Welcome to The CommUnity Lab! The knowledge transfer podcast, where we dive deep into the fascinating world of professional communication research and its application. Hosted by Danny (Daniel Wolfgruber), this podcast brings together leading scholars to explore how communication shapes workplaces, relationships, and society at large.

Today’s guest is Prof. Nancy Bell from Washington State University. In this Lab Talk, we dive into the fascinating world of humor, especially the moments when a joke doesn’t land. Together, we explore how and why humor fails in everyday interactions at work, in the classroom, and at home. Drawing on linguistic research, Nancy explains the roles of humor competence and humor performance, and why context and framing are crucial when you decide to crack a joke. A must-listen for anyone who wants to understand what makes humor work… and what makes it fall flat.

Want to explore more? Here are five scientific publications related to today’s episode:
Bell, N. (2015). We are not amused: Failed humor in interaction. De Gruyter. https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501501586/html
Gironzetti, E. (2022). The multimodal performance of conversational humor. John Benjamins. https://benjamins.com/catalog/ftl.13
Haugh, M. (2016). “Just kidding”: Teasing and claims to non-serious intent. Journal of Pragmatics, 95, 120-136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.12.004
Haugh, M., & Márquez Reiter, R. (2025). (Un)intended offence: Speaker meaning and discursive scales in the negotiation of offensive humour. Pragmatics & Cognition, 32(1), 8-38. https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.24019.hau
Schnurr, S., Azikin, N., & Omar, M. (2021). Leadership and humour at work: Using interactional sociolinguistics to explore the role of gender. In J. Angouri & J. Baxter (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315514857-16/leadership-humour-work-stephanie-schnurr-azikin-mohd-omar

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Let’s decode the way we (try to) connect, one conversation at a time!