Issues in Conversational Joking

Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359 www.elsevier.
com/locate/pragma
Issues in conversational joking

Neal R. Norrick
Chair of English Linguistics, Saarland University, 66041 Saarbru cken, Germany Received 1 June 2001; received in revised form 19 October 2002
Abstract In this article, I explore the main theoretical issues facing researchers in conversational humor today. In particular, I address (1) the structure of humorous discourse; (2) the forms of conversational humor: jokes, anecdotes, wordplay, irony; (3) the interpersonal functions of conversational humor: aggression versus rapport; (4) single-stage versus multi-stage processing of humor; and (5) the description of timing in word play and narrative jokes. # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Humor; Jokes; Conversation; Relevance; Frames; Aggression; Rapport
1. The structure of humorous discourse Classical treatments of humor from Plato and Aristotle on revolved around the hostility experienced toward some ridiculous object and the benecial eects of humor as a social corrective. Hobbes (1840, 1909) modern formulation of superiority theory concentrated on the feeling of sudden glory we experience in laughing at the foibles and misfortunes of others. Bergson (1911), too, focused on human situations which evoke laughter through our recognition of incongruity in the mechanical encrusted upon the living. Kant was the rst to analyze the humorous object in terms of incongruity arising from the disappointment of a strained expectation, and Schopenhauer was the rst to expressly describe the sudden perception of incongruity as the basis of laughter. Bateson (1953, 1972) proposed more explicitly that the humorous incongruity consisted in a clash of opposed frames; and Koestler (1964) developed the notion of bisociation as the simultaneous perception of an object within two contrasting frames of reference. Though all so-called
E-mail address: n.norrick@mx.uni-saarland.de (N.R. Norrick). 0378-2166/03/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00180-7
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N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359
incongruity theories describe the humorous object in terms of clashing frames of reference or sets of expectations, they do not focus on the humorous text. Freud (1960) initiated the linguistic analysis of the humorous text in identifying joke techniques in terms of sounds, syllables, repetition, and variation. Freud further related the compression he found in joke techniques to a saving of psychic energy, which resulted in the release of repressed emotion as laughter. Other approaches to humor like Fry (1963) and Mindess (1971) posit similar types of release, but they lack the exact description of language structures Freud oers, and so are of less interest to linguists. Raskin (1985) nally provided an explicit description of joke texts as simultaneously compatible with opposed semantic scripts. Attardo and Raskin (1991) and Raskin and Attardo (1994) subsequently eshed out the analysis of jokes to a General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), including pragmatic components. Giora (1991, 1995) is developing a discourse theory of humor based on information ow and relevance in texts. This discourse theory accounts for both canned jokes and irony in a unied way, and this would make it preferable to the GTVH, other things being equal; but as currently formulated, neither theory attempts to describe the spontaneous wordplay characteristic of everyday talk, so this will be a point of comparison in the following. Rather than taking sides in the debate between these two positions at this point, I will briey present and compare the two approaches to humorous texts and leave till later questions about humor in conversational interaction. I hope to show fairly general agreement about the underlying structure of the humorous text. Then I will point out various problems facing all the current theories. Raskin (1985) rst proposed the semantic script theory of jokes, since revised with Attardo as the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo and Raskin, 1991; Raskin and Attardo, 1994). The theory employs semantic scripts (frames, schemas) to model the recipients use of linguistic and real-world knowledge to interpret joke texts. The lexical entry for a word is a script, a cognitive structure including commonsense knowledge of things, processes, and procedures; as such, it goes far beyond what a standard dictionary entry normally contains. These scripts are represented as graphs with lexical nodes and semantic links between the nodes. As each succeeding sentence comes into play, combinatorial rules lter out inappropriate scripts on the way to a composite interpretation; the rules assign default readings unless previous information forces a special interpretation, and they allow recursion to information in the foregoing text. Recursion models the recipients ability to choose appropriate contexts, and to revise choices in light of new information. On the basis of this semantic theory, the GTVH denes the joke as a text compatible with two scripts opposed to each other in specic ways: at the most abstract level, the joke opposes real to unreal, or the real world versus the world imagined in the joke; at the next level, it creates oppositions like actual vs. non-actual, normal vs. abnormal, possible vs. impossible; at the deepest level, these are manifested as good vs. bad, life vs. death, sex vs. non-sex etc. Typically, some semantic script-switch trigger in the punchline of the joke forces the passage from one script to another, as in the classic one-liner below, where I bit him compels the recipient to re-analyze the phrase have a bite in the build-up of the joke. The switch from an idiomatic to a non-idiomatic
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reading is a common script-switch trigger, as are situational ambiguity, true polysemy and homophony, phonetic similarity, and so on. (1) A bum came up to me this morning and said he hadnt had a bite in weeks, so I bit him. The GTVH includes a special set of humor scripts, which go beyond our world knowledge of the events they cover, and include conventional joke topoi associated with such matters as sex, ethnicity, and politics. These scripts pertain only to groups of jokes, and we learn them through contact with the appropriate texts, just as we learn the conventions for sonnets, romantic comedy, and so forth. The GTVH distinguishes joke patterns on the basis of their logical mechanisms and their script oppositions, though it makes allowances for dierences in language or wording, in narrative strategy, in the situation described, and in the butt or particular target group or person within a single basic joke. Let us now see how the GTVH, originally formulated as a theory of canned joke texts, can also apply to spontaneous conversational joking: the wordplay, banter, and irony so familiar to and frequent in everyday talk. Since canned jokes are often structured around puns and misunderstandings, indeed around dialogue, the theory naturally extends to many types of joking, though irony presents manifold problems of its own. A brief consideration of a conversational pun will demonstrate the potential for script-based analysis of conversational joking. In the following transcription, (2), of a passage of recorded conversation,1 Roger is talking about dolphins within an extended discussion of human and animal intelligence, when Jason creates a pun by reanalyzing the foregoing utterance: He picks up the invented word poddy from the previous turn due to its phonetic similarity with party, and cleverly combines it with animal in reference to the dolphins being discussed to echo the popular phrase party animal. (2) Roger: And it seems to be a completely egalitarian band. There isnt a leader in a dolphin- do they have pods?
All conversational passages cited in this paper were recorded and transcribed by my students and me according to the conventions summarized below. The examples in the rst four sections were previously treated in Norrick (1993). Shes out. Oh yeah? nine, ten. Damn bu- but says Oh {sigh} Period shows falling tone in preceding element. Question mark shows rising tone in preceding element. Comma indicates a level, continuing intonation. Italics show heavy stress. A single dash indicates a cut o. Double quotes mark speech set o by speakers voice. Curly braces enclose editorial comments and untranscribable elements.
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Jason: Roger:
Jason: Roger: Jason: Roger:
I dont know what theyre called. Whales are pods. I dont know what dolphins are. I guess theyre pods too. Poddies. (1.3) Anyway {laughing}. Yeah but I meanTheyre poddy animals. {laughs} {laughs} Oooh. Thats- thats like a blow to the midri, yknow. {laughing}
As in the canned joke in (1) above, we can recognize poddy animals as a semantic script-switch trigger which forces the passage from the script of dolphins to one of party fanatics. Again we have a switch from a real to a non-real script and from the animal to the human realm. Of course, theres no typical joke script involved, but this is as we would expect from a simple pun. The great strengths of the GTVH are its explicitness and testability. It has been successfully implemented on the computer for the analysis of a wide range of joke texts (see Raskin and Attardo, 1994). Finally, Raskin and Attardo have developed the notion of jokes as non-bona de communication to account for their failure to adhere to normal conditions on truthfulness and relevance in discoursea matter I will address in a separate section below. Of interest here is an evaluation of the GTVH as an account of conversational humor. We have just seen initial evidence that it will apply to (some types of) conversational puns; but much research remains to be done if we want to extend the GTVH to provide a unied account of jokes, anecdotes, joking, and irony, and the personal anecdotes told in conversation. Further, as conceived, formulated and tested, GTVH describes joke texts rather than conversational joke performances. It relies on scripts attached to words, and says nothing of facial expressions, gestures, props, imitations of voices and noises, or other uncoded, non-script behavior. Even the prosody and timing of the oral joke performance remain outside its purview at present. Let us now consider a second theory of humor due to Giora and her associates (Giora, 1985a,b, 1991, 1995, 1997, 1999; Giora and Fein, 1999; Giora et al., 1998). By contrast with Raskins semantic theory of joke texts, Gioras theory is discoursebased and primarily oriented toward (nonconventional) irony. Giora assumes a theory of discourse in which a well-formed text: (1) conforms to the relevance requirement, so that all its messages are conceived of as related to a discourse topica generalization generally stated explicitly at the beginning of the discourse; (2) conforms to the graded informativeness condition, viz., that each proposition be gradually more informative (but at least not less informative) than the preceding one; and (3) explicitly marks any deviation from the previous requirements with a digressive connector such as by the way or after all. The initial phase of discourse interpretation is guided by the graded salience principle, which dictates that we always access salient meanings rst. Salience is coded in the mental lexicon, and aected by conventionality, frequency, familiarity,
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and prototypicality. Less salient meanings get activated more slowly and might reach sucient levels of activation, if the most salient meaning fails to match the context. In the second, contextual integration phase, activated meanings may be either retained, or suppressed as irrelevant or disruptive, or they may be allowed to fade. As to irony, (1) conforms to the relevance requirement in that it introduces information about the discourse topic; but (2) violates the graded informativeness condition in that it introduces a proposition whose salient meaning is either too informative or not informative enough; and (3) thereby forces the recipient to activate a marked, less or nonsalient interpretation (in line with Gioras analysis of irony as a kind of indirect negation of the stated proposition) without, however, suppressing the salient but inappropriate meaning. Jokes (to be precise: joke punchlines) also (1) conform to the relevance requirement; but (2) violate the graded informativeness condition in introducing a markedly too informative proposition; and (3) thereby force the recipient to go on beyond (and suppress) the unmarked interpretation in order to discover a second, less salient or marked one. In the one-liner cited as (1) above, the most salient interpretation of I bit him violates the graded informativeness condition in introducing an unforeseen, less salient proposition involving jaws and teeth, and this forces the recipient to switch from the most salient, idiomatic interpretation of the phrase have a bite to the decidedly less salient interpretation about a physical assault. Clearly, this analysis covers roughly the same ground as the GTVH description outlined above in dierent terms. If we equate Gioras meanings with semantic scripts, then her rst stage of interpretation accomplishes roughly the same work as Raskins compositional rule; a perceived violation of the informativeness principle corresponds to Raskins script-switch trigger; and discarding the most salient interpretation in favor of an initially less salient interpretation coincides with recursively nding a second script on the most abstract level of script opposition between the real and unreal in the GTVH. The lower-level script oppositions represent collections and formalizations of saliency reversals characteristic of jokes, with no direct representation in Gioras theory. Moreover, Attardos (1997) revision of the GTVH captures the notions of salience and accessibility by equating script oppositeness with low accessibility and high informativeness in the jocular script. Even with this revision, the theories are not quite notational variants of one another, but their dierences lie in areas requiring additional research before a more direct comparison would be fruitful. As a rst tentative step in this direction, lets see how Gioras theory applies to the pun in the conversational passage transcribed above. I suggest that punning, by contrast with irony and joke punchlines, runs afoul of the relevance requirement in discourse, because puns are far more disruptive of conversation than is irony (see Sherzer, 1985; Norrick, 1993), and far less expected than the structurally necessary punchlines in jokes. Conversationalists may either engage in further wordplay on the punning interpretation or return to relevant topical talk, so that puns must generate parallel interpretations rather than forcing replacement of the literal one. Thus, punning will (1) violate the relevance requirement in introducing
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information unrelated to the discourse topic; (2) violate the graded informativeness condition, as irony does; and (3) thereby force the recipient to discover a second, unmarked interpretation beside the literal one. To illustrate, in example (2) above, the nominal poddy animals introduces information unrelated to the topic of dolphins or intelligence, thus (1) violating the relevance requirement; it also (2) violates the graded informativeness condition in introducing a markedly too informative proposition about avid party-goers; and (3) thereby forces the recipient to nd a less salient, marked interpretation relating party animal to poddy animal by virtue of a phonetic similarity (or identity in some dialects) and to discard the salient, unmarked interpretation. The great strengths of Gioras proposal are its direct connection with a description of discourse which includes notions like topic and reference (Ariel, 1990, 1991; Reinhart, 1983) and its potentially unied treatment of jokes, joking, and irony. It extends naturally to the description of conversational punning, as we have seen. However, like the GTVH, this discourse theory describes joke texts rather than conversational joke performances. Although built around a discourse theory, Gioras treatment of jokes reduces them to independent texts, rather than treating them as elements of conversational interaction. As currently formulated, her theory does not integrate facial expressions, gestures, props, imitations, and other non-discourse behavior, though, like the GTVH, it could probably be extended to do so. Again, the prosody and timing of the oral joke performance do not enter into these theoretical considerations. Moreover, unlike the GTVH, Gioras discourse theory remains inexplicit and untested in many particulars. The notion of discourse topic is notoriously dicult to dene even for orderly written texts (but see Giora, 1985a,b), let alone for conversation, where it is rarely if ever stated explicitly and almost never at the outset. By making relevance central, the theory builds in all the imprecision of that concept as well. This promising theory, too, has a long way to go before it can claim to describe the wide range of conversational humor.
2. Forms of conversational humor: jokes, anecdotes, wordplay, irony The discussion so far has suggested that we already possess discrete denitions of jokes, anecdotes, the various types of wordplay, and irony, or could at least separate them in practice. In fact, I have argued that a clear distinction is neither possible nor sensible, because the forms naturally fade into each other in conversation (Norrick, 1993), and in literature as well (Nash, 1985). The exibility and protean character of conversational joking forms is an integral part of their attraction: joke punchlines turn into wisecracks, witty repartees grow into anecdotes, anecdotes develop into jokes, and so on. For the present, theoretically oriented purpose, it should be sucient to distinguish a few clear cases, and show how they dier in terms of their humor mechanisms, their internal structure, and their integration into discourse. We have already seen how jokes, puns, and irony can be distinguished by their humor mechanisms in a discourse-based theory. In particular, jokes end in a
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punchline, which adheres to the relevance requirement, but violates the graded informativeness condition, thereby forcing the recipient to discard the unmarked interpretation upon discovering a second, marked one. Puns violate the relevance requirement and the graded informativeness condition, thereby forcing the recipient to discover a second, unmarked interpretation. According to Giora, irony conforms to the relevance requirement, but violates the graded informativeness condition, thereby forcing the recipient to discover a marked interpretation that represents a kind of negation of the stated proposition. The humor mechanism seems to work the same way in personal anecdotes as in narrative jokes, but the proposition (or the propositions) which violate(s) the graded informativeness condition do(es) not necessarily conclude the anecdote text. Indeed, personal anecdotes may contain several humorous propositions intended to elicit laughter; this dierentiates them crucially from jokes, which characteristically aim at a single response (preferably laughter) precisely at their conclusion. Personal anecdotes are told as true reports of funny events experienced by the teller, and they are usually explicitly prefaced as such with statements like the funniest thing happened to me or I remember when I was ve or six. Thus, they generally give hearers some new information about the teller; they bear direct relevance to the surrounding conversation, as well as following principles of internal coherence. Consequently, anecdotes encourage active participation from listeners, including becoming full-edged co-tellers. Jokes, too, are announced as such with standard prefaces like Have you heard the one about . . .? By contrast with personal anecdotes, narrative jokes are not about real people or even realistic characters, but only about caricatures or types like this traveling salesman or simply this guy. Any information that jokes relate about these sketchy characters becomes irrelevant as soon as the joke ends. Jokes are generally disconnected from surrounding conversation, though they adhere to the relevance requirement internally. They tend to limit audience participation to laughter at crucial points. Stories told about mutual acquaintances and (literary) anecdotes repeated about famous people occupy a ground midway between narrative jokes and personal anecdotes. By contrast with jokes and personal anecdotes, which are usually explicitly set o from surrounding turn-by-turn conversation by some kind of preface, punning (including wisecracks and sarcasm based on puns) is unannounced and disruptive of topical conversation. This disruptive characterwhich amounts to a violation of the relevance requirementdistinguishes puns from all the other forms of conversational humor. The same sort of abrupt script reversal (or salience imbalance) in the punchlines of jokes adheres to the relevance requirement only because it is an integral element of the genre. When punning joins with personal attack in sarcasm, the disruptive element looms even larger. Consider passage (3) below, in which an initial pun provides the basis for several turns of word play at the expense of Jason, who wants to describe a favorite painting. Jason and his wife Margaret are at the home of Trudy and Roger for dinner, and the four are seated at the table over dessert and coee.
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(3) Jason: Margaret: Jason: Roger: Jason: Margaret: Roger: Margaret: Roger: Trudy: Margaret: Roger: Jason: That painting in our living room of the boat in theYawl in the channel? Maine? Theres a little boat and an island. Yall in the channel? {laughing} Yawl. Yawl. Its a boat, yall. What are yall doing in the channel. {laughing} I need a little port. {laughs} {laughs} Yall in that channel {laughing}. What are yall in that channel for. I know. Sorry. Who painted yawl in the channel? Its a painting by a painter named. . .
This pun picks out a word in the preceding turn for humorous comment, violating expectations for sequential relevance by forcibly yoking the noun yawl with the American Southern personal pronoun yall (the plural of you), based on their fortuitous phonological identity. Roger marks his pun with a nal laugh, but Jason treats it as a legitimate failure to understand, repeating the crucial word by way of clarication. Margaret picks up on the pun, and produces a parallel play on words. Then Margaret delivers I need a little port in such a manner that it sounds more like a request for a drink than an explanation of someones presence in a channel, and this amounts to a second pun, before she recycles yall in the channel. Roger, who instigated the word play, also returns to topical talk with a question directed to the interrupted speaker. In saying sorry Roger apologizes either for the poor quality of the initial pun, for the topical digression or perhaps for both (see Gioras requirement for explicit digression marking). Jasons silence may have prompted this reaction; after all, he neither laughed nor took a speaking turn after his attempted clarication. Just because humor is technically o record, this does not prevent it from being an unwelcome interruption to the speaker who lost the oor, or a shock to the sensibilities of participants who feel the humor and laughter intrude frivolously into sacrosanct matters. In any case, the turn segues back into Jasons description of a painting. This indicates that participants in talk may themselves recognize the aggressive and disruptive eect of punning, and attempt to ameliorate it and return to the ow of topical conversation which occasioned the initial pun. Irony and non-punning sarcasm need not disrupt the ow of conversation in this way; indeed, they are often not even perceived as humorous. In much earlier theorizing about irony, the matter of humor rarely comes up (Grice, 1975; Sperber and Wilson, 1981; Sperber, 1984; Wilson and Sperber, 1992; Clark and Carlson, 1982; Clark and Gerrig, 1984; Kumon-Nakamura et al., 1995; Giora, 1995, 1997; Gibbs, 1986, 1994), but more recent work by Colston and OBrien (2000a,b), Dews et al., (1995), Dews and Winner (1995), Gibbs (2000), Kreuz et al., (1991), Kreuz and
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Roberts (1995), Roberts and Kreuz (1994) shows that irony, too, can elicit laughter, disrupt conversation, and lead to further joking. If irony violates the graded informativeness condition in introducing a markedly too informative proposition, thereby forcing a marked interpretation (in Gioras terms), then it clearly makes two incompatible scripts simultaneously available and meets the conditions for humor in Raskins script theory. And if an ironic utterance literally outs the maxim of quality to signal a particular intention represented by a second proposition, as in Grices (1975) classic account, we again have two opposed scripts. But if the interpretation of irony involves only a single stage, recognizing it as pretense (Clark and Gerrig, 1984), or echoic mention (Wilson and Sperber, 1992), or simply as a special form of derogation (Gibbs, 1994), then the humorous potential of irony requires some separate explanation. No single-stage description of irony has so far taken this challenge seriously, although irony is sometimes funny, as shown by the laughter in (4), below. Here the brothers Brandon and Ned are discussing movies, when Ned invokes irony in the narrow semantic sense of saying the apparent opposite of what he believes: (4) Brandon: Ned: Brandon: Ned: Brandon: I watched The Fountainhead just a couple weeks ago. With Gary Cooper and Patricia NealBoy Ill bet thats a great movie. {laughing} Its a terrible movie. {laughs} It was pretty good. I had read the book. . .
Neds straightforwardly ironic Ill bet thats a great movie elicits laughter from both the recipient and the ironist himself, but it has little eect on the conversation otherwise. Both the Ill bet-construction and the word great are standard markers of irony, so that Neds utterance is unquestionably ironic even without the characteristic sarcastic intonation contour audible on the tape (see Kreuz and Roberts, 1995, on markers of irony). Though Brandon laughs, he nevertheless immediately reverts to the literal (intended) terrible, rather than joining in the ironic approach, and proceeds to his description of the lm. Irony often fails to generate further humorous talk, because it has come to be an unmarked form of expression for many conversationalists. This undisruptive interpretation of irony is reected in an analysis which sees irony as adhering to the relevance principle (and violating only the graded informativeness requirement, by contrast with punning, which presents a violation at the highest level). This distinction between irony and punning raises the issue of aggression versus rapport in conversational joking, a topic we take up in the following section.
3. Functions of conversational humor: aggression versus rapport Joke telling and joking have been described both as aggressive and conducive to rapport. I believe that careful analysis of real conversational examples leads to
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an interactional account in which aggression and rapport play complementary roles. 3.1. Joke telling as an interactional achievement To begin with joke telling, Sacks (1974) analyzed a dirty joke in conversation, concentrating on the organization of the telling, and postulated a test function for jokes: the speaker demonstrates knowledge and challenges hearers to prove they understand by laughing at the proper place. Legman (1982) had earlier suggested that the teller of a dirty joke directs aggression at listeners in exposing them to its oensive subject matter. Accordingly, the teller tests for understanding, but also for a kind of guilty complicity in the sexual or scatological scene the joke portrays. While this makes dirty jokes more aggressive, it also makes them more conducive to the creation of conversational rapport. Sherzer (1985) goes beyond Sacks in identifying a twofold aggression in jokes: against the hearer, who is subjected to a little intelligence test, and against the butt of the jokeperhaps a person or group the teller and hearer conspire to laugh at. Still, as Norrick (1993) shows, the aggression most speakers direct at their listeners in telling them jokes cannot rate very high on the scale of aggressive acts; rather than testing for background knowledge, jokes presuppose it and oer an opportunity to ratify shared attitudes. Even an erudite allusion joke like Though Will shake his spear, Anne hath a way most likely appears in conversation between literaryminded cognoscenti as a show of mutual knowledge, rather than to test someones doubtful background in Shakespeare by way of aggression. If anything is being probed in such cases, it is the audiences willingness to laugh about the subject matter in question. It is up to the joker to signal a play frame in the sense of Bateson (1953, 1972) and to express the jest in a form accessible to members of a certain group, while it is up to the listener to interpret and get the joke, and to show appreciation with laughter. If the two coordinate their timing, they both share in the payo of amusement and increased rapport (see Norrick, 1994). Tannen (1984) argues that humor makes a persons presence in a conversation more strongly felt than other sorts of contributions. According to Goman (1967), we interact to present a personality, to gain knowledge of others, and to enhance self-image for ourselves and others, so telling jokes should provide an opportunity for the joker to gain credit for a performance and to gather relevant social data about the audiencedata on beliefs, attitudes, group membership, and so on. Since jokes often trade on personal problems or slips and socially sensitive topics such as ethnic identity, politics, and sex, they allow the joker to demonstrate a certain tolerance and/or insensitivity, while oering hearers a chance to signal their agreement, shock, resentment, or what have you. In addition, since jokes allow us to direct aggression at a third party, they can help create and enhance feelings of rapport. Joking works to establish and enhance group cohesion, and serves as a control on what sorts of talk and behavior are acceptable to participants in the interaction. Far from testing for background knowledge with jokes, tellers commonly ll the audience in on any information the joke presupposes in the interest of ensuring understanding
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and enjoyment, and hence the success of the performance. Brandon does just this in the excerpt (5) below, before producing the actual joke text. Brandon and Ned are discussing their plans for the coming weekend, when a name makes a joke topically relevant for Brandon, and he insists on telling it before continuing with serious topical talk. (5) Brandon: Ned: Brandon: Ned: Brandon: Ned Brandon: Then they were going to go see Dwight Yoakum and Pol- Dolly Parton? And Clint Black. Oh Ive got a joke for you. You probably dont know Clint Black. I dont. Ive got a joke for you. You know who Red Adair is? Red Adair? Hes the guy who goes around and puts out oil well res? Yeah. Okay. Hes coming back from Indonesia. Hes been over there a while putting out res. And he stops o in Las Vegas. On his way back to Houston. He sits down at the bar next to a guy and he starts up a conversation and the guy starts talking about what a terrific town Las Vegas is. He says, Not only is there gambling and good golf and all this stu but the entertainment here is just spectacular. Two nights ago I saw the greatest song-and-dance man ever. Lenny Davis Jr. And this guy was terric. Hes very old at this point but- boy he can still hoof. And Red Adair looks at the guy and says, Lenny Davis Jr. You mean Sammy Davis Jr. {laughs} Sammy, Lenny, I dont know. But the guy was great. I tell you the entertainment here is terric. And he says, And last night. You know who I went to see? I saw the best country and western singer Ive seen in my life. This gal was just terric. Sings like an angel. Molly Parton. And Red Adair looks at the guy. Molly Parton. Everybody knows that its Dolly Parton. How can you call Dolly Parton Molly Parton. So their talk goes a little further and the guy says, By the way, you look familiar to me. Who are you? And he says Oh Im Red Adair. And he says Oh are you still sleeping around with Ginger Rogers? {laughing} Thats pretty cute. I liked it. But it doesnt have anything to do with Dwight Yoakum. No. But Dolly Parton is whatOh. Dolly Parton. And you dont know Clint Black. is what rang the bell. Clint Black is . . .
Ned: Brandon:
Ned: Brandon: Ned: Brandon: Ned: Brandon: Ned:
This passage illustrates a number of interesting points, which receive further attention below, but of central importance here is Brandons concern that Ned
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possesses crucial background information before he goes into the joke itself. After interrupting the original discussion with Ive got a joke for you, then cutting o Neds attempted return to the topic with a terse I dont and a repetition of the announcement of a coming joke, Brandon rst asks whether Ned knows the central character in the joke. Only when Ned responds positively, does Brandon signal the beginning of the joke proper with okay. The primary interactional point of this joke telling clearly consists in performance and entertainment rather than in ascertaining shared background knowledge or probing attitudes. Since joke telling counts as a performance, including an extended occupation of the conversational oor with the intention of entertaining the other participants, some speakers revel in joke telling, while others avoid it. The decision to tell a joke right here, right now in an ongoing conversation, shows the teller has no compunction about derailing the interaction in progress for the ostensible purpose of amusement. Humor makes a persons presence more strongly felt in a multi-party conversation, and performing jokes well certainly rates even higher than spontaneous humoragain because it involves a performance which suspends the usual give-and-take of everyday talk. Thus when conversationalists announce jokes, they have already revealed a lot about themselves, before they ever even get into the performance proper. Moreover, the choice of joke materials strongly reects the personality of the presenter. Conversationalists usually expect a joke to bear contextual relevance, and they may negatively judge the logic and consistency of someone who tells a joke with no obvious topical point. If, as Freud (1960) suggests, joking provides a socially acceptable way of venting unconscious emotions, then the topics we choose to joke about suggest something about the feelings we suppress. Even the performance of a joke itself reveals a particular personality. We expect the teller to present the buildup clearly and coherently, and to deliver the punchline without laughing or telegraphing it in advance. Failure in any of these departments can blow the joke in the sense of Hockett (1977; see Norrick, 2001). Performance factors help determine the amount of aggression a joke expresses toward its butt as well. This, in turn, inuences the way we laugh, whether sympathetically or derisively, and hence the personalities we ourselves reveal in telling and responding to jokes. We must also briey consider the reception of the performance of jokes in the conversational context. As Sacks (1974) stresses, the performance of a joke critically depends on laughter for successful completion. Audience laughter demonstrates understanding, but at the same time, it raties and evaluates the tellers performance. Listeners may also interrupt the ongoing performance of a joke with complimentary laughter. Laughter during the build-up signals appreciation of the performance itself rather than a positive evaluation of the joke text. Since a joke calls for laughter immediately upon its completion, silence on the part of hearers becomes signicant. A lack of laughter shows that something has gone awry, but it remains initially ambiguous: either the recipients have failed to get the joke, or they are withholding laughter purposely to show that they did not appreciate the performance. Beyond simply withholding laughter, members of the audience may respond at the proper juncture with a mirthless ha-ha-ha, a disgusted oh, or
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some other sign that they have understood the joke but are not amused. These responses then allow the audience to signal that the problem lies not with them but on the side of the teller. Both initial silence and mirthless laughter often herald some more explicit comment by the audience on the joke performance. Of course, audiences also comment upon completion of a joke they like, sometimes while they laugh about it and sometimes afterward. In response to the Red Adair joke in example (5), Ned comments Thats pretty cute, as he nishes laughing, and the teller Brandon says I liked it. Then Ned goes on to question the jokes contextual relevance, and Brandon responds to this. Audiences comment on jokes in all kinds of ways, and their comments may lead to talk on serious matters; but not rarely, the talk after one joke tends to turn to other jokes. 3.2. The interpersonal dimension of conversational joking We turn now from joke telling to spontaneous conversational joking. The aggressive aspects of conversational joking follow from the fact that humor calls for laughter immediately upon its completion, which narrowly determines the range of responses the listener can make. But conversationalists also use stock and spontaneous humor to negotiate openings, closings, topic changes, and realignments, and how they interact in so-called banter to produce extended sequences of word play oriented toward some topic. Conversational joking allows participants to perform for their mutual entertainment with a consequent enhancement of rapport. Humor can be seen as helping smooth the work in everyday conversation, as well as oering us a chance to play: to present a personality and create rapport in entertaining fashion. From canned jokes, we now move into forms of word play such as punning, hyperbole, and allusion, and then on to mocking and sarcasmthat is, from those apparently harmless forms geared to mutual revelation to those forms clearly aggressive in attacking the personal characteristics and errors of others. It is easy to see that swapping jokes allows self-presentation and contributes to rapport directly, whereas competitive word play substitutes a show of wit for the self-presentation, and its aggressive aspects loom large. On the positive side, puns may enhance rapport indirectly, since reacting properly demonstrates shared attitudes and group membership. By contrast, sarcastic comments on the foibles and slips of fellow conversationalists seem geared to produce animosity rather than rapport, which makes their interpersonal function as a whole problematic. Nevertheless, some conversationalists apparently thrill to the competition and hardly covert aggression of mocking and sarcasm, word play, and innuendo. In fact, some friends and colleagues develop a relationship where joking routinely takes the form of verbal attack, competitive word play, teasing, and so on (Norrick, 1993). Such a customary joking relationship may serve a rapport function between some conversationalists; and this helps explain the apparently positive role of mocking and sarcasm in their talk exchanges (see Kottho, 2002). Punning in particular enjoys a rather poor reputation traditionally. Puns count as frivolous and supercial even among the various types of humor, and they rank
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quite high on the scale of aggression, because they disrupt topical talk by misconstruing and redirecting it. Moreover, puns often revolve around rather marginal, less salient senses of a word, those related to arcane or abstract areas of knowledge. And we may play on more or less covert sexual and religious connotations of words and phrases. Puns presuppose our close attention to the local context and engage our wits to reanalyze the talk within it rapidly, as well as requiring us to be able to take a joke in some cases. Interactionally, puns can be viewed as skewed responses to foregoing talk. The punster constructs an ambivalent utterance with one meaning oriented toward understanding the preceding utterance and a second meaning also tted to that utterance but based on a contextually inappropriate analysis of it. In passage (6), below, involving three undergraduate student assistants in the departmental copying room, talk shifts abruptly from the activity of cutting paper to Arnolds mental condition via the fortuitous connection between the concrete and mental senses of the phrase o center. (6) Arnold: Judy: Beth: Arnold: An exact cut. Oh no. This one is a little o center. Thats because youre a little o center. {laughs} No its Toms print.
Judy expropriates a phrase Arnold initially introduced with literal reference to some papers he is cutting, then applies it to Arnold himself, so that it takes on its gurative sense. She lets the dual meaning potential of Arnolds phrase o center entice her into a punning attack on him. This points up one sort of verbal aggression often associated with puns: The punster moves into an antagonistic relationship with one or more listeners, thus realigning the participants in the conversation. This attack diers from the rather mild aggression associated with puns as context-bound wit, not only in severity, but also in the clear aim it takes at an individual. Beth must simply get the joke, but Arnold must also retain his composure and reply in kind. Verbal aggression of this sort reveals something of the personality Judy chooses to express and her relationship with Arnold; at the same time, Arnolds weak response, saying that the print is Toms, also provides relevant, though initially ambiguous, social data about him. Once a pun has introduced a play frame, all kinds of humor become acceptable. And this holds for word play generally. In example (7) below, Frank establishes a humorous key with hyperbole, rst in his choice of aeronautical vocabulary like take o and payload, then in his grossly exaggerated twenty tons, though no laughter ensues until he commences his claim to have never seen an insect that big. The play frame takes rm hold when Ned and Brandon begin suggesting inappropriate names for the insect. Frank enlists Brandon as a witness to his hyperbole, then extends his aeronautical metaphor, using the specically aircraft term fuselage twice and wingspan once. Finally, he puts an end to his own
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extended metaphor and hyperbole in oering an objectively appropriate comparison with a hummingbird. (7) I keep hearing people call them things like hornets. Let me tell you. That dude was big enough to take o with a payload of about twenty tons. Ned: Well what do you call it? Frank: I didnt know what to call it. I had never seen an insect that big. Ever. Ned: {laughs} Frank: The only thing I could think to call itNed: {laughing} Call it, get thee hence. Brandon: Call it sir. Ned: {laughs} Frank: Let me tell you what I call it. My God look at that big bug. It had a fuselage that big. {holds up ngers} Ned: {laughs} Frank: Yeah. Brandon, Im not exaggerating, am I? Brandon: Oh no. No. Easy. Frank: It had a fuselage like that. Ned: {laughs} Frank: And a wingspan like that. Oh man. Never seen one like that. Ned: So were talking primordial here. Frank: It was just slightly smaller than a hummingbird. Of particular interest here is the way participants take turns in making contributions to the humorous framework once established. All three men take a shot at naming the bug and commenting hyperbolically on its size. The conspiracy reaches its high point when Frank appeals to Brandon for testimony that he is not exaggerating, and Brandon goes even one step further in saying Oh no. No. Easy. At the end, even Ned kicks in primordial as a show of solidarity. Here, the three participants succeed, as a group, in humorously describing a past event only two of them experienced rst hand via extended metaphor, hyperbole, and allusion. Notice particularly that Brandons call it sir echoes a line from an old riddle joke, one version of which appears as example (8) below. (8) Question: What do you call a seven-foot, three-hundred-pound bully armed to the teeth? Answer: Sir. Ned: Frank:
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The allusion works on several levels at once in conversational humor. According to Freud (1960), we derive a childlike pleasure from the serendipity of nding old acquaintances in unaccustomed guises. Hence, even unfunny allusion can excite a laugh of recognition and a moment of rapport between participants in a conversation, because they can bask in their shared ability to identify the relevant piece of pre-existing text. Further, reference to a joke makes Brandons line a special type of allusion for purposes of conversational humor. Allusion to a text funny in itself has an obvious double humorous potential, rst in its actual contribution to the current text, and second by recalling the original text for listeners in the know. Moreover, in the present case, the original joke revolves around a pun. In the question, what do you call has the force of how do you designate, whereas sir in the answer reanalyzes the question as something like how do you address. So, Brandons turn also works as a pun itself along with the allusion and word play proper based on the inappropriateness of sir as a class name. The allusion is especially apt in its reference to a rather large member of the species as well, so that it works on several levels simultaneously. Interestingly, Ned responds immediately and appreciatively, while Frank fails to react, perhaps because he was intent on delivering his own line, though he may simply have been unfamiliar with the joke in question. This appreciation for a witty allusion and the dierential reaction to it are the sorts of data participants take more or less conscious note of, and they ultimately accrue to the personalities conveyed in humorous conversational interaction. Conversational humor generally allows us to present a personality, share experiences and attitudes, and promote rapport. Punning as a type of word play may function either to amuse or to verbally attack. Both types are aggressive in disrupting turn-taking and topical talk, but the punning attack adds personal aggression as well. When directed at participants within the group, the more aggressive forms of joking depend on a customary joking relationship developed through a history of interaction: they convey positive politeness or solidarity by outing negative politeness conventions, and hence showing the relationship need not stand on formalities. At the same time, apparently aggressive conversational joking enhances rapport by demonstrating coparticipation in competitive play on an equal basis. While they cause competition in interaction as a whole, mocking, sarcasm, and irony produce little local eect on the organization of talk; they work more as social control on the recipient than to present a personality for the joker.
4. Single-stage versus multi-stage processing This section addresses the current debate between single-stage versus multi-stage models for processing humor. In single-stage models like those proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1986) and Gibbs (1994), the recipient produces a coherent interpretation of a discourse, revising the analysis of context on the y. Irony is understood as irony, but is not opposed to some literal meaning: the appreciation of its humorous eect requires a separate explanation. All classical views of humor as well as current
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linguistic models of humor appreciation require some recognition of incongruity based on two opposed meanings for a single stretch of discourse. Thus, single stage theories will need additional mechanisms to explain humor appreciation. In traditional terms, how can humor consist in the recognition of sense in nonsense, if recipients constantly block out nonsense in search of sense? Grice (1975) distinguished literal meaning from speaker intention. Recipients rst process the literal meaning of an utterance, assuming the speaker was adhering to the Cooperative Principle (CP) and its associated maxims, then they check this interpretation against the context. If it ts, it can be taken to reect the speakers intention; if it violates any of the maxims, the recipient works out possible implicatures corresponding to what the speaker intended. The clash between the initial literal interpretation and the implicature serves the purpose of humor theories requiring two opposed meaningsframes of reference or scripts. But joke-tellers are not committed to the truth of their texts, and we certainly do not expect conversational humor to present trustworthy information. Various researchers have demonstrated how jokes regularly violate the Gricean maxims, particularly the maxims of quality and quantity (see Attardo, 1994, chapter 9 and references therein). Raskin (1985) argued that humor must count as non-bona de communication, because it systematically violates the CP. He proposed that humor follows its own CP and separate set of maxims, which account for internal consistency and inferencing within humorous discourse. These maxims and CP provide a background against which violations within the joke text can create the script switch necessary for humor, without overextending the Gricean framework. Robin Lako (1973, 1977) outlined a more radical revision along similar lines. Lako sees Grices CP and maxims as adequate for more formal, consultative styles of communication where deference and distance between participants reign supreme. This sort of communication rests on negative politeness geared toward negative face, as Goman (1967) dened it (see Brown and Levinson, 1987). Talk between friends, by contrast, reects positive politeness and positive face. It is based on solidarity and making others feel good about themselves. Joking is, of course, a strategy of positive politeness, and hence it need not adhere to the Gricean maxims. By including notions like solidarity and distance, Lako can account for inferences about relative power and group relations like the aggression and rapport we found to be so important in the interpersonal dimension of humor in the previous section. The revisions of Grices framework by Raskin and Lako retain the notion of implicature as indicative of speaker intention. Processing a joke in conversation begins with attuning oneself to the peculiar conventions of joke telling, regardless of the apparently logical build-up. The incongruity necessary for semantic script switch and humor recognition derives from a discrepancy between two opposed interpretations of the text, one apparently relevant and a second initially unexpected, but representing the tellers intention. This sort of description represents a multi-stage model of processing, and hooks directly into standard descriptions of humor appreciation as well. Discourse-based theories like Gioras also envision interpretation as a multi-stage process, though they do not rely on the Gricean notions of
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`implicature and intention. Instead, violations of relevance and informativeness vis-a vis the ongoing discourse lead recipients to a second stage of processing to access initially unexpected interpretations. If, however, listeners simply seek to produce a single coherent interpretation consistent with the main thrust of the discourse in progress, how can they detect the incongruity central to the recognition of humor? The single-stage models of Sperber and Wilson (1986) and Gibbs (1994) maintain that recipients understand irony and metaphor without actually deriving a second-order meaning from a rst-order , 2000). This seems to entail that puns and jokes could be meaning (but see Curco understood without experiencing the sudden reversal of sense humor theories require. Gibbs (1994: 13) speaks of a fundamental ability to conceptualize situations as being ironic and a recognition of the incongruity between an expectation. . .and . . .reality, but he never attempts any more explicit formulation of this ability. He treats the puns in the ritualized insults below (from Abrahams, 1962) as if they were interpreted in the same way as metaphors (Gibbs, 1994: 139). (9) a. b. At least my mother aint no railroad track, laid all over the country. Your mothers like a police stationdicks going in and out all the time.
In multi-stage theories like Raskins and Gioras, the appropriate literal meaning of laid in (9a) would surface rst only to give way to the sex act meaning, and the detective sense of dick in (9b) would surface before the sex organ sense, yielding semantic script oppositions in both cases. But if the sexual meanings appear immediately, as in single-stage theories like Gibbs, no explicit script opposition arises, and we must seek a basis for appreciating the humor involved elsewhere. In fact, it is not clear how one can be said to have comprehended a comparison without having grasped the pivotal phrase, the tertium comparationis in traditional terms, and for the punning comparisons above this must include recognition that the phrase is ambiguous. Perhaps the context of the soundings above forces the sexual interpretation, whereas the other interpretations would remain the salient ones in normal contexts, and this tension between the two types of contexts might function as the incongruity necessary for humor. This would jibe with the fact that recipients tend to see other matter is involved. wise non-salient interpretations only in cases where some risque Thus, in the structurally parallel examples below, only the second (10b) involving sex makes us work out the less salient, but more salacious interpretation, whereas we remain satised with the innocent interpretation of (10a), in which each man jogs with his own wife. The structural ambiguity is always present, but the less salient meaning remains latent without the promise of hanky-panky. (10) a. b. Allen jogs with his wife twice a week, and so does Paul. Allen sleeps with his wife twice a week, and so does Paul.
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The same eect appears with polysemous words like buns in the next pair of examples: The ambiguity only surfaces if some sexy interpretation beckons, as in (11b): (11) a. Jenny Schwarz made the best muns in town, but it was her fathers luscious buns that kept the crowds coming. b. Lenny Schwarz made the best muns in town, but it was his daughters luscious buns that kept the crowds coming. If the joking context and the promise of prurient content clash with normal expectations for ambiguous structures and words, then single-stage theories, too, might claim a basis for humor appreciation. This move again appeals to multi-stage interpretationor at least dual processingsince it involves both an initial interpretation and a comparison of this interpretation with some norm. If recipients recognize incongruity between expectations and actual interpretations, as Gibbs maintains, then they are performing a two-stage or dual process on beyond the initial comprehension process. In any case, examples (9)(11) seem to suggest that recipients can access all available readings, discarding those which fail to match the context and oer no other interesting interpretation. While comprehension may usually proceed as a single-stage process, humor appreciation requires additional processing, as in a discourse theory which checks each item of a text for relevance and informativeness against the ongoing interpretation. Humor via allusion presents perhaps the greatest problem for single-stage theories. Central to the appreciation of allusion and intertextuality generally is the recognition that some element somehow ts the current context, although it derives from another context with a distinct meaning (see Norrick, 1989). Freud (1960) hypothesized that we derive serendipitous pleasure from recognizing familiar items in new places. We saw (in the case of the call it sir-allusion in the excerpt in Section 3.2, above) how identication of the source text must precede humor understanding: full appreciation of the allusion required recognizing aspects of the source in the new context as well. Single-stage interpretation of an allusion as a coherent element of the current context will fail to register its source text and its humorous potential. Clearly, the recognition of an external source for an allusion must remain separate from an understanding of its contextual signicance, so that any single-stage theory will require extension to be able to describe the mechanism of humorous allusion. topics, aggressive tendency, or Moreover, any theory of humor based on risque any other aspect of content fails to account for innocent jokes like the gag want ad below. (12) Lion tamer seeks tamer lion
Pure wordplay lacking in lurid matter and aggression, as in example (13), also presents a problem for any content-based account of humor.
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(13) I lack a lass, alack alas; alas alack, a lass I lack. If anything, these jokes seem to target the language structures themselves. In conversational joking, we also frequently nd spontaneous wordplay, as in example (1) cited earlier (excerpted here as (14) for convenience), where the spurious similarity between the words poddy and party suces for Jason to insert the punning phrase Theyre poddy animals: (14) Roger: Whales are pods. I dont know what dolphins are. I guess theyre pods too. Poddies. (1.3) Anyway {laughing}. Yeah but I meanTheyre poddy animals. {laughs} {laughs} Oooh. Thats- thats like a blow to the midri, yknow. {laughing}
Jason: Roger: Jason: Roger:
A discourse theory which describes the pun as a relevance violation forcing an unexpected interpretation of a word could account for the linguistic data and hook up with a humor theory built around conicting semantic frames as well. A theory operating with notions of power and solidarity could further explain why Jason feels free to disrupt Rogers turn, and why Roger can respond after laughing with the apparently oensive comment Thats like a blow to the midri with an ameliorative eect on rapport. In order to describe the structures and mechanisms of conversational humor, we need a theory that goes beyond straightforward comprehension.
5. Timing In this nal section, I look at the perennial question of timing in the oral performance of jokes. In a recent article, Attardo (1997) lists Timing rst among the unresolved issues in humor studies. Timing is by its very nature a topic we must study on the basis of the oral joke telling performance. Everyday conversation is the natural home of joke telling, so it seems a logical place to begin (see Norrick, 2001). We must avoid reifying timing as a unitary notion. Timing is compounded of many factors and does not reduce to a single variable in the joke performance, or relate to a single talent on the part of the joke teller; timing has both textual and oral aspects, yet it requires interactional denition, since a successful joke telling depends on the audience. Timing in the joke performance does not depend primarily on the pause between the build-up and punchline, nor can it be directly measured in seconds on the clock, because spoken and semantic features of the build-up and the punchline inuence our perception of timing, as does the tellers style of delivery. The overall tempo of the performance, the ebb and ow of given and new information highlighted
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by rhythms of hesitation, repetition, and uent passages, all co-determine timing. Many of these features of timing come to light only in the joke performance and diverge from what we are accustomed to seeing in printed joke texts. One obvious feature that dierentiates jokes told in conversation from those printed in magazines and books (and even from those performed by professional comedians) is the prefaces intended to announce jokes and to determine whether they are already known to the listeners. Conversational joke tellers typically ask, Have you heard the one. . ., or simply say, Oh Ive got a joke for you, as Brandon does to preface the Red Adair joke excerpted as example (5). Secondly, in real conversational joke performances, tellers frequently repeat themselves or correct themselves at the beginning of the performance: they typically start the joke, then hesitate, backtrack and re-start, often in a slightly dierent way. It may seem that they plunge into the joke, then spin their wheels for a few seconds to organize their performance; but this happens so frequently that we might well view it as a standard strategy in oral joke performance. As Jeerson (1974) shows, self-correction can serve as an interactional resource for enlisting hearer attention and securing uptake. The repetitions, hesitations, and self-corrections cluster at the beginning and at turning points in the development of a narrative joke. They often mark the last few phrases leading up to the punchline, thoughand this is signicantthe punchlines themselves typically come o without a hitch. In fact, the general use of repetition and formulaic phrasing amounts to a third characteristic of the conversational joke performance. Not only do we nd stock joke phrases like guy walks into a bar at the beginning, but also formulaic material repeated in the body of the joke. Jokes often use repetition of a scenario or formulaic phrasing to establish a pattern, only to skew it the third time around in the punchline. The semantic reversal between the build-up and the punchline is a feature of the joke text which relates to joke timing, because it is often accompanied by a shift in voice quality, speaking tempo, and uency with signicance for the perception of timing in the joke performance. While the semantics of the joke suggests specic teller strategies, these strategies determine the form of verbalization which ultimately guides audience perception of the text. With this theoretical basis in place, we can go on to investigate two conversational joke performances. We will explore both their conversational contexts and their internal structure for cues to the strategies and eects of timing. We will see that timing is compounded of hesitations, false starts, repetitions, and formulaicity in the build-up, along with a more rapid, uid delivery of the punchline, often highlighted by a swift accumulation of information and a perspective switch just before the punchline. In passage (15), several graduate students are telling jokes after class. Ellen has just nished a joke which elicited no laughter. Grant and Robert explained that they knew versions of the joke Ellen told, but Ginger gave no reason for not laughing. Robert wonders whether Ginger ever laughs at jokes in the initial turn in this example; and Ginger is responding to Roberts question in the rst part of her turn, I dont, actually I dont, while her No comes in direct reply to the preface.
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Grant realizes that his description of the intended joke as the drunken Irishman one may be misleading, so he revises his preface, saying Its uh two drunken Irishmen. When Ginger again says she does not know the joke, Grant launches into the text. This second preface shows that Grant wants to make quite sure his joke is unfamiliar to Ginger, since he apparently wants to test her propensity to withhold laughter after jokes: notice his see, once Ginger has laughed and commented positively on his performance, Thats cute, and his pause after Gingers second conrming response with Okay, so before launching into the joke proper: (15) Robert: Maybe you dont ever laugh at jokes Grant: Do you- have you heard the drunken Irishman one thats making the rounds lately Ginger: I dont, actually I dont. No. Grant: Ok. Its a two drunken Irishmen. Maybe maybe you know it now? Ginger: No. Grant: Okay, so. Guy walks into a bar theres theres a a drunken Irishman sitting at the bar and another Irishman walks into the bar and he is like, Oh. H- how do you do? And the guy says Im doing just ne. And so he says, Well, lets have a drink. And then so they have a drink. And then eh {Audience laughter} he says, Well, where are you from? And he goes, I am from Dublin. He goes Well, imagine that, Im from Dublin as well. So they have another drink. And then he says, Well, where did you go to school in Dublin? And he says Oh, Im from- eh I went to St. Marys down in and he- he gives a street address. And then so like, What a coincidence this is so odd, I went there, too. And they have another drink. So lets lets drink to St. Marys. And they have another drink. And then the guy says, Well, what year did you graduate? He says, Well, I graduated back in seventy-two. And he goes, Now this is getting downright perplexed because I graduated from seven- in seventy-two just as well. And so they were like Lets have another drink. So they have another drink and another guy walks into the bar, goes there to the bartender and asks, Whats up? And he says: Oh, nothing, just the OMalley twins getting drunk again. Robert: {laughs} Ginger: {laughs} Thats cute. Grant: See. Robert: {laughs} Grant begins the joke text in characteristic fashion with a sentence that breaks o and requires patching together. Grant discards the whole initial phrase, Guy walks into a bar, and restarts, theres theres a a drunken Irishman sitting at the bar and another Irishman walks into the bar. Now, Guy walks into a bar is of course a classic joke introduction, particularly due to the bare noun guy with no article.
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We might say that Grant falls victim to formulaicity here at the beginning, and yet the formula with the following correction actually provides a serviceable prologue to an oral joke performance and comes close to providing an appropriate expository statement even here, so that Grant may be excused for beginning the joke this way. The confusion of identities contributes to the obfuscation at work in this joke, so that we cannot reasonably exclude the possibility that Grant begins the joke this way on purpose. In any case, it remains for the correct introduction to set up the joke and act as its pivot: theres a a drunken Irishman sitting at the bar and another Irishman walks into the bar. This sentence works both as the pivot for the joke and as a misleading garden path, since it suggests a state of aairs which turns out not to hold. The phrases a drunken Irishman and another Irishman suggest that the two drinkers are unrelated. Even the punchline discloses the contrivance of the joke, since it indicates that the bartender knew the two were twins. In responding, Oh, nothing, just the OMalley twins getting drunk again, he suggests that their relationship is trivial, general knowledge. The teller also drawls out the three words Oh, nothing, and just to further extend the garden path and put o the punchline so as to render the path more eective. This is one more timing strategy tellers typically employ. Repetition and formulaicity help determine the rhythm of the joke performance. One nds repetition of formulas like lets have a drink as well as repeated phrases like And so they have another drink. In fact, the joke is built around nding new reasons for drinking and having another drink. The elicitation of interruptive laughter also works as a timing mechanism in slowing down the build-up. Notice nally the perspective changes preceding the punchline. We see the buildup of the joke through the eyes of the second drunk who enters the bar. Then a stranger enters the bar and asks the bartender what is going on, forcing us to see the situation from a new point of view. The perspective switches again when the bartender answers the question and thus delivers the punchline. Such perspective changes slow the action down and complicate the processing task facing the audience; they also intertwine with teller strategies for retarding the delivery of the punchline, so that it intrudes itself with added force. Consider now a nal joke from spontaneous conversation. (16) Larry: Whats the- did- didnt you tell the one about the- the guy in the bar who who suddenly uh- starts hearing these very nice things said about him? Claire: I dont know. Larry: Who told me that? Claire: What were the nice things? Larry: Guys standing there at the bar. And he- and this voice says, Gee, youre such a great looking guy. And he looks around and theres nobody there. Turns back around and he hears the same voice say, Yknow I just think youre a really good person.
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{Several listeners giggle} Yknow he keeps looking around, he cant see anybody talking. And it keeps happening and he nally says to the bartender, he says, Whatswhats going on here. I keep hearing all these- and I look up- And the bartender says, Its the peanuts, theyre complimentary. {General laughter} Claire: Now thats {laughing} thats cute. Claire is visiting Larry. She just arrived two days earlier, and Larry thinks he rst heard the joke from her (did- didnt you tell the one about the- the guy in the bar), so we can assume that hes telling it for the rst time. Although Claire rst answers that she doesnt know if she told the joke, her question What were the nice things? apparently convinces Larry that Claire has no prior claim to tell it, so he forges ahead with the performance. Notice rst the characteristic joke syntax, namely the missing article in Guys standing there at the bar (line 7); the subjectless clause Turns back around (line 9); repetition of says in he nally says to the bartender, he says (lines 1415); false starts: And he- and this voice says (lines 7-8) and Whats- whats going on (line 15); and llers: Gee, youre (line 8) and Yknow (lines 10 and 13). Here, too, interruptive laughter serves to prolong the build-up as well. Again, a rapid accumulation of information occurs just before the punchline, through incomplete structures and the switch of perspective: I keep hearing all these- and I look up- And the bartender says, Maybe the break after all these- is due to a planning switch, because the teller intends to say all these compliments, then realizes it would spoil the punch; but the break after look up- seems to reect a rush to the punchline, i.e. a desire to wrap up the joke quickly once enough build-up has been delivered. Larry is telling this joke for the rst time, so hes feeling his way, especially at this transitional interval between the build up and the punchline. Clearly, he opts to end the build up and get on to the punch, even though he leaves two structures incomplete. In fact, he could have left out the whole sequence I keep hearing all these- and I look up- without damage to the joke text. The nal sentence puts o the crucial punchline phrase theyre complimentary as long as possible. The switch to the perspective of the bartender, followed by the initial answer Its the peanuts, serves to make the nal segment of the build-up dense. Then the actual punchline theyre complimentary and the clauses leading up to it come o without a hitchby contrast with the false starts, llers, and repetitions in the build up. We have seen that timing in the conversational joke telling performance is compounded of disparate elements: features of the basic joke text, teller strategies, standard joke prefaces, formulas and patterns, the tellers style of delivery, and audience response. Hesitation, formulaicity, and repetition help tellers gain planning time, but they also contribute to the overall rhythm of the performance, marking the
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ow of information and serving as guides to listeners. Joke tellers work up to punchlines slowly with various lexical and syntactic strategies. The punchlines themselves typically coincide with a semantic perspective switch in the joke text, which tellers further foreground with a voice shift and a rapid, uent delivery. This marking of joke introductions, build-ups, and punchlines has signicance for the description of humor in discourse-based theories. Gioras theory assumes that information is built up incrementally in texts, each utterance adding new propositional information. But in the joke telling performance, the hesitations, repetition, and formulaicity seem to aim at gaining planning time for the teller, at the same time hindering the delivery of new information, so that the punchline falls more forcefully. At the same time, all this cueing segments the performance, prepares the listener for the punchline, then signals its delivery, as if to make very sure the listener cannot miss it. Raskins recognition of a special set of maxims for jokes seems more to the point here.
6. Conclusions A complete theory of humor will have to account both for the performance of jokes and for wordplay in conversation. A discourse theory which describes jokes and joking based on relevance and informativeness violations seems to account for the linguistic data; it explains the integration of humor into the conversational context, if one accepts special discourse criteria for jokes and joke telling performances. A description of jokes and joking built around conicting semantic frames would hook up with current theories of humor; apparently, two-stage processing is necessary to account for humor appreciation (especially for puns and allusions). Such a theory could be further enriched to handle the interpersonal eects of joking in terms of power and rapport.
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Mindess, Harvey, 1971. Laughter and Liberation. Nash, Los Angeles. Nash, Walter, 1985. The Language of Humor: Style and Technique in Comic Discourse. Longman, London. Norrick, Neal R., 1989. Intertextuality in humor. Humor 2, 117139. Norrick, Neal R., 1993. Conversational Joking. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Norrick, Neal R., 1994. Involvement and joking in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 22, 409430. Norrick, Neal R., 2001. On the conversational performance of narrative jokes: toward an account of timing. Humor 14, 255274. Raskin, Victor, 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Reidel, Dordrecht. Raskin, Victor, Attardo, Salvatore, 1994. Non-literalness and non-bona-de in language. Pragmatics and Cognition 2, 3169. Reinhart, Tanya, 1983. Anaphora and Semantic Interpretation. Croom Helm, London. Roberts, Richard M., Kreuz, Roger J., 1994. Why do people use gurative language? Psychological Science 5, 159163. Sacks, Harvey, 1974. An analysis of the course of a jokes telling. In: Bauman, R., Sherzer, J. (Eds.), Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 337353. Sherzer, Joel, 1985. Puns and jokes. In: van Dijk, T.A. (Ed.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis, vol. 3: Discourse and Dialogue. Academic Press, London, pp. 213221. Sperber, Dan, 1984. Verbal irony: pretense or echoic mention? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113, 130136. Sperber, Dan, Wilson, Deirdre, 1981. Irony and the use/mention distinction. In: Cole, P. (Ed.), Radical Pragmatics. Academic Press, New York. Sperber, Dan, Wilson, Deirdre, 1986. Relevance. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Tannen, Deborah, 1984. Conversational Style. Ablex, Norwood, NJ. Wilson, Deirdre, Sperber, Dan, 1992. On verbal irony. Lingua 81, 5376. Neal R. Norrick holds the chair of English Linguistics at Saarland University in Saarbru cken, Germany. He has taught English Linguistics at Northern Illinois University and the Universities of Wu rzburg, Kassel, Hamburg, Braunschweig and Regensburg. His research specializations in linguistics include conversation, verbal humor, pragmatics, semantics and poetics. In recent years, Professor Norrick has focused his research on spoken language. His recent publications include the monographs: Conversational Narrative (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000), Conversational Joking (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

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Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359 www.elsevier.

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

Jason: Roger: Jason: Roger:

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

Ned: Brandon: Ned: Brandon: Ned: Brandon: Ned:

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

Jason: Roger: Jason: Roger:

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

N.R. Norrick / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 13331359

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