[Commlist] New book: Cringe humor on screen and in digital media

Célia Schneebeli (Université Bourgogne Europe), Lynn Blin and Virginie 
Iche (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier) are very pleased to announce 
the publication of

Iché, V., Schneebeli C. & Blin L. (Eds.). (2026). /Cringe humor on 
screen and in digital media: Pragmatic perspectives/. Palgrave 
Macmillan. 978-3-031-93002-7

It is available in electronic and print formats and can be ordered 
online: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-93002-7 
<https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-93002-7>

This volume is the first book-length study of 21st-century 
English-language cringe humor on screen and in digital media. The book 
includes quantitative and qualitative analyses of verbal and multimodal 
cringe humor by international linguists interested in its conditions of 
emergence and success. It examines the sociocultural variables involved 
in its reception and sheds new light on audience reactions—from 
alignment to disaffiliation and resistance to empathy. This book reveals 
that, while not unanimously championed, cringe humor thrives in the 21st 
century, drawing on its inherent ambivalence and leveraging the 
affordances of new media to navigate the post-politically correct 
ethical complexities of laughing at embarrassing behavior. With its 
cross-disciplinary, pragmatically grounded approach, this book will 
interest scholars and students in Linguistics, Media and Cultural 
Studies, and Psychology.


*Contents*
1. Introduction: Charting the territory of twenty-first century cringe 
humor - Virginie Iché and Célia Schneebeli

Part One - From theoretical definitions to contextual considerations
2. Dimensions and loci of cringe humor: The case of /8 out of 10 Cats 
Does Countdown/ - Alexander Brock
3. How cringe humor spices up talk show interactions - Agnieszka Piskorska
4. Talk-show cringe humor: A multimodal approach to the pragmatics of 
play-awkwardness in /Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis/ - Jacob 
Rigal and Dima Alkhateeb

Part Two - Sociocultural variations in the reception of cringe humor
5. British vs American cringe comedy: Cultural differences in 
embarrassment humor - Marc Hye-Knudsen
6. To cringe or not to cringe: The role of cultural and age variability 
in the perception of Covid-19 humor - Luca Bischetti
7. Heterocringe: Navigating the limits of cringe humor in the critique 
of heteronormativity on Instagram - Alice Cesbron
8. "Extremely painful to endure. Good work": The pragmatics of cringe 
humor reception on YouTube - Célia Schneebeli

Part Three - Beyond cringe humor
9. Ambivalent comedians and their streamed comedy specials - Thomas C. 
Messerli
10. Hannah Gadsby's /Nanette/: Cringeworthy and funny, but /not/ cringe 
comedy - Lynn Blin
11. From cringe humor to empathy in /Fleabag/ - Adeline Terry

Postface - Beyond the screen: Cringe media references in conversation
12. Resisting cringe(worthy) linguistic film stereotypes in everyday 
talk - Sylvia Sierra

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