Abstract
In political discourse, White House State dinner speeches constitute a genre that aims at strengthening the bilateral relationship between nations. Among the rhetorical strategies used by US presidents to establish a good international rapport, a significant role is played by humor. Combining political discourse analysis with the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), the present article investigates discursive forms and functions of jocular presidential utterances based on a dataset of 87 state dinner speeches. The study covers oratory by seven US presidents during a time span between the years 1986 and 2025, adopting a qualitative approach. The results are complemented by selected quantitative data concerning the occurrence of laughter in the transcripts. As is demonstrated, presidential humor can be speaker-, hearer-, or other-oriented, referring either to the heads of states as individuals or to the national collectives. Humor mainly fulfills a self-deprecating and affiliative function, thereby underscoring the presidents’ likable personality and the emotional bond between the international allies.
Introduction
When Barack Obama welcomed the Singaporean prime minister to the White House State Dinner on 2 August 2016, he jocularly declared that in Singapore, even the street vendors – the hawker stalls – earn Michelin stars [Laughter], which creates some pressure this evening. We have a lot to live up to (Woolley and Peters, 1999-2025). With this statement, the president combined hyperbolic praise of the addressee with self-deprecating humor, which resulted in audience amusement, as indicated by the inserted annotation Laughter in the transcript of the speech. As this example shows, humorous political rhetoric can be employed with the aim of consolidating and improving amicable international relations. Based on this general premise, the present paper aims to identify and categorize recurring discursive strategies of establishing closeness and solidarity by means of humor in state dinner speeches given by seven US presidents.
While state dinners have mainly been studied from a sociocultural vantage point as a part of White House affairs (Prud’homme, 2023), the speeches given on these occasions have received little linguistic attention, with the exception of politeness research (Schubert, 2025). Even the comprehensive study of US presidential oratory by Campbell and Jamieson (2008) mentions dinner speeches only in passing among “other rhetorical forms” (p. 347). This is possibly due to the relatively conventionalized and consent-oriented nature of dinner speeches, which serve as a type of laudatory rhetoric (Reisigl, 2008: 245). However, dinner oratory constitutes a significant genre in international diplomacy, contributing to the discursive construction of friendship between nations (Kampf et al., 2022). Moreover, the benevolent words to some extent also encompass a mild persuasive agenda of winning the political partner over, in accordance with the strategic function of “coercion” (Chilton and Schäffner, 2011: 311), which is one pivotal goal of political discourse at large.
Studies of humor and politics in the USA generally tend to focus on political satire and comedy in cartoons and late-night shows (Baumgartner, 2021; Baumgartner and Morris, 2008; Gardner, 1994). However, although political discourse usually deals with serious societal issues, politicians themselves may also employ witty and humorous rhetoric to present themselves in a favorable light and to appeal to audiences (Stewart, 2011: 216; Tsakona and Popa, 2011: 7). Accordingly, discursive strategies of humor in political speeches can be disclosed with the help of the widely known General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH; Attardo, 2020: 138; Attardo and Raskin, 1991), which is particularly appropriate for examining political discourse since it takes into account both linguistic and contextual parameters.
The present research goal is to identify and classify humorous rhetorical strategies that contribute to the objectives of establishing a good international rapport and to subtly direct the addressees toward a complaisant and obliging attitude. After an outline of the genre of state dinner speeches, the manifestations and functions of humor and laughter in political rhetoric are theoretically discussed. Following the description of the dataset and the methodology, the sample-based analysis presents the central strategic uses of humor in state dinner speeches, while the conclusion summarizes the functions of humor with regard to the communicative participants and characteristic humorous incongruities.
The genre of state dinner speeches
The term genre has been seminally defined as “a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes” (Swales, 1990: 58). Along these lines, individual state dinner speeches are specimens that fulfill the chief discursive function of creating and maintaining benevolent international relations. According to the official website of the White House Historical Association, a state dinner is part of a formal state visit and serves as “a courtesy, an expression of good will, and a way of extending hospitality” (Monkman, n.d., “The White House state dinner”). This description indicates that in dinner speeches a central role is played by verbal politeness, which can generally be defined as any behavior that is concerned with the metaphorical “face” of interlocutors (O’Driscoll, 2017: 92). Simply put, “positive face” pertains to the interactants’ wish for approval and solidarity, while “negative face” covers their desire for freedom of action (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 61). Since the rhetoric of state dinner speeches aims at conveying appreciation and closeness, it is mainly directed toward the partner’s positive face (Schubert, 2025: 348–351), which strongly relies on the construction of common ground. Correspondingly, humor may significantly contribute to politeness, for “jokes are based on mutual shared background knowledge and values” (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 124). As has been shown by a study of ritualized diplomatic events (Berkowitz et al., 2024: 123), humor can also be used as an efficient tool to break formality, which in turn contributes to international bonding. Since the dinner speech is a diplomatic discourse type, it is based on recurring expressions of friendship, which can occur both at the interstate and the interpersonal levels (Kampf et al., 2022: 670), so that considerable skills in the appropriate use of political humor are required (see Section “Humor in political rhetoric”).
Dinner speeches principally belong to epideictic rhetoric, as they comprise the “verbalisation of political values and – at least apparently – of political (inter-party, national or supra-national) consent in the public sphere of the assembled company” (Reisigl, 2008: 244). While the central and ostensibly displayed communicative function is to celebrate the memorable occasion and the high-ranking dignitaries, a state dinner “also showcases global power and influence” (Monkman, n.d., “The White House state dinner”). Thus, the speech invites the international partner to continue the benevolent collaboration, while it also signals to third parties that there are close alliances between the United States and the respective partner country (Prud’homme, 2023: 363). To some degree, a subtle coercive agenda is involved in dinner speeches, since the overtly demonstrated mutual goodwill aims at “positioning the self and others in specific relationships, and making assumptions about realities that hearers are obliged to at least temporarily accept” (Chilton and Schäffner, 2011: 311). In sum, state dinners constitute “a forum for politics and entertainment on the highest level” (Prud’homme, 2023: xix), in which culinary delight and rhetorical enjoyment go hand in hand.
In order to define the genre of state dinner speeches and the corresponding use of presidential humor, it is requisite to explicate the discursive context on the basis of the seven “situational characteristics” proposed by Biber and Conrad (2019: 40): (i) Participants: Presidents act as public personas, speaking in their institutional role as heads of states, and address multiple recipients, including the foreign presidents and their spouses, the entire international delegation, as well as media representatives informing the public. (ii) Relations among participants: In addition to amicable ties between states, the heads of state may also have a close personal connection, depending on individual character dispositions. Although there is basically a symmetrical power relationship between world leaders as professional peers, the USA as military and economic superpower has an exceptional status. (iii) Channel: the dinner speech is a written-to-be-spoken genre, for the president commonly reads out a carefully prepared text using a microphone. In this monological form of face-to-face communication, paralinguistic audience reactions like laughter or applause are immediately discernible. (iv) Processing circumstances: the speech is commonly scripted and edited according to diplomatic protocol with the help of advisors and speechwriters, while the comprehension process takes place in real time. (v) Setting: State dinners may take place at the White House or in the partner country’s capital, with the host giving the first speech, followed by the respective guest’s remarks. More specifically, White House dinner speeches are given in the official State Dining Room (Prud’homme, 2023: xxi), following international negotiations during the day. Hence, the setting is highly institutionalized and semi-public, since only strictly selected invited guests have access to this location. (vi) Communicative purposes: As indicated above, the discursive objective is to establish and maintain amicable relations and to foster future cooperation by expressing appreciation for the international partner. (vii) Topic: While the political subjects obviously vary according to the allied nation, recurring subjects in dinner speeches are common historical events, shared values, as well as current and projected future collaborations (Schubert, 2025: 363).
Humor in political rhetoric
An adequate foundation for the study of humor in political discourse is provided by the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), which was seminally established by Attardo and Raskin (1991) and more recently updated by Attardo (2020: 136–156). This theory defines six knowledge resources, constituting different aspects that need to be taken into account in the analysis of jokes or jocular utterances at large. As pointed out by Table 1, the knowledge resources can be elucidated by key questions that can be applied to humorous discourse.
The general theory of verbal humor (GTVH; Attardo, 2020: 138).
(1) The script opposition is based on the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH; Raskin, 1985: 99, 2008: 7), claiming that humor arises from forcing together two incongruous cognitive templates. This occurs, for instance, in Obama’s comparison between casual street food and the formal White House state dinner, quoted at the beginning of the article. The SSTH is in line with the fact that one widely accepted ingredient of humor is “incongruity” (Ritchie, 2004: 46) between disparate concepts or ideas. More specifically, humor-generating incongruity is defined as a playful “violation of expectations” (Attardo, 2020: 80) within the linguistic field of semantics. (2) The logical mechanism is a strategy to resolve the incongruity, which is achieved in the Obama example by assuming that the hawker stalls have an unexpectedly high culinary quality, so that the international partner is flattered. (3) The contextual situation of humor in state dinner speeches is defined by the situational characteristics outlined at the end of the Section “The genre of state dinner speeches”. (4) The target is the “butt” of a jocular mark, which in aggressive political humor is usually the political opponent. However, the benign and conciliatory genre of dinner speeches does not contain humorous aggression, so that it is more reasonable here to make a neutral “distinction between self-oriented, other-oriented and third-party oriented humour” (Béal and Mullan, 2017: 37). As convincingly argued by Priego-Valverde et al. (2018: 571), the GTVH is extended by the insight that humor does not always need a denigrated target but can merely have a non-judgmental orientation. In other words, a humorous utterance can be oriented toward the “Speaker, Hearer, or a third-person/object, or possibly the setting or situation” (Attardo, 2020: 145), which serves as a suitable foundation for the analysis of humorous utterances in state dinner speeches (see Section “Strategic uses of humor in state dinner speeches”). (5) Regarding the narrative strategy, which encompasses diverse “forms of textual organization” (Attardo, 2020: 142) in a broader sense, dinner speeches are monologues that may contain humorous anecdotes or other rhetorical techniques such as quoting (see Section “Strategic uses of humor in state dinner speeches”). (6) As far as language is concerned, humor in dinner oratory can rely on diverse rhetorical devices such as metaphor or hyperbole (see Section “Strategic uses of humor in state dinner speeches”). In addition to these six categories, a further knowledge resource proposed by Tsakona (2024: 25–26) is the sociocultural context. This is clearly relevant to state dinner speeches, for presidents and their international guests need to rely on shared sociocultural knowledge and ideological attitudes in the production and reception of political humor (see Section “Strategic uses of humor in state dinner speeches”).
In his survey of political humor, Baumgartner (2021: 20) distinguishes between the four categories of (i) political comedy (e.g. jokes by Jimmy Fallon in The Tonight Show), (ii) simple satire (e.g. Jon Stewart in The Daily Show), (iii) complex satire (e.g. Stephen Colbert in The Colbert Report), as well as (iv) self-deprecating humor. In the fourth type, the script opposition is immediately obvious, since “[p]oliticians speaking ill of themselves, even in a joking manner, is so unusual that the resulting incongruity is pleasantly surprising to most” (Baumgartner, 2021: 24). However, this typology is not exhaustive because humor by politicians themselves is here limited to self-deprecation. As the present study will show, humor is employed by politicians not only in a self-denigrating way but may also be directed at other participants with the objective of international bonding.
From a general psychological vantage point, four discursive styles of humor can be distinguished (Martin et al., 2003: 53–54): (i) affiliative humor fostering interpersonal relations, (ii) self-enhancing humor, (iii) aggressive humor, and (iv) self-defeating humor supporting relationships at the speaker’s expense. According to Mendiburo-Seguel et al. (2022: 2), humor used by politicians only encompasses the three categories of aggressive, self-deprecating, and affiliative humor, which will briefly be outlined in the following. Aggressive humor is characteristic of adversarial political genres such as election debates, where it can serve the function of entertaining the audience at the expense of the political opponent (Schubert, 2022: 403–406). In self-deprecating humor, presidents direct humorous attention toward their own person in a gesture of jocular humility, which has been found to be particularly effective in election campaign debates (Bippus, 2007: 116). On the campaign trail, self-deprecating and aggressive humor tend to go hand in hand (Stewart, 2011), which underscores the fact that humor in politics has both an inclusive and an exclusive function (Tsakona and Popa, 2011: 4), depending on whether interactants agree or disagree about the underlying values and attitudes. Finally, affiliative humor is “a beneficial type of interaction and a facilitator of positive relations” (Mendiburo-Seguel et al., 2022: 3), directly corresponding with the amicable intention behind consent-oriented dinner speeches. This humorous effect is underlined by a recent study of communication in business meetings, arguing that humor serves as a marker of a facilitating leadership style (Andersen and Langerfeld, 2025: 329).
In addition to these discursive styles of humor based on its orientation, it is also illuminating to consider typical functions of humor. As disclosed by previous research (Mendiburo-Seguel et al., 2022: 2; Tsakona and Popa, 2011: 7), there are three main objectives behind politicians’ use of humor, which in turn serve the overall macro-function of political persuasion: First, politicians employ humor to convey an attractive and popular image of themselves, for humor serves an important ingredient of leadership qualities. Second, they aim at creating a benevolent affective bond with the addressees by emotionally involving them, using humor as a strategy of positive politeness (Schubert, 2025: 361–362). Third, humor is used by politicians for the sake of media attention and creating a greater reach for their messages, since entertaining utterances are more likely to be quoted and thus also become more memorable for the public. However, as pointed out by Yarwood (2001: 387–388), this also involves communicative risks, as media coverage can lead to misunderstanding if jocular utterances are quoted out of context.
In order to affectively involve addressees in political discourse, orators may employ “jocular mockery” (Haugh, 2017: 204), which is one specific practice in the domain of teasing. Since mockery combines mild provocation with benign humor, it presupposes a very close and trusting relationship between the interlocutors. In terms of social interaction, teasing “invites specific forms of response from participants, including both addressed recipients (i.e. the target), and side participants (i.e. the audience)” (Haugh, 2017: 208). Accordingly, teasing in dinner speeches can result in the visible amusement of participants that manifests itself in laughter among the international delegation. In politeness research, the equivalent to teasing is “banter” (Leech, 2014: 238), which signals “camaraderie” between interlocutors who feel familiar in terms of power relations and solidarity (Leech, 2014: 239).
Laughter is basically a paralinguistic phenomenon that constitutes “a non-verbal vocalization along with breathing sounds, sighing, or clicking” (Trouvain and Truong, 2017: 341). From a psychological perspective, laughter can broadly be defined as “the behavioral response to perceptions of humor” (Martin and Ford, 2018: 7). However, laughter “cannot be used uncritically to identify humor” (Attardo, 2020: 42), for humor does not always lead to laughter, nor is laughter in all cases triggered by humor (Tsakona and Popa, 2011: 4). Thus, laughter may be an indication not only of amusement but of diverse dispositions, including “nervousness,” “affiliation,” “maliciousness,” as well as “face-saving or threatening action” (Trouvain and Truong, 2017: 340). For instance, parliamentary debates are frequently marked by the hostile and denigrating practice of “laughing at” rather than the benevolent action of “laughing with” (Mueller, 2011: 58). In view of these circumstances, laughter can be analyzed only in its respective discursive context and by taking into account genre conventions.
In the benign and friendly atmosphere of state dinners, laughter can be considered as an indicator of mirth and joy experienced by the assembled delegation. Since laughter is here embedded in verbal discourse, this diagnosis is further corroborated by a semantic analysis of utterances preceding laughter occurrences in dinner speeches (see Section “Strategic uses of humor in state dinner speeches”). Hence, state dinners can be studied under the general premise that “laughter is considered not only the most typical contextualization cue for humour [. . .] but also its desired effect” (Tsakona and Popa, 2011: 4). The mutual laughter among audience members indicates cordial emotions and fulfills important communicative objectives, for it is a “form of social bonding; that is, a display of affiliation” (Trouvain and Truong, 2017: 341–342), which will be illustrated in the subsequent inspection of dinner speeches.
Dataset and methodology
The data under discussion were retrieved from the online archive of the American Presidency Project (APP; Woolley and Peters, 1999-2025). This repository was established by non-partisan political scientists at the UC Santa Barbara and provides transcripts of a wealth of public presidential documents, including state dinner oratory. The orthographical transcripts of the speeches encompass italicized inserts that give information on paralinguistic communication, such as [Laughter], [Applause], or [He offered a toast], allowing researchers to detect all cases of annotated laughter. Of course, the transcripts were not produced with a distinctly linguistic objective, so that the possibility cannot be ruled out that minor cases of laughter may have been overlooked by the transcribers. Since laughter during dinner speeches constitutes an immediate reaction to jocular statements, the identification of humorous utterances does not rely on arguable interpretations of potential speaker intentions but is firmly based on authentic and spontaneous responses by the assembled audience.
The dataset includes state dinner speeches (n = 87) by seven US presidents (see Table 2), covering a time span of 40 years from 1986 to 2025. All six speeches by Donald Trump and by Joe Biden that are available on the website were adopted. Since the speeches of their five predecessors are covered in much higher numbers by the online archive, these presidents are each represented in the dataset by the final fifteen dinner speeches of their respective presidencies. In this way, a representative small-scale sample could be compiled without the danger of selection bias.
Quantitative survey of state dinner speeches in the dataset.
While the study mainly adopts a qualitative approach, focusing on categories and functions of presidential humor, it also provides selected quantitative data, such as the frequencies of laughter occurrences per president. Along these lines, Table 2 gives a survey of the word count of the speeches of each president, accompanied by the absolute frequency of laughter occurrences as well as the frequency of laughter per 1000 words. As the numbers show, Obama triggered by far the most laughter with 9.7 occurrences per 1000 words, while the other six presidents range between 1.9 and 4.4 occurrences. It is notable that positions two and three are likewise occupied by Democratic presidents (Clinton and Biden), whereas the lowest scores occur in the rhetoric of the Republican presidents Trump and Reagan. Hence, the latter’s reputation as a joke teller is not corroborated by the dinner speeches in the dataset. In general, quantitative differences in laughter occurrences can be caused by diverse parameters, including the president’s personal rhetorical style, the gravity of political subjects discussed in the speeches, or the respective degree of collegiality between the international partners.
The analysis followed a succession of 5 methodological steps: (i) The 87 state dinner speeches were selected and downloaded from the APP website and read extensively to get an overview of the topics covered by the presidents. (ii) A total of 211 instances of “[Laughter]” in the transcripts were singled out by means of a keyword search. (iii) All laughter occurrences were discursively embedded and analyzed with regard to utterances preceding the expression of mirth. (iv) The humorous utterances triggering laughter were investigated with the help of selected GTVH criteria, focusing on linguistic strategies, incongruities, as well as speaker-, hearer-, and other-orientation. In doing so, the frequencies of these three types of orientation were manually determined (see Table 3). (v) Representative examples of humor from diverse dinner speeches were selected for the sake of analytical illustration. In particular, despite Obama’s dominance in laughter frequencies, the goal was to cover all seven presidents and all types of orientation in the selected extracts, in order to present a balanced picture.
Frequencies of humor orientation in state dinner speeches (n = 211).
Strategic uses of humor in state dinner speeches
In the following analytical subchapters, the basic parameter is the humorous orientation, which can pertain to the speaker, the hearer, or other participants. With regard to speaker and hearer, it is requisite to distinguish between the individual and the collective, since humor can contribute to the discursive construction of both personal and group identities (Tsakona and Chovanec, 2024: 291). On this foundation, the individual examples are examined with respect to the question of how humorous incongruities are linguistically realized. In terms of quantification, Table 3 provides the frequencies of the 211 laughter occurrences regarding the three types of orientation used by the individual presidents. While other-orientation shows the highest frequency (41.2%), owing to the fact that this category comprises the greatest variability of possible entities, speaker-orientation (32.2%) is slightly more frequent than hearer-orientation (26.6%), which hints at the common practice of humorous self-denigration in dinner speeches. In addition, some tentative differences between presidents can be detected, despite the relatively low overall scores. For instance, Donald Trump is the only president with a preference for hearer-orientation, while Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and the two presidents Bush mostly use other-orientation. In contrast, the speeches by Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan show a slight inclination for speaker-orientation.
Speaker-oriented humor
In the first subtype of speaker-oriented humor, humorous remarks are directed at the presidential speaker as an individual. This may realize self-deprecating humor, as illustrated by Example (1), in which George W. Bush welcomes the Ghanaian president John Agyekum Kufuor to the White House.
(1) And we’re particularly happy to host President Kufuor and Mrs. Kufuor. After all, we were in their country last February, and it was an unbelievable visit in spite of my lousy dancing. [Laughter] Mrs. Kufuor was my partner, and she can testify to my lousy dancing. [Laughter] (G. W. Bush, 15 September 2008)
The humorous incongruity is here based on the contrast between the dignified and reputable office of the US presidency on the one hand and the relatively banal and mundane physical activity of dancing on the other. Accordingly, since self-deprecation here refers to a non-political domain, the speaker does not harm his standing as world leader but presents himself as a likable and modest human being with weaknesses. Simultaneously, Bush flatteringly implies that Mrs. Kufuor is a much better dancer than himself, which results in a dynamic two-way relationship between speaker-deprecation and hearer-appreciation. In terms of the narrative strategy knowledge resource, this flashback has an anecdotal character. For the purpose of self-effacement, Bush’s rhetoric progresses from the plural we, which includes his wife and himself, to the singular possessive determiner my, which places the focus on him as an individual. The incongruity is further linguistically underscored by the antonymy between the positively connoted adjective unbelievable, referring to Bush’s presidential duties, and the repetition of the pejorative adjective lousy, characterizing his dancing abilities. On another occasion, the same non-political topic is used for self-deprecation by Barack Obama, who thanks the Indian president for not making me dance again. [Laughter] (B. Obama, 25 January 2015). With this humorous remark, the speaker not only appears humble and relatable but also polite in his expression of gratitude. The rhetoric of humility is similarly employed by Bill Clinton when he welcomes the Spanish King Juan Carlos I and his wife to the White House (Example 2).
(2) The State in which I was born once was part of the Spanish Empire. And I suppose, Your Majesties, I am, in a sense, one of your subjects. [Laughter] (B. Clinton, 23 February 2000)
With help of a historical flashback to the Spanish Empire, Clinton constructs a comic incongruity in mutual power relations. Since Clinton’s home state of Arkansas once belonged to the Spanish crown, the powerful US leader humorously belittles himself as one of the king’s subordinates, thus elevating the distinguished guest in a flattering way. The jocular deviation from the actual state of affairs is made possible by the hedging expressions I suppose and in a sense. Furthermore, self-deprecation may be used not only to enhance the speakers’ likability but also their trustworthiness, as the following extract from Ronald Reagan’s dinner speech for the Egyptian president shows (Example 3).
(3) Wendell Phillips once said that “you can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned 70 or given up all hope of the Presidency.” [Laughter] Well, today I welcome you, President Mubarak, as a friend. Coming from a 76-year-old constitutionally prohibited from seeking another term, you can rest assured those sentiments are genuine and come from the heart. [Laughter] (R. Reagan, 28 January 1988)
The incongruity is here caused by the narrative strategy of applying the quotation from the 19th-century abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips to Reagan’s contemporary situation. Although Reagan still has 1 year of his presidency left, he humorously claims to meet both criteria mentioned by Phillips. In this self-deprecating move, the president depicts himself as a senior politician that has nothing to lose and nothing to hope for, which supposedly guarantees his credibility. Although he is the leader of the superpower USA, he modestly describes himself by means of his advanced age (76-year-old) and with the disparaging attribute constitutionally prohibited. Reagan’s jocular analogy serves amicable international relations, as it underlines his honesty in welcoming the Egyptian president as a friend.
In the second subcategory of speaker-oriented humor, presidents refer not only to themselves but to the national collective, which is facilitated by the fact that they serve as the elected representatives of the people. For instance, when Obama welcomes the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to the White House, he mentions Italy’s cultural achievements to cast a tongue-in-cheek light on US elections (Example 4).
(4) We stand before the Lincoln Memorial and see the work of the Piccirilli brothers. We look up at the dome of the U.S. Capitol and marvel at the touch of Brumidi. Then again, some days our Presidential campaigns can seem like Dante’s “Inferno.” [Laughter] (B. Obama, 18 October 2016)
The humorous incongruity here relies on contrasting Italian art and literature with US political practices, here collectively presented with the first-person plural pronoun we and the determiner our. Since this speech was delivered only a few months before the end of his presidency in January 2017, Obama compares the ongoing election campaign with the journey through hell described by Dante Alighieri in his Divina Commedia. Thus, while the art of Brumidi and the Piccirilli brothers is here portrayed with positive connotations, Dante’s poem represents the less agreeable aspects of American democratic processes, thereby constituting an unexpected self-deprecating turn that generates humor. Linguistically, the Inferno metaphor transfers the ghastly features of hell onto US politics and stands in an antonymic relationship with the appreciatory verb marvel, which expresses deep admiration.
Speaker-oriented humor at the collective level also occurs when Obama welcomes the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the White House. In this speech, the president highlights the shared values of the North American neighbors and jocularly praises the benevolent international cooperation (Example 5).
(5) And to the great credit of their people, Canadians from British Columbia to New Brunswick have, so far, rejected the idea of building a wall to keep out your southern neighbors. [Laughter] We appreciate that. [Laughter] We can be unruly, I know. (B. Obama, 10 March 2016)
The humorous incongruity is here established by equating the relations between Canada and the USA with the relationship between the USA and Mexico. Alluding to Republican plans to erect a wall at the southern US border, the designation southern neighbors here refers to the USA, which is a self-denigrating move for the superpower nation. The collective speaker-orientation is again underlined by the first-person plural pronoun we, which apparently includes the president and his fellow Americans. The humor is further supported by the hedging phrase so far, which ironically implies that a wall at the southern Canadian border might still be feasible in the future. The irony is continued in the grateful conversational routine we appreciate that, since the humorously insinuated plans of securing the southern border were never pursued by the Canadian government in the first place. In consequence, the two collectively self-deprecating Examples (4) and (5) fulfill the function of presenting an unpretentious and likable image of the US and in this way aim at strengthening the emotional bond with the international partner.
Hearer-oriented humor
In state dinner speeches, hearer-oriented humor does not belligerently target addressees but rather serves to honor the international delegation by means of jocular flattery und compliments, which are typical strategies of enhancing the hearer’s positive face. By analogy with speaker orientation, the first subcategory is humor directed at the allied head of state as an individual. Along these lines, when Joe Biden greets the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his wife, he uses an ingratiating floral image (Example 6).
(6) I’m delighted you’re here. And you know, even the cherry blossom bloomed early in anticipation of your—[laughter]. Well, they did, by the way. They really did. (J. Biden, 10 April 2024)
The humorous incongruity is here triggered by the personification of the cherry blossom, which is said to have eagerly awaited the visitors’ arrival. Since this blossom is the national flower of Japan, Example (6) illustrates the significance of the knowledge resource of sociocultural context. Hence, the Japanese guests are not only honored by the rhetorical device of personification but also entertained by the hyperbolic compliment, so that their spontaneous laughter even overlaps with the final words of Biden’s sentence. Apparently, the president interprets the audience’s amusement as incredulity, which prompts him to reconfirm his previous assertion about the blooming flower. A humorous compliment is also paid to the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by Donald Trump (Example 7), when the president tells the anecdote that Abe unconventionally insisted on visiting him in New York already before his official inauguration.
(7) Meaning, you have a very aggressive—very, very aggressive, strong, tough Prime Minister. That’s a good thing, by the way, not a bad thing. [Laughter] (D. Trump, 6 November 2017)
Although Trump here speaks about the Prime Minister in the third person, the adjectival attributes very aggressive, strong, tough are ascribed to the latter. The laughter, however, is triggered not by this description but by the president’s metadiscursive disambiguation that this characterization is actually intended as a compliment. In this way, Trump makes sure that his portrayal is not perceived as a “face-threatening act” (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 60) but as an expression of praise. The humorous incongruity thus relies on the equivocality of the allocated characteristics, especially in a Japanese context, in which the concepts of politeness and face management play a particularly significant societal role deviating from Western communicative standards.
Whenever the personal relationship between world leaders is particularly close, hearer-oriented humor can become somewhat more audacious, thus reaching the domain of teasing in the form of mild jocular mockery. In such situations, presidents tread a fine line between banter and possible offense and therefore tend to use appropriate rhetorical strategies to avoid potential face threats. This can be observed in the ways Obama casually addresses both the Prime Ministers of Italy (Example 8) and Canada (Example 9) on different occasions.
(8) As our Italian friends know, Matteo’s first claim to fame—when he was just 19 years old—was, he was on Italy’s version of “Wheel of Fortune.” [Laughter] This is a true story. (B. Obama, 18 October 2016) (9) Now, we intend to have fun tonight. But not too much. [Laughter] If things get out of hand, remember that the Prime Minister used to work as a bouncer. [Laughter] This is true. [Laughter] (B. Obama, 10 March 2016)
In both cases, humorous incongruity is founded on associating the two political leaders with non-political domains by providing anecdotal flashbacks to their previous lives, which constitute the narrative strategy. In terms of conversation analysis, the audience’s laughter serves an “indexical” function, as it points to a preceding “laughable” utterance (Attardo, 2020: 239–241). The laughter in turn prompts Obama to justify his humorous utterance with another communicative contribution, for in both examples the president subsequently confirms the factual correctness of the remarks. This confirmation serves as a tentative legitimizing device for sharing that kind of personal information, which may also appear surprising to the audiences. In the case of Matteo Renzi, Obama jocularly links the Prime Minister’s popularity with a TV game show, locating him in the sphere of mundane pop cultural entertainment. Justin Trudeau, on the other hand, is identified as a former nightclub security guard, which humorously insinuates that he might forcefully intervene in case one of the distinguished dinner guests should misbehave. These strategies of jocular mockery signal that Obama has an excellent rapport with the international partners, as he can take the liberty of teasing them in the form of benign provocation, which is positively sanctioned by the guests’ laughter.
In the second subcategory of hearer-oriented humor, the US president does not address the individual head of state but directs appreciatory remarks to a larger collective of the allied nation. For instance, when Bill Clinton speaks to the Indian president Kircheril Narayanan, he praises the country’s scientific achievements with a subsequent humorous twist (Example 10).
(10) Indian thinkers have enriched every science known to humanity. And I welcome the presence of so many of your scientists here tonight. However, I must confess there are many American high school students who wish that “Aryabhatiya” had kept his work on trigonometry to himself. [Laughter] (B. Clinton, 21 March 2000)
While Clinton initially expresses tremendous admiration for the advancement of science in India, humorous incongruity between semantic scripts is eventually triggered by taking the perspective of US pupils who have difficulties in understanding mathematical theories. Regarding the knowledge resource of language, this unexpected turn in Clinton’s line of thought is here explicitly underscored by the adversative adverb however. Still, the appreciation of Indian scientists in past and present, which aims at enhancing the addressees’ positive face, is obviously not revoked by humorously describing the alleged attitude of adolescents. Alternatively, the American president may address not a particular professional group but the entirety of the allied nation, as illustrated by Obama’s acclaim for the people of Ethiopia (Example 11).
(11) Of course, of the many contributions Ethiopia has made to the world over the centuries, I’m certain that Americans want to thank you for one in particular, discovering something that sustains people around the world, day and night, and many people in the White House, and that is coffee. [Laughter] Thank you, Ethiopia. We are large consumers of coffee in the White House. [Laughter] (B. Obama, 27 July 2015)
In Obama’s dinner speech, Example (11) follows several momentous remarks about bilateral cooperation in serious areas such as poverty alleviation and armed conflicts, so that it serves as a form of comic relief. Accordingly, the humorous incongruity between scripts is here based on the contrast between life-changing accomplishments on the one hand and an everyday commodity such as coffee on the other. It is noteworthy that the subject of coffee is introduced as the final culmination point in a complex sentence that generates suspense, as the audience is likely to be curious to learn which of Ethiopia’s contributions will be specifically highlighted by Obama. In terms of language as a knowledge resource, the vague noun phrase one in particular and the indefinite pronoun something raise expectations of a grandiose invention which are humorously met by mentioning the stimulating beverage. After the occurrence of laughter, the president underlines the White House’s gratitude and employs the vocative Ethiopia to reinforce the international bond, which is benevolently acknowledged by another round of laughter.
Other-oriented humor
Apart from speaker and hearer, humor can also be oriented toward a third entity, here subsumed under the general denominator “other.” As the following example-based survey will illustrate, the category other is quite varied, ranging from persons via inanimate objects to abstract concepts. In the first subcategory of this group, US presidents mention third persons who may be family members or other important individuals that contribute to amicable international relations. For instance, when George H.W. Bush greets President Patricio Aylwin of Chile in the White House, he reminisces about his previous visit to Aylwin’s house in Santiago (Example 12).
(12) I still recall with pride and delight that you took in your children and your grandchildren. We did a little arithmetic yesterday, and between us, we have 10 children and 23 grandchildren. Perhaps we could arrange for a soccer game out on the South Lawn. [Laughter] (G. H. W. Bush, 13 May 1992)
By referring to the extended families of the two presidents, Bush strengthens the emotional bond and evokes common ground on a personal level. The jocular incongruity is here founded on mixing the semantic scripts of presidential family life and soccer. Since this team sport is tremendously popular in South America, this correlation is likely to be particularly appealing to the Chilean president and therefore contributes to affiliative humor. This fact once again underlines the importance of the knowledge resource of sociocultural context in the strategic use of humor. The humorous analogy between family and sports relies on the quantification of the joint descendants, which is linguistically underscored by cardinal numerals. In addition, the tongue-in-cheek remark is further enhanced by the ironic phrase between us, suggesting privacy in an overtly public communicative situation. International collegiality can also be constructed by mentioning celebrities in sports, as demonstrated by Obama’s welcome address for the Italian prime minister (Example 13).
(13) America is a place where if you work hard, no matter what you look like, what your last name is, how many vowels you have in your name, you can make it if you try. And even if we are not Italian American, or Mets fans, we can celebrate that Mike Piazza is finally in the Baseball Hall of Fame. [Laughter] (B. Obama, 18 October 2016)
Obama here mentions the renowned Italian-American baseball player Mike Piazza, whose biography serves as an exemplary success story among descendants of immigrants to the United States. The humorous incongruity between scripts relies on the contrast between the crucial political idea of socio-economic upward mobility and the pop cultural reference to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Accordingly, the humorous juxtaposition portrays Piazza as a role model that embodies virtues of both nations, thereby enhancing international solidarity and unity. Along these lines, the temporal adverb finally emphasizes Obama’s conviction that it was high time for Piazza to be honored for his achievements.
The second subcategory of other-orientation features inanimate objects, such as specific written works relevant for international relations. For instance, when Joe Biden addresses president Macron in Paris, he presents a few quirky quotations from a book American soldiers received from the US military when they were sent to France in World War II (Example 14).
(14) And the book was called “A Pocket Guide to France.” Seriously. It included helpful hints like this: “No bragging; the French don’t like it.” [Laughter] Not a joke. “Be generous; it won’t hurt you.” “Avoid controversial topics, even if you took French in high school.” [Laughter] (J. Biden, 8 June 2024)
The incongruity clearly depends on the discrepancy between the present-day international relations and the outdated advice for intercultural discursive behavior in the historical instruction manual. Thus, the humor is oriented toward the book, which is here ridiculed with the intention of entertaining the international partner. This is corroborated by the fact that the laughter occurrences immediately follow the quotations from the book, so that they are clearly marked as the preceding “laughable” (Attardo, 2020: 241). Since speaker and hearers may jointly laugh about the obsolete manual as the “other,” affiliative humor here establishes common ground between the allies. Thus, in the traditional terminology of the GTVH, the book could be called the “target” of the humorous exchange. Ironically, the humor is further enhanced by the president’s repeated affirmation that he is not joking (seriously and not a joke), which underlines his own incredulity about the quoted text, as the manual deals with transatlantic encounters in simplistic and stereotyped ways. Concerning humorous knowledge resources, the employment of historical quotes serves as a particular narrative strategy (see also Example 3). The ironic use of the adjectival attribute helpful also rhetorically contributes to the generation of humor.
Another written text is spotlighted by George H. W. Bush in his warm words for the German president Richard von Weizsäcker. In this case, however, it is a children’s book by the First Lady Barbara Bush with the title Millie’s Book as Dictated to Barbara Bush, which fictionally recounts the adventures of White House dog Millie (Example 15).
(15) Now, in that spirit of cultural excellence, we have a present for you. There’s a slogan in America, and it’s particularly appropriate during a political year: If you want a friend, get a dog. [Laughter] And so in the spirit of enduring friendship, we’ll give you the translation, the German translation. (G. H. W. Bush, 29 April 1992)
Laughter is here triggered by the narrative strategy of quoting the slogan If you want a friend, get a dog, because the cynical attitude expressed by this adage is blatantly incongruent with the speaker’s friendly intentions. Without the given verbal and situational context, the proverb could be interpreted as a jibe against the German president, so that this ambiguity further contributes to the humorous effect. However, the US president subsequently reveals that the saying is here related to Barbara Bush’s book about the friendly “First Dog,” which is actually given to the German president as a present in the spirit of enduring friendship. In terms of the GTVH, this revelation serves as the logical mechanism resolving the incongruity between the sarcastic slogan and the benevolent atmosphere. Hence, in contrast to Example (14), this book is not derided but serves as a visible metaphor for the speaker’s benevolence. In this second category of other-orientation, further objects that are invoked for humorous purposes are the odorous Asian fruit durian (B. Obama, 2 August 2016) and the Japanese rice wine named sake (B. Obama, 28 April 2015).
Third, other-oriented humor may pertain not to third persons or inanimate objects but to shared activities, joint interests, and other similarities between the two heads of states. This is the case, for instance, when Bill Clinton thanks President Jorge Sampaio of Portugal for the cordial welcome to Lisbon (Example 16).
(16) It has been a pleasure for me to spend time with another President who likes to read detective novels, listen to good music, and play golf. We could have had a two-day summit on those three topics alone. [Laughter] (B. Clinton, 30 May 2000)
Clinton here mentions three popular pastimes enjoyed by both presidents, which triggers laughter in the audience owing to the humorous incongruity between serious political issues and mundane hobbies that many people can relate to. In particular, the political technical term two-day summit stands in stark contrast to the three private leisure activities. In this way, international relations are improved not only by way of affiliative laughter but also by encounters in the domain of mutual recreation. In another speech, Clinton stresses that he shares his fondness for rock and roll with the Bulgarian president (B. Clinton, 22 November 1999), while Donald Trump highlights that he played golf with the Japanese Prime Minister (D. Trump, 6 November 2017). Apart from private pastimes, the commonalities between presidents may also refer to their professional lives, as highlighted by George W. Bush in his speech to the Ghanaian president Kufuor (Example 17).
(17) We first met in 2001; we were new Presidents. And here we are, nearly seven years later, and we’re fixing to leave office. [Laughter] (G. W. Bush, 20 February 2008)
Bush here draws a striking parallel between himself and his counterpart regarding their terms of office, which both began in 2001 and are about to end in 2009. Laughter is thus triggered by this coincidental similarity between presidents from dissimilar countries on different continents. Humorous incongruity is here also caused by lexical choices, since these significant developments in world politics are presented in an informal and almost colloquial style. In particular, the US president uses the terse and matter-of-fact expression here we are as well as the dialectal verbal construction be fixing to, which is characteristic of the US south, pointing to Bush’s origins in Texas. A similar analogy is drawn by Ronald Reagan in his empathetic observation that both he and the Egyptian president are currently in their second term, followed by his humorous remark that it doesn’t get any easier. [Laughter] (R. Reagan, 28 January 1988).
The fourth and final category of other-orientation includes occasional uses of the international partner’s first language. One remarkable example of metalinguistic wordplay occurs in Bill Clinton’s speech addressed to the Indian president, when he states that he just learned that the Sanskrit-origin numeral crore means “ten million” (Example 18).
(18) I didn’t know what a crore was until I got here this time. Now I can go home and suggest to my Vice President that he have a new slogan: Four crore for Al Gore! [Laughter] (B. Clinton, 21 March 2000)
In this pun with the Indian lexeme, the phonetic form plays a central role for humor creation, since multiple rhymes (four, crore, and for) with the last name of Clinton’s Vice President Gore are established. Laughter is thus mainly based on the incongruity between the weighty vice-presidential election campaign and this relatively infantile play on words. The narrative strategy again relies on a slogan (see Example 15), which in this example is newly created. In any case, references to the partner’s mother tongue show appreciation and high esteem for the other nation’s culture, which in turn contributes to a benevolent atmosphere. Consequently, the respective foreign language may also appear during greetings, for instance, when George W. Bush welcomes the French delegation with the words Bienvenue a la Maison Blanche. [Laughter] (G. W. Bush, 6 November 2007). Barack Obama routinely wishes the international partners a good evening in their own language, including Habari ya jioni [Laughter] in Kenya (B. Obama, 25 July 2015) and Kalispera [Laughter] in Greece (B. Obama, 15 November 2016). In the latter case, Obama also closes his dinner speech with the Greek toast Stin ygeia sas [Laughter] (B. Obama, 15 November 2016). These foreign-language rhetorical routines tend to evoke cordial laughter as they come unexpected from a US president, whose non-native accent may additionally contribute to the audience’s entertainment.
Conclusions
As the sample analyses have illustrated, benign humorous strategies serve to establish and maintain friendly and cooperative relations, thus pursuing a gentle persuasive agenda. Among the knowledge resources proposed by the GTVH, the study particularly benefited from the four categories of orientation (originally labeled “target”), incongruity (based on script opposition), narrative strategy, and language. Since state dinner humor usually does not attack targets in the conventional sense, it can generally be oriented toward the speaker, the hearer, or the category other. Both speaker- and hearer-oriented humor can be subdivided into the individual level, which foregrounds a single politician, and the collective level, pertaining to the entire nation or specific societal groups. Other-oriented humor in the present data not only comprises third persons but also encompasses inanimate objects, shared activities, and even references to the partner’s mother tongue.
Regarding discursive functions, speaker-oriented humor typically fulfills a self-deprecating role, enhancing the image of presidents or the American people by making them appear modest and likable. Hearer-oriented humor serves an affiliative function, strengthening the emotional bond between the partners by paying compliments and occasionally teasing the hearer in the form of jocular mockery. Other-oriented humor also fulfills an affiliative function by emphasizing joint interests and attitudes that include family, pastimes, and biographical similarities. Generally, the humorous passages in dinner speeches are likely to attract media attention, while the danger of being misrepresented is relatively low, owing to the benevolent nature of self-deprecating and affiliative humor.
Concerning the knowledge resource of script opposition, humorous incongruity in dinner speeches is largely based on contrasting the power and dignity of the presidential office with overt expressions of humility or with trivial everyday activities. In particular, the latter comprise sports (e.g. soccer, baseball, golf, and dancing), food and drink (e.g. coffee, sake, and the fruit durian), and forms of pop cultural entertainment (e.g. television shows, children’s books, and detective novels). Hence, laughter is triggered by disrupting momentous political issues with references to enjoyable subjects and human-interest matters that are likely to resonate with audiences. In terms of the narrative strategy knowledge resource, presidential humor may resort to anecdotal flashbacks and quotations from historical sources, or it may be organized around established or newly created slogans. As far as the knowledge resource of language is concerned, incongruities can be supported by rhetorical devices such as metaphor, personification, and antonymy, which bring together disparate domains in innovative ways.
Based on the results of the present paper, further directions for future research into politicians’ humor are conceivable. For instance, it could be enlightening to study the speeches given by the other political leaders on the same occasion, in order to highlight the dialogic quality of humor during the international encounter. Moreover, the media coverage of dinner speeches could be examined so as to find out about the public perception of and response to presidential humor. In any case, the article hopes to have underlined that political discourse analysis may greatly benefit from utilizing categories of humor studies to examine rhetorical strategies in international diplomacy.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.