Trying to make it fit…That's what she said: An argument for a new category on the formulaic continuum

The present paper seeks to find a notionally neat category for the pragmatic idiom That's what she said. While this may seem like a trivial goal at first glance, this paper will systematically uncarve the internal and contextual complexities of this formula and the challenges entailed in this aim. While That's what she said merges features and functions that have been defined and labelled by scholars of Pragmatics, Cognition and Psychology as well as the highly interdisciplinary field of Humor Studies, these approaches have not been sufficiently aligned. The present discussion thus forms part of a larger-scale issue, i.e. that humor-related utterances on the one hand and aspects and frameworks of formulaic speech on the other hand have so far not explicitly been brought together. The present paper aspires to do exactly that, putting forth an extended formulaic continuum that does not only fit That's what she said in particular, but potentially other similar formulae that may not yet have been assigned their place on e.g. Kecskés's continuum in its present form and scope either (2000, 2003, 2010, 2013). The present paper therefore proposes the new notion of Isolated Formulaic Punchlines for such formulae, acknowledging their supposedly incoherent or isolated occurrence in the discourse, their formulaic makeup and their humorous potential.