LINGUIST List 12.1605

Mon Jun 18 2001

Books: Humor

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Gillian Caglayan, Humor: S. Attardo, Humorous Texts

New Publication from Mouton de Gruyter

>From the series Humor Research
Series Editors: Victor Raskin and Willibald Ruch

Salvatore Attardo
Humorous Texts
A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis

2001. 23 x 15,5 cm. xvii, 238 pages
Cloth. DM 176,- / EUR 89,99 / �S 1285,- (RRP) / sFr 151,- / approx. US$
88.00
ISBN 3-11-017068-X
(HUMOR RESEARCH 6)

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. They include authors from
the Renaissance to the modern period. Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's
Crime is reproduced in its integrity and the analysis examines every
instance of humor in the text (an absolute first in humor research or
literary analysis, for that matter). The complete French text, English
translation, and analysis of Allais'story Han Rybeck is also included.
Furthermore, a ground-breaking discussion of the quantitative
distribution of humor inselect texts is presented.

This book will appeal to humor researchers, and to linguists,
psychologists, cognitive scientists, and literary theorists interested
in humorous texts. Literary scholars will be particularly intersted as
the book bridges the gap between literary and linguistic analysis of
humor.

Content:

Preface
A cautionary tale - Acknowledgments

Preliminaries
The SSTH - The Structure of a Semantic Theory - The Semantic Theory of
Humor - The GTVH - Outline of the Theory - Methological and
metatheoretical issues

Literature Review
The Expansionist Approach - The Revisionist Approach

Semantic Analysis and Humor Analysis
Semantic and Pragmatic Tools - How is information added to the storage
area? - The Text World - Surface structure recall - Summing up

Beyond the Joke
Narrative vs. Conversation - Joke cycles - Conclusion

A Theory of Humorous Texts
Method of analysis - Narratives - Lines and their Configurations - A
typology of line position - Humorous Plots - Humorous Techniques -
General Considerations

Diffuse Disjunction
Register humor - Irony

Case Studies
Chuckles Bites the Dust: the opening sequence - Sexton's Cinderella - A
Merry Discourse of Meum and Tuum - Il nome della rosa: Analysis of one
strand - Han Rybeck ou le coup de l'�trier

"Lord Arthur Savile's Crime" by Oscar Wilde

Further Perspectives

Primary Sources
Works Cited
Index


For more information please contact the publisher:
Mouton de Gruyter
Genthiner Str. 13
10785 Berlin, Germany
Fax: +49 30 26005 222
e-mail: ordersdegruyter.de

Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter
http://www.degruyter.com