Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis

by Salvatore Attardo

Overview

This book presents a theory of long humorous texts based on a revision and an upgrade of the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH), a decade after its first proposal. The theory is informed by current research in psycholinguistics and cognitive science. It is predicated on the fact that there are humorous mechanisms in long texts that have no counterpart in jokes. The book includes a number of case studies, among them Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Allais' story Han Rybeck. A ground-breaking discussion of the quantitative distribution of humor in select texts is presented.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110170689
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	05/29/2001
Series:	Humor Research [HR] , #6
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Salvatore Attardo is Professor at the English Department of Youngstown State University, USA.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
0.1	A cautionary tale	vii
0.2	Acknowledgments	ix
0.2.1	Publications	ix
0.2.2	People	x
1	Preliminaries	1
1.1	The SSTH	1
1.1.1	The SSTH's Main Hypothesis	1
1.1.2	Scripts	2
1.2	The Structure of a Semantic Theory	9
1.2.1	Formal Semantic Analysis	9
1.2.2	Inferential Explosion	15
1.2.3	Is this a formal analysis?	16
1.3	The Semantic Theory of Humor	17
1.3.1	Overlapping	17
1.3.2	Oppositeness	18
1.3.3	The Doctor's Wife Joke	21
1.4	The GTVH	22
1.4.1	Language (LA)	22
1.4.2	Narrative Strategy (NS)	23
1.4.3	Target (TA)	23
1.4.4	Situation (SI)	24
1.4.5	Logical Mechanism (LM)	25
1.4.6	The KRs: Script Opposition (SO)	26
1.4.7	The Joke, According to the GTVH	27
1.5	Outline of the Theory	28
1.6	Methodological and metatheoretical issues	30
1.6.1	Competence, not performance	30
1.6.2	Semiotics, Text, Narrative	32
1.6.3	The role of intuition in humor research	33
2	Literature Review	37
2.1	The Expansionist Approach	37
2.1.1	Chlopicki	38
2.1.2	Kolek	39
2.2	The Revisionist Approach	41
2.2.1	Holcomb	41
2.2.2	Wenzel	42
2.2.3	Palmer	44
2.2.4	A digression: Jolles on jokes	45
3	Semantic Analysis and Humor Analysis	47
3.1	Semantic and Pragmatic Tools	47
3.1.1	Storage Area	47
3.1.2	Contents of the Storage Area	48
3.1.3	Scripts	53
3.2	How is information added to the storage area?	54
3.3	The Text World	57
3.4	Surface structure recall	58
3.5	Summing up	59
4	Beyond the Joke	61
4.1	Narrative vs. Conversation	61
4.1.1	Stand-up routines	62
4.1.2	Joke telling contests	65
4.1.3	Conversation	66
4.2	Joke cycles	69
4.2.1	Definition of Joke Cycle	69
4.2.2	A little history	70
4.2.3	Two generations of jokes	70
4.2.4	Recapitulation	78
4.3	Conclusion	78
5	A Theory of Humorous Texts	79
5.1	Method of analysis	79
5.2	Narratives	79
5.3	Lines and their Configurations	82
5.3.1	Jab lines	82
5.3.2	Punch lines	83
5.3.3	Strands	83
5.3.4	Repetition	85
5.3.5	Stacks	86
5.3.6	Intertextual jokes	87
5.3.7	Bridges and Combs	87
5.4	A typology of line position	88
5.4.1	No line	88
5.4.2	Final punch line	89
5.4.3	Episodic	90
5.4.4	Mere sequence of jab lines with final punch line	91
5.4.5	Bathtub placement	91
5.5	Humorous Plots	92
5.5.1	Narratives Structurally Similar to Jokes	92
5.5.2	Metanarrative Plots	94
5.5.3	Plots with Humorous Fabulae	97
5.5.4	Plots with Serious Fabulae	98
5.5.5	Humorous disruption and realistic illusion	98
5.6	Humorous Techniques	99
5.6.1	Coincidences	99
5.6.2	Hyperdetermined	100
5.7	General Considerations	101
6	Diffuse Disjunction	103
6.0.1	Discrete or diffuse disjunctors	103
6.1	Register humor	104
6.1.1	Literature Review	104
6.1.2	Register Humor in T. L. Peacock	106
6.2	Irony	110
6.2.1	Principle of least disruption	112
6.2.2	A contextual-appropriateness theory of irony	114
6.2.3	Reasons for using irony	119
6.2.4	Irony and Humor	122
6.2.5	A Passage from Voltaire's Candide	123
7	Case Studies	127
7.1	Chuckles Bites the Dust: the opening sequence	128
7.2	Sexton's Cinderella	134
7.2.1	Graphs	139
7.2.2	Stacks	141
7.3	A Merry Discourse of Meum and Tuum	142
7.4	Il nome della rosa: Analysis of one strand	148
7.4.1	A text with more than one model reader	149
7.4.2	A Serious Novel with a Humor Strand	149
7.5	Han Rybeck ou le coup de l'etrier	150
7.5.1	Overall Analysis	151
7.5.2	Schematic representation of HRCI	155
7.5.3	The text of Han Rybeck ou le coup de l'etrier	157
7.5.4	English Translation of HRCI	160
8	"Lord Arthur Savile's Crime"	163
8.1	Chapter I	163
8.2	Chapter II	174
8.3	Chapter III	176
8.4	Chapter IV	185
8.5	Chapter V	188
8.6	Chapter VI	199
9	Further Perspectives	203
9.1	A quantitative look at LASC	203
9.2	General Conclusions	206
9.3	Limitations of the Model	207
	Primary Sources	209
	Works Cited	211
	Index	226

Editorial Reviews

Attardo (Youngstown State U.) explores the issue of what makes narrative texts which are longer than jokes function as . Coverage includes an overview of linguistically based humor research, a review of literature on humorous narratives, the semantic and pragmatic tools necessary to model the text, intermediate length texts sharing some of the features of longer and short texts, the tools for handling the humorous aspects of long texts, humorous texts lacking a distinct punch line, and the application of the author's method in a number of case studies from a range of genres, languages (English, French, Italian), and historical periods (1600 to the present). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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