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Although not all humour is strictly linguistic, much of it with little doubt is, in that it depends crucially for its existence on the manipulation and specific use of linguistic form. The verbal joke as one form of linguistic humour is the object of my investigation. A brief overview of various approaches to analysing jokes is given, including textual, discoursal, sociological, anthropological.
Jokes are products of spontaneous human creativity. They are mainly passed on in the verbal tradition. Strategies of remembering jokes with interesting differences between native and non-native speakers, children and adults are discussed. After a brief critical account of alternative theories, such as the incongruity, dominance, and catastrophe theories, is given, it is argued that ambiguity, that is the juxtaposition of more than one reading, is a crucial element for the existence of the majority of linguistic jokes.
One of the readings is unmarked, while the other(s) is (are) marked, and it is not until the punch line is delivered that both (all) these readings become accessible to the audience. A detailed typology of the types of linguistic ambiguity explored in jokes is proposed. Examples are provided and discussed. Some classificational endevours by other authors are noted and discussed. It is pointed out that the previous attempts have failed to deal with three important issues: the typology depends on what components of linguistic knowledge and stages of processing are recognized; the borderlines between different levels (such as the morphological, the phonological levels) may be fuzzy; in some cases ambiguity at several levels seems to be involved. The last problem presents special difficulties for the analyst. In an attempt to resolve these difficulties, a distinction between multi-level interdependent ambiguities and multi-level independent ambiguities is proposed. In the former, it is the lowest-level ambiguity that obligates the existence of ambiguity at higher levels; in the latter, there is no such entailment and in this case it is reasonable to recognize truly multiple, distinct ambiguities. A new concept, ambiguation, is introduced. It is understood as the set of purposeful devices aiming at enhancing the probability of the alternative (marked) reading(s). Certain well-noted characteristics of jokes, such as the tendency for jokes to depict intellectually deficient, immature, and dialect-speaking characters, are reanalysed as elements of ambiguation. Consequently, a commonly shared opinion that each joke must have a victim or "butt" is challenged. Different types of ambiguators are discussed and exemplified. Laughter is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of funniness. Funniness is here viewed from an audience subjective- perceptive angle. It is acknowledged that a huge variety of factors determine whether a given joke is perceived as funny. While it is certainly impossible to control for all those factors, it is compelling to try to determine some largely invariant factor which, with the usual "other things being equal" proviso, would be a relatively consistent predictor of funniness. Two previously proposed candidates for such a predictor are given and assessed critically: amount of incongruity and amount of cognitive effort. A new measure of funniness is proposed, expressed as the ratio of ambiguity to ambiguation.
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