Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis

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.

About the author

Salvatore Attardo is Professor at the English Department of Youngstown State University, USA.

Product details

• Authors: Salvatore Attardo
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.01.2001
• EAN: 9783110170689
• ISBN: 978-3-11-017068-9
• No. of pages: 238
• Dimensions: 155 mm x 23 mm x 230 mm
• Weight: 563 g
• Illustrations: 9 b/w ill., 10 b/w tbl.
• Series: Humor Research; Humor Research [HR]; Humor Research; ISSN
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics