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This article investigates spontaneous humour-related phenomena in TV documentary, arguing that their presence helps to overcome the scripted nature of the genre. Focusing on the diegetic level of interaction between the presenter and other individuals present in the scene, the analysis traces how the interlocutors achieve mutual in-tune-ness that is necessary for setting up the play frame. It pays attention to several humour-related phenomena, including non-humorous laughter, joint joking and physical pranks. The findings indicate that while laughter can alleviate tension associated with face-threat or personal failure, other forms of humour emerge in the diegetic frame as part of the programme producers’ design to divert from the transactional mode of factual television to a more entertaining hybrid format based on a significant experiential component. As a result, TV viewers do not simply receive information but derive pleasure from the playful spontaneity performed for their benefit by the presenter and other interlocutors.

In this paper, I analyse how expertise is discursively negotiated in TV documentary programmes. While previous research has explored the relationship between the ‘lay’ and the ‘expert’ dimensions invarious public participation programmes, this paper focuses on a TV programme format that is based on the cooperative interaction between professionals who differ in the extent of their knowledge and experience. The paper notes that while expertise is unevenly distributed between the voiceover, the presenter and the expert, these parties complement each other in explaining complex phenomena for the benefit of the audience. Using data from the documentary series How Britain Worked, I argue that as long as the presenter possesses some technical expertise, he may be positioned as a semi-expert between the true expert and the lay audience, even when he simultaneously acts in other contexts as a novice acquiring the specialized expertise needed for his quest. Thus, rather than demonstrating his own knowledge and skills, the presenter mediates expertise for the benefit of the audience. The mediating role is attested by the presenter's frequent shifts of footing in and out of the conversational interaction with the true expert, who may end up assuming a background role of expert support.

This paper deals with the phenomenon of the ‘microphone gaffe’ in the context of sports broadcast talk. This peculiar communicative event is characterized by the public mediation of live talk to media audiences without the speakers being aware that they are actually on air. Adopting a general pragmatic perspective, this paper analyses the microphone gaffe in terms of its specific participation framework and discusses its humorous potential. It is argued that the key element underlying these communicative situations consists of the momentary non-acknowledgement of the media audiences by the speakers. The audience, repositioned as non-participants, actually find themselves in the role of the ‘eavesdropper’ on a private conversation. On the production side of the communicative scheme, the mistaken belief in enjoying this momentary ‘private’ speech event is accompanied by a shift of footing, where the commentators’ institutional identities become replaced with their non-public personas, evidenced by forms of backstage talk that contrasts with their frontstage performance. This paper proposes that in case of microphone gaffes, humorous effect arises from the various incongruities between the actual and the presumed footings, as well as from the subsequent recontextualizations that enclose the original communicative act within an additional communicative level. The aim of the paper is to propose and elaborate a general theoretical framework for the analysis of unintended humour in media discourse.

This book offers the first comprehensive linguistic analysis of live text commentary, one of the most innovative online genres of modern news media. The study focuses on written sports commentaries in online newspapers that enable partial real-time audience involvement in the media text. Adopting an approach from interactional pragmatics, the book identifies the genre’s characteristic micro-linguistic features as well as its unique narrative structure. Live text commentary is shown to be a hybrid and multimodal text format – an internally complex form of media communication that combines elements of live spoken broadcasting, blogging, informal conversation and online chat. It aims to inform as well as entertain the audience: by using humour, banter and real or staged dialogue it seeks to create a sense of community among its readers – sports fans. The book will be of interest to many scholars in linguistic pragmatics, discourse analysis and social sciences, as well as to all others interested in modern online genres, news media and sports discourse.

The article is a critical review of a publication in which the author proposes a semantic-pragmatic theory of analysing humour in short comic narratives.

The article provides a critical review of a research monograph on the syntactic issues - the emergence of 'online' syntax in the act of communication. It focuses especially on the interface between linguistic structures and non-linguistic situations and events, pointing out how appropriate verbalizations come into existence.

This article documents some foregrounding devices that the media use to attract readers' attention to linguistic forms, all identified in sports reports relating to the Euro 2004 Football Championship published in various British newspapers. A functional explanation is offered in terms of the poetic and interactive character of such devices and their role in simulating friendship and encouraging `bonding' between the writers and readers (phaticity). Their omnipresence in the British media is linked with structural characteristics of the English language, the readiness of the British to tolerate manipulation of linguistic forms, and the general trend towards `infotainment' in the media.

This contribution discusses linguistic aspects of discussion and interaction in a new genre of journalism?live text commentary?that has recently come into existence thanks to new communication technologies, most notably the Internet. Live text commentary is a professional journalistic text that is produced online contemporaneously with the event that it describes. The technology enables the text’s consumers to provide instant feedback to the author, thus enhancing interpersonal interaction. Structurally, the resulting texts contain elements of discussion because readers’ comments are used to co-construct the texts, while also manifesting numerous linguistic features of reader-oriented interactiveness. Live text commentary is viewed as an instance of mediated quasi-interaction. This is because the readers interact in a virtual space, discursively enacting their membership in an imaginary community, rather than participating in a real interpersonal interaction. Using material from live text commentaries of sports events, this contribution provides an analysis of such online discussion and interaction from the perspective of discourse analysis and sociolinguistics.