Page 18 - The Language of Humour

‘JUST FOR A LAUGH?’ 5
Visual humour—as in silent films, cartoons and clowning—is outside
the scope of this book, though it is possible to comment on the way
cartoon captions interact with visuals to create humour. Some spoken
humour, particularly of impressionists like Rory Bremner, relies so
much on features like the quality and tone of voice that it would need a
sophisticated phonetic analysis—also outside the book’s scope. Use the
following as a guide to choosing texts that are suitable for language
analysis:

• The humour must be verbal—either written or spoken.
• It will generally be intentional, though perhaps based on inadvertent
slips of the tongue.
• Your response must be to aspects of language.
• Those aspects should be diverse enough to allow extended comment.