L’implicito e l’esplicito linguistico in forme diverse di testi umoristici

In the present research, we discuss Humour Studies within Linguistics, focusing mainly on linguistic theories of humour including the Semantic Script Theory of Humour (SSTH; Raskin 1985), and the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH; Attardo 1994, 2017b). The study demonstrates different types of cultural conceptualisations (Sharifian 2017a, 2017b) that the interlocutors draw upon, such as cultural categories, cultural metaphors, and cultural schemas to create humour, and we argue that the General Theory of Verbal Humour does not account for culturally-constructed verbal humour. Hence, we argue that it is necessary to fill this gap in the most prevailing theory of verbal humour, the General Theory of Verbal Humour, by demonstrating how cultural conceptualisations must be considered in identifying and analysing instantiations of humour, in moving towards a comprehensive theory of culturally constructed humour.

The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) and the Semantic-Script Theory of Humor (SSTH) have been defined as the most influential linguistic humor theories of the last two decades. The GTVH was first presented in 1991, with the publication of Attardo and Raskin. The GTVH is an expansion of Raskin's SSTH, but it is also a part of Attardo's taxonomy of textual relationships. In Attardo's taxonomy, jokes could entertain relationships with other texts based on resemblance at the textual level, but also in relation to other texts. The GTVH was created to address these two issues, with a heavy emphasis on the second one. The GTVH was born out of the observation that the SSTH, despite its obvious advantages over other linguistic theories of humor, was not a complete theory. This solution was accomplished by the introduction of four other parameters, which, along with the script opposition, rounded up the six knowledge resources.

The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) has dominated the discussion of humor theory for the last quarter of a century. It generated a great deal of interest in humor studies by scholars both within and outside the discipline of linguistics. Problems are resident in GTVH, however, which have been inherited from its predecessor the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH). Script Opposition and Script Overlap are not adequately defined, nor are they sufficient for the identification of a joke-carrying text. The resource of the Logical Mechanism posited by GTVH may have complicated rather than simplified the matter as the list of proposed mechanisms are too loosely defined and woefully incomplete. The Ontological Semantics Theory of Humor (OSTH) has promised to demonstrate the adequacy of the linguistic theories of humor by the ability of computers to process natural language input to discriminate between joke-carrying and non-joke-carrying texts. That promise, also decades old, remains to be fulfilled, and it is questionable whether it can be fulfilled if based on SSTH and GTVH platforms.

The empirical study presented in this article aims to determine some of the linguistic and cultural elements that can influence the production process and the reception of humour and to verify the applicability of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) to humorous literary translation. 60 Vietnamese and 60 Italian participants had to read and rate the level of humorousness of excerpts taken from the Vietnamese novel Số Đỏ (Vũ Trọng Phụng, 1936) and its correspondent Italian translation (Il gioco indiscreto di Xuan, 2012). By comparing their feedback, it was possible to observe that one is more likely to appreciate humour when one is not part of the categories subject to ridicule/irony/satire; and that a direct contact with the original language and culture constitutes an important role in humour understanding and appreciating. Also, a comparison between the rating that the Italian participants assigned to the official Italian translation and an alternative version allowed us to analyze the role of Language Knowledge Resource (GTVH). According to the Italian participants, although the two versions of the translation, which share the first five levels of Knowledge Resources, were remarkably similar (as predicted by the GTVH), they were dissimilar in terms of humour and in readers' preferences. I therefore argue that, although the GTVH is a useful tool for analyzing and verifying the similarity between the source and target text, it has proved to be impractical and not always reliable if we want to use it as a parameter of the translation of literary humorous texts.

Ruch et al. (1993. Toward an empirical verification of the general theory of verbal humor. Humor 6(2). 123–36.) found that ordinary college students perceived joke similarity in a pattern that largely but not completely matched the pattern predicted by the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH, Attardo and Raskin. 1991. Script theory revis(it)ed: joke similarity and joke representation model. Humor 4(3–4). 293–47.). Stand-up comedians must not only perform jokes in front of audiences, but must write the jokes they deliver. Joke theft, the telling of a joke written and performed by another comedian without express permission, is a serious violation of community norms. A stolen joke need not have the same precise wording, hence it may be hypothesized that stand-up comedians would develop an increased sensitivity to joke synonymy. In the present study, working comedians rated joke similarity using a similar procedure to that of Ruch et al. (1993. Toward an empirical verification of the general theory of verbal humor. Humor 6(2). 123–36.). While the comedians’ responses did not differ dramatically from those of non-comedians in Ruch et al. (1993. Toward an empirical verification of the general theory of verbal humor. Humor 6(2). 123–36.), their perceived similarity followed the pattern predicted in the GTVH more closely. These findings suggest slightly but not markedly greater sensitivity to joke synonymy among working comedians and offer further empirical support for the GTVH.

This paper investigates the Arabic verbal humorous comments pertaining to COVID-19 on social media. The main objectives of the paper are to identify the distinct categories that are highlighted in those comments disseminated between March and September 2020, on the AlMamlaka and Roya Jordanian Facebook accounts. Additionally, the study examines the claim of Attardo and Raskins's (1991) that the "target" is an optional Knowledge Resource in the General Theory of Verbal Humor. The research design employed in this study is descriptive qualitative. The researchers conducted a thematic analysis to analyze 15 comments, applying the General Theory of Verbal Humor of Attardo and Raskin (1991). The analysis revealed eight emerging categories: governmental, gender, COVID-19, lockdown, behavior, conspiracy, geographical, and facemask jokes. The study found that humorous comments conform to the six Knowledge Resources of the General Theory of Verbal Humor. The most prominent logical mechanism used in the comments was irony and sarcasm, enabling Jordanians to shed light on hidden issues to express their reactions and feelings. The study also found that identifying the target in a humorous comment is crucial in determining the various categories of humorous comments. The research opens avenues for further exploration into the utilization and interpretation of humor in diverse cultural settings, during other natural disasters, and its impact on understanding humorous content.

The present study derives hypotheses from the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) and tests them on a sample of 534 subjects. Subjects are presented with three sets of jokes, each consisting of an anchor joke and comparison jokes in which variations in one and only one of the six Knowledge Resources (KR), script Opposition (SO), logical mechanism (LM), Situation (SI) target (TA), narrative strategy (NS), andlanguage (LA) occurred. Subjects rated the degree of similarity between the anchor joke and the six comparison jokes. The results support the hypothesis that the extent to which the similarity judgment is affected depends on the type of the KR manipulated. Also, there generally is a decreasing trend in similarity between the KRs LA and SO. Whereas there was a significant difference between all consecutive KRs, as predicted by the hierarchy postulated by the GTVH, SI and LM were not in the right order. Possible explanations for thisfact are discussed. This article presents and discusses a study which empirically Supports some of the Claims of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). After introducing the theory, the article will present the hypotheses derived from the theory that were tested and finally the results of the investigation.

The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) has been a significant pragmatics theory since Attardo and Raskin put it forward in 1991. Six knowledge resources (KR) are included in GTVH: script oppositions (SO), logical mechanisms (LM), situations (SI), targets (TA), narrative strategies (NS), and language (LA) to analyze verbal humor. As a comedic performance on stage, stand-up comedies have experienced explosive popularity in China in recent years. This paper extracted four excerpts from the final round of a stand-up comedy TV show “Rock & Roast” Series 5 and applies qualitative research to analyze them with the theory of GTVH. From the analysis, different KRs of SI and TA showed up to give the audience several interesting contents. In the SO KR, from the most to lowest abstract level are all used in the script. At the same time, LM, NS and LA KRs as tools serve for the contents. It is obvious that LM varies among these excerpts, but NS are usually the same and LA can be absent in the performances. The straightforward content KRs of SI and TA are more obvious, LM, but NS and LA are sometimes unnoticed, which are essential tools to make the text effective. It suggests the feasibility of combining Chinese stand-up comedy with pragmatics theory and it extends the traditional studies in this field.

Humour is one of the channels used in communication to express a concept or an idea. It can also be used to entertain people, such as in a TV show. This research focuses on the investigation of verbal perceptions of humour found in the transcription of the animated TV series Gravity Falls. Its purpose is to figure out what kinds of verbal humour can be found in the transcription of the animated television series Gravity Falls, as well as how the verbal humour in its transcription linguistically examined using the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). This study examined an episode of “Gravity Falls season 2: Not What He Seems” using a descriptive qualitative technique. The investigation discovered 29 linguistic humours in the research object, which were classified into 9 of the 12 types. The six Knowledge Resources in the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) are used to analyze the verbal humours previously discovered linguistically: Script Opposition (SO), Logical Mechanism (LM), Situation (SI), Target (TA), Narrative Strategy (NS), and Language (LA). To analyze the verbal humour, the analysis is done in a hierarchical order of the KRs.

The paper argues for the multiple advantages of applying cognitive linguistic concepts and frameworks to the study of basic mechanisms and conceptual, pragmatic and social aspects of musical parody a as a polyvalent, flexible, multimodal phenomenon, understood both as a musical genre which revolves around replication or imitation of pre-existing music, and as a comedic statement utilizing the latter technique. Points of convergence, and important differences, between traditional concepts offered by the most influential linguistic theories of humour, viz. Raskin’s (1985) Semantic Script Theory of Humour and Attardo & Raskin’s (1991) General Theory of Verbal Humour, are addressed, with particular emphasis on how the status and treatment of concepts of incongruity and its resolution are accommodated within the interpretative frameworks of frame- shifting (Coulson, 2001) and Blending Theory (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002). Both emerge as useful heuristics offered within the cognitive linguistic paradigm and suggested as applicable to (multimodal) humour research. These are argued to encompass and cater for both the sequential and the (predominately) non-sequential aspects of incongruity resolution (Ritchie, 2009) underlying musical parodies as sources of humorous amusement. Further motivating factors for the development and appreciation of parodies as humorous stimuli, such as the role of (word) play and listener familiarity with the borrowed music are addressed by focusing on the description of the distinctive cognitive-cultural mechanisms and goals underlying the opus of a particular artist, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic, by applying the abovementioned concepts and interpretative frameworks to the analysis of the techniques and goals behind his use of comedy music.

An application of the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) to the theory of humour translation is presented. The GTVH is presented as a theory that allows us to relate perceived differences between jokes to six hierarchically ordered Knowledge Resources (parameters), namely knowledge concerning Language; Narrative Strategies; Target(s); Situation; Logical Mechanism(s); Script Opposition(s). The GTVH’s contribution to theory on humour translation is the metric of joke similarity, which allows the translator to evaluate how much a translated joke differs from the source joke. Some strategies for applying the metric heuristics to translation are provided. Finally, the issue of the translation of puns is taken up and it is argued that humorous translation cannot be absolutely guaranteed in all cases.

For more than a quarter of a century, the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH) and its successor, the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), have been employed to characterize the factors that define a joke, to describe the components of jokes and their interrelationships, and to provide a model for the analysis of joke texts. But these theories have never been adequately scrutinized. When approached from the perspective of

The paper will discuss the following subtopics: Arthur Koestler's bisociation theory of humour and its reception; Victor Raskin's script-based theory of jokes (SSTH) in his Se- mantic Mechanisms of Humor; the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo and the attempt of testing GTVH by Willibald Ruch; Salvatore Attardo's Linear Theory of Humor (IDM); The analysis of puns by Attardo; Humour and pragmatic maxims (Raskin, Attardo, etc.); Attardo's Setup-Incongruity-Resolution -model (SIR); The further taxonomy of logical mechanisms (LM) of jokes by Attardo, Hempelmann, and Di Maio; the Anti-Festschrift for Victor Raskin.

This chapter deals with two of the three major linguistic theory of humor, the script-based Semantic-Script Theory of Humor, or SSTH, and the Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor, or OSTH. It addresses a number of issues, and the transitions may be sharp and also addresses the theory and practice of ontological semantics without humor and, following that, its application to humor. The chapter addresses more complexity in humor, analyzing another joke informally and then theoretically. SSTH, the first generation of the linguistic theory of humor, was a purely linguistic application of semantics to verbal jokes. OSTH, the latest, continues the enterprise on the advanced foundation of the latest theory of linguistic semantics. But the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) was an attempt of an interdisciplinary theory, including linguistics but not limited to it. Information about the world comes from the OST ontology, a constructed model of reality, a theory of the world.

Among modern cognitive approaches to uncovering the mechanism of humor generation, the most famous are the Semantic Script Theory of Humor and its improved version – the General Theory of Verbal Humor, which are united under the umbrella of frame/script incongruity inherent in humor. This study is devoted to one of the most discussed pragmatic approaches, which is a part of the General Theory of Verbal Humor, the so-called neo-Gricean theory of Raskin and Attardo. It consists in the fact that jokes, as well as other comic forms, constitute a non-bona-fide mode of communication, which is opposed to the Gricean model and accordingly, it is guided by the humour cooperative principle. On the basis of the analysis of these authors conception (Attardo & Raskin 1994; Attardo 1993, 2003, 2017, etc.) on non-observance of cooperative maxims in a humorous message a zone of productive criticism was highlighted, namely: insufficient distinction between the concepts of 'violation' vs 'flout' of maxims (Dynel 2008, 2013); lack of proper interest in the social context and emotional background of communication, presupposed by Relevance Theory and Politeness Theory, and, accordingly, the communicative norms are limited only by the cooperative principle of Grice; the lack of criteria for intentional violation of communicative maxims, necessary for the identification of humorous implicatures. The comic effect is more likely to be recognised, if, in the course of interpretation, the addressee discovers a repeated maxim flouting, as well as possible ignoring of other norms. Therefore, it is proposed to include to the generally accepted list of Grice's maxims Leach's principle of politeness, which is mostly focused not on the substantive aspect of communication, but on the social one: the speaker's attitude towards third parties in a status-role hierarchy. The obtained results of the theoretical exploration are integrated into an improved model of humor interpretation and illustrated by a intent-analysis of a verbal joke.