Laughter in the White House
The rhetoric of humor in US-American state dinner speeches
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6013545 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christoph Schubert (0000-0002-8684-4049, University of Vechta, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 482-501 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Discourse Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1461-4456 • E-ISSN: 1461-7080 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14614456251387198 |
| OpenAlex | W4415988523 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 30 |
In political discourse, White House State dinner speeches constitute a genre that aims at strengthening the bilateral relationship between nations. Among the rhetorical strategies used by US presidents to establish a good international rapport, a significant role is played by humor. Combining political discourse analysis with the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), the present article investigates discursive forms and functions of jocular presidential utterances based on a dataset of 87 state dinner speeches. The study covers oratory by seven US presidents during a time span between the years 1986 and 2025, adopting a qualitative approach. The results are complemented by selected quantitative data concerning the occurrence of laughter in the transcripts. As is demonstrated, presidential humor can be speaker-, hearer-, or other-oriented, referring either to the heads of states as individuals or to the national collectives. Humor mainly fulfills a self-deprecating and affiliative function, thereby underscoring the presidents’ likable personality and the emotional bond between the international allies
The Linguistics of Humor
Register, Genre, and Style
Discourse and Politics
Funnypoliticians
Performing positive politeness
Is smiling during humor so obvious? A cross-cultural comparison of smiling behavior in humorous sequences in American English and French interactions
Script theory revis(it)ed
Factors predicting the perceived effectiveness of politicians' use of humor during a debate
When Congress makes a joke
Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being
Humour and laughter as indicators of meeting leadership style in Fomc meetings
Strategic functions of linguistic impoliteness in US primary election debates
These are not just slogans
Politeness
The Pragmatics of Politeness
The pragmatics of conversational humour in social visits
Performing good diplomatic relations
The influence of self- and other-deprecatory humor on presidential candidate evaluation during the 2008 US election
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |