Abstract Studies of conversational humor in intercultural settings have focused largely on illustrating how participants can successfully draw on humor to build rapport. However, it is nevertheless clear that attempts at humor can also go awry in settings in which participants come from different cultural backgrounds. In this paper, we focus on the responses of American and Australian participants to playful or light-hearted comments on, or responses to, another speaker’s just prior serious talk, which are designed to initiate a non-serious side sequence, or what we term “jocular quips”. Drawing from a comparative analysis of thirty recordings of initial interactions involving participants from ostensibly the same (AmAm; AusAus) and different (AmAus) backgrounds, we report our finding that affiliative responses to jocular quips are more prevalent in the “intracultural” dyads (AmAm, AusAus), while non-affiliative responses are more frequent in the “intercultural” dyads (AmAus). We suggest this is due to troubles in accomplishing particularistic co-membership and shared critical, mocking attitudes that are attributed to, or directed at that category. We conclude that Americans and Australians are not “divided by a common language” as such, but rather that affiliating with jocular quips in initial interactions is contingent on the locally situated accomplishment of particular membership categories and predicates associated with these categories.

中文翻译：

---

用共同语言划分？美国和澳大利亚讲英语的人之间最初互动中的幽默嘲笑和（非）从属反应

摘要跨文化环境中的对话式幽默研究主要集中在说明参与者如何成功利用幽默来建立融洽的关系。但是，很明显，在参与者来自不同文化背景的环境中，幽默尝试也可能会出错。在本文中，我们着重于美国和澳大利亚参与者对另一位演讲者之前的认真演讲的俏皮或轻松评论或回应的回应，这些言论旨在引发不严重的旁听，即我们所说的话。 “幽默的笑话”。通过对三十种初始交互记录的比较分析得出的结果，这些交互涉及表面上相同（AmAm； AusAus）和不同（AmAus）背景的参与者，我们报告了我们的发现，在“文化间”的双胞胎（AmAm，AusAus）中，对黄麻齿的倾向性反应更为普遍，而在“文化间的”双胞胎（AmAus）中，非隶属度反应更为频繁。我们建议，这是由于在实现特殊成员资格方面存在麻烦，并且归因于或针对该类别存在共同的批评，嘲弄态度。我们得出的结论是，美国人和澳大利亚人并没有因此而“被共同的语言划分”，而是在最初的互动中与幽默的讽刺联系在一起取决于特定成员类别和与这些类别相关的谓词在本地的完成情况。我们建议，这是由于在实现特殊成员资格方面存在麻烦，并且归因于或针对该类别存在共同的批评，嘲弄态度。我们得出的结论是，美国人和澳大利亚人并没有因此而“被共同的语言划分”，而是在最初的互动中与幽默的讽刺联系在一起取决于特定成员类别和与这些类别相关的谓词在本地的完成情况。我们建议，这是由于在实现特殊成员资格方面存在麻烦，并且归因于或针对该类别存在共同的批评，嘲弄态度。我们得出的结论是，美国人和澳大利亚人并没有因此而“被共同的语言划分”，而是在最初的互动中与幽默的讽刺联系在一起取决于特定成员类别和与这些类别相关的谓词在本地的完成情况。