations of social norms of appropriateness that have been previously interiorized in the speech events in question. Overall, our findings suggest that individuals engaging in banter tend to prioritise interpersonal implicatures over potential face-damage and, hence, carry out relational work that foregrounds a sense of camaraderie and maintains the culturally specific proscription of earnestness (as is evidenced by social anthropologists). In terms of its linguistic mechanisms, banter, as a rule, manifests itself through flouting the maxim of quality and hyperbolizing the negative evaluation while contributing to both linguistic and social cooperation.