Page 42 - The Language of Humour

THE SHOCK OF THE NEW 29
(The Far Side by Gary Larson © Farworks, Inc. Used with
permission. All rights reserved)
A man who was tried and acquitted for armed robbery said, ‘Great.
Does that mean I can keep the money?’
INFORMATION BOOTH
‘Can I help you?’ ‘I’d like some information.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘What
information have you got?’ (Fry and Laurie)
This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to
meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It’s a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in
peace. If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the
daisies. It’s rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This
is an ex-parrot. (Monty Python)
Two cows in a field. One says, ‘Moo.’ Other says, ‘You bastard, I
was going to say that’
I was thrown out of college for cheating in the metaphysics exam; I
looked into the soul of the boy next to me. (Woody Allen)

Commentary
These examples of humour are not so straightforward to explain,
because they involve a wider set of conventions than those involving
ambiguity of meaning. So, what are the usual conventions of language
behaviour that are being broken? Here is a brief comment about each
example.
There are accepted conventions about the type of things we would
say if faced by imminent death—not a ‘by the way’ complaint about
borrowed sunglasses. We recognise phrases like ‘meaninglessness of
life’ as signals for confession about personal angst, not a homicidal
urge. When someone tells us how much they are suffering, it is not
enough to offer them a cookie. In a courtroom we would keep quiet
about our guilt if we had pleaded ‘not guilty’. We understand the sorts of
questions that are suitable at an information booth. Clichés and other set
expressions, like ‘Do you believe everything x tells you?’, are not to be
taken at face value. Euphemisms are a way of skating delicately around
the subject of death, not poured out in a torrent. We do not think of
animals having a range of language choices, as humans do. Souls are not
things to be looked into, and it’s odd to think of it as a way of cheating.
Yet these examples of humour are not nonsense. They open up a
range of possibilities—it’s conceivable that animals do have just as
sophisticated a system of communication; if you could look into
another’s soul, it might tell you much more than a book; why not