A Pragmatic Study of Humor

Sura Dhiaa Ibraheem, Nawal Fadhil Abbas

Abstract


Linguistically speaking, the concept of humor, which seems to be vast for people, has specific dimensions by which it is generated including: puns, irony, sarcasm, wittiness, and contrastive utterances in relation to the speakers of those utterances. It is about how the extra linguistics elements dominate the situation and the delivery of humor. The researchers of the present paper intend to show how the selected literary extract can be subjected to a linguistic pragmatic analysis and then be explained by applying the incongruity theory of humor by Kant (1790) in order to show the ways or the mechanisms that lead to the flouting, infringing and the violation of Gricean maxims can consequently lead to the creation of humor. Despite the fact that the present paper is qualitative in nature, some tables are provided by the researchers in order to reach into a better, deeper and more understandable analysis. Investigating the ways Gricean maxims are flouted, infringed and violated to create humor, and showing how the imperfect use of language sometimes create unintentional humor are the researchers’ aims of this paper.

Keywords: pragmatics, humor, implicature, Gricean maxims, Measure for Measure


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