Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
to humor
Ever since the publication of Victor Raskin's seminal work on the Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (1985), linguistic humor research has had a decidedly cognitive orientation. The cognitive psychological roots of the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH) presented in the aforementioned
book, have been adopted in a large number of studies that have appeared
since. In this respect, Attardo, in a recent discussion on the cognitive tum
in literary studies, points out "that linguists who study humor may well
be pleased to find out that they were doing cognitive stylistics all along"
(2002: 231). Indeed, the two most influential linguistic humor theories of
the last two decades, the SSTH and the General Theory of Verbal Humor
(GTVH, Attardo and Raskin 1991; Attardo 1994, 1997, 2001a), along
with a number of other theoretical studies (Giora 1991; Kotthoff 1998;
Yus 2003) share some significant features with the broad Hnguistic framework that is the methodological angle of the present thematic issue, viz.
Cognitive Linguistics (CL).
What is Cognitive Linguistics? Although introducing a highly diversified research endeavor like CL is a book project in itself (see e.g. Taylor
2002; Croft and Cruse 2004; Geeraerts and Cuyckens 2006), we necessarily limit ourselves to the pinpoint motto of the Cognitive Linguistics Series
(Mouton de Gruyter):
Cognitive Linguistics subsumes a variety of concerns and broadly compatible theoretical approaches that have a common basic outlook; that language is an integral facet of cognition which reflects the interaction of social, cultural, psychological, communicative and functional considerations, and which can only be
understood in the context of a realistic view of acquisition, cognitive development
and mental processing ... It seeks insofar as possible to explicate language structure in terms of the other facets of cognition on which it draws, as well as the
commimicative function it serves.
Humor 19-3 (2006), 203-228
DOI 10.1515/HUMOR.2006.012
0933-1719/06/0019-0203
Walter de Gruyter
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Introduction
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Introduction
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general (Giora 2002, 2003). According to Giora's graded salience hypothesis, salient information is always accessed before any other, less salient
information, and this very general organizational principle is exploited
in many types of "expressive" language use, like novel metaphor, punning, irony, and humor.
Apart from the function of salience and framing, other general conceptualization mechanisms have been treated, directly or indirectly, at various places in the humor literature, likefigure-groundconstellations (Hofstadter and Gabora 1989: 422; Attardo and Raskin 1991: 303; Attardo
2001a: 19; borrowed from Talmy 1978), metaphor (Pollio 1996, based
on Lakoif's conceptual metaphor theory), and conceptual mappings in
general (Attardo et al. 2002). But since it is not our intention to give a
full review of all of these points of contact in the domain of semantic
principles, we will not further explore these issues here (for a more detailed overview, see Brone and Feyaerts 2003). The basic intention of this
rough sketch is to illustrate some of the commonalities in the semantic
construal of different types of language use and open up new perspectives
for research exploring exactly this question of how everyday cognitive
mechanisms are exploited in various ways for humorous, stylistic, or
other purposes.
Despite this obvious movement towards cognitively motivated semantic humor analysis, the tension between marked and unmarked semantic
construal, which can be plotted using the meaning construction mechanisms of CL, and which accounts for the effect of unexpectedness or incongruity (Kotthoff 1998: 50), has not been explored to its fullest in
most of the linguistic humor research. The contributions to the present
issue are intended to open this debate. As mentioned above, the implications of these studies are not relevant to humor research alone, in that
they illustrate one of the central claims of CL, viz. that the human conceptual system is prototypically structured and highly flexible (see also
the section on "cognitive linguistic interest in humor"). The contributions
by Veale et al. and Kotthoff especially draw attention to the heuristic importance of prototypicality for describing humor in terms of ubiquitous
cognitive categories of construal and communication.
One central aspect of construal that has been widely discussed in CL,
but which has been poorly dealt with in humor research, is the role of imagery in linguistic meaning. Particularly the phenomena involving conceptual mappings, like metaphor, metonymy and analogy, have been the
subject of an ever-growing body of research. Conceptual metaphor.
Introduction
209
defined as the conceptualization of one domain (target) in terms of another domain (source), can be considered as a construal operation, since
the choice of a particular domain for conceptualizing a target inherently
construes the target in a specific fashion (cf. Croft and Cruse 2004: 194).
Although it has been repeatedly pointed out that there is a theoretically
interesting (vague) conceptual boundary between humor and metaphor/
analogy (Koestler 1964; Hofstadter and Gabora 1989), humor theorists
have, until recently, only focused on the potentially humorous ambiguity
of a literal vs.figurativereading of a metaphorical expression (Alexander
1997; Attardo 1994). Pollio (1996) explores the boundaries in humor and
metaphor, using insights from the interaction theory of metaphor (Black
1962) and the Lakovian approach (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff
1987). It is argued that humorous bisociation (to use Koestler's 1964
term) differs from metaphorical conceptualization in the profiling of domain boundaries. Whereas metaphors essentially fuse the source and target to form a single entity (Gestalt), suppressing the obvious domain
boundaries, humorous stimuli (un)intentionally emphasize the dissimilarities between domains. Veale et al. (this issue) follow a similar argument,
in that they illustrate that in many cases of interactional humor, utterances with an underlying metaphorical (and/or metonymical) structure
are used as a cue for a trumping strategy. This strategy consists of a
speaker B subverting a speaker A's utterance, e.g. by distorting the
source/target structure of the initial metaphorical utterance.
Metonymy, in a cognitive hnguistic approach, is generally viewed as a
cognitive mechanism enabling the selection of a salient reference point in
a frame to refer to a different concept in the same frame or to the frame
as a whole (Langacker 1993; Panther and Radden 1999). This conceptual
approach to metonymy covers phenomena that were previously treated in
pragmatics as inferences or conversational implicatures (Gibbs 1999; Panther and Thomburg 2003). Given the general agreement that humor interpretation involves complex inferential activity, metonymy can be argued to play a substantial role in this process. Barcelona (2003) argues
that the inferential work in joke interpretation is facilitated by preexisting metonymic connections in a cognitive frame. Metonymic connections, on his account, are the driving force behind the script switching
process (Raskin 1985) that yields the resolution. Brone and Feyaerts
(2003) illustrate, using various types of verbal as well as non-verbal
humor, that the interpretation process is often complicated through
the use of marked metonymic reference-point structures. This process of
Introduction
211
indeed provides some articulate tools that have not been fully explored
in linguistic humor theories. Uncovering patterns in the semantics of humorous texts, using these mechanisms, can provide useful insights into
the essentially marked character of these texts. The tension between
normal and marked use (or between prototypical and peripheral use) of
semantic-pragmatic devices seems to play an essential role in the humor
game. One of the general conclusions that can be drawn from the papers
in the present issue is that a prototypical model is needed for the use of
conceptualization operations, differing core cases in conventionalized language use from more marked uses. Analogously, from a more pragmatic
point of view, the contribution by Kotthoff advocates a highly flexible description of communication principles in terms of prototypical categories.
The second cornerstone of the cognitive linguistic philosophy of language is that linguistic structure is usage-based. Usage-based models of
language essentially state that a speaker's linguistic system is grounded
in usage events, and hence is experientially driven (Langacker 1987,
1988; Barlow and Kemmer 2000). Langacker (1988: 131) notes concisely
that "[i]n describing cognitive grammar as a 'usage-based' model of language structure, I have in mind the 'maximalist', 'non-reductive', and
'bottom-up' character of the general approach (as compared to the minimalist, reductive and top-down spirit of the generative tradition)." If the
linguistic system is indeed inherently tied to usage ("bottom-up"), then
the primary source of information is the actual use of language in context.
In contrast to most formal approaches to language, CL argues that linguistic and non-linguistic context both play an essential role in the production and processing of language. There is no strict boundary between
linguistic and contextual information, in that features of contextual (and
pragmatic) information can, through conventionalization, become part of
the linguistic system as such. The linguistic utterance as such merely functions as a cue the processor uses as a starting point in the meaning construction process (supra).
Uncovering the tight interaction between contextual and linguistic understanding is the main research goal of the steadily growing field of cognitive discourse analysis (Langacker 2001; Van Hoek et al. 1999). One of
the advantages of such a perspective is that it can provide "a valuable
corrective to the often-assumed dichotomy between cognitively-oriented
studies, which often ignore the interactional aspects of discourse, vs. interaction models, which often de-emphasize cognitive processes" (Barlow
and Kemmer 2000: xvii). This multidimensional approach can be of
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obvious interest to hiiinor researchers studying the interpersonal and inferential nature of humor. On the level of interpersonal dynamics, it needs
to he ohserved that many cases of humor directly or indirectly draw on
collaborative (Kotthoff, this issue) and adversarial (Veale et al., this
issue) strategies in interaction. Speakers in running (humorous) discourse
often huild on previously introduced strands or themes (Davies 1984),
and thus either proceed on a humorous topic in collaboration with other
participants, or counter another participant's utterance hy means of adversarial humor strategies (cf. Davies 1984 on the thematic principles of
contradiction and elaboration). The semantics of multi-agent forms of
humor has been poorly analyzed in humor research, especially in comparison to the hulk of literature on (canned) jokes, which often does not refer
to the context these jokes are delivered in. Cognitive linguistics explicitly
states that language is grounded in discourse and social interaction (Langacker 2001: 143), which means that the context of speech and shared
knowledge all play a central role in semantics, and they cannot he separated from the "core meaning" of an utterance. Langacker's notion of a
current discourse space, defined as a mental space "comprising those elements and relations construed as being shared hy the speaker and hearer
as a hasis for communication at a given moment in the flow of discourse"
(2001: 144), illustrates this unified treatment of semantics. On this view,
meaning arises in discourse through a range of cues, rather than by simply processing stored semantic information (see also the papers by Kotthoff and Coulson et al., this issue).
Apart from the general theoretical importance, positing a usage-based
model of language and conceptualization has major methodological implications as well. Usage-based theories hypothesizing a tight relationship
between linguistic structures and real usage necessarily need to base their
claims on the observation of actual data, rather than on constructed examples. This has led to a renewed attention to the empirical support of
theoretical claims, both on the level of production and processing. Production data can be drawn from corpora collecting usage material. This
way, corpus analysis can chart linguistic variation at all possible levels,
including sociolectic, dialectic, idiolectic, but also expressive variation.
As a central instance of linguistic variation, expressivity and creativity
should not be neglected in a usage-based model (see also the next section).
Kotthoff (1998, this issue) and Priego-Valverde (2003) illustrate that a
semantic-pragmatic account of meaning construction in humor can draw
interesting insights from corpus-based conversation analysis.
Introduction
213
Data on the processing of linguistic input can be drawn from simulation experiments like reading times, priming tests, ERP-analyses, etc.
Vaid et al. (2003) provide an overview of the various accounts that have
been proposed of the different stages of meaning activation in joke comprehension. In order to test empirically the conflicting hypotheses in the
literature, the authors used a lexical decision semantic priming experiment to measure the time course of meaning activation. Coulson et al.
(this issue) report on a number of studies that test the psychological reality of frame-shifting (supra) in joke comprehension. Self-paced reading
times for one-line jokes (see also Coulson and Kutas 1998) show that
jokes that require frame-shifting take longer to process than straight endings. These data suggest that frame-shifting requires an extra processing
cost. A complementary ERP-experiment (event-related brain potentials)
was conducted to get a more fine-grained view of the cognitive process
involved in frame-shifting (see also Coulson and Kutas 2001). It is argued
that a sustained negativity 500-900 ms is the ERP effect that indexes the
frame-shifting needed for joke comprehension. In a third experiment,
Coulson et al. measure eye movements to examine whether the reinterpretation process of frame-shifting involves an increased amount of regressions (leftward eye movements) in comparison to non-joke endings. The
eye tracking data show that total viewing duration is longer for jokes
than for non-joke controls, and that participants make more regressive
eye movements when frame-shifting is required for the interpretation. In
general, these empirical studies show a renewed awareness of the need for
experimental backup of theoretical hypotheses, a need that has been expressed, among others, by Attardo (2001a: 208). Nevertheless, this field
is still in its infancy (partly because it is notoriously difficult to design
methodologically sound tests), and needs a fair amount of basic data.
In sum, in this first section we have connected some of the basic concepts of the Cognitive Linguistics framework to the specific linguistics
of humor in an attempt to uncover common ground and new perspectives
for both cognitive linguists and humor researchers. As a stepping stone,
we used two of the key ideas in CL. First, the broad, dynamic view on
meaning as comprehensive conceptualization leads to a focus on the reflection of higher-level construal mechanisms or conceptualization operations in language. Although some of these mechanisms have been studied
at length in their relevance in the meaning construction process in humor
(e.g. framing, salience), others have gone largely unnoticed (e.g. metaphor, metonymy). It is argued in a number of papers in this issue that
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including these general cognitive mechanisms may contribute to the development of a genuinely cognitive account of verbal (as well as nonverbal) humor. A second trigger in the discussion is the cognitive hnguistic view on linguistic structure as usage-based. The implications of this
basic claim for the scope of semantic analysis and for the methodologies
that are used, are not trivial. From the perspective of production, a cognitive semantic analysis needs to take into account the rich conceptual
landscape in which meaning emerges, including semantic, pragmatic, contextual, cultural, and even (inter)personal information. This multidimensional perspective may contribute to a better understanding of the way
in which different cues jointly trigger a humorous effect. On the level of
processing, a cognitive linguistic account generates direct hypotheses that
can be tested in a simulation setting. This may provide a new impetus
for the much-needed interaction between descriptive-theoretical work and
empirical testing in linguistic humor research.
This general account of the potential contribution of a cognitive linguistic perspective on humor does not, as such, motivate why cognitive
linguists interested in linguistic structure in general may find the study
of humor compelling and worthwhile. In the next section, we pursue the
question why cognitive hnguists should (occasionally) deviate from the
accepted path of conventional language use to study more creative cases.
To a large extent, this interest arises from looking at the arguments proposed in this section from a different angle.
2.
Introduction
215
Introduction
217
well-chosen metonymic expression lets us mention one entity that is salient and easily coded, and thereby evokeessentially automaticallya
target that is either of lesser interest or harder to name" (Langacker 1993:
30). Such manipulations may rely on, for instance, the profiling of nonessential side elements in a visual setting or an event structure as reference
points, or also the non-profiling of highly salient elements ("profile gap",
Brone and Feyaerts 2003: 3Iff). The analysis of these phenomena in
terms of non-prototypical cases of metonymic construal, rather than
humor-specific logical mechanisms, strongly invites an integrated, nonmodular CL account of humor. At the same time, however, it calls upon
CL to further refine its heuristic tools in order to live up to its name as the
framework most suitable for the analysis of dynamic meaning construction. More specifically, as instances of creative language use show, construal mechanisms seem to require a more elastic definition in terms of
prototypical characteristics in order to bring even full creativity (Bergen
and Binsted 2003) within reach of basic cognitive construal mechanisms.
By adopting a construal approach to incongruity resolution, the linguistic
interest in humor interpretation might stretch beyond the purely humor
theoretical perspective. Instead of focusing on the uniqueness of the humor phenomenon (e.g. in logical mechanisms), a CL account may reveal
the way in which day-to-day cognitive capacities are explored and pushed
to the limit for humorous purposes.
Besides its relevance for descriptive semantic theory, the analysis of creative language use (humor) also promises new insights to psycholinguistic
studies on the processing of language. In the context of this issue, we
briefiy refer to two observations whose relevance extends beyond the semantic structure of humorous utterances alone. A first benefit of tackling
humorous material through the application of experimental methods concems the psychological reality of frames, more specifically, the process of
frame shifting. In their observation of regressive eye movements, Coulson
et al. (this issue) confirm earlier reading time findings by Coulson and
Kutas (1998, 2001) as they note that "people were more likely to make
regressive eye movements when they read the joke than the straight endings, as if they wanted to re-examine earlier parts of the sentence for clues
to which altemative frames should be retrieved" (Coulson et al., this
issue). A second, related observation pertains to the multifold interaction
between the processing of both word and surrounding context (message).
Analyzing the complexity of frame-shifting jokes, Coulson et al. (this
issue) arrive at an upgraded notion of context compared to traditional
3.
In the opening paper of the issue Seana Coulson, Thomas Urbach and
Marta Kutas present the space structuring model, a cognitive linguistics
inspired model of linguistic comprehension that focuses on the interaction
between sentence processing and text processing. Using insights from that
model, the authors report on a number of experiments that test the psychological reality oi frame-shifting, the semantic and pragmatic reanalysis
that is necessary for the interpretation of the punchline of a joke. In the
case of frame-shifting, the lexical processing of the punchline triggers the
construction of cognitive models in working memory. Previous self-paced
reading and ERP (event-related brain potentials) experiments both suggest that frame-shifting involves an additional processing cost in comparison to non-joke controls. The eye-tracking study presented in this issue
confirms the results of previous studies under the more natural reading
conditions this methodology provides. In addition to the other studies,
the eye movement data show that the extra cognitive cost is not simply a
question of word recognition, since the length of the readers' initial gaze
duration of a word did not differ significantly for jokes and controls.
Rather, the cost is related to higher-level processing, as indexed by the
longer total viewing duration of words in jokes. The fact that jokes elicit
more regressive eye movements upon encountering the punch word than
straight controls provides additional evidence for the psychological reality
of a reanalysis process like frame-shifting.
Graeme Ritchie starts from the widely accepted idea in humor theories
that many jokes consist of a set-up phase, which has a salient interpretation and a punch line that suddenly forces the reader or hearer to reinterpret the set-up differently. However, the level at which the reinterpretation process occurs, is not as unambiguous as most theories observe,
since the initial misinterpretation can be situated on the level of either
Introduction 219
the reader/hearer or a character in the joke. In order to capture this stratification, Ritchie presents an account in terms of viewpoints or belief sets,
formalized by means of mental spaces (Fauconnier 1994 [1985]). It is argued that the reinterpretation process does not necessarily have to be directly in the mental space of the audience, but rather, it suffices that it
happens in a viewpoint that is accessible to the audience (nested viewpoint). An in-depth analysis shows that the change of interpretation can
occur in the hearer's viewpoint, in the narrative viewpoint or in the viewpoint of a story character, hence widening the canonical view that the
reinterpretation process involves a hearer making a revision from a previously false to a correct interpretation. What is more, the higher-level, formal treatment of forced reinterpretation provides a generalization that
can not be captured by some other taxonomies (like e.g. the widely accepted verbal-referential distinction). In using a mental space account to
capture this generalization, Ritchie seems to corroborate one of the basic
claims of cognitive hnguistics, viz. that it is possible to account for a wide
range of phenomena, verbal as well as non-verbal, using a restricted set of
basic conceptual mechanisms.
Although Helga Kotthoff's analysis of conversational humor formally
figures as a pragmatic approach, this contribution also provides valuable
input to the recent discussion in Cognitive Linguistics to pursue the concept of 'usage-based hnguistics' to the full (see, among others, Geeraerts
2003). Specifically, three key notions of CL-theory may be identified, motivating the relevance of this paper for the theoretical orientation of the
present issue. First, and most importantly, Kotthoff highlights flexibihty
as a crucial characteristic of semantic/pragmatic categories such as communication principles. By doing so, she adopts an ecological view on (linguistic) categorization, which basically boils down to the adaptation
of prototype theory to linguistic analysis. This theory still represents one
of the methodological cornerstones of CL, providing a structural explanation for the differentiation between, among others, preferred (salient) and
non-preferred (less-sahent) meaning structures. Although she does not
explicitly argue in terms of 'prototypicahty,' a major point of Kotthoff's
paper concerns the flexible extension of communicative principles, thus
rejecting an "explosion of maxims" in favor of "maxim exploitation"
allowing humorous utterances to be described as "[d]eviations from normal conventional ways of speaking." Second, Kotthoff clearly adopts an
encylopedic view on semantics according to which meaning resides in the
interplay of linguistic, social and cultural factors. Although this may not
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Introduction 221
up in the previous utterance(s) (Langacker 2001). On the basis of the
analysis, the authors conclude that a cognitive semantic account in terms
of general principles of conceptual organization provides an adequate account of the tension between markedness and transparency in humor and
exhibits an ecological validity that is lacking in most linguistic humor research. The issue finishes with a thought-provoking epilogue article by
Salvatore Attardo, who, from the point of view of the GTVH, points out
a number of potential strengths and weaknesses of the cognitive linguistic
endeavor.
4.
If cognitive linguistics is to live up to its reputation as a framework of dynamic meaning construction, it should be demonstrably capable of handling the most dynamic aspects of humorous meaning. The papers in
this special issue, we believe, go some way toward providing such a demonstration. However, many key questions remain either unanswered, or
worse, unasked, and cognitive linguistics must prove its value on these
questions also. For instance, how does humor relate to other cognitive
and social phenomena that appear to have a strong family resemblance?
Such phenomena include: gossip (jokes, like scandalous stories of the misbehavior of others, are amongst the most contagious memes that human
society has evolved; what makes these forms such compelling vehicles
for dynamic meaning, and what meaning-construction and meaninggrounding mechanisms do they share?); insults (not always humorous,
but the most valued are always creative; why does society prize indirect
and ambiguous assaults on character as clever over more direct and unambiguous attacks?); understatement (surely some mechanism of underspecification is shared with humor?); overstatement (like metaphors, humor often exploits literal mistruth); and so on. Since cognitive linguistics
refuses to box language and meaning into strict modular compartments
of mind, we should expect the cognitive ecology it fosters to have direct
application to all of these questions.
In line with this cognitive ecology, according to which humor figures
among other cognitive phenomena requiring a holistic, integrated approach, future research is expected to benefit from an even more intensified focus on commonalities with day-to-day communication in terms of
construal mechanisms, principles of communication, etc. On this view.
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4.1.
Circumscribing the boundaries of humorous language is not a straightforward task. Although the mechanisms of humor on the one hand, and
those of metaphor, irony and linguistic creativity on the other are not
identical, neither are they are clearly demarcated categories of cognition.
To what extent does humor exploit different kinds of figurative and idiomatic language use? Is there a real difference between literal and figurative humorous language use, or is the difference as elusive, and in some
ways ideological, as it is in the study of metaphor? Just as all metaphors
are neither literally anomalous nor false, neither should a joke rely on the
perception of an incongruity to force a humorous interpretation. Certainly, metaphors can be stretched so far as to cross the line from persuasive analogy into humorous juxtaposition, but metaphors can be perceived
as humorous without negating their truth-theoretic content. Humor, like
other forms of playful creativity, rely to some extent on the "ludic" spirit
of participants. Further research is required to elucidate precisely which
mechanisms of mind are shared by creative language and humorous language, and which, if any, predates the other.
4.2.
Introduction
223
4.3.
Humorous utterances are extremely fragile linguistic and conceptual constructs, the meaning of which depends vitally on a nexus of quantitative
criteria (such as the time of delivery, and the activation of key expectations) and qualitative criteria (such as social context, cultural taboos,
shared world models, etc.). This fragility of humorous language makes it
an ideal linguistic form in which to theorize about the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative aspects of language and cognition.
How can we objectively determine the complexity of a given stimulus or
complexity of the intended cognitive resolution process? Should this be
based on degree of conventionahty, contextual expectation, complexity
of inferential work, the cognitive mechanisms that are exploited (e.g.
frame-shifting), or maybe a combination of all of these parameters?
4.4.
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Introduction
225
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