Anglicizing Humor in a Spanish Satirical TV Show—Pragmatic Functions and Discourse Strategies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper addresses a highly relevant and contemporary phenomenon: the use of Anglicisms as humorous and pragmatic resources in a Spanish satirical television program (El Intermedio, EI). The originality of the study lies in the combination of a pragmatic perspective with the analysis of humorous television discourse, based on a broad and representative corpus (300 episodes). Furthermore, it offers an up-to-date sociolinguistic reading of language contact between English and Spanish in popular media outlets.

The theoretical framework is extensive and solid. It draws on key references in the field of verbal humor (Attardo, Dynel, Yus, Ruiz-Gurillo), studies on Anglicisms (Rodríguez-González, Balteiro, Luján-García), as well as pragmatics and sociolinguistics. The author demonstrates strong interdisciplinary competence and builds a conceptual scaffolding that is well suited to the study’s objectives.

The corpus (3 325 Anglicisms recorded across 2 774 utterances) is rich, clearly delimited, and appropriately described, including a thematic classification. The data collection method—transcription via WhatsApp and subsequent transfer into Excel—is functional, though it may be considered somewhat informal for a study of this academic nature. The research is predominantly qualitative, complemented by frequency counts and pragmatic and grammatical categorizations. As a suggestion for improvement, a more systematic methodological account of the corpus would be welcome: How were the cases coded? What criteria were followed to assign pragmatic functions or discourse strategies?

The analysis is thorough, varied, illustrative, and well supported by linguistic data. The examples cited are authentic and particularly revealing from a pragmatic standpoint. Six discourse strategies are clearly identified (naming, insertion, cultural references, metacomments on English, lexical creativity, and free translations), and their humorous effects and linguistic functions are effectively explained.

From a formal standpoint, the paper is well written in clear English with an appropriate academic style, although a few minor ortotypographical issues should be corrected. Since this is a scholarly paper, it is advisable to avoid the use of the first person in sentences such as that in line 178 (“Then I decided to continue monitoring episodes between October 6th and December 18th 2024 [19th season]”) or in line 205 (“In my analysis, I considered the two main functions”). Additionally, the sentence in line 352 should be revised, as something seems to be missing and its meaning is unclear.

Finally, it is important to highlight that this paper makes a significant contribution to the understanding of how Anglicisms can fulfill humorous and pragmatic functions in media contexts; to the sociolinguistics of English-Spanish contact in television; and, most notably, to the study of humor from a pragmatic perspective. Moreover, the study may serve as a model for similar research in other languages, sociocultural contexts, and genres of journalistic discourse in Spanish.

In conclusion, this is a rigorous, original, innovative, and well-documented study that will undoubtedly enrich research on humor, Anglicisms, and media pragmatics, provided the minor revisions noted are addressed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

• The paper lays out a compelling rationale for analyzing El Intermedio, firmly positioning itself in the intersection of humor studies and contact linguistics. The integration of qualitative insight with simple but effective quantitative data (see Tables 1 and 2) adds credibility to the work. The paper uses vivid, carefully selected excerpts—like the creative plays on “ghosting” and “burpees”—to illustrate how Anglicisms function pragmatically in context. These make the strategies feel concrete and memorable. It’s evident that the author draws from a rich mix of theoretical sources—ranging from pragmatics to sociolinguistics and cognitive humor theory—highlighting both breadth and a solid intellectual foundation.

Noted typos and inconsistencies:

• “March 3oth” should be corrected to “30th”.

• The same citation appears with two different spellings: “Chovanec & Ermida (2012)” and “Chavanec & Ermida (2012)”—needs standardizing.

• Possessive phrasing: “scriptwriters’s” should be “scriptwriters’”.

Suggestions for improvement:

• Reference cleanup: Do a final sweep to ensure in-text citations match the references list exactly. “Chovanec” vs. “Chavanec” is one example, but a careful cross-check will catch others if present.

• Clarify method details: It might help to briefly explain the rationale for excluding reruns or “best-of” holiday episodes. That way, readers can better understand any limits on generalizing the findings.

• Smooth out phrasing: A few sentences feel slightly awkward or literal. For instance, “the longest-running program in one of the Spanish private TV channels” would read more naturally as “on a Spanish private TV channel.” A light edit to smooth out these phrases will polish the presentation.

Author Response

Please see the attachment for reviewer 2

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overview
I enjoyed reading this article about the use of English loan words and phrases in Spanish comedy. I think the analysis has the potential to make a contribution to the field, but in my view, the article needs considerable revision before publication. First, the specific goal of the study isn’t totally clear, nor is the gap that this study fills and the contribution that it makes to the field. I suggest making a stronger case for how this article makes a key contribution to the field. I also suggest stating research questions explicitly and explaining how the results address those questions. For example, by reading the title and abstract, I expected this article to focus on humor, but after reading it, humor is kind of beside the point; the main point of this article seems to be presenting different types of Anglicisms that, incidentally, occur in humor. The literature review focuses a lot on humor when, given the focus of the results, perhaps it should report more previous research on different types of Anglicisms. The author reports on different types of Anglicisms in the results, kind of giving the impression that these observations are new when, I’m certain other authors have already observed how different types of Anglicisms work in Spanish. Second, very little is said about the data analysis procedures; more details should be provided. Third, the results feel disjointed and mostly a collection of observations about the show; providing a stronger statement about the goal and gap that this research fills and then addressing that goal/gap with the results could potentially help make the results a bit more coherent overall. Also, please see my specific comments below. 

Specific comments
- p. 1: Why is “using the daily (inter)national news in our globalized world to make humor a real challenge”? It’s not clear to me. Personally, it seems to me like there’s a lot of good material out there these days to make fun of. I recommend the author avoid making these types of subjective evaluations that aren't relevant to the analysis.
- p. 2: What is a “pragmatic trend in humor studies” and why is it important to mention?
- p. 3: Is a list of so many fields necessary for the purposes of this article? It’s a little tedious and seemingly irrelevant to read through all the different fields and domains in which there are English loan words. I suggest paring down and/or summarizing the list and adding a phrase like “and so forth” at the end to indicate that there are more fields/domains not mentioned.
- p. 3: I suggest defining the term “semantic loanwords” as is done for the other types of borrowings.
- p. 4: Is “macaroni English” a technical term? If not, I suggest using a different phrase.
- p. 4: I don’t quite understand the role of a WhatsApp chat in the data analysis procedures. I suggest clarifying.
- p. 4: There is very little information provided about the data collection and analysis procedures. I suggest providing more details so that other researchers can easily understand what was done in this study. For instance, were only those instances of Anglicisms recorded that were included in a humorous utterance? Did the Anglicism have the be part of the humorous mechanism to be recorded? How did the author identify humorous utterances? Were the whole episodes recorded and transcribed or only the individual English words and phrases therewithin? Was the discourse context recorded and transcribed for each Anglicism example or not?
- Following up on my previous comment, taking the example “La Casa Real mete al ray emérito en un escape-room…” on p. 6, the Anglicism doesn’t seem to be that important to the humor of the utterance. It’s simply naming a cultural practice that apparently doesn’t have a Spanish equivalent. Or, if “escape-room” is contributing to the humorous effect, how do the authors determine that it is? I may misunderstand this example in particular, but I think my question suggests that the author would do well to provide additional detail about the data collection and analysis procedures and to clarify what the goal of the analysis is: is it examining Anglicisms that incidentally occur in humorous utterances or is it Anglicisms that contribute to the humor or both?
- p. 5: I would appreciate some explanation as to how the coding was done. For instance, how did the author know that the use of “cash” “invokes an effect of snobbery”? Is this the author’s intuition or was there a procedure in determining this attitude? Same question with the example of “bro”—how does the author know that it’s indexing informality and not some other attitude or identity?
- p. 6: The author wrote: “The unexpectedness or markedness of a switch is the cue that something funny is happening.” Is this always the case? Can there be use of a loan word without it creating humor?
- p. 7: The word "panas" is in italics as are “bro,” “gang” and “crew,” but as far as I know "panas" is not an English word. It is a word for “friend” in some dialects of Spanish. If it is that Spanish “panas" then I suggest providing a translation in parentheses after the word, so that the reader is clear that it isn’t an English word.
- p. 7: The phrase “OK, boomer” seems different from the other loan words and phrases mentioned thus far since it is a direct quote from a New Zealand parliament member.
- p. 7: How is the word “marrón” related to the TV series The Crown? A brief explanation would be helpful.
- p. 7: How is the title “Juez” anglicized? Was the word pronounced English-inflected phonology?
- p. 7: Why is the explanation of EGW’s artistic name mentioned in the section on episode titles?
- pp. 7-8: It seems there are two versions of an utterance presented in (5) and (8). I suggest presenting only the actual utterance that was said or clarifying that basically the same utterance was produced in two different ways.
- p. 8: I don’t quite understand what the author means by the following paragraph: “Relevant studies on humor (Holmes, 2003; Jonsson, 2010; Vizcaíno, 2011, among others) argue that these switches are hard to anticipate. Thus, rather than accidentally reflecting performers’ skills, they are significant ways of showing how discourse is orchestrated. In sum, switching for humor is meaningful because of the audience’s shared language and cultural knowledge.” I suggest clarifying.
- Regarding the paragraph quoted in my previous comment, one reason I don’t quite understand the argumentation is that a show like EI is probably scripted, right? Perhaps that fact should be made clear in the description of the show early on.
- p. 8: Why is the word “fans” classified as technological terminology?
- p. 9: I don’t understand how example (11) has to do with the need to “learn English to simply go shopping.” The example doesn’t seem to relate to shopping.
- p. 9: The example "estar living” could benefit from some additional explanation about how these types of Anglicisms work.  This use of “living” (along with other common examples in Peninsular Spanish like "hacer footing” and “hacer tuning”) apparently involve English loan words, but they take on a totally different meaning when used in Spanish. As far as I know, “to be living” doesn’t mean to “feel exciting, happy” in English. This particular type of Anglicism seems to function differently than other examples provided in this article and perhaps it's worth explaining this.
- p. 9: What does the word “centennial” mean in this context?
- p. 10: I suggest not repeating the example in (14) which was provided on the previous page.
- p. 10: From whose point of view is lexical creatively “the most hilarious”? I suggest the author not present these subjective judgments that aren’t relevant to the analysis.
- p. 10: What English suffix gave rise to “-liber”? In other words, how is this suffix an Anglicism?
- p. 11: It’s not clear to me how reporting on the use of other languages like German, Catalan, and French achieves the goal of this study, which is purportedly to discuss Anglicisms. Please clarify the goal of the article or clarify how this section meets the goal.
- At various points in the article, the author seems to contend that each and every use of loan words or code-switching will automatically and inevitably lead to humor. I would suggest either toning down this assertion or providing stronger evidence for this stance. It doesn’t seem like the analysis presented in this article fully supports this claim, since, for example, the author did not examine what the audience’s reaction was to code-switching or use of loan words.
- p. 13: I don’t understand the logic connecting the following two sentences: “the examples illustrating the strategies detected in EI humorous discourse are also connected to other levels of linguistic analysis, such as morphology, phonetics and vocabulary. This means that by using Anglicisms, EI enhances humor in both structure and meaning.” Why is humor necessarily enhanced by using different types of Anglicisms?
- p. 13: The Conclusions begin with the following: “This paper has demonstrated the great creativity, pragmatic and sociolinguistic awareness of the scriptwriters of EI, a program that manages to entertain while reporting on the turbulent (inter)national current affairs.” To me, this is not an important contribution to the field nor an important problem to address that will advance understanding in pragmatics/linguistics. I recommend that the author provide a more compelling reason that this research makes an important contribution to the field of pragmatics/linguistics.

Author Response

Please see the attachment for reviewer 3

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf