Page 25 - The Language of Humour

12 ‘I SAY, I SAY, I SAY’

1 And the batsman’s Holding, the bowler’s Willie. (cricket
commentator Brian Johnstone)
2 She’s the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success,
wrong by wrong. (Mae West)
3 Manchester children all follow United, because their
mothers tell them to stay away from the Maine Road.
4 Macho does not prove mucho. (Zsa Zsa Gabor)
5 Be alert. (Civil Defence poster with added graffiti) Your
country needs lerts.
6 Never darken my Dior again. (Beatrice Lillie)
7 (Dorothy Parker, when challenged to use the word
‘horticulture’ in a sentence) You can lead a horticulture, but
you can’t make her think.
8 Je t’adore. (caption on front of greeting card) Inside: Shut
it yourself, you lazy git.
9 Stop Miss World—we want to get off. (banner)
10 Man walks into a bar and orders a pint of jelly and some
roof tiles. He belongs to the Campaign for Surreal Ale.

Commentary

Extra-linguistic knowledge is needed in 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9 and 10, which
allude either to proper names referring to specific people, places and
organisations (cricketers named Holding and Willie, Maine Road as the
home of Manchester City football ground; Christian Dior as the name of
a fashion designer; the Campaign for Real Ale organisation) or to well-
known sayings (‘to climb the ladder of success, rung by rung’; ‘Never
darken my door again’; ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t
make it drink’; ‘Stop the world—we want to get off’). 1 and 3 are exact
homophones, whereas 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10 rely on similarity of sound. 1
relies on sentence stress and 5, 7 and 8 on word boundaries.

Graphology
Graphology refers to the way in which the language is represented
visually. Some examples of humour need to be seen rather than heard.
Although short verbal jokes often found as graffiti can also work when