Semantic Mechanisms of Humor by V Raskin

Semantic Mechanisms of Humor by V Raskin

GOAL This is the funniest book I have ever written - and the ambiguity here is deliberate. Much of this book is about deliberate ambiguity, described as unambiguously as possible, so the previous sentence is probably the fIrst, last, and only deliberately ambiguous sentence in the book. Deliberate ambiguity will be shown to underlie much, if not all, of verbal humor. Some of its forms are simple enough to be perceived as deliberately ambiguous on the surface; in others, the ambiguity results from a deep semantic analysis. Deep semantic analysis is the core of this approach to humor. The book is the fIrst ever application of modem linguistic theory to the study of humor and it puts forward a formal semantic theory of verbal humor. The goal of the theory is to formulate the necessary and sufficient conditions, in purely semantic terms, for a text to be funny. In other words, if a formal semantic analysis of a text yields a certain set of semantic proptrties which the text possesses, then the text is recognized as a joke. As any modem linguistic theory, this semantic theory of humor attempts to match a natural intuitive ability which the native speaker has, in this particular case, the ability to perceive a text as funny, i. e. , to distinguish a joke from a non-joke.

`..this is an interesting and provocative book on an important topic of interest to those interested in pragmatics...'
Linguistics, 23:6

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9789400964747
ISBN 10	9400964749
Title	Semantic Mechanisms of Humor
Author	V Raskin
Series	Studies In Linguistics And Philosophy
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Springer
Year published	2011-11-12
Number of pages	284
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable