Assessing the SSTH and GTVH: A view from cognitive linguistics

Abstract

AbstractDespite its strong cognitive orientation in recent years, humor research still has paid relatively little attention to the paradigm of Cognitive linguistics (CL), which in light of its dynamic view on cognitive and semantic aspects of language in use, seems to provide an adequate framework for the analysis of humor. With regard to the “cognitive construal” of human experience as one of the basic notions of CL, this paper describes for three types of humorous texts in what ways construal operations are exploited, combined, and embedded in humorous discourse, as well as the way in which they relate to the achievement of humorous effects. It is demonstrated, accordingly, that CL contributes to a holistic account of humor as a highly marked and complex, yet structurally not irregular kind of language use. In this respect, this contribution is particularly critical about the category of Logical Mechanisms, defined in the GTVH as humor-specific operations that guide the process of incongruity resolution in humor interpretation. Instead, the present account advocates a prototype model of construal operations, in which incongruity and resolution appear as two perspectives of the same cognitive construal.