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Humor Markers in Japanese VTuber Video Comments

Leah Allan

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS

March 1, 2026

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Research Area

  • How do speakers convey pragmatic intentions without the same visual and verbal cues afforded by face-to-face communication?

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  • In Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), speakers often use digital non-verbal contextualization cues

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  • Which cues are used to indicate humorous intent?

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS

March 1, 2026

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Background: Marking Humor in CMC

  • Manipulating punctuation, capitalization, and using nonstandard spellings can convey paralinguistic cues in CMC (Werry, 1996)

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  • Humor markers include punctuation, formatting type, emoticons/emojis, laughter markers, and explicit markers in English CMC (Adams, 2012)

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  • Pragmatic functions of laughter markers in Japanese CMC include acknowledging humor in preceding propositions, inviting laughter, softening illocutionary force, and saving face/avoiding face threats (Takamura, 2023; Katayama, 2022)

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Background: Japan and VTubers

  • VTuber = Virtual YouTuber

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  • Major VTuber companies in Japan include HoloLive (90M+ subscribers) and Nijisanji (60M+ subscribers)

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  • Streamers may be organized in sub-groups based on streaming language, debut date, or gender

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March 1, 2026

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Dataset

  • 5,000+ YouTube comments posted on HoloLive VTuber videos

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  • Content videos rather than musical covers or animated shorts

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  • February-November 2025

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  • Only Japanese comments

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Data Analysis

  • Humorous comments were identified using the following criteria:�1) Explicit acknowledgement of humor by poster (e.g. “Do you know this joke?”),�2) Reception by other users as humor (e.g. “That’s so funny!”), or �3) Adherence to the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) (Attardo, 1994)
    • Native-speaker validation resulted in a final n=205 humorous comments
  • Humor markers appearing in the comments were tallied as the following types:�unmarked, punctuation, laughter marker, emoji/emoticon, script-choice, sentence-final particle, phoneme manipulation, character sizing, and symbol
    • A total of n=264 humor markers (including unmarked) were identified in the comments

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March 1, 2026

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Humor Marker Distribution (%)

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Punctuation

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DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS

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“@USER, are you going to become a video clipper too?”

Punctuation Type

Count

Ellipsis

…

29

Exclamation Point(s)

!

16

Quotation Mark(s)

“” or 「」

10

Question Mark(s)

?

9

Combination Exclamation/Question

?! or !?

4

Tilde

~

3

Other

() or 。.

3

「 @USER, お前も切り抜き師にならないか？」 .

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Laughter Markers

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS

March 1, 2026

Laughter Marker Type

Count

w variant

w or ww or www

42

笑 (wara) variant

笑 or (笑) or 笑った

8

草 (kusa) variant

草 or (草)

6

Other

HAHA

1

今日もVCRGTAは平和ですｗ

VCRGTA is peaceful today too lol

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Script Choice

  • Overwhelming preference for katakana script (92.3%)
  • Katakana can be used stylistically for emphasis, irony, indication of the “outside” or “foreign” perspective, adding critical or sarcastic attitudes, or highlighting sounds (Maynard, 2012; 2022)

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS

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クロニー🕰「ワタシハ呼バレナイノデスカ？」

Kronii 🕰 “Am I not being called upon?”

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Use of Multiple Markers

  • Multiple markers were used in 17.1% of the comments
    • 2 markers (85.7%), 3 markers (8.5%), 4 markers (2.9%)

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  • Common combinations included: punctuation + laughter marker (31.4%), punctuation + emoji, punctuation + sentence-final particle, laughter marker + emoji, and punctuation + script choice (14.3% each)

DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS

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この音声ガイド・・・よく喋るぞ！

This audio guide… talks a lot!

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Conclusion

  • In the CMC context of Japanese VTuber videos, humor is most frequently unmarked, marked with punctuation marks, or marked with laughter markers

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  • Humor may be unmarked due the belief that other fans, as members of the same discourse community, will understand pragmatic intentions with minimal cues

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  • Future research should investigate other CMC contexts (other discourse communities) and expand the dataset

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March 1, 2026

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Thank you!

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References

Adams, A. (2012). Humor markers in computer-mediated communication (Publication No. 1529858) [Master’s thesis, Texas A&M University-Commerce]. Proquest LLC.

Attardo, S. (1994). Linguistic theories of humor. De Gruyter Mouton.

Katayama, M. (2022). Tekisuto chatto ni okeru (笑) no shakai goyōronteki kino [The sociopragmatic function of emoticonic usage of (笑) in text chat]. Studies in Language

and Culture, 30, 31-58.

Maynard, S.K. (2012). Raitonoberu hyōgenron: Kaiwa, sōzō, asobi no disukōsu no kōsatsu [Expressivity in light novels: Analyzing the discourse of conversation, creativity,

and play]. Tokyo: Meiji Shoin.

Maynard, S.K. (2022). Style, character, and creativity in the discourse of Japanese popular culture: Focusing on light novels and keitai novels. In Y. Asahi, M. Usami, & F.

Inoue (Eds.), Handbook of Japanese sociolinguistics (pp. 433-454). De Gruyter Mouton.

McCulloch, G. (2019). Because internet: Understanding the new rules of language. Riverhead Books.

Takamura, R. (2023). Pragmatic functions of wara in Japanese text messages. Journal of Japanese Linguistics, 39(2), 261-283. https://doi.org/10.1515/jjl-2023-2019

Werry, C.C. (1996). Linguistic and interactional features of internet relay chat. In S.C. Herring (Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social, and cross-

cultural perspectives (pp. 47-64). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Yus, F. (2023). Pragmatics of internet humor. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31902-0