Humour and Impoliteness in Comedy Discourse

The chapter aims to discuss the functions and manifestations of humour in dramatic dialogue in an American TV series, The Office . The analysed episode is a humorous commentary on the implementation of ‘green’ initiatives in big corporations and companies. Dwight Schrute, an eccentric and over-zealous employee of Dunder Mifflin, a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, educates his firm about environmental awareness as he was asked to do by the corporate branch. To celebrate Earth Day with dignity and to ensure a good understanding of environmental issues by employees, he creates a peaceful character, ‘Recyclops’, an imaginary creature who cares for the environment (supervises recycling in the office, saves water, etc.). However, as years go by, ‘Recyclops’ turns rogue – he dons armour made of plastic and wants to destroy the Earth, the planet he once loved, by demolishing office furnishings and disseminating aerosol spray. The chapter will describe the notion of ‘conversational humour’ (Dynel, 2009, 2013), which is prevalent in dramatic discourse, as well as look into both pragmatic and stylistic manifestations of humour, such as the neologisms, faulty grammar or impoliteness displayed by the character ‘Recyclops’. The analysis will demonstrate how dramatic irony maximises the comic effects of some scenes. The chapter will also focus on some specific functions of TV dialogue (Bednarek, 2017), showing how the stylistic features of the characters’ speech contribute to characterisation in telecinematic discourse.