Towards a comprehensive theory of culturally constructed humour
VIEW FULL TEXT

Keywords

Humour
General Theory of Verbal Humour
Cultural Conceptualisations

How to Cite

Kianbakht, S. (2020). Towards a comprehensive theory of culturally constructed humour. The European Journal of Humour Research, 8(2), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2020.8.2.Kianbakht

Abstract

In the present research, we discuss Humour Studies within Linguistics, focusing mainly on linguistic theories of humour including the Semantic Script Theory of Humour (SSTH;  Raskin 1985), and the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH; Attardo 1994, 2017b). The study demonstrates different types of cultural conceptualisations (Sharifian 2017a, 2017b) that the interlocutors draw upon, such as cultural categories, cultural metaphors, and cultural schemas to create humour, and we argue that the General Theory of Verbal Humour does not account for culturally-constructed verbal humour. Hence, we argue that it is necessary to fill this gap in the most prevailing theory of verbal humour, the General Theory of Verbal Humour, by demonstrating how cultural conceptualisations must be considered in identifying and analysing instantiations of humour, in moving towards a comprehensive theory of culturally constructed humour.

https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2020.8.2.Kianbakht
VIEW FULL TEXT

References

Abedinifard, M. (2015). Humour and Gender Hegemony: The Panoptical Role of Ridicule vis-à-vis Gender. Alberta: University of Alberta, PhD thesis.

Abedinifard, M. (2019). 'Persian 'rashti jokes': Modern Iran's palimpsests of gheyrat-based masculinity'. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 46 (4), pp. 564-582.

Antonopoulou, E. (2004). 'Humour theory and translation research: Proper names in humorous discourse'. Humour: International Journal of Humour Research 17 (3), pp. 219-256.

Aryanpur Kashani, A., & Aryanpur Kashani, M. (1984). Aryanpur Persian-English Dictionary. Teharn: Amir-Kabir Publications.

Ashouri Talooki, R. (2017). Let Me Tell You What It Means: Reading beyond Humor in Selected Iranian-American Memoirs, Stand-up Comedy, and Film in the Post-9/11 Era. Ontario: The University of Western Ontario, PhD thesis.

Athanasiadou, A. (2017). 'Cultural conceptualisations of irony in Greek', in Sharifian, F. (ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics, Singapore: Springer, pp. 111-124.

Attardo, S. (1994). Linguistic Theories of Humour. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Attardo, S. (1997). 'The semantic foundations of cognitive theories of humour'. Humour: International Journal of Humour Research 10 (4), pp. 395-420.

Attardo, S. (2001). Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.

Attardo, S. (2002). 'Translation and humour: An approach based on the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH)'. The Translator 8 (2), pp. 173-194.

Attardo, S. (2003). 'Introduction: The pragmatics of humour'. Journal of Pragmatics 35 (9), pp. 1287-1294.

Attardo, S. (2008). 'A primer for the linguistics of humour', in Raskin, V. (ed), The Primer of Humour Research. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 101-155.

Attardo, S. (2014). 'Humour content versus structure', in Attardo, S. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Humour Studies, Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 355-355.

Attardo, S. (2014). 'Metaphor', in S. Attardo (ed.), Encyclopedia of Humour Studies, Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 505-506.

Attardo, S. (2017a). 'The General Theory of Verbal Humour', in Attardo, S. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humour, London: Routledge, pp. 126-142.

Attardo, S. (2017b). 'The GTVH and humorous discourse', in Chlopicki, W. & Brzozowska, D. (eds.), Humorous Discourse, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 93-107.

Attardo, S. (ed.) (2017c). The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humour. London: Routledge.

Attardo, S., Hempelmann, C. F. & Di Maio, S. (2002). 'Script oppositions and logical mechanisms: Modeling incongruities and their resolutions'. Humour: International Journal of Humour Research 15 (1), pp. 3-46.

Attardo, S., & Raskin, V. (1991). 'Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model'. Humour: International Journal of Humour Research 4 (3-4), pp. 293-348.

Attardo, S., & Raskin, V. (2017). 'Linguistics and humour theory', in Attardo, S. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humour, London: Routledge, pp. 49-63.

Banas, J. A., Dunbar, N., Rodriguez, D. & Liu, S.-J. (2011). 'A review of humour in educational settings: Four decades of research'. Communication Education, 60 (1), pp. 115-144.

Behdad, A. (2005). A Forgetful Nation: On Immigration and Cultural Identity in the United States. Durham: Duke University Press.

Behdad, A., & Thomas, D. (2014). A Companion to Comparative Literature. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

Berger, A. A. (1987). 'Humour: An introduction'. American Behavioural Scientist, 30 (3), pp. 6-15.

Berger, A. A. (2014). 'Targets of humour', in S. Attardo (ed.), Encyclopedia of Humour Studies, Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 753-755.

Berger, A. A. (2017). An Anatomy of Humour. London: Routledge.

Boggs, C. G. (2010). Transnationalism and American Literature: Literary Translation 1773–1892. London: Routledge.

Brekhus, W., & Ignatow, G. (2019). The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chiaro, D. (1992). The Language of Jokes. Analyzing Verbal Play. London: Routledge.

Chiaro, D. (2005). 'Foreword. Verbally expressed humour and translation: An overview of a neglected field'. Humour: International Journal of Humour Research 18 (2), pp. 135-146.

Chiaro, D. (ed.) (2010). Translation, Humour and Literature: Translation and Humour (Vol. 1). London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chiaro, D. (2018). The Language of Jokes in the Digital Age. New York: Routledge.

Chlopicki, W. (2017). 'Humour and narrative', in Attardo, S. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humour, London: Routledge, pp. 143-157.

Chlopicki, W. & Brzozowska, D. (2017). 'A foreword on humorous discourse', in Chlopicki, W. & Brzozowska, D. (eds.), Humorous Discourse (Humour Research series vol. 11), Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 1-10.

Chovanec, J., & Tsakona, V. (2018). 'Investigating the dynamics of humour: Towards a theory of interactional humour', in Chovanec, J., & Tsakona, V. (eds), The Dynamics of Interactional Humour: Creating and Negotiating Humour in Everyday Encounters (Vol. 7), Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 1-28.

Davis, D. (1996). My Uncle Napoleon (a novel by Iraj Pezeshkzad translated by Dick Davis). Maryland: Mage Publishers.

Dumas, F. (2003). Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America. New York: Random House.

Ermida, I. (2008). The Language of Comic Narratives: Humour Construction in Short Stories (Humour Research series vol. 9). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Giora, R. (1991). 'On the cognitive aspects of the joke'. Journal of Pragmatics 16 (5), pp. 465-485.

Giora, R. & Attardo, S. (2014). 'Irony', in Attardo, S. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Humour Studies, Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 398-402.

Kecskes, I. (2015). 'Intracultural communication and intercultural communication: Are they different?', International Review of Pragmatics 7 (2), pp. 171-194.

Krikmann, A. (2006). 'Contemporary linguistic theories of humour'. Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore 33, pp. 27-58.

Lakoff, G. (1987). 'The death of dead metaphor'. Metaphor and Symbol 2 (2), pp. 143-147.

Martin, R. A. (2007). The Psychology of Humour: An Integrative Approach. London: Elsevier.

Martín, R. M. (1995). Lingüística Para Traducir [Linguistics for Translation]. Barcelona: PURESA Publications.

Morreall, J. (1997). Humour Works. Amherst, Ohio: Human Resource Development Press.

Mulder, M. P., & Nijholt, A. (2002). Humour Research: State of the Art. Enschede, Netherlands: Centre for Telematics and Information Technology, University of Twente Press.

Nash, W. (1985). The Language of Humour. London/New York: Longman.

Olin, L. (2016). 'Questions for a theory of humour'. Philosophy Compass 11 (6), pp. 338-350.

Pazargadi, L. (2012). Mosaics of Identity: Reading Muslim Women's Memoirs from Across the Diaspora. Los Angeles: University of California, PhD thesis.

Peeters, B. (2016). 'Applied ethnolinguistics', International Journal of Language and Culture

(2), pp. 137-160.

Polzenhagen, F., & Xia, X. (2014). 'Language, culture, and prototypicality', in Sharifian, F. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture, London: Routledge, pp. 269-285.

Pourmohammadi, E. (2018). The Use of “Taarof”: The Generation and Gender Factors in Iranian Politeness System. Saskatchewan: University of Saskatchewan, PhD thesis.

Rahimieh, N. (2011). 'Dāī jān nāpelon (uncle napoleon)', in Yarshater, E. (ed.), Encyclopaedia Iranica, New York: Columbia University Center for Iranian Studies, p. 597.

Raskin, V. (1985). Semantic Mechanisms of Humour. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Raskin, V. (ed.) (2008). The Primer of Humour Research (Humour Research series vol. 8). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter.

Raskin, V. (2017). 'Script-based semantic and ontological semantic theories of humour', in Attardo, S. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humour, London: Routledge, pp. 109-125.

Ritchie, G. (2004). The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes. London: Routledge.

Rojo Lopez, A. M. (2002). 'Applying frame semantics to translation: A practical example'. Meta: Translators' Journal 47 (3), pp. 312-350.

Scheel, T. (2017). 'Definitions, theories, and measurement of humour', in Scheel, T., & Gockel, C. (eds.), Humour at Work in Teams, Leadership, Negotiations, Learning and Health, New York: Springer, pp. 9-29.

Sharifian, F. (2003). 'On cultural conceptualisations'. Journal of Cognition and Culture 3 (3), pp. 187-207.

Sharifian, F. (2011). Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical Framework and Applications (Vol. 1). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Sharifian, F. (2012). 'Translation and body-part terms: The case of cheshm ‘eye’ in Persian'. Journal of Language, Culture, and Translation, 1(1), pp. 1-16.

Sharifian, F. (2013a). 'Cultural linguistics and intercultural communication', in Sharifian, F., & Jamarani, M. (eds.), Language and Intercultural Communication in the New Era, London: Routledge, pp. 74-94.

Sharifian, F. (2015). 'Cultural linguistics: The development of a multidisciplinary paradigm'. Language and Semiotic Studies, 1(1), pp. 1-26.

Sharifian, F. (2016a). 'Cultural linguistics and translation: The case of xoshbaxti (‘happiness/prosperity’) and baxt (‘fate/luck’) in Persian'. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op-PzIgZwWo.

Sharifian, F. (2016b). 'Cultural pragmatic schemas, pragmemes, and practs: A Cultural linguistics perspective', in Allan, K., Capone, A., & Kecskes, I. (eds.), Pragmemes and Theories of Language Use, New York: Springer, pp. 505-519.

Sharifian, F. (2017a). Cultural Linguistics: Cultural Conceptualisations and Language (Vol. 8). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Sharifian, F. (2017b). 'Cultural linguistics: The state of the art', in Sharifian, F. (ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics, New York: Springer, pp. 13-28.

Sharifian, F. (2018). 'Metacultural competence in English language teaching (ELT)', in Liontas, J. I. (ed.), The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 1-6.

Sharifian, F., & Bagheri, M. (2019). 'Conceptualisations of xoshbaxti (‘happiness/prosperity’) and baxt (‘fate/luck’) in Persian'. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 20 (1), pp. 78-95.

Stankic, D. P. (2017). 'Cultural conceptualisations in humorous discourse in English and Serbian', in Sharifian, F. (ed.), Advances in Cultural Linguistics, New York: Springer, pp. 29-48.

Strandell, J. (2019). 'Bridging the vocabularies of dual-process models of culture and cognition', in Brekhus, W. H., & Ignatow, G. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Sociology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 192-286.

Strauss, C., & Quinn, N. (1997). A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning (Vol. 9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Xu, Z., & Sharifian, F. (2017). 'Unpacking cultural conceptualisations in Chinese English'. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 27 (1), pp. 65-84.

Yu, N. (2007). 'The Chinese conceptualisation of the heart and its cultural context', in Sharifian, F., & Palmer, G. B. (eds.), Applied Cultural Linguistics: Implications for Second Language Learning and Intercultural Communication (Vol. 7), Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 65-85.

Zabalbeascoa, P. (2019). That’s Just What We Need, a Fourth Language. Multilingual Humour in Film and Television Translation. Madrid: The Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Press.

All authors agree to an Attribution Non-Commercial Non Derivative Creative Commons License on their work.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.