36.2389, Reviews: Multimodal mockery in face-to-face interaction: Clarissa de Vries (2025)

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Subject: 36.2389, Reviews: Multimodal mockery in face-to-face interaction: Clarissa de Vries (2025)

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Date: 11-Aug-2025
From: Neda Chepinchikj [neda.cepincic at gmail.com]
Subject: Pragmatics: Clarissa de Vries (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-1041

Title: Multimodal mockery in face-to-face interaction
Subtitle: On the negotiation of nonseriousness and stance
Series Title: LOT Dissertation Series
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke
(LOT)
           http://www.lotpublications.nl/
Book URL: https://dx.medra.org/10.48273/LOT0685

Author(s): Clarissa de Vries

Reviewer: Neda Chepinchikj

SUMMARY
Multimodal Mockery in Face-to-face interaction: On the Negotiation of
Nonseriousness and Stance is a monograph based on Clarissa de Vries’s
PhD thesis. It investigates multimodality in spontaneous interactions
and how it is employed in mockery. The multimodal resources under
scrutiny are various and they include verbal language, gaze, body
positions and movements, gestures and facial expressions. The analysis
also takes into consideration handling objects that are part of the
interaction environment and to which the participants orient to.
The author’s starting perspective is that mockery is “a complex stance
act” that “is negotiated and multimodal” (p. 2). Mockery is defined as
a nonserious act that makes pretence and is usually a result of a
“clash between expectation and reality (or incongruity)” (p. 4). As a
pervasive social phenomenon, the author identifies a gap in its
treatment from a multimodal perspective, which is what this study
offers. The aim is to describe the sequential and multimodal building
of mockery in interaction. As such, it is a corpus-based study,
consisting of eight hours of video recordings of face-to-face triadic
interactions between friends. It is a predominantly qualitative
micro-analysis with some quantitative elements.
De Vries has organised the data analysis, results and research
questions into three case studies, which focus on one stage each in
the interaction process: 1) the initiation of mockery; 2) managing the
mockery; and 3) elaborating the mockery. The research questions are
several and they are also organised according to the case study. The
general research questions, however, focus on identifying and
understanding how interlocutors come to a multimodal understanding of
mockery and how they negotiate this in interaction.
One of the key concepts covered in this thesis is stance, which is
defined as taking positions in interaction relative to the topic
discussed, the feelings, attitudes and perspectives of the
participants (p. 9). The author uses Du Bois’s (2007) Stance Triangle
Model in approaching this concept, which posits three basic components
in stance (subject, object and alignment). In addition to explaining
this model, the author also outlines the various facets of stance and
stance-taking as sequentially and interactionally developed and
expressed. Thus, the study builds theoretically on the notion of
stance-taking as multimodal (Andries, Brône & Vermeerbergen, 2022).
The author examines any semiotic resource that is meaningful to stance
and focuses on three aspects of the theory: 1) the participation
framework, which is embodied and shared; 2) the embodied resources;
and 3) “the potential for monitoring and negotiating the temporal and
collaborative organisation of stance” (p. 19).
Furthermore, for the purposes of sequential organisation and
stance-taking, the author applies the Metaphor Foregrounding Analysis
by Müller and Tag (2010, 2024), in combination with Iwasaki’s (2022)
stance progression model, which focuses on alignment and disalignment
in stance-taking and its temporal development. Finally, for the
purposes of analysing mockery as a complex stance act, another
framework employed is Clark’s (1996) Staged Communicative Acts one.
The current study builds on both cognitive and interactional
linguistic treatment of mockery and on the theory of humour more
generally. Therefore, the author discusses the concept of
nonseriousness in interaction and calls for a
‘cognition-for-interaction’ approach to mockery, which implies the use
of people’s cognitive apparatus to structure and coordinate
communication (as per Grice, 1989). Furthermore, the author elaborates
on the three types of mockery, which are included in her analysis,
those being: 1) external mockery that targets persons absent from the
interaction; 2) self-directed mockery, where the speaker positions
themselves as the target; and 3) internal mockery, where a person
present in the interaction is being teased.
The data consist of three corpora, two of which pre-date the current
study and were made in closely monitored spaces, whereas the third one
was made in a social setting (a café) by the author. In the
pre-existing corpora, the participants wear eye-tracking glasses,
whereas in the third corpus they do not. The eye-tracking glasses were
used to monitor gaze behaviour. All interactions include three
participants (triads) of university students who are friends. All the
interactions are spontaneous and captured on video. ELAN was used to
annotate the interactions and inter-coder annotations and testing were
also conducted. The coders were looking for the presence of a humorous
stance in the interactions to establish instances of mockery, while
the intonation unit was set as the most appropriate unit of analysis.
The data showed a high percentage of mockery instances and the
presence of all three types of mockery. While a number of multimodal
features are annotated and analysed (verbal language, facial
expressions, gaze, head movement, manual gestures, shoulder and torso
movements, physical actions, smiling and laughter), prosody is not
taken into account and only some mentions of voice pitch and quality
are mentioned where relevant to interpreting the data.
The results of the study are organised in three chapters, and they all
have a different focus. In the first analytical chapter (Chapter 4),
the focus is on initiation of mockery where transitions from serious
to non-serious actions are tracked, as well as their multimodal
expression. This leads to the author’s argument that multimodal
resources are used to negotiate the onset of mockery in spontaneous
interactions as well as the collaboratively constructed nature of
mockery over several turns through an “incremental process” (p. 84).
The findings show that mockery is a complex process of stance-taking,
which evolves and is co-constructed. As for the targets of mockery,
these can be the speaker or someone else. Moreover, laughter, raised
eyebrows and smiling can be used to switch to a nonserious, mocking
act, in addition to verbal means, and they usually precede them.
The second analytical chapter (Chapter 5) investigates gaze as a
multimodal resource that is employed in managing mockery. The data
analysis follows Rossano’s (2012) framework for gaze in interaction.
The author makes a few hypotheses about her expectations regarding
gaze employment by both speakers and addresses in all three types of
mockery, which all prove to be correct. Speakers’ gaze is asymmetrical
in the cases of internal mockery, where they gaze mostly at the
target, while in the other two types, they mostly gaze at the
background. Also, in external and self-directed mockery, the speaker
tends to gaze more at the second addressee rather than the first. As
for addresses, they mostly gaze at the speaker in the cases of
external and self-directed mockery, whereas in internal mockery
instances, both addressees gaze less at the speaker. The target tends
to gaze at the background, while the non-target addressee gazes at the
target.
In the last analytical chapter (Chapter 6), the focus is on enactments
and co-enactments as part of the mocking acts. The author defines
enactments as constructing a character or a persona of themselves
and/or somebody else and their behaviour by using all semantic
resources available. The analysis of enactments and co-enactments
across the three corpora shows a 40% incidence of these acts, which
are predominantly about past events and relevant referents are most
often not present during the enactments. They have diverse functions,
such as setting the scene and introducing characters, inviting
interlocutors to join the pretence and show alignment with the stance
taken. Enactments have been found to build on previous ones or on
previous mocking utterances in a stacking manner, thus elaborating on
and upgrading the story or event being depicted. They are also the
most frequent device for expressing mockery and co-enactments can add
different viewpoints and stances to the mockery. The analysis also
found that these are multilayered and can include a variety of
semiotic resources, thus creating complex multimodal gestalts (as per
Mondada, 2014).
The last chapter (7), situates the findings of the study within the
relevant literature, identifies the contributions, limitations and
lists some possible directions for future research. As de Vries
states, her study’s contributions are connected to a more
comprehensive account of multimodality in humour, integrating the
study of humour with language studies and reassessing stance-stacking
as a concept. She also asks for a larger body of work on multimodal
patterns in mockery and humour more generally as these are scarce, as
well as for investigating different types of humour from a multimodal
perspective.
EVALUATION
The current study is part of a larger project – Multimodal
Stancetaking in Interaction (MUST), which looks at complex forms of
stance-taking and stance-stacking (Dancygner, 2012). Investigating
mockery is one of the streams in this project.
This book is de Vries’s published doctoral dissertation and, as such,
it follows the format of a PhD thesis. It starts with the author’s
acknowledgements and presents the thesis in seven chapters:
introduction, conceptual framework (which is the theoretical chapter
that grounds the research in relevant current literature), data and
methods, three separate data analysis chapters (4, 5 and 6) and a
final discussion chapter, which also includes the study’s
contributions, limitations, directions for future research and a
conclusion. Both the structure and the language are clear and concise
and the author uses plenty of signposting to guide the reader through
her work. In addition to the theoretical chapter, de Vries also
addresses relevant literature at the beginning of each analytical
chapter, which may sometimes appear as repetition of information, but
it also serves to inform the analysis more closely.
With regard to the intended audience, this is a scholarly volume that
can be useful to scholars, researchers and students focusing on
interactional and cognitive linguistic studies, as well as pragmatics
and (multimodal) conversation analysis. It may be of particular
interest to anyone studying and researching humour in interaction as
well as multimodality in interaction.
The volume is well defined in its scope, and it is very precise in
both posing and answering the multiple research questions. It
positions language use at the centre of social interaction as it is
actually conducted and negotiated with other people. The study also
does well to both identify and fill the gap of absence of multimodal
research into mockery as well as humorous interactions more generally.
It accomplishes its aim of describing the sequential and multimodal
construction of mockery in interaction. The thesis also addresses the
question of how to analyse complexities of interaction, such as
mockery, where multiple stances are expressed either simultaneously or
sequentially. However, this is only done on a small scale in the third
analytical chapter, most likely because of the multitude of research
questions (five in total) and aspects of mockery the study discusses.
Another merit of this volume is the thorough, meticulous and varied
treatment of literature sourced from a number of fields, including
interactional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, conversation
analysis, pragmatics and ethnomethodology. While not explicitly siding
with any of these areas, the author advocates for a
‘cognition-for-interaction’ approach to mockery because it implies
that people use their cognitive apparatus to coordinate and structure
communication in everyday situations. Furthermore, the author guides
the reader and explains clearly and thoroughly the nature of the
phenomena she is researching and how complex it may be to identify
mockery in interaction as well as to analyse the complexity of
multimodal construction thereof. The data selection criteria are
explicitly stated and explained, and de Vries makes a solid case for
treating her data as spontaneous conversations even though two of the
three corpora have been created in lab-like environments and are
semi-guided.
In summary, this thesis makes a compelling argument for multimodality
as an essential and indelible part of humour and achieves the goals of
demonstrating the sequential and multimodal construction of mockery in
spontaneous interactions. Even though de Vries dubs her study as
exploratory, she provides a detailed and thoughtful description of how
mockery is initiated, maintained and enacted in triadic interactions
between friends, which advances the audience’s understanding and
appreciation of its intricacies.
REFERENCES
Andries, F., Brône, G., & Vermeerbergen, M. (2022). Stance in Flemish
sign language: A
multimodal and polysemantic phenomenon. Belgian Journal of
Linguistics, 36, 16 – 45.
Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge University Press.
Dancygier, B. (2012). Negation, stance verbs and intersubjectivity. In
B. Dancygier and E.
Sweetser (Eds.), Viewpoint in language: A multimodal perspective (69 –
93). Cambridge University Press.
Du Bois, J. (2007). The stance triangle. In R. Englebretson (Ed.),
Stancetaking in
discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction (139 – 182). John
Benjamins.
Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the way of words. Harvard University
Press.
Iwasaki, S. (2022). Stancetaking in motion: Stance triangle and double
dialogicality. Text
& Talk. https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2020-0222.
Mondada, L. (2014). The local constitution of multimodal resources for
social
interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 65, 137 – 156.
Müller, C. & Tag, S. (2010). The dynamics of metaphor: Foregrounding
and activating
metaphoricity in conversational interaction. Cognitive Semiotics,
6(1), 85 – 120. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogsem.2010.6.spring2010.85.
Rosano, F. (2012). Gaze in conversation. In J. Sidnell and T. Stivers
(Eds.), The handbook
of conversation analysis (308 – 329). Wiley.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Dr Neda Chepinchikj is a linguist, educator and researcher, working at
the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Her areas of
interest include applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, academic
language literacy, multimodal conversation analysis and telecinematic
discourse. She is also a published author.



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