Wit's end women's humor as rhetorical & performative strategy / [electronic resource] :
- 作者: Zwagerman, Sean.
- 其他作者:
- 其他題名:
- Pittsburgh series in composition, literacy, and culture
- 出版: Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press
- 叢書名: Pittsburgh series in composition, literacy, and culture
- 主題: Performative (Philosophy) , Speech acts (Linguistics) , Man-woman relationships in literature , Conversation in literature , Women in literature , Humor in literature. , American literature--20th century--History and criticism. , American wit and humor--History and criticism.
- ISBN: 9780822973775 (electronic bk.) 、 0822973774 (electronic bk.) 、 9780822960744 (pbk.) 、 0822960745 (pbk.)
- FIND@SFXID: CGU
- 資料類型: 電子書
- 內容註: Includes bibliographical references and index. "Like a marriage with a monkey" : an argument for the use of speech-act theory in the analysis of humor -- Subversive potential meets social resistance : women's humor in Thurber, Hurston, and Parker -- Generally unhappy : the deconstruction of speech acts and Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? -- Comic relief : a stand-up performance by J.L. Austin andthe consequences of not getting it -- Failure revisited and authority regained : Louise Erdrich's Love medicine -- Sisyphus's punch line : intentionality and wit as treatment for postmodern depression.
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讀者標籤:
- 系統號: 005102254 | 機讀編目格式
館藏資訊
In Wit’s End, Sean Zwagerman offers an original perspective on women’s use of humor as a performative strategy as seen in works of twentieth-century American literature. He argues that women whose direct, explicit performative speech has been traditionally denied, or not taken seriously, have often turned to humor as a means of communicating with men. The book examines both the potential and limits of women’s humor as a rhetorical strategy in the writings of James Thurber, Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy Parker, Edward Albee, Louise Erdrich, and others. For Zwagerman, these texts “talk back” to important arguments in humor studies and speech-act theory. He deconstructs the use of humor in select passages by employing the theories of J. L. Austin, John Searle, Jacques Derrida, Shoshana Felman, J. Hillis Miller, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Zwagerman offers arguments both for and against these approaches while advancing new thinking on humor as the “end”—both the goal and limit—of performative strategy, and as a means of expressing a full range of serious purposes. Zwagerman contends that women’s humor is not solely a subversive act, but instead it should be viewed in the total speech situation through context, motives, and intended audience. Not strictly a transgressive influence, women’s humor is seen as both a social corrective and a reinforcement of established ideologies. Humor has become an epistemology, an “attitude” or slant on one’s relation to society. Zwagerman seeks to broaden the scope of performativity theory beyond the logical pragmatism of deconstruction and looks to the use of humor in literature as a deliberate stylization of experiences found in real-world social structures, and as a tool for change. Zwagerman contends that women’s humor is not solely a subversive act, but instead it should be viewed in the total speech situation through context, motives, and intended audience. Not strictly a transgressive influence, women’s humor is seen as both a social corrective and a reinforcement of established ideologies. Humor has become an epistemology, an “attitude” or slant on one’s relation to society. Zwagerman seeks to broaden the scope of performativity theory beyond the logical pragmatism of deconstruction and looks to the use of humor in literature as a deliberate stylization of experiences found in real-world social structures, and as a tool for change.