Salvatore ATTARDO, Manuela Maria WAGNER, Eduardo URIOS-APARISI
(eds), Prosody and Humor, John Benjamins Publishing Co,
Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2013, 192 p.
Combining humor research and discourse analysis, Prosody and Humor is a collection of articles that take on a subject that has only recently received adequate attention, namely “whether and how prosodic and multimodal features are used to ‘mark’ humor” (Attardo 2013:8). The volume is comprised of eight articles that tackle these issues from a variety of angles, and while in most cases the authors point out how their research is only a stepping stone or some first attempts in a research area that still needs work, this caveat is not meant to be demoralizing in any way. On the contrary, each study presents an air of opportunity, making Prosody and Humor as a whole feel like an open invitation, a way of saying “this is what little has been so far, so come, join us in our explorations”.