This book is the first comprehensive and systematic introduction to the linguistics of humor, exploring not only theoretical linguistic analyses, but also topics from applied linguistics. It will be a valuable resource for students from advanced undergraduate level upwards, particularly those coming to linguistics from related disciplines.

Salvatore Attardo is Professor of Linguistics at Texas A&M University - Commerce. He works primarily on the linguistics of humor, and on issues relating to implicatures, irony, and rationality, and more generally on Neo-Gricean pragmatics. He was Editor-in-Chief of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research for ten years. His publications include Linguistic Theories of Humor (De Gruyter, 1994), Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis (De Gruyter, 2001), and, as editor, The Encyclopedia of Humor Studies (Sage, 2014) and The Handbook of Language and Humor (Routledge, 2017).

• Preface


• List of figures and tables


• Part I: Humor Studies


• 1: Humor studies: A few definitions


• 2: Methodological preliminaries


• 3: Theories of humor and their levels


• 4: Incongruity and resolution


• 5: Semiotics of humor


• Part II: Humor Competence


• 6: The semantics of humor


• 7: The General Theory of Verbal Humor


• 8: Pragmatics of humor


• 9: Verbal humor


• Part III: Humor Performance


• 10: The performance of humor


• 11: Conversation analysis: Humor in conversation I


• 12: Discourse analysis: Humor in conversation II


• 13: Sociolinguistics of humor


• Part IV: Applications


• 14: Humor in literature


• 15: Humor and translation


• 16: Humor in the classroom


• 17: Conclusion


• Glossary


• References


• Index