Page 43 - The Language of Humour

30 THE SHOCK OF THE NEW
expose the lack of sense in clichés, and who knows what might seem
important at the point of death?

Semantics, pragmatics, discourse and register

The conventions of language in use are examined in the following
sections on semantics, pragmatics, discourse and register. Each
section outlines some concepts and terminology, with short examples of
humour to illustrate them. The activities ask you to apply the concepts
to humorous texts.

SEMANTICS

Semantics is the study of meaning. It examines relations of sense
between words, for example synonyms (such as ‘woman’, ‘lady’, ‘adult
female being human’), and antonyms (‘lady’, ‘gentleman’). However,
not all aspects of meaning are describable without reference to a wider
context. Semantics also takes into account the connotations of words,
i.e. the communicative value they have apart from their reference. For
some people ‘lady’ signifies more respect than ‘woman’, as it has
connotations of gentility. Connotations can vary and change; today
some people find the term ‘woman’ more acceptable. This is partly
caused by the collocations of these terms, i.e. the way that they are used
and the words that tend to occur with them. The collocations of the terms
‘woman’ and ‘lady’ are not the same: we say ‘dinner-lady’ not ‘dinner-
woman’. They do not have a similar range of collocations to ‘man’ and
‘gentleman’: in Wimbledon there is a ‘Ladies’ Final’, but a ‘Men’s [not
‘Gentlemen’s’] Final’.
Sometimes we are caused to laugh by combinations of words and
meanings that seem odd, or incongruous, in some way. Why is it that
some combinations of words make sense together and others do not?
Compare:

1 My uncle always sleeps in the day.
2 My uncle always sleeps awake.
3 My uncle always sleeps standing on one toe.

Because the second and third are also recognisably English, rather than
gibberish, this sort of combination is being referred to as ‘non-sense’
rather than ‘nonsense’. It is useful to think of two kinds of non-sense.
The second example contradicts what we know about language and