Culture and incongruity in The Office (UK)

- Sitcom producers communicate indirectly, a-synchronically, with unknown audiences.
- Incongruity can be resolved or discovered but roots in cognitive models.
- Cognitive models can be shared on a personal, cultural and universal level.
- Shared cultural and universal knowledge ensure similar cognitive models of situations.
- Viewers observe scenes as characters' behaviour and producers' behavioural residue.

The creators of a TV sitcom like The Office (UK) communicate with their audience via the characters. The viewers must therefore watch the scenes of The Office both as situated character behaviour, and as the behavioural residue of the creators. Understanding behaviour and behavioural residue requires shared knowledge at the personal, cultural or universal level. By analysing the tone-setting first five scenes of the sitcom, this paper demonstrates how the creators show their characters deviating mainly from culturally shared norms concerning the management of English offices to produce incongruous stimuli which their audience can recognise. The effort needed to detect the creators' intent can be enjoyed when the interactants are in a playful, para-telic meta-motivational state.