Home Multimodal Humour: Integrating Blending Model, Relevance Theory, and Incongruity Theory
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Multimodal Humour: Integrating Blending Model, Relevance Theory, and Incongruity Theory

  • Ahmed Abdel-Raheem

    Ahmed Abdel-Raheem is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English Studies at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland. He was previously a guest lecturer at the Association of Critical Education in Wrocław, Poland. He holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Łódź, Poland, and is a former lecturer at Umm al-Qura University in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He is also founding editor and coeditor of the John Benjamins journal Moral Cognition and Communication. He has published internationally in a number of journals, such as Discourse and Society, Information Design Journal, Metaphor and the Social World, Pragmatics and Cognition, Visual Communication Quarterly, and Sciences de la Société. Moreover, he is a regular contributor to international news outlets, including The Guardian, Forbes, The Newnan Times-Herald, The Jerusalem Post, The Commentator, and Inside Sources, among others.

    EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: March 22, 2018

Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is to discuss humorous political cartoons contingent on pictorial and textual components, with the heuristic apparatus provided by Fauconnier and Turner’s (2002, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books) conceptual blending theory. Blending is discussed in reference to three approaches to humour known in topical literature, viz. bisociation (Koestler, 1964. The Act of Creation. London: Hutchinson), the incongruity-resolution model (Suls, 1972, A two-stage model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons: An information processing analysis. In: The Psychology of Humor, J. Goldstein and P. McGhee (Eds.), 81–100. New York: Academic Press; 1983, Cognitive processes in humour appreciation. In: Handbook of Humour Research, Vol. 1, P. McGhee and J. Goldstein (Eds.), 39–57. New York: Springer), and relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995, Relevance Theory: Communication and Cognition. 2nd. Blackwell: Oxford; Yus, 2003, Humour and the search for relevance. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(9):1295–1331; 2016, Humour and Relevance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins). Here, a corpus of 45 multimodal cartoons on the West is examined. A detailed discussion of examples aims to testify to the widespread and multifarious applicability of the incongruity-relevance-blending approach to the analysis of humorous cartoons. Additionally, an attempt is made to explain the difference between humorous and non-humorous blends.

About the author

Ahmed Abdel-Raheem

Ahmed Abdel-Raheem is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English Studies at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland. He was previously a guest lecturer at the Association of Critical Education in Wrocław, Poland. He holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Łódź, Poland, and is a former lecturer at Umm al-Qura University in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He is also founding editor and coeditor of the John Benjamins journal Moral Cognition and Communication. He has published internationally in a number of journals, such as Discourse and Society, Information Design Journal, Metaphor and the Social World, Pragmatics and Cognition, Visual Communication Quarterly, and Sciences de la Société. Moreover, he is a regular contributor to international news outlets, including The Guardian, Forbes, The Newnan Times-Herald, The Jerusalem Post, The Commentator, and Inside Sources, among others.

References

Abdel-Raheem, A. (2016). The JOURNEY metaphor and moral political cognition. Pragmatics & Cognition, 22(3):373–401.10.1075/pc.22.3.06abdSearch in Google Scholar

Abdel-Raheem, A. (2017a). Decoding images: Toward a theory of pictorial framing. Discourse & Society, 28(4):327–352.10.1177/0957926517702978Search in Google Scholar

Abdel-Raheem, A. (2017b). Can cartoons influence Americans’ attitudes toward bailouts? Visual Communication Quarterly, 24(3):174–187.10.1080/15551393.2016.1230472Search in Google Scholar

Attardo, S. (2006). Cognitive linguistics and humor. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 19:341–362.10.4324/9781351034708-24Search in Google Scholar

Attardo, S., and Raskin, V. (1991). Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model. Humor, 4:293–348.10.1515/humr.1991.4.3-4.293Search in Google Scholar

Bergen, B. (2003). To awaken a sleeping giant: Political cartoons in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. In: Language, Culture, and Mind, M. Achard and S. Kemmer (Eds.), 2–12. Stanford: CSLI.Search in Google Scholar

Bing, J., and Scheibman, J. (2014). Blended spaces as subversive feminist humor. In: Gender and Humor: Interdisciplinary and International Perspectives, D. Chairo and R. Baccolini (Eds.), 13–29. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Burmeister, J. M., and Carels, R. A. (2014). Weight-related humor in the media: Appreciation, distaste, and anti-fat attitudes. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(4):223–238.10.1037/ppm0000029Search in Google Scholar

Carroll, P. J., Young, J. R., and Guertin, M. S. (1992). Visual analysis of cartoons: A view from the far side. In: Eye Movements and Visual Cognition: Scene Perception and Reading, K. Rayner (Ed.), 444–461. New York: Springer-Verlag.10.1007/978-1-4612-2852-3_27Search in Google Scholar

Clark, H. H. (1996). Using Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620539Search in Google Scholar

Cohn, N., Murthy, B., and Foulsham, T. (2016). Meaning above the head: Combinatorial constraints on the visual vocabulary of comics. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 28(5):559–574.10.1080/20445911.2016.1179314Search in Google Scholar

Coulson, S. (1996). The Menendez brothers virus: Analogical mapping in blended spaces. In: Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language, A. E. Goldberg (Ed.), 67–81. Palo Alto: CSLI.Search in Google Scholar

Coulson, S. (1997). Semantic Leaps: The role of frame-shifting and conceptual blending in meaning construction. (Doctoral thesis). UC San Diego.Search in Google Scholar

Coulson, S. (2001a). What’s so funny? Conceptual blending in humorous examples. Downloadable at http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~coulson/funstuff/funny.htmlSearch in Google Scholar

Coulson, S. (2001b). Semantic Leaps: Frame-Shifting and Conceptual Blending in Meaning Construction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511551352Search in Google Scholar

Coulson, S. (2003). Reasoning and rhetoric: Conceptual blending in political and religious rhetoric. In: Research and Scholarship in Integration Processes, E. Oleksy and B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Eds.), 59–88. Lodz, Poland: Lodz University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Coulson, S. (2005a). What’s so funny? Cognitive semantics and jokes. Cognitive Psychopathology/Psicopatologia Cognitive, 2(3):67–78.Search in Google Scholar

Coulson, S. (2005b). Extemporaneous blending: Conceptual integration in humorous discourse from talk radio. Style, 39(107–1):22.Search in Google Scholar

Coulson, S. (2005c). Sarcasm and the space structuring model. In: The Literal and the Nonliteral in Language and Thought, S. Coulson and B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (Eds.), 129–144. Berlin: Peter Lang. Retrieved from (pp. 1–14). http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~coulson/spaces/coulson-sarc.pdfSearch in Google Scholar

Coulson, S., Urbach, P., and Kutas, M. (2006). Looking back: Joke comprehension and the space structuring model. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 19(3):229–250 Downloadable at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.381.1013&rep=rep1&type=pdf10.1515/HUMOR.2006.013Search in Google Scholar

Coulson, S., and Williams, F. (2004). Hemispheric asymmetries and joke comprehension. Neuropsychologia, 43(1):128–41. Downloadable at 1–14: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e845/55cc028044e53ea3415ee626dc80db6fd5b1.pdf10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.03.015Search in Google Scholar

Deckers, L. (1993). On the validity of a weight-judging paradigm for the study of humor. Humor, 6:43–56.10.1515/humr.1993.6.1.43Search in Google Scholar

Dynel, M. (2009). Humorous Garden-Paths: A Pragmatic-Cognitive Study. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

Dynel, M. (2011). Blending the incongruity-resolution model and the conceptual integration theory: The case of blends in pictorial advertising. International Review of Pragmatics, 3:59–83. doi:10.1163/187731011X561009.Search in Google Scholar

Dynel, M. (2013). When does irony tickle the hearer? Towards capturing the characteristics of humorous irony. In: Developments in Linguistic Humour Theory, M. Dynel (Ed.), 298–320. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/thr.1Search in Google Scholar

El Refaie, E. (2003). Understanding visual metaphor: The example of newspaper cartoons. Visual Communication, 2(1):75–95. doi:10.1177/1470357203002001755.Search in Google Scholar

El Refaie, E. (2005). “Our purebred ethnic compatriots”: Subversive irony in newspaper journalism. Journal of Pragmatics, 37(6):781–797.10.1016/j.pragma.2004.10.017Search in Google Scholar

El Refaie, E. (2009a). What makes us laugh? verbo-visual humour in newspaper cartoons. In: The World Told and the World Shown: Multisemiotic Issues, E. Ventola and A. J. M. Guijarro (Eds.), 75–89. London; New York: Palgrave.Search in Google Scholar

El Refaie, E. (2009b). Metaphor in political cartoons: Exploring audience responses. In: Multimodal Metaphor, C. Forceville and U.-E. Aparisi (Eds.), 173–196. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar

El Refaie, E. (2011). The pragmatics of humor reception: Young people’s responses to a newspaper cartoon. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 24(1):87–108. doi:10.1515/HUMR.2011.005.Search in Google Scholar

El-Bendary, M. (2010). The Egyptian Press and Coverage of Local and International Events. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.Search in Google Scholar

Fauconnier, G. (1985). Mental spaces. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Fauconnier, G. (1999). Methods and generalizations. In: Cognitive Linguistics: Foundations, Scope, and Methodology, T. Janssen and G. Redeker (Eds.), 95–127. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110803464.95Search in Google Scholar

Fauconnier, G., and Turner, M. (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar

Fauconnier, G., and Turner, M. (2003). Conceptual blending, form and meaning. Recherches En Communication: Sémiotique Cognitive, 19:57–86.10.14428/rec.v19i19.48413Search in Google Scholar

Feyaerts, K., and Brône, G. (2002). Humor through ‘double grounding: Structural interaction of optimality principles. In: The Way We Think: A Research Symposium on Conceptual Integration and the Nature and Origin of Cognitively Modern Human Beings (Odense, Denmark, August 19–23, 2002). Odense Working Papers in Language and Communication, Vol. I And II, A. Hougaard and S. N. Lund (Eds.), 313–336. Odense: Odense University, Institute of Language and Communication.Search in Google Scholar

Forabosco, G. (1992). Cognitive aspects of the humour process: The concept of incongruity. Humor, 5:9–26.10.1515/humr.1992.5.1-2.45Search in Google Scholar

Forabosco, G. (2008). Is the concept of incongruity still a useful construct for the advancement of humor research? Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 4:45–62.10.2478/v10016-008-0003-5Search in Google Scholar

Forceville, C. (2005). Addressing an audience: Time, place, and genre in Peter Van Straaten’s calendar cartoons. Humor, 18(3): 247–278.Search in Google Scholar

Forceville, C. (1996). Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203272305Search in Google Scholar

Forceville, C. (2004). Review of Fauconnier and Turner (2002). Metaphor and Symbol, 19:83–89.10.1207/S15327868MS1901_5Search in Google Scholar

Forceville, C. (2011). Pictorial runes in Tintin and the Picaros. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(3):875–890. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.014.Search in Google Scholar

Forceville, C. (2014). Relevance theory as a model for multimodal communication. In: Visual Communication, D. Machin (Ed.), 51–70. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110255492.51Search in Google Scholar

Forceville, C., and Urios-Aparisi, E. (2009). Introduction. In: Multimodal Metaphor, C. Forceville and E. Urios-Aparisi (Eds.), 3–17. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110215366Search in Google Scholar

Ghazal, R. (2015, July 23). An Eid anthem from the 1980s is enjoying a new lease of life. The National. Retrieved from http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/the-review/an-eid-anthem-from-the-1980s-is-enjoying-a-new-lease-of-lifeSearch in Google Scholar

Goatly, A. (2007). Washing the Brain: The Hidden Ideology of Metaphor. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/dapsac.23Search in Google Scholar

Gray, W. A. (2015). Kushy Koala and his mates in Japan. Bloomington, Ind.: Xlibris.Search in Google Scholar

Greenberg, B. S., Eastin, M., Hofschire, L., Lachlan, K., and Brownell, K. D. (2003). Portrayals of overweight and obese individuals on commercial Television.”. American Journal of Public Health, 93(8):1342–1348.10.2105/AJPH.93.8.1342Search in Google Scholar

Hofstadter, D., and Gabora, L. (1989). Synopsis of the workshop on humor and cognition. Humor, 2:417–440.Search in Google Scholar

Johnson, M. (1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226177847.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Kapferer, J. (2002). Corporate brand and organizational identity. In: Corporate and Organizational Identities: Integrating Strategy, Marketing, Communication and Organizational Perspectives, B. Moingeon and G. Soenen (Eds.), 175–193. London/New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203361726.ch9Search in Google Scholar

Keith-Spiegel, P. (1972). Early conceptions of humour: Varieties and issues. In: The Psychology of Humour, J. Goldstein and P. McGhee (Eds.), 3–39. New York: Academic Press.10.1016/B978-0-12-288950-9.50007-9Search in Google Scholar

Kennedy, M., Green, D., and Vervaeke, J. (1993). Metaphoric thought and devices in pictures. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 8(3):243–255.10.1207/s15327868ms0803_9Search in Google Scholar

Koestler, A. (1964). The Act of Creation. London: Hutchinson.Search in Google Scholar

Koller, V. (2009). Brand images: Multimodal metaphor in corporate branding messages. In: Multimodal Metaphor, C. Forceville and E. Urios-Aparisi (eds.), 45–71. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar

Kövecses, Z. (2010). Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Laineste, L. (2002). Take it with a grain of salt: The kernel of truth in topical jokes. Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 21:7–25.10.7592/FEJF2002.21.jokesSearch in Google Scholar

Lakoff, G. (2008). The political mind: Why you can’t understand 21st century politics with an 18th century brain. New York, NY: Viking.Search in Google Scholar

Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

MacAskill, E., and Chulov, M. (2014, October 22). Isis apparently takes control of US weapons airdrop intended for Kurds. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/22/isis-us-airdrop-weapons-pentagonSearch in Google Scholar

Marín-Arrese, J. (2008). Cognition and culture in political cartoons. Intercultural Pragmatics, 5:1–18.10.1515/IP.2008.001Search in Google Scholar

Martin, R. (2007). The Psychology of Humor. An Integrative Approach. Burlington, MA: Elsevier.Search in Google Scholar

Morreall, J. (1983). Taking Laughter Seriously. Albany: State University of New York.Search in Google Scholar

Morreall, J. (1989). Enjoying incongruity. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 2(1):1–18.10.1515/humr.1989.2.1.1Search in Google Scholar

Nazemroaya, M. (2006, November 18). Plans for redrawing the Middle East: The project for a “New Middle East.” Global Research. Retrieved from http://www.globalresearch.ca/plans-for-redrawing-the-middle-east-the-project-for-a-new-middle-east/3882Search in Google Scholar

Niemeier, S. (2003). Straight from the heart: Metonymic and metaphorical explorations. In: Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective, A. Barcelona (Ed.), 195–214. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110894677.195Search in Google Scholar

O’Connor, F. (2009). Obesity and the Media. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.Search in Google Scholar

Pagán Cánovas, C., and Turner, M. (2016). Generic integration templates for fictive communication. In: The Conversation Frame: Forms and Functions of Fictive Interaction, E. Pascual and S. Sandler (Eds.), 45–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/hcp.55.03pagSearch in Google Scholar

Partington, A. (2006). The Linguistics of Laughter: A Corpus-Assisted Study of Laughter-Talk. Oxon: Routledge Studies in Linguistics.10.4324/9780203966570Search in Google Scholar

Raskin, V. (1985). Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.Search in Google Scholar

Rayner, K., Rotello, M., and Stewart, J. (2011). Integrating text and pictorial information: Eye movements when looking at print advertisements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 7(3):219–226.10.1037/1076-898X.7.3.219Search in Google Scholar

Ritchie, G. (2004). The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203406953Search in Google Scholar

Rothbart, M. K. (1976). Incongruity, problem-solving and laughter. In: Humor and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications, A. J. Chapman and H. C. Foot (Eds.), 37–54. New York: Wiley and Sons.Search in Google Scholar

Ruch, W. (1992). Assessment of appreciation of humor: Studies with the 3WD humor test. In: Advances in Personality Assessment, Vol. 9, C. Spielberger and J. Butcher (Eds.), 27–75. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Search in Google Scholar

Ruch, W. (2008). Psychology of humor. In: The Primer of Humor Research, V. Raskin (Ed.), 17–100. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gryuter.10.1515/9783110198492.17Search in Google Scholar

Ruch, W., and Hehl, F. J. (1998). A two-mode model of humor appreciation: Its relation to aesthetic appreciation and simplicity-complexity of personality. In: The Sense of Humor: Explorations of a Personality Characteristic, W. Ruch (Ed.), 109–142. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110804607.109Search in Google Scholar

Scott, B. (2004). Picturing irony: The subversive power of photography. Visual Communication, 3(1):31–59.10.1177/1470357204039597Search in Google Scholar

Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance Theory: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance Theory: Communication and Cognition. 2nd. Blackwell: Oxford.Search in Google Scholar

Suls, J. (1972). A two-stage model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons: An information processing analysis. In: The Psychology of Humor, J. Goldstein and P. McGhee (Eds.), 81–100. New York: Academic Press.10.1016/B978-0-12-288950-9.50010-9Search in Google Scholar

Suls, J. (1983). Cognitive processes in humour appreciation. In: Handbook of Humour Research, Vol. 1, P. McGhee and J. Goldstein (Eds.), 39–57. New York: Springer.10.1007/978-1-4612-5572-7_3Search in Google Scholar

Turner, M. (2001). Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Watson, S. (2014, November, 18). Iraqi intelligence: USA is supplying ISIS with weapons, food. Infowars. Retrieved from http://www.infowars.com/iraqi-intelligence-usa-is-supplying-isis-with-weapons-food/Search in Google Scholar

Wilson, D., and Sperber, D. (2012). Explaining irony. In: Meaning and Relevance, D. Wilson and D. Sperber (Eds.), 123–145. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139028370.008Search in Google Scholar

Yus, F. (2003). Humour and the search for relevance. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(9):1295–1331.10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00179-0Search in Google Scholar

Yus, F. (2006). Inferring from comics: A multi-stage account. In: El Discurs Del Còmic (Quaderns De Filologia, Estudis De Comunicació, Vol. III), P. Sancho Cremades, C. Gregori Signes and S. Renard (eds.), 223–249. València: Universitat de València.Search in Google Scholar

Yus, F. (2016). Humour and Relevance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/thr.4Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2018-3-22

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 25.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/mc-2017-0013/html
Scroll to top button