Dellumorismo

Dellumorismo is a multidisciplinary framework that studies humor as a social phenomenon and its role in shaping communication, culture, and power relations. It treats humor not merely as entertainment but as a tool people use to negotiate identity, status, and meaning across everyday talk, media, and public discourse. Researchers examine how jokes, satire, and humorous tone influence attitudes toward groups, policies, and norms, and how audiences interpret humor in diverse contexts.

The term dellumorismo appears as a coined label in contemporary scholarship seeking to capture humor's social dimensions. Its etymology is linked to the Italian dell'umorismo, meaning "of humor," reflecting an international orientation toward humor studies. The concept has circulated mainly in sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, and media studies since the late 2010s.

Core ideas include humor as a social practice that builds and polices boundaries between communities; the performativity of jokes, in which audiences co-create meaning; and humor's capacity to reinforce or challenge power. The framework distinguishes satire, parody, and ridicule while addressing ethics such as offense, harm, inclusivity, and vulnerable groups.

Methods used to study dellumorismo include discourse analysis of talk and media content, corpus linguistics to quantify patterns, ethnographic observation, and controlled experiments on reactions. Applications span political satire, online platforms, advertising, public health messaging, and intercultural communication, where humor can aid engagement but risk misinterpretation.

Reception is mixed. Proponents see dellumorismo as a unifying lens to analyze humor's social functions, while critics caution against overgeneralizing subjective responses and normative judgments about acceptable humor. Debates focus on measurement, context sensitivity, and potential misuse in policing expression.

See also: humor studies, critical discourse analysis, satire, sociolinguistics, media studies.