Humorous Texts
eBook - PDF

Humorous Texts

A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis

  1. 252 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Humorous Texts

A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis

About this book

This book presents a theory of long humorous texts based on a revision and an upgrade of the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH), a decade after its first proposal. The theory is informed by current research in psycholinguistics and cognitive science. It is predicated on the fact that there are humorous mechanisms in long texts that have no counterpart in jokes. The book includes a number of case studies, among them Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Allais' story Han Rybeck. A ground-breaking discussion of the quantitative distribution of humor in select texts is presented.

Frequently asked questions

Yes, you can cancel anytime from the Subscription tab in your account settings on the Perlego website. Your subscription will stay active until the end of your current billing period. Learn how to cancel your subscription.
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
Perlego offers two plans: Essential and Complete
  • Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
  • Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Both plans are available with monthly, semester, or annual billing cycles.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes! You can use the Perlego app on both iOS or Android devices to read anytime, anywhere — even offline. Perfect for commutes or when you’re on the go.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Humorous Texts by Salvatore Attardo in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Linguistics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Preface
  2. 0.1 A cautionary tale
  3. 0.2 Acknowledgments
  4. 0.2.1 Publications
  5. 0.2.2 People
  6. 1 Preliminaries
  7. 1.1 The SSTH
  8. 1.2 The Structure of a Semantic Theory
  9. 1.3 The Semantic Theory of Humor
  10. 1.4 The GTVH
  11. 1.5 Outline of the Theory
  12. 1.6 Methodological and metatheoretical issues
  13. 2 Literature Review
  14. 2.1 The Expansionist Approach
  15. 2.2 The Revisionist Approach
  16. 3 Semantic Analysis and Humor Analysis
  17. 3.1 Semantic and Pragmatic Tools
  18. 3.2 How is information added to the storage area?
  19. 3.3 The Text World
  20. 3.4 Surface structure recall
  21. 3.5 Summing up
  22. 4 Beyond the Joke
  23. 4.1 Narrative vs. Conversation
  24. 4.2 Joke cycles
  25. 4.3 Conclusion
  26. 5 A Theory of Humorous Texts
  27. 5.1 Method of analysis
  28. 5.2 Narratives
  29. 5.3 Lines and their Configurations
  30. 5.4 A typology of line position
  31. 5.5 Humorous Plots
  32. 5.6 Humorous Techniques
  33. 5.7 General Considerations
  34. 6 Diffuse Disjunction
  35. 6.1 Register humor
  36. 6.2 Irony
  37. 7 Case Studies
  38. 7.1 Chuckles Bites the Dust: the opening sequence
  39. 7.2 Sexton's Cinderella
  40. 7.3 A Merry Discourse of Meum and Tuum
  41. 7.4 Il nome della rosa: Analysis of one strand
  42. 7.5 Han Rybeck ou le coup de l'etrier
  43. 8 “Lord Arthur Savile's Crime” by Oscar Wilde
  44. 8.1 CHAPTER I
  45. 8.2 CHAPTER II
  46. 8.3 CHAPTER III
  47. 8.4 CHAPTER IV
  48. 8.5 CHAPTER V
  49. 8.6 CHAPTER VI
  50. 9 Further Perspectives
  51. 9.1 A quantitative look at LASC
  52. 9.2 General Conclusions
  53. 9.3 Limitations of the Model
  54. Primary Sources
  55. Works Cited
  56. Index