ABSTRACT
Amongst speakers of Chinese, humour was traditionally known as huaji 滑稽 but in recent times, it is generally termed youmo 幽默. Its recorded use dates from at least 2500 BCE in China. Yet despite this long and venerable history, humour in everyday settings amongst ordinary speakers of Chinese, or conversational humour, has only recently gained serious scholarly attention. Work on Chinese conversational humour demonstrates that it varies across contexts and different groups of speakers, depending on their age, gender, region, etc. This variation in Chinese conversational humour practices raises the question of change over time. Designing studies to address this is not, however, straightforward, partly because humour research scholars work with different notions of time. These different notions of time are explored in this chapter through analysing conversational humour practices amongst Taiwanese speakers of (Mandarin) Chinese and of Taiwanese (Hokkien). What appears to be an intergenerational difference emerges, namely, preference by older Taiwanese (in their 60s) for engaging in wordplay and preference by younger Taiwanese (in their 20s) for engaging in various forms of teasing (e.g. wulitou, fantasy teasing). The study considers whether this difference is due to synchronic variation or reflects a broader diachronic change in humour practices in Taiwan. While in humour studies broadly language change is generally approached through the lens of different historical periods, in conversational humour studies it is viewed through the lens of age (i.e. tied to one's stage of life) or generation (i.e. tied to the year of one's birth). The present analysis suggests that studies of conversational humour in general might benefit from more serious engagement with the different concepts of time utilised across humour research.
