Weak Communication, Joke Targets and the Punch-Line Effect: A Relevance-Theoretic Account (original) (raw)
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Acta Philologica 44
The present contribution discusses a number of important conceptual tools and strategies which emerge as responsible for the explanation of the humorous material. The paper draws upon the theory of relevance (Sperber and Wilson [1986] 1995; Wilson and Sperber 2002, 2004) with a special emphasis on epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al. 2010), the guru effect (Sperber [2005] 2010), and three patterns of inference, viz. naïve optimism, cautious optimism, and sophisticated understanding (Sperber 1994, 2000). It is argued that the conflation of several concepts and mechanisms provides a broad panorama of the model of comprehension favoured by the hearer so as to arrive at the humorous effects. Also, the humorist’s knowledge of a particular path of comprehension followed by the audience is essential since s/he uses this knowledge to manipulate the hearer into the entertainment of humour.
A relevance-theoretic classification of jokes
Relevance Theory pictures communication as an inferential activity that adjusts, in parallel, the explicit content of utterances, the implicated premises and conclusions that can be derived, and the right amount of contextual information needed to obtain them. When applied to jokes, a relevance-theoretic classification may be proposed depending on whether the humorist plays with the audience’s inferential activity aimed at an explicit interpretation, with the audience’s inference devoted to deriving implications or with their access to the right amount and quality of contextual information needed to obtain relevant interpretations. In this paper three types of jokes are proposed which focus on these aspects. A fourth type is also added, but this time referred to broad contextual assumptions on social or cultural values of society that are targeted by humorists.
Humor and the search for relevance
Journal of pragmatics, 2003
In this paper, Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance theory is analyzed as to its explanation of how humorous interpretations are produced. The main foundation of this cognitive theory is the hypothesis that human beings rely on one single interpretive principle, which they invariably use in their attempt to select the interlocutors’ intended interpretation. This principle states that the first interpretation which provides an optimal balance of interest—cognitive effects– and mental effort, is the one that the speaker possibly intends to communicate, and hence it is the one selected, and interpretation stops at this point. As will be shown in the article, this theoretical claim is valid for any type of ostensive communication (in which communicators intend to make mutually manifest to the addressee some information), humorous utterances included. Besides, the steps involved in this interpretive procedure may be predicted to a greater or lesser extent, which provides communicators with the key to the necessary control over the eventual interpretation of their humorous discourse.
A Manifestation of Stereotypes in Jokes: Relevance Theory
The International Journal of Humanities & Social Studies, 2020
A Manifestation of Stereotypes in Jokes: Relevance Theory 1. Introduction This study sets out to explore jokes that are manifested with stereotypes. In today's world, there is increasing interest in problems of cross-cultural communication. In this regard, researchers are beginning to pay attention to components with cultural perspective such as stereotypes and jokes in a linguistic perspective. Stereotypes and jokes are utterances that are given a pragmatic analysis. Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics that deals with language in use and the contexts in which it is used, such as, taking of turns in conversation and how utterances are interpreted. Most jokes in form of anecdotes reflect stereotypes and attitudes within groups of people. Individuals from different ethnic communities in Kenya and beyond have in mind stereotypes of how cultural practices of other groups of people look like. Within a cultural group of people or society, there are stereotypes of their own (in group). At the same time a community (in group) formulates stereotypes about other groups (out group) Brewer, (2001). Since humour is an inevitable part of human life, it is a fundamental aspect of language. According to Chiaro (1992), humour stands out as one of the few attributes that widely apply to all people and all languages globally. Jokes consist of playing or manipulation of language. The adequate interpretation of humour in many cases depends on decoding the real meaning hiding behind contextual actualization of words or phrases that sound the same but have different meanings. Humour means understanding, not only the language and words but their use, meaning, subtle nuances, the underlying culture, implications and unwritten messages. Language is a very common tool used to create humorous situations. Humour is a perception that enables individuals to experience joy even in times of sadness. Humour elicited from jokes is associated more with people, even though the more intelligent animals with basic ability respond to humour (Yus, F., 2008). A joke is an organized group of utterances that work in harmony having a humorous climax. The listener is amused by the speaker, marking the climax of the joke. Jokes are spoken or written with an intention of eliciting humour. Jokes come in different forms such as single word, question and answer, sarcasm, irony and word play. Jokes are used for entertaining friends and on lookers. According to Ritchie (2004), a joke is a short text for a certain group with the aim of producing reactions that amuse. Deaux, (1996) posits that, a joke is a linguistic text that communicates or expresses semantic meaning in spoken or written form. Jokes are not only comical in nature but also deal with serious matters such as sex, politics and death (Norrick, 2001). 1.1. Jokes, Stereotypes and Anecdotes Jokes play a very important role in creating stereotypes. Stereotypes are generalizations that people make about a group of people with regard to observations of a few members belonging to the group (Samover, 2010). They are cognitive structures with the knowledge of the perceiver, expectancies and beliefs about groups of people. Stereotypes are based on culture, race and ethnicity and very often, they are incorrect. For instance if we say, 'All Kikuyus are thieves,' this is a
Humour and Relevance [John Benjamins, 2016]
This book offers a cognitive-pragmatic, and specifically relevance-theoretic, analysis of different types of humorous discourse, together with the inferential strategies that are at work in the processing of such discourses. The book also provides a cognitive pragmatics description of how addressees obtain humorous effects. Although the inferences at work in the processing of normal, non-humorous discourses are the same as those employed in the interpretation of humour, in the latter case these strategies (and also the accessibility of contextual information) are predicted and manipulated by the speaker (or writer) for the sake of generating humorous effects. The book covers aspects of research on humour such as the incongruity-resolution pattern, jokes and stand-up comedy performances. It also offers an explanation of why ironies are sometimes labelled as humorous, and proposes a model for the translation of humorous discourses, an analysis of humour in multimodal discourses such as cartoons and advertisements, and a brief exploration of possible tendencies in relevance-theoretic research on conversational humour.
Review of Humour and Relevance, by Francisco Yus
Philologia Hispalensis, 2016
Humour has constantly intrigued scholars and has been extensively analysed from disciplines as varied as anthropology, sociology, psychology, neuroscience or linguistics. Within this, it has received due attention from discourse and conversational analysts, semanticists, semioticians or pragmatists, for example. Researchers have looked into its manifold manifestations and a wide array of its fascinating, but often complex characteristics. Several models and theories have been proposed to account for this ever-present and ubiquitous phenomenon -suffice to mention the Semantic Script Theory of Humor or the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo and Raskin 1991), to name but two. Obviously, the post-Gricean, cognitive pragmatic framework of relevance theory Wilson 1986, 1995) could not be alien to the interest aroused by humour, so relevance theorists soon incorporated it into their research agendas. On the basis of this ground-breaking and revealing theory put forward thirty years ago by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, there have been many illuminating attempts to unravel how jokes, punning, monologues, ironies or sitcoms, among other types of humorous texts, work and achieve their effects (number of studies has not been accompanied so far by a unified, all-encompassing analysis of humour through the lens of relevance-theoretic pragmatics.
Yus’s and Jodłowiec’s relevance-theoretic approaches to jokes: a critical comparison
Anglica 22 (2): 87-99, 2013
The prime objective of this paper is to compare Yus’s (2003, 2004, 2008, 2011, 2012ab) and Jodłowiec’s (1991ab, 2008) accounts of jokes based on the assumptions of Relevance Theory (RT; Sperber and Wilson 1986 [1995], 2002, 2004). To meet this objective, I explore Yus’s and Jodłowiec’s classifications and models of joke comprehension since there is a strong link between the two phenomena.