Language in Society 49, 149–152.

BOOK REVIEW

Language in Society 49 (2020)

doi:10.1017/S0047404519000836

CAMILLA VÁSQUEZ, Language, creativity and humour online. London: Routledge,

2019. Pp. 190. Pb. £29.
Reviewed by MARTA DYNEL
University of Łódź
Institute of English Studies, Department of Pragmatics
ul. Pomorska 171/173, 90-236 Łódź, Poland
marta.dynel@yahoo.com

Camilla Vásquez’s recent monograph is a significant contribution to the burgeon-

ing field of research on users’ creative humour construction on the internet, specif-
ically on social media. Her point of departure is that creative humour cannot be
‘dismissed as silly or trivial’ since it is ‘far more effective at achieving mass
distribution than… serious informational content’ (13). Therefore, she sets out to
discover what makes various ‘stylized performances’, in Bauman’s sense (19),
so appealing to general audiences. At the same time, Vásquez’s investigation
does contribute to the research on humour not only as a social glue that fosters
affiliation and solidarity among anonymous users but also as a vehicle for
‘serious’ meanings (see e.g. Demjén 2016; Dynel & Poppi 2018).
In chapter 1, Vásquez describes the notion of creativity (see e.g. Carter & Mc-
Carthy 2004; Jones 2012, 2016; Carter 2016) and lists some formal realisations/dis-
course strategies of creative language. What needs to be stressed is that these forms
(e.g. polysemy or hyperbole) are not exclusive to humour. Additionally, humour
often transcends these forms, as borne out also by Vásquez’s data analyses, as
well as the overview of previous research on creativity (and humour online),
which she gives in chapter 2. She reports both on older works, mainly books,
about creativity after the advent of the internet, and on a selection of recent
works on creativity in the Web 2.0 era, except the research relevant to the practices
she discusses in the three chapters that follow. Given the plethora of publications on
creative humour on social media, this overview could not possibly be exhaustive,
but it gives the reader an idea of the diversity of the relevant research, besides the
book’s foci of attention.
Vásquez presents the fruit of her own empirical labour in chapters 3–5. Rather
than addressing the well-entrenched forms of humour, such as memes, on which
much ink has been spilt from various perspectives, she focuses on phenomena
that have not been widely acknowledged or investigated yet (but see Skalicky &
Crossley 2015; Highfield 2016; Vásquez & Creel 2017; all quoted in the mono-
graph), which is an unquestionable merit of the book. Specifically, in the three

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 BOOK REVIEW

consecutive chapters, Vásquez examines qualitatively select specimens of three in-

teresting humorous genres: novelty Twitter accounts (which deploy, and sometimes
blend, the voices of diverse real personae or imagined/absurd individuals and enti-
ties), Tumblr chat posts (which also merge the voices of imagined individuals in
fictional interactions), and parodies of Amazon reviews (which users duly take
up on in their replies). As she discusses the data sampled from her corpora, the
author elaborates on their specific characteristics (e.g. the format and the rationale
behind the Shit Academics Say Twitter account). Most importantly, Vásquez ex-
plores different facets and features that she has found salient in her data, namely
the recurrent topics and formal components of the selected genres (e.g. multimodal-
ity of some novelty accounts; youth culture, register incongruity, popular and digital
culture references, and political themes in Tumblr chats; and the features distin-
guishing parodic reviews from ‘legitimate’ ones).
Vásquez expands on select examples from her dataset in a clear manner, neatly
depicting their workings without any superfluous jargon. Many descriptions are an-
chored in the Bakhtinian notions of voicing, heteroglossia, and polyphony.
However, some other crucial notions coinciding with categories of humour
would have benefited from some explanation and references. For instance, imag-
ined scenarios/interactions involving different voices on Tumblr are reminiscent
of online joint fictionalisations (Tsakona 2018), which Vásquez does mention,
but the relevant phenomenon of joint fantasising (also online) has received more
attention (e.g. Chovanec 2012). The same applies to the notion of humorous self-
deprecation, which is brought up in many places and might have been embedded
in the existing literature to buttress the argumentation (see Dynel & Poppi 2019b
for discussion and references).
Generally, my only quibble is the treatment of previous humour literature, which
is somewhat limited and should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt as far as
humour theory is concerned. Vásquez presents the well-entrenched script-opposi-
tion approach as capturing the production process, and the incongruity-resolution
framework as lying at the heart of humour reception. However, the two approaches
are actually competing theories of the workings of humour understood as a com-
municative product, and hence both production and reception processes. (Inciden-
tally, some scholars do bring the two approaches together on the assumption that
script opposition/overlap is a version of the incongruity theory of humour.) Addi-
tionally, incongruity, a term that echoes across the chapters in the descriptions of
various examples, is not really defined, and neither the original proponents of the
incongruity-resolution framework nor key contemporary scholars are quoted (for
an overview, see Martin & Ford 2018), whilst only a few random references are pro-
vided. Importantly, rather than viewing incongruity as a cognitive/psychological
mechanism (e.g. Suls 1972; Forabosco 1992), Vásquez seems to regard it as cap-
turing a range of textual/formal properties (see e.g. Dynel 2013) specific to the
types of humour at hand, such as incongruity between registers or two parts of a
jocular text based on thwarted expectations. However, these small sins of omission

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 BOOK REVIEW

can be redeemed inasmuch as Vásquez focuses primarily on creativity, rather than

humour theory, and the reader only needs to be aware that some further reading may
be in order. Otherwise, the guidance that Vásquez gives the reader is commendable.
The book is written in an appealing style devoid of otiose academic jargon.
Vásquez grabs readers by the hand, leading them through her discussions of previ-
ous literature and the research she has conducted. She also presents the (logical)
structure of each chapter and reiterates her central premises and claims in the
course of the book. All of this makes the monograph a valuable resource for stu-
dents. What they will find useful is also the elaboration of the rationale for the
studies and methodological considerations, in tandem with notes on ethics, all of
which come (rather unconventionally) in the ‘Conclusions’ (chapter 6) as if with
the benefit of hindsight.
Although Vásquez signposts a few directions for future research in chapter 6,
only time can tell what will deserve to be studied in the years to come. Each day
brings new specimens of human creativity, and new humorous practices followed
by vast communities keep arising on social media, facilitated by their technological
affordances (see e.g. Demjén 2018 on a running joke on a cancer forum, or Dynel &
Poppi 2019a, 2020 on RoastMe). Human creativity is unbounded, which is some-
thing that scholars can and should capitalise on, using Vásquez’s monograph as a
fertile source of inspiration.

REFERENCES
Carter, Ronald (2016). Language and creativity: The art of common talk. 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
———, & Michael McCarthy (2004). Talking, creating: Interactional language, creativity and context.
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Chovanec, Jan (2012). Conversational humour and joint fantasizing in online journalism. In
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Cambridge Scholars.
Demjén, Zsofia (2016). Laughing at cancer: Humour, empowerment, solidarity and coping online.
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——— (2018). Complexity theory and conversational humour: Tracing the birth and decline of a
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———, & Fabio I. M. Poppi (2018). In tragoedia risus: Analysis of dark humour in post-terrorist attack
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———, & ——— (2019a). Risum teneatis, amici? The socio-pragmatics of RoastMe humour. Journal
of Pragmatics 139:1–21.
———, & ——— (2019b). Arcana imperii: The power of humorous retorts to insults on Twitter.
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———, & ——— (2020). Quid rides? Targets and referents of RoastMe insults. Humor, to appear.
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ity. Humor 5:9–26.
Highfield, Tim (2016). News via Voldemort: Parody accounts in topical discussions on Twitter. New
Media & Society 18(9):2028–45.

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Jones, Rodney H. (2012). Introduction: Discourse and creativity. In Rodney Jones (ed.), Discourse and
creativity, 1–14. Harlow: Pearson.
——— (ed.) (2016). The Routledge handbook of language and creativity. London: Routledge.
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Tumblr Chat posts. Discourse, Context & Media 20:59–69.
(Received 2 September 2019)

152 Language in Society 49:1 (2020)

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