Meaning and Humour
Editorial CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Festland Spanien
- Verlag CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
- ISBN13 9780521181068
- ISBN10 0521181062
- Gegenstandsart Buch
- Buchseiten 366
- Jahr der Ausgabe 2012
- Sprache Englisch
- Bindung Taschenbuch
Abschnitte
General LinguisticsMeaning and Humour
Editorial CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Festland Spanien
Buch Details
How are humorous meanings generated and interpreted? Understanding a joke involves knowledge of the language code (a matter mostly of semantics) and background knowledge necessary for making the inferences to get the joke (a matter of pragmatics). This book introduces and critiques a wide range of semantic and pragmatic theories in relation to humour, such as systemic functional linguistics, speech acts, politeness and relevance theory, emphasising not only conceptual but also interpersonal and textual meanings. Exploiting recent corpus-based research, it suggests that much humour can be accounted for by the overriding of lexical priming. Each chapter's discussion topics and suggestions for further reading encourage a critical approach to semantic and pragmatic theory. Written by an experienced lecturer on the linguistics of the English language, this is an entertaining and user-friendly textbook for advanced students of semantics, pragmatics and humour studies.