Analyzing jokes with the Intersecting Circles Model of humorous communication
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Francisco Yus
Francisco Yus teaches pragmatics at the University of Alicante, Spain. He has a PhD in linguistics and has specialised in the application of pragmatics (especially relevance theory) to media discourses and conversational issues. For instance, he has made two applications of pragmatics to characters in alternative comics (
Conversational cooperation in alternative comics , 1995;El discurso femenino en el comic alternative inglés , 1998), proposed a pragmatic verbal-visual model of communication in media discourses (La interpretación y la imagen de masas , 1997), studied the written-oral interface (La preeminencia de la voz , 1998) and developed a pragmatic approach to Internet-mediated communication (Ciberpragmática , Ariel 2001;Ciberpragmática 2.0 , Ariel 2010;Cyberpragmatics , John Benjamins, 2011). Latest research has to do with the application of relevance theory to the analysis of misunderstandings and irony in conversation, as well as to the production and interpretation of humorous discourses.
Abstract
Speakers of jokes are aware of the human cognitively rooted relevance-seeking inferential procedure (Sperber and Wilson 1995) and predict (i.e. metarepresent) the interlocutor’s steps leading to a valid interpretation of the utterance(s) in the joke. Specifically, speakers can predict (a) the accessibility to certain information which builds up a proper scenario for understanding the joke (make-sense frame), (b) the inferential steps taken to turn the words uttered into contextualized meaningful propositions (utterance interpretation), and (c) the awareness of cultural stereotypes regarding professions, nationalities, connoted places, sex roles, etc. (cultural frame). This inferred information (a-c) is exploited to generate humorous effects. In previous research (Yus forthcoming), the Intersecting Circles Model was proposed. It comprises seven types of jokes depending on whether the joke only relies on one of (a-c) or on combinations of them, which entails analyzing the extent to which (a-c) play or do not play a role in the generation of humorous effects. In this paper, 1000 jokes are analyzed and fitted into a type or combinations of (a-c). Several interesting humor-generating patterns are also isolated inside the seven preliminary joke types covered by the Model.
About the author
Francisco Yus teaches pragmatics at the University of Alicante, Spain. He has a PhD in linguistics and has specialised in the application of pragmatics (especially relevance theory) to media discourses and conversational issues. For instance, he has made two applications of pragmatics to characters in alternative comics (Conversational cooperation in alternative comics, 1995; El discurso femenino en el comic alternative inglés, 1998), proposed a pragmatic verbal-visual model of communication in media discourses (La interpretación y la imagen de masas, 1997), studied the written-oral interface (La preeminencia de la voz, 1998) and developed a pragmatic approach to Internet-mediated communication (Ciberpragmática, Ariel 2001; Ciberpragmática 2.0, Ariel 2010; Cyberpragmatics, John Benjamins, 2011). Latest research has to do with the application of relevance theory to the analysis of misunderstandings and irony in conversation, as well as to the production and interpretation of humorous discourses.
©[2013] by De Gruyter Mouton Berlin
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Editorial
- Analyzing jokes with the Intersecting Circles Model of humorous communication
- Clause chaining in Toposa: A pragmatic approach
- Where next for comrade? On the use of ideology-based address forms in post-Communist societies (with reference to modern-day Serbia)
- Online communication and students’ pragmatic choices in English
- Conflict talk and argumentative strategies in highly adversarial talk shows: The case of Al-Jazeera’s The Opposite Direction
- Indexing in fairy tales: Evidence for the role fairy tales play in children’s concept formation
- Review of Pragmatism. An Introduction by Michael Bacon
