LINGUISTIC HUMOR AND LANGUAGE PLAY
There are many different types of linguistic humor: phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. There are
Oxymorons (Civil War),
Metaphors (raining cats and dogs),
Slang (T’sup),
Allusions (Jiminy Cricket),
Anagrams (George Bush = He bugs Gore),
Chiasmus (Aging is a matter of mind over matter;
if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.),
Enigma (It’s been a strange day.
First, I found a hat full of money,
and then I was chased by an angry man with a guitar),
Eponymy (Gloomy Gus),
Irony (Paglacci is not a happy clown),
Nonsense (T’was brillig and the slithy toves),
Palindromes (Dammit I’m mad),
Synecdoche (“Father, he’s asked for my hand.”
Father responds, “It’s the whole thing, or nothing.”),
and Zeugma (A little song. A little dance. A little seltzer down your pants).
How important is the study of linguistic humor and language play in the field of linguistics?
Don L. F. Nilsen
You might include the fields of scatolinguistics and pornolinguistics created by James D. McCawley, whereby linguistics itself became a vehicle for humor. "English sentences without overt grammatical subject" is a classic.
https://babel.ucsc.edu/~hank/quangphucdong.pdf
https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027285881
https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027285881#chapters
Karl: Thanks for your help. Check oot the end of this revised PowerPoint. Thanks again. P.S I had forgotten to include the James McCawley Festschrift--STUDIES FROM OUT IN LEFT FIELD, defamatory essays published in honor of his 34th or 35th birthday. This may be the first significant example of linguists demonstrating that they have a sense of humor.
Dear Don, thank you for another interesting topic. It might be interesting to include also children's humor. It shows the process of language acquisition by kids, their misunderstandings of language mechanisms related to their age of development (e.g. word formation and semantics), and the comparison of the logical relation with the logical structures presented in the article about Humor Translation by S. Attardo. Another interesting issue is bilingual humor (e.g. "No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder"). Just some thoughts...
Recently, I was also thinking about humor in literature (e.g. M. Twain). Of course, these jokes follow certain language patterns. But here I would have a question: the humorous passages from literature frequently occur as aphorisms that characterize the corresponding situations in the real life. Could they belong to a special category of language humor based on the combination of three properties: their "narrative" function, (micro)monologue, and their source (e.g. fiction literature)?
Elena: Again, your comments are spot on. Here is our PowerPoint about "Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature." J. K. Rowling also had some marvelous irony and word play in her Harry Potter books.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Correction