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Theoretical Viewpoints
Humor spans the areas of sociology, philosophy, and even physiology.
Humor also has to do with the principles of psychoanalysis, linguistics, and
cognitive principles.. It is a great influence on almost every area of peoples’
lives. Research into humor has been going on for many years and is huge in
its scope. This chapter will be about the linguistic theories of humor and
those that have something to do with the goals of the study. Another
purpose of this chapter is to decide the importance of the theories in relation
to the analysis of texts in this paper.
3.1 Incongruity Theories
The theory of incongruity is one of the most important approaches in
the research and definition of humor. Schopenhauer in 1819 described the
theory of incongruities:
The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and the laugh itself is just an expression of this incongruity. (In The World as Well and Idea, reprinted in Morreall, 1987, p. 52).
Simply, if funny stories are analyzed with the theory of incongruity, two
things are presented in one concept. Both different things are compared to
the one concept, and the things then appear to be similar.
As the joke goes along, it becomes obvious that the concept only goes with
one of the things and that is what is called the incongruity. Therefore, in
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general it can be said that humor involves incongruity. (Ritchie, 2004).
Theories of incongruity are dependent upon the cognitive aspect of
humor. They are closely related to the linguistic theories of structuralism
descent because they are essentialist (Attardo, 1994:49). In additions, that
just reinforces the fact that incongruities are to be worked out in some way.
The aforementioned theories consider humor as the “linking of disparities”
(Monro, 1951:248), “incorporating into one situation what belongs to
another” (ibid: 45). In the words of Oring, “humor depends upon the
discernment of an appropriate incongruity” (1989:349).
Morreal (1989:12) stated that humans are the only species that
enjoys incongruity. He went on to say that humans can identify and enjoy
incongruity, and therefore can see the rest of the world in “un-practical”
ways. (1989:12). Understanding and having a good time with incongruity has
assisted in the development of objectivity and understanding and
appreciating humor. (Morreal, 1989: 12)
Shultz (1976) spelled out two different stages of incongruities:
resolution and perception. After the incongruity is understood by a lister or
reader that it is resolved and humor is the result. For that person, humor or
laughter is in the actual incongruity. The incongruity theory then means
humor is achieved through a process of several stages: The incongruity is
established, then more information is introduced which resolves the
incongruity. Shultz (1976:11) demonstrates this in his analysis of “immense
heuristic value in accounting for vast samples of humor”.
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In the literature, no precise definition of congruity is produced.
Rothbart and Pien wrote that humor was a combining cohesion of the “two
categories of incongruity and two categories of resolution” (1977:37).
Possible or impossible incongruities and complete or incomplete resolution
are the potential results. Rothbart and Pien (1977:38) said:
Cognitive aspects of humor would be seen as a function of (a) the number of resolved incongruous elements, (b) the number of incongruity elements remaining unresolved, (c) the degree of incongruity of each element, (d) the difficulty of resolution (e) the degree of resolution. Increases in the first three factors should lead to increase in humor appreciation, while the difficulty of resolution may be ... related to humor.
Those theories that are based on incongruities assert that the humor is
in the incongruity itself It is for the listeners to figure it out and resolve the
incongruity, and in so doing, the humor is revealed.
3.2 Superiority Theories
In the rhetorical theories of ancient Greek and Roman literature superiority
theories of humor are based on derision, aggression, malice and superiority.
Ludovici and Rapp (1947, 1951) wrote that humor is supposed to be based
on the similarities in the bodily positions between aggressive behavior, such
as arguing and laughing. Suls (1977:41), however, wrote that these theories
of humor are totally based on the proposition that we laugh at others’
weaknesses and problems. And that they are similar to the views of Hegel,
Hobbes, and Plato. These theories also focus on the superiority of the teller
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of the joke, versus the actual target of that joke, which may or may not be
the listener. Keith Spiegel (1972: 7) wrote:
Not all theorists who include the element of superiority as a part of humor believe that laughter is always contemptuous or scornful. Sympathy, congeniality, empathy, and geniality may be combined with the laughter of superiority.
The humor researchers of such superiority theories, such as McDougall
(1922) and Rapp(1949) as a way of “getting out” feelings and tendencies
toward aggression.
3.3 Release/Relief Theories
Another set of categories of humor are the Release/Relief theories
which rely on the relief principle that says that humor and laughter are just
ways of releasing stress and inhibitions which come about because of social
constrictions. (McGhee, 1983a). The intention of jokes are to help get that
relief from the stress. Therefore, if the joke’s listener or listerners feel relief,
it has been a good joke. If the audience does not, it is a failure. The most
important thing is the effect of the joke on the audience or listener. That
way, a joke that is not funny fails as far as the audience is concerned
because they cannot decipher what the point of the joke was or do not
appreciate its humor at all. Another reason that a joke might “fall flat” is
when the audience does not correctly interpret the joke and therefore no
humor is achieved. Therefore, it is important to note that these release/relief
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theories pertain only to the listner’s feelings and psychology and not the joke
teller. (Raskin: 1985: 40).
3.4 Raskin’s Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH)
Raskin’s theory (1985) was the first linguistic theory concerning humor
which is centered around text. His theory said that humor is produced when
the text has two different scripts which are actually opposite in meaning and
overlap in the joke, causing humor. Attardo (1994:198) defines a script as
An organized chunk of information about something (in broadest sense). It is a cognitive structure internalized by the speaker which provides the speaker with information on how things are organized.
However, Koestler (1964) had previously written about this very idea
focusing on the impact of the two different lines of thought. This process is
what he called bisociation. Raskin came up with this idea by using the
smenatics of linguistics to illustrate that a joke is found in conflicting
“chunks” of dialogue that are the source of the incongruity. The notion of
script, therefore, shows that all the information, both intralinguistic and
extralinguistic, is included in a lexical unit (Raskin, 1985:81; Attardo,
1994:201). Scripts are connected with other scripts, forming “semantic
networks”. Raskin (1985:100) put forth the following to illustrate his theory:
“Is the doctor at home?” the patient asked in his bronchial whisper.“No,” the doctor’s young and pretty wife whispered in reply. “Come right in”.
Raskin likens this joke and the differences between the two scripts
and said it could be shown as: “the patient comes to the doctor’s house to
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see the doctor” versus “the patient comes to the doctor’s house not to see
the doctor” (Raskin: 110), which would make little sense and probably ruin
the humor.
Raskin (1985) also wrote about what he termed the non-bona-fide
(humorous) form of communication which is different from bona-fide
(serious, information-giving) that the former goes against at least one of the
four conversational maxims of Grice’s principles (Grice, 1975) which are
quality, quantity, relation and manner. This can be intentional or
unintentional by the teller. (Raskin l985: 100
Attardo (1994) asserts that the contrast in scripts is a matter of
situation, context, or just opposites. The oppositional theory could be
interpreted as the difference between the real situation, the normal state of
affairs and the situation. Some typical pairs of opposites are: obscenity \ no
obscenity, violence \ no violence, money \ no money, death \ life, bad \ good
(Raskin, 1985: 107).
Raskin limits his theory, however, only to certain types of jokes and
that is in relation to linguistic form. This is why it did not deal with the
differences that are not in the texts, and does not take into account humor or
comedy which does not use linguistics. For instance his theory does not deal
with sight gags, or what is considered “slapstick” comedy routines, like
someone slipping on a banana peel. Also, it does not depend on
interpretation, such as when humor depends on the listeners’ interpretation
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which can be different by different people, or in different situations or
societies. .
3.5 The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH)
The General Theory of Verbal Humor is the idea of telling a story or a tale,
linguistics and practicality (Attardo, 1994:222). It depends partly on the
semantics of the humor and other features, both linguistic and non-linguistic,
which occurs by the knowledge of resources (KR) and the similarity of the
jokes. It is important to know that this is a change in the semantic script
theory of humor (SSTH) by Raskin and Attardo, in orer to enlarge the theory
to go over more linguistic areas and go beyond the domain of the mere
expressed joke. It brings up six KR’s “which inform the joke” and are the
basis of SSTH: SO’s or script oppositions. The five other resources have to
do with factors associated with SO—language (LA), narrative strategies (NS),
situation (SI), target (TA) which takes in the audience and logical mechanism
(LM). .
3.5.1 Script Opposition (SO)
The script opposition is based on Raskin’s semantic theory of humor, which
holds that there are two different scripts and these two scripts are opposites
in a special way, i.e., good / bad, real / unreal, and so on. Attardo and Raskin
(1991: 296) wrote about this theory:
A chunk of structured semantic information, the script can be understood for the purposes of this article as an interpretation of the text of a joke. The main claim of SSTH is that the text of a joke is always fully or in part compatible with two distinct scripts and that the two
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scripts are opposed to each other in a special way.
3.5.2 Logical Mechanism (LM)
The Logical Mechanism KR shows the mechanism that will be used to oppose
the script. An example would be a joke that uses figure-ground reversal,
false analogy, simple reversal, simple juxtaposition false priming and the
juxtaposition of two different situations shown by an ambiguity is a pun.
(Attardo, 1991)
3.5.3 Situation (SI)
Situation (SI) is the set of circumstances which “set up” the joke, such as the
time, place, or whatever. A joke can be totally different if set up with a
different set of circumstances and different situations, as per the script
opposition (SO) and logical mechanism (LM).
3.5.4 Target (TA)
The target of a joke is the thing or the person who is the “butt” of the joke.
This is an optional parameter of the aforementioned resources.
3.5.5 Narrative Strategy (NS)
This KR decides whether the joke should be in the form of a riddle, a
conundrum, religious texts, political texts, sexual texts, or another form.
3.5.6 Language (LA)
LA is primarily about the wording the joke uses. An important aspect of the
GTVH is that it has a particular organization of KRs as the following: SO, LM,
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SI, TA, NS, LA, organized from more different and less determined to the
more similar and more determined.
Attardo (1991) says that if the GTVH is right, it will seem like an increase
in similarity between pairs of jokes selected along the KR hierarchy will be
detected. This is true for all KRs except LM. The question comes up if LM is a
KR or not. Attardo (1997) talks about the GTVH compared to the incongruity-
resolution theories, and says that LM is actually the resolution of the
incongruity, or script opposition (SO). Therefore, LM is seen as an optional KR
due to the “nonsense” jokes. These are jokes without resolution, and can be
seen as comical or funny. It is possible, also, that LM is only the resolution
and not the KR. (Attardo, et al., 2002:4-17).
Ritchie (2001) writes that GTVH is developed more than any other
theory of linguistics. Particularly, script-opposition and logical mechanicm
KR’s need an almost complete understanding of the world, including many
different areas, in order to fully be operational. In the language KR with all its
diverse parts such as phonologic, morphophonemic, morphologic, lexical,
syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels of language structure, the joke
teller, or raconteur, is very much free to some particularly humorous
elements and relations. (Ritchie: 121).
3.6 Language-Specific Humor (LSH)
This section talks about the linguistic effects of jokes and their humor.
Also, it talks about their humorous effect on language choice, for instance,
the interactions between language and jokes. This research also deals with a
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phenomenon called Language-Specific Humor which which is said to be that
kind of humor whose humorous effect is determined by the types and forms
of the language used. As it is defined, the study attempted to determine the
nature of language-specific humor in regard to various manifestations, to
discover and understand the possible differences of language-specific humor
that make up the most important part of the humor. Language-specific
humor has to do with the various types of humor both spoken and in writing.
It has wordplay in it such as pun and non-wordplay such as slips of the
tongue, potential ambiguities, non-intended associations and repetitons.
(Delabastita, 1997: 6).
Language-specific humor is a neutral description of a term that takes
in forms of language that is used restrictively to produce a humorous result.
Similarly, it is what Hockett (1977: 263) calls “a poetic joke”--a joke plays
with the language to make humor and the listender needs to understand the
way the teller of the joke has “fooled around” with language. Language-
specific humor is an another term for wordplay. Chiaro (1992: 1) said “the
term wordplay includes every conceivable way in which the language is used
with the intent to amuse.”
The terms wordplay or “play on words” is often used instead of the term
pun. The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) defines pun as “the
humorous use of a word to suggest different meanings”. The term wordplay
is therefore used in the literature of humor to mean making a pun (e.g.
Delabastita 1993, 1996, 1997; Alexieva 1997; Hedrick 1996). LSH though
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does not have to do with the differences in meaning;It involves other factors.
This shows definitely that LSH is a much larger concept than just punning.
Wordplay, slips of the tongue, puns, malapropisms and meaningful names
are also in the LSH. Therefore, most of the information on puns and their
definitions can be applied to LSH.
3.6.1. Wordplay
Delabastita (1996) differentiates between wordplay and unintentional
ambiguity,, saying that the most important part of wordplay is the intent to
produce words with a certain meaning, because if not intentional, they would
not make any sense. Delabastita (1996.: 128) also said that wordplay
involves:
The various textual phenomena in which structural features of the languages used are exploited in order to bring about a communicatively significant confrontation of two or more linguistic structures with more or less different meanings.
In Arabic, the poet Sirajuddin 1-Warraq wrote:
اديب عندهم الموت لقاء اناس عن وجهي اديم اصون
حبيب و لهم به وافى ولو بغيض عندهم الشعر رب
Translation
I avoid showing my face to those for whom meeting a literary person is like
dying.
Many a poem is hated by them, even though Abu Tammam Habiib Ibn Aws
al- Ta’i.
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Habib in the second line has more than one meaning. It could mean
‘friend’, ‘beloved’, or’ the name Abu Tammam Habiib Ibn Aws al- Ta’i. The
writer meant to say that some people believe that poems are distasteful and
even if written by a good poet, like Habiib, or even if a loved one wrote a
poem, they would not like it. Habib would supposedly mean ‘friend’, but the
poet does not intend this. He makes a “play on words”since the name of
agreak poet is also Habib. The poet intends to use the word Habiib as either
a ‘beloved’ or ‘the name Abu Tammam Habiib Ibn Aws al- Ta’I’ .
Alexieva (1997: 38) gives the definition of wordplay as “a clash of two
meanings”, however, Davis (1997: 25) has a much different definition which
rests on the “systemic operation of language” and “disambiguating context”.
She goes on to define the systemic operation of language to be the reliance
of denotational meaning based on certain rules and semantic features. As a
result, the ambiguous meaning is made clear by the context (Davis, 1997).
Sometimes linguists cannot describe or define what wordplay is.
Golden (1996: 279) wrote that wordplay actually cannot really be defined
because it covers semantic boundaries. The subject of boundaries remains
obscure. Delabastita (1997: 4) said that the reason the term wordplay is
difficult to define is that the term should really be considered a cline, not an
abstract term.
3.6.2 Pun
Pun is defined as a play on two words close in sound, but the meanings are
different. The word pun is defined as a play on two words similar in sound
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but different in meaning (Crisafulli, 1996: 261; Delabastita, 1996: 128). Also,
it is a joke the relies of playing with the different meanings of a word or
bringing two words together with similar sounds, or forms, but very different
meanings. It is sometimes called paronomasia. (Crystal 2003:467).
Paronomasia means the humorous use of a word in a certain way that uses
different meanings of the same word. A pun is a figure of speech which
involves a play words. In order to discuss wordplay, it is necessary that the
word “pun” is integral in that type of humor. A pun is the prime example of
other forms of language-specific jokes which are based on word play. It is
really an alternative term for the other forms of language-specific humor. .
Numerous researchers have tried to come up with a definition for the
word pun and how it is placed in the ield of humor. Similarly, these
definitions mention the use of similar words with different meanings which
end up causing laughter or humor. Pun was researched by linguists such as
Abrams (1957: 36), Leech (1969: 110), and in the early 1990’s, such as
Attardo (1994: 112). Every since the 1980’s the pun has been thought of as
a valid academic study and it makes for an independent branch of linguistics.
Many researchers have seriously studied the use of puns, for example
Chiaro, Delabastita, Offord, and others. Nash wrote:
We take punning tawdry facetious thing one of the less profound forms of humor, but that is the prejudice of our time, a pun may be profoundly serious or charged with pathos.
(Nash, 1985: 137).
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The pun is involved in many literatures and is, in a way, a universal
type of humor. Humor is created when the audience catches both the
obvious meaning and the “not really meant” meaning of the joke teller.
Researchers solve the translation situation that arises in puns in several
ways. If they cannot find a similar word in the target language which has the
source meanings responsible for creating the pun, they may define both
meanings. A famous pun in dramatic literature is Mercutio’s statement as he
is dying: “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man”. (Romeo
and Juliet, III, i). The pun on “grave” can be translated only if the new
language has a word or phrase that means at the same time ‘serious’ and ‘a
burial place’. If the new language does not have such a words or phrases, the
pun may be forever lost. Another way of handling this problem is the
insertion of new puns for the ones that cannot be recovered.
3.6.3 Slips of the Tongue
Slips of the tongue are accidental and non-intended words or phrases that
Chiaro (1992:17) terms “verbal banana skins,” and Nash (1985:149) says are
“lucky lapses.” These are called Freudian slips as they are said
unconsciously, as in “slips of the tongue” and can be made deliberately, in
which case they are produced by the conscious brain. Therefore, the
difference between wordplay and “slips of the tongue” is whether it is
intentional or not. (Toury, 1997:273). There are three types of “slips of the
tongue”: spoonerisms, malapropisms and Goldwynisms, all named after the
people who became famous for uttering them.
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3.6.3.1 Spoonerisms
Spoonerisms are called such after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner
(1844-1930), the Dean of New College in Oxford. He regularly mixed up
sounds and words to produce such phrases as the following:
You have hissed all my mystery lectures. In fact you have tasted two whole worms and you must leave Oxford this afternoon by the Town Drain.
(Huxley, 1944: quoted in Toury, 1997:272).
The intended meaning of the example, of course, is:
You have missed all my history lectures. In fact you have wasted whole terms and you must leave Oxford this afternoon by the down train.
Transposing of the two linguistic units can be governed by a set of
rules to make an actual spoonerism:
I. It must involve well-formed units;
2. There may be a stretch of text between the sentence segments; and
3. The transposition process occurs only before the initial sounds (Toury,
1997: 274).
3.6.3.2 Malapropisms
A malapropism is a mistake in speaking, called such because of a fictitious
character, Mrs. Malaprop, in the Sheridan play, The Rival. In the play, Mrs.
Malaprop uses words which make no sense in the context used. In a
malapropism, a word is used that is close in sound, but not in meaning to
another, generally high level word, (Bolinger, 1968: 139-240), and which by
using that word, the speaker attempts to appear of a higher class,, and
better educated that he or she really is, and which turns out funny.
(Chiaro,1992:20). The following is an example:
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Sure, if I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!
(Sheridan, The
Rivals. Act III. Scene III)
The above could also be written as follows:
Sure, if I comprehend anything in this world it is the use of my vernacular tongue, and a nice arrangement of epigrams.
The re-writing of this shows a malapropism which comes about when
two words that sound similar are deliberately transposed. These “slip ups”
can be classical malapropisms in which the mistakes happen unintentionally
due to the speaker not knowing the difference, or intentional mistakes done
totally for the humorous reaction. .
3.6.3.3 Goldwynisms
Goldwynisms are phrases which are named after Sam Goldwyn who is
famous for such phrases as “include me out” and “in two words: im-possible”
(Nash, 1985). The comedic part in the second phrase is that it makes “im” a
word along with “possible.” The same thing happens in the following
sentence: “A backwards poet writes inverse”. The “in” of course is part of
the word inverse, but it is funny because of the meaning of the entire
sentence as a whole.
3.7 The Purpose of Jokes
When a joke is studied through linguistics, its humor is better
understood and the researcher can more deeply get into the language and
the way it functions. Most jokes have a lack of correspondence between
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form and meaning. That is a source of ambiguities which make the joke
“funny.” These ambiguities lets the listeners get a sense different from what
the primary meaning would suggest, to humorous effect. The reason for
humor and jokes and especially language specific humor are several. The
first purpose is to display wit, cause surprise or to get to the audience. The
person telling the joke is important in the humor producing mechanism.
(Apte, 1985:199). Many times the teller of a joke uses pun to ake an effect
opposite to what the audience expects. This produces a funny or humorous
situation. The audience has also a major part in the success or failure of the
joke. Veisbergs (1997: 159) states that humor can attract the reader’s
attention to only one point or particular part of the text. Watson (1984: 245-
246) added the following functions: assisting composition, lending
authenticity, denoting reversal, showing appearances to be deceptive, and
equating two dissimilar things.
3.8 Humor vs. Joke
Though both humor and jokes lead to laughter, or are supposed to, there is a
difference between the two. Humor is events, characters or situations that
make people laugh, but jokes are linguistic and logical structures that make
people laugh. Although both lead to laughter, there is a difference between
humor and joke. Shakir and Farghal (1992) found that “these characteristics
can be classified into two groups: those relating to surface structural
features (the said), and those relating to underlying features (the unsaid)”.
Most theorists discuss jokes in terms of the incompatibility of context, which
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causes a search for the resolution of that incongruity. Attardo (1994, 1996,
2000, 2001) says that a joke begins by processing the actual meaning of the
ambiguous word.
3.9 Jokes and Pragmatic Rules of Conversation
In situations where communication is a part, laughter is often caused by
someone breaking the regular “rules” of language. John Morreall (1983:82)
asserted the rules of conversation which were developed by Grice, who said
that cooperative rules are used to describe language. He explained how
humor can be generated from these rules. Here are Grice’s rules (1975: 45-
46):
1. Make your contribution as informative as is required for the purposes of
the exchange.
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
3. Do not say what you believe to be false.
4. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
5. Avoid obscurity of expression.
6. Avoid ambiguity.
7. Be brief.
8. Be orderly.
Morreall (1983: 86) presents another eight principles of conversation.
Any one of which can make the conversation humorous:
1. When the person plays a role in an unhelpful conversation, he makes
humor.
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2. The very much enlightening person is comic,
3. Lies and lying characters make people laugh.
4. Wild expectations or guesses inserted into a conversation can make
humor.
5. Obscurity of expression holds back or stops communication in a funny
way.
6. Ambiguity causes humorous misinterpretation.
7. The person who does not know when to stop talking is funny.
8. A confused person is sometimes a comic character.
Levinson (1983: 103) said that people will primarily understand and be
able to explain these “rules” but Grice believes that most ordinary
conversation between people do not necessarily follow these rules.
3.10 Joke Interaction
People find more humor when they are in a group connected with one
another and doing the same things. A joke is a social phenomenon which
makes people laugh. Al-Khatib (1999: 269-270) wrote that “everybody can
tell jokes, but not all those who tell jokes have the ability to make others
laugh heartily”. Telling a joke is a definite skill and whether it works depends
on the teller of the joke. Also, along with the “telling” of the joke gestures
and body language play a role in the joke-telling process. In 1928, Freud said
that telling a joke involves three participants: the narrator or teller of the
joke, the butt of the joke (which could even be an inanimate object) and the
audience or listeners. Sven Svebak (1974) used the same participants but
20
with using different labels for the first two: humorist instead of narrator,
target for butt, and audience. Craig Lundberg (1969) also wrote about
humorous behavior and put forth four “analytical categories,” notably, the
initiator or teller of the joke, the target or audience, the focus of the story,
and finally, the butt of the joke. .
Dwyer (1991) follows Lundberg’s idea, but he defines the target
differently. According, the target is the “the object of the joke”. This seems
to be the same and described by Lundberg as the focus of the joke, but it is a
bit different. Dwyer uses the word “audience” to refer to the group that
Lundberg calls the “target.”
Success in the telling of a joke takes someone who is very skilled, who
has a keen sense of humor, and tells the joke with some degree of
sophistication in the physicality of the joke-telling. Telling a joke or a funny
story is a social experience. It maintains good will and group attention when
in the midst of several people.
3.11 Summary
The chapter was about the theories having to do with humor. It mainly
centered on the primary theories of humor and these are: the incongruity
theory, superiority theory, release/relief theory, Raskin’s semantic script
theory of humor (SSTH), and the general theory of verbal humor (GTVH).
The theory of incongruity is one of the most prominent theories about humor
and says that humor is mostly cognitive. It maintains that almost anything
can be humorous two actions are not compatible with the listener’s
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expectations and results in a short struggle cognitively, resulting in an
incongruity. The end result is humor.
The Superiority theory says that something is funny because the
audience is made to feel superior to the teller of the joke or presenter of the
story. This theory says humor is a way of making the listener feel better or
enhance his or her ego. The next theory is the release/relief theory. In this
theory, humor is a socially acceptable way to release stress, anxiety and
tension. Supposedly it comes from a psychological perspective. (Attardo,
1994).
The fourth theory is SSTH. This theory is one of the linguistic theories
that is important for this study. In this particular theory, humor is produced
when two scripts are opposing each other. Thus, for a text to product humor
it should be two overlapping scripts. This theory looks at humor as a
violation of Grice’s cooperative principles. This theory views humor as a
violation of Grice’s cooperative principles and the punch line changes the
humorous text from the bona-fide to the non-bona-fide.
The final and by far the most important theory is the GTVH. This
theory is a complicated revising and extending of the SSTH that was
developed to cover more linguistic areas and expand past the simple joke.
GTVH emphasizes verbal humor and is what is considered similarity between
the funny texts and jokes by keeping track of the number of KR’s that the
jokes have in common.
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The next section of this chapter is concerned with a linguistic
phenomenon called Language Specific Humor (LSH) described as that types
of humor whose humorous result comes about by the features of the
language used. LSH is one alternative to wordplay and it is about all kinds of
humor either text or spoken. It also can have wordplay devices such as pun
and “slips of the tongue.”
The real reason for telling jokes is for us to make humor or comedy
that show intelligence and make others laugh. This means that the person
telling the joke must be good at telling the joke so that it is successfully
understood by the listener. Grice’s maxims are general practical rules that
people follow in a regular conversation. But, if one of the rules is broken,
laughter or humor can be the result. Of course, laughter requires groups of
people to interact with each other and make a humorous atmosphere.
Because a joke is a social phenomenon, it cannot be a joke for just one
person, but needs more than one human being in order to create laughter.
One writes a joke for another, or one tells a joke to an audience, and so on.
Freud,, however, said that jokes involve three or more participants--the
teller of the joke, the butt of the joke, and the audience.
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