Page 124 - The Language of Humour

INDEX OF TERMS 111
and the pronoun ‘I’, respectively, meaning, e.g. ‘over the
are omitted with the ellipsis here moon’=‘happy’.
creating a casual and informal incongruity 5; 7
tone. indirect object 20
Element of a clause.
filler 96 innuendo 60
Words or sounds in spontaneous A disguised reference, usually to a
speech like ‘er’, ‘sort of’ that do taboo subject.
not carry conventional meaning intensifiers 93
but allow time to think. Adverbs like ‘very’, ‘awfully’
force 38 used to modify adjectives
A term used in speech act theory —‘awfully hot’.
to refer to the meaning something intertextuality 3, 36
gains in its context. The way in which one text echoes
free morpheme see morphology, 14 or refers to another text. For
Unlike bound morphemes, these example, an advertisement which
are free-standing words, like stated ‘To be in Florida in winter
‘forget’ in ‘unforgettable’. or not to be in Florida in winter’
would contain an intertextual
graphology 7, 11 reference to a key speech in
The visual representation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
language in writing. intonation 9
The rising and falling tones in
headword 19 speech.
The key word in a phrase, for irony 49
example ‘a long, hot day in A way of expressing meaning in
midsummer’, where the other language of a different tendency.
words are adding detail and ‘Dramatic irony’ is a literary
description to the headword ‘day’. technique in which the audience
See modifier. can perceive hidden meanings
homonyms 8, 16 unknown to the characters.
Words spelt and pronounced the
same, but with different meanings, lampoon 80
e.g ‘bark’ (sound of dog), ‘bark’ A type of satire mocking an
(on tree). individual.
homophones 8 lexis 7
Words which have the same The words or vocabulary of a
pronunciation but different language.
spellings and differ in meaning,
e.g ‘saw’, ‘sore’. malapropism 10
Choosing a word with a similar
idiom 17 sound, but inappropriate meaning.
A sequence of words which For example, ‘Is it lunch time yet?
functions as a single unit of I’m ravishing.’