Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyze jokes in terms of positive politeness. This will be achieved by focusing on situations of playful conflict where one speaker opposes the other as a joke. During playful conflict speakers repeatedly oppose each other, but they do so in a non-serious way, thus appealing to each other's positive face. My findings suggest that there are two important aspects of playful conflict. Firstly, there are two recurrent opening formats. Playful conflicts arise when (a) one speaker directly opposes the other, or (b) when one speaker intentionally says a nonsense which invites the other to oppose. Secondly, I discuss the cues that enable speakers to frame talk as playful conflict. The cues include exaggerated emotional expressions, style switching and laughter.
