Page 40 - The Language of Humour

Unit three
The shock of the new

This unit continues to examine humour which is caused by incongruity
in language. Whereas Unit 2 looked at examples of double meaning in
language, suggesting an image of language having a surface with
something underneath, the work in this unit relies on the image of a net
for the complex web of conventions that construct meaning. Some
people even talk about language as a linguistic straitjacket. The German
nonsense poet, Christian Morgenstern, used this sort of image to claim
that we are imprisoned by language and that this causes our unsatisfactory
relationship with other people, the society and the world in general.
What we need to do, he said, is ‘smash language’ before we can learn to
think properly. Some contemporary humour, like that of Monty Python,
moves from wordplay towards nonsense and the absurd. But it is not a
modern phenomenon. John O.Thompson points out that the French
writer, Rabelais, used a comic form of speech called coq-a-l‘âne
(meaning ‘f rom rooster to ass’): ‘It is a genre of intentionally absurd
verbal combinations, a form of completely liberated speech that ignores
all norms, even those of elementary logic’ (Thompson, 1982). But it is
extreme to claim that such humour is ‘completely liberated’ and
‘ignores all norms’. If language is ‘smashed’, is there any firm basis
from which it can be examined? It should be possible to discuss how the
existing conventions of language have been stretched to reveal wider
possibilities for language and thought.

Activity with text
The Goon Show written by Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, has been
described as ‘the birth of alternative comedy’ (Eddie Izzard). Look at
this extract, where Eccles and Bluebottle are talking about the time.
jonathan Miller comments that Milligan’s humour jokes about
representation and logic—areas of interest to psychologists