examining linguistic ambiguity as a source of constructing funniness in english verbal jockes = khảo sát hiện tượng mơ hồ ngôn ngữ với vai trò là một nguồn tạo nên tính hài hước của các câu chuyện tếu tiếng anh

ELT English language teaching LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS Figure 3: Analytical framework of linguistic ambiguity in English 26 Figure 4: Types of linguistic ambiguity exploited in Englis

VNU UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN HẢI HÀ

EXAMINING LINGUISTIC AMBIGUITY AS A SOURCE OF CONSTRUCTING FUNNINESS

IN ENGLISH VERBAL JOKES

(KHẢO SÁT HIỆN TƯỢNG MƠ HỒ NGÔN NGỮ VỚI VAI TRÒ

LÀ MỘT NGUỒN TẠO NÊN TÍNH HÀI HƯỚC CỦA

CÁC CÂU CHUYỆN TẾU TIẾNG ANH)

M.A COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

HANOI- 2011

VNU UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN HẢI HÀ

EXAMINING LINGUISTIC AMBIGUITY AS A SOURCE OF CONSTRUCTING FUNNINESS

IN ENGLISH VERBAL JOKES

(KHẢO SÁT HIỆN TƯỢNG MƠ HỒ NGÔN NGỮ VỚI VAI TRÒ

LÀ MỘT NGUỒN TẠO NÊN TÍNH HÀI HƯỚC CỦA

CÁC CÂU CHUYỆN TẾU TIẾNG ANH)

M.A COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Võ Đại Quang

HAnOi- 2011

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1.3 Types of linguistic ambiguity in English 9

2.2.2.1 Definitions of verbal jokes 12

2.2.2.3 Verbal jokes versus other types of humor 14

2.2.3.1 The role of linguistic ambiguity in verbal jokes 18 2.2.3.2 Factors towards appreciating verbal jokes’

humor and other registers

CHAPTER 3: DISCUSSION AND FINDINGS

3.2 Types of linguistic ambiguity used as a source of constructing

3.2.1.4 Specific and general word meaning 38

3.2.5.2 Idiom and complex language 52 3.3 Classification of English verbal jokes based on types of 53

3.3.1 Types of English verbal jokes based on linguistic

4.2 Concluding remarks on each of the set forth objectives 56

APPENDICES

ELT English language teaching

LIST OF FIGURES AND CHARTS

Figure 3: Analytical framework of linguistic ambiguity in English 26 Figure 4: Types of linguistic ambiguity exploited in English verbal jokes 58

CHARTS

Chart 1: Frequency level of five types of English verbal jokes

based on linguistic ambiguity

54

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Statement of problems and rationale

It is a linguistic convention that language is used not only to convey information among participants but also to create rapport and personal attitudes of each participant in

the communicative event, which is called the transactional and interactional functions of

language In other words, language, in both spoken and written forms, is message-oriented and serves a specific intended function so as to “pass on information” and “maintain social relationships” (Nguyen Hoa, 2004:16) Verbal humor is such a kind of language function aiming at the cooperation between Speaker (teller) and Hearer to see its funniness

The issue of verbal humor, along with its most common representative, verbal jokes, has been the focus of various studies in philosophical, psychological, social logical and

cognitive linguistics fields Unlike non-verbal humor, which is related to extralinguistic features, verbal humor is perceived as that primarily constructed by means of language in

the form of a single-joke-carrying text (Raskin, 1985) As a product of language, verbal humor is, undoubtedly, an exclusively human domain that no other creatures or entities can possess In his work on the theory of linguistic verbal jokes in English, Lew (1996) asserts the fact that contrary to its abundant resources, humor in general is not equally available to all humans in the way that it requires “sense of humor” and language competence to appreciate its funniness, which apparently not everyone can possess, especially when the hearers of the humor can acquire modestly the language of the humor

Below is a very notable verbal joke:

(1) In the diner of a southbound train, a honeymoon couple notices two nuns at another

table When neither could identify the religious habit, the husband volunteered to settle the question

“Pardon me, Sisters,” he said, pausing politely before the nuns‟ table, “but would you mind telling me your Order?”

One of the nuns smiled at him “Not at all,” she said cheerfully “Lam chops- and they‟re delicious!”

(Hoke, 1965:194)

It is obvious that the funniness of the joke can only be revealed when two different readings are accessed, one by the husband to refer to the religious rank of the nuns; and the other by the two nuns to respond to the enquiry about their food selection Clearly, it has nothing to do with the lack of context in this piece of humor but it is more of the problems

text-of one word denoting two possible referents or antecedents in the context To be more specific, it is the noun “order” with its double meanings of “a group of people, especially monks or nuns, living under religious rules” and “a request for food and drinks in a hotel, restaurant, etc.” that causes the contradiction between the two responses, thus, creates the humor or funniness of the joke

Let us now look at another example of verbal joke and examine what its humor is: (2) A man eating a kebab goes up to a lady who has a yapping Chihuahua at her heels

“Can I throw your dog a bit?” he asked politely

“Certainly,” came the reply

So he scooped the dog up and flung it a hundred yards

(Lew, 1996:33) Like in (1), the original text can be interpreted in two different ways, either “your dog” is the indirect object and “a bit” is the direct object of the ditransitive verb “throw”, which can be rephrased as:

(2a) “Can I throw a piece of kebab to your dog?”

or “your dog” is the direct object and “a bit” is the adverb of the monotransitive verb

“throw”, which also means:

(2b) “Can I pick up your dog and fling it away a bit?”

As the story proceeds, it is easy to conclude that one and the same question of the man is understood as (2a) by the lady and meant as (2b) by the man himself, and the final reaction, which is unexpected, has created the funniness herein

The two examples above have partially revealed one of the most favorite mechanisms of inventing a verbal joke, which lies in the different possible interpretations

attached to one and the same word or phrase, i.e linguistic ambiguity- known as the major

humorous stimulus (Bucaria, 2004)

The issue of ambiguity in English texts, in fact, has always been attracting scholars and linguists worldwide; nevertheless; compared to a good number of papers on ambiguity

in other disciplines such as headlines and advertisements (Kess and Hoppe, 1981; Leno,

1990 and 1992; Oaks, 1994; Bucaria, 2004; Hoenisch, 2004; among many others), studies

on ambiguity in the field of humor are much less numerous, which may be resulted from the fact that in previous studies, much attention has been devoted to analyzing the mechanism that generates the ambiguity or the one that helps to resolve the ambiguity This, to a large extent, can contribute to ruining the ambiguous and funny features of the humorous texts As warned by W.H Auden, a famous English poet, the study of the humor can threaten the humor to dead

Stimulated by this recognition as well as personal interests, the researcher has

conducted the paper entitled “Examining linguistic ambiguity as a source of constructing

funniness in English verbal jokes”, with the view to exploring English verbal jokes in a

deeper sense, without damaging the humor nature of the jokes In short, the paper places a strong emphasis on analyzing how one particular type of linguistic ambiguity becomes the humorous stimulus of various English joke-carrying texts, then, makes up one type of linguistically ambiguous English verbal jokes

The findings of the paper, hopefully, can bring about a closer look into the being discussed matter together with a holistic picture of how a joke is ambiguously humorous Furthermore, with its merits and drawbacks, the study is expected to contribute a stronger voice into the modest number of studies on the same field and be a helpful and sufficient reference for future studies

1.2 Objectives of the study

As mentioned clearly earlier, the current paper aims at tackling the existing shortcomings of previous studies on the application of linguistic ambiguity in verbal jokes

To be more specific, through extracting and linguistically analyzing 50 verbal-joke texts

collected for the paper in detail, some rules that govern humorous stimuli of linguistic

ambiguity-based English verbal jokes are expected to be captured, concurrently, some

categories and subcategories of English verbal jokes involving linguistic ambiguity can

also be proposed Additionally, the results of the paper can help to reveal an overall trend

about the frequency of each type of ambiguity-based English verbal jokes In the final place, from the analysis of the chosen joke texts, some implications for teaching and

learning the English language and for proper translation of those texts into Vietnamese can

2 In what way can English verbal jokes be categorized in accordance with the types

of linguistic ambiguity involved?

3 What is the frequency level of each type of ambiguity-based English verbal jokes?

1.3 Scope of the study

As suggested by the title of the paper, it targets at English verbal jokes, one type of English humor, conveyed primarily by means of language Henceforth, visual humor (as in cartoons and clowning) and any non-verbal joke-carrying acts like in silent films should and must be excluded from the paper Also, by “verbal jokes”, the texts collected for the study are mainly in written form as spoken jokes in fact depend chiefly on features of quality and tone of voice and need sophisticated phonetic analysis, which should be treated

as beyond the scope of this study

In addition, at this point, the researcher wants to make a clear cut between “verbal jokes” and its commonly heard counterpart of “verbally expressed jokes” or “verbalized jokes”, defined as every way in which language is used to create amusement (Chiaro 1992, Ritchie 2004) Similar as they may appear, verbal jokes and verbalized jokes actually have

the relationship of hyponym-superordinate with the former concerned with verbal matters

(specific properties of a language) and much narrower a term than the latter As the joke texts in this study are analyzed linguistically in terms of the types of ambiguity that they involve, the complex forms of jokes seem unnecessary Therefore, the term “verbal jokes”

is used in this paper

Another note-worthy point at this stage is that due to the small number of the data (50 English verbal jokes) as well as time constraints, the study, admittedly, has not yet been able to cover all expected issues These self-conscious limitations, which are going to

be discussed in details in the final chapter, hopefully can help to raise some innovative ideas for later studies on the same research area

1.4 Significance of the study

In the first place, the study, once accomplished, is expected to be an informative, useful and interesting source for both linguistic and non-linguistic readers More specifically, equipped by the outcomes of the paper, linguists and teachers of linguistics can find another simple but effective aspect to deal with the matter of linguistic ambiguity,

a puzzle in semantic, structural and pragmatic fields Similarly, students of English, with the help of humorous examples and detailed explanations in the paper, can access similar linguistically ambiguous texts and analyze those texts in an easy and motivating manner

Secondly, with regards to social interaction purposes, the study hopefully can assist readers, especially students of English and those whose language competence is modest to confidently get involved in or even successfully initiate, maintain and close any communicative event Obviously, with more or less linguistic strategies related to humor, social interactions can easily be established and reserved Communication breakdowns and culture shocks, consequently, can be minimized (Pepicello and Green, 1984)

Last but not least, will all attempts of the researcher at presenting the study in a systematic, thorough and reader-friendly way, the paper would expectedly contribute to the few studies on linguistic ambiguity as a source of English humor in general Most importantly, the findings of the paper may receive recognition from those interested and be appreciated as a reliable and comprehensive reference in linguistic aspects, particularly in ambiguity-related issues

1.5 Structure of the thesis

The study is presented in four chapters Chapter 1 provides a general introduction

to the topic as well as the stimuli for conducting the paper In this chapter, objectives of the

paper and research question are raised, followed by a summary of scope and significance

of the study Implied by the title “Literature review”, chapter 2 deals with exploring the

theoretical notions of Linguistic ambiguity and English verbal jokes Previous studies on

the ambiguity-based theories of English humor are also examined in this chapter Chapter

3, also the focus of the entire paper, presents a full answer to the proposed research question, accompanied by logical and well-supported interpretations and explanations of data collected Finally, chapter 4 is the summary of the findings and discussion about major issues, limitations and recommendations for future studies Also in chapter 4, some implications for teaching English language, especially teaching ambiguous vocabulary, and ambiguous joke translation can be found Attached to four chapters of the study are the list

of references and appendices with the full collection of 50 English verbal jokes

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Serving as the theoretical framework for the research, the chapter sheds lights on the way

in which the key notions of the paper should be perceived and how the current paper is compatible and related with previous ones in the same field

2.1 Linguistic ambiguity

Of the two key terms expressed in the title of the paper, Linguistic ambiguity seems

to attract attention of readers first and foremost, which should be made clear right away in order to easily follow the progress of the whole paper Generally speaking, the term

Linguistic ambiguity targets at the phenomenon of Ambiguity in the field of Linguistic semantics Consequently, both the broader term of Linguistic semantics and that of Ambiguity are about to be the focus of denotation in this part of the paper

2.1.1 Linguistic semantics

Dated back from nearly a century ago, the term Linguistic semantics has triggered a

hot debate on how it should be perceived and to what nature it is attached With precious contributions to the studies of linguistics, Frawley (1992:xiii, xiv) asserts that “Linguistic semantics concerns the relation between semantic structure and overt linguistic form More technically, it is about grammaticalization patterns or how languages carve up and express universal semantic space in grammatical form.” In a deeper sense, this eminent linguist

defines Linguistic semantics as “the study of literal meanings that are grammaticalized or

encoded.” (p.1) Viewing the issue from the same angle, Lyons (1995) additionally

emphasizes the ambiguity of the term Linguistic semantics in that it refers either to “the

study of meaning in so far as this is expressed in language” or “the study of meaning within linguistics” (p.11) Jackendoff (1983), on the other hand, takes the view that linguistic semantic can be defined as central to conceptual semantics The term, for Jackendoff, should primarily be concerned with the grammatical meaning and obviously exclude the so-called lexical meaning in linguistics

In its nature, Linguistic semantics is classified as a branch of linguistics just as

philosophical semantics of philosophy or logical semantics or logic, which are generally

considered non-linguistic semantics While it is normally easy to figure out the differences

in the focus of Linguistic semantics and its counterparts in other disciplines, only in Frawley (1992) can Linguistic semantics be distinguished from its partner in the field of linguistics, which is Philosophical semantics According to Frawley (1992:4), Philosophical semantics attempts to solve the problem “(a) whether and how meaning is at all possible, and (b) the kinds of meanings that are in principle possible.” Primarily, Philosophical semantics is deductive, which spins around the principle based on which the meaning of the language arises On the contrary, Linguistic semantics is an “empirical discipline” (Frawley, 1992:5) which is inductive and concerns more of the actual meanings that the language produces rather than following any model patterns

All of the above have reflected the difficult task to define Linguistic semantics in a

satisfying manner Thus, in this paper, the researcher would unconditionally follow the

simple definition of Linguistic semantics proposed by Nguyen Hoa (2004), who remarks

“semantics […] is the systematic study of meaning…the study of how language organizes and expresses meaning”(p.32) Also, this author suggests that “every word combines grammatical and lexical meanings” (p.67) Another state of art the triggers this study is the view that “pragmatics is just a further stretch of semantics” (Nguyen Hoa, 2004:27) with the former dealing with the meaning of an utterance on the ground of the speaker‟s background knowledge or context and the latter concerning the sentence meaning as

mentioned earlier That is simply to say there is a close interrelation between Linguistic semantics and other branches of Linguistics including Pragmatics and Syntactics

2.1.2 Linguistic ambiguity

As suggested in Hurford and Heasley (2001:128), “ambiguity of various kinds is never far from the centre of our attention in Semantics” and by Semantics, we first and foremost target at Linguistic semantics Henceforth, the term “Linguistic ambiguity” or the shortened “Ambiguity” hereafter actually refers to one and the same phenomenon of

ambiguity in Linguistic semantics (or Semantics as in this study), which describes any case exploiting linguistic devices potentially understood in two or more ways or conveying at least two incompatible interpretations- “having more than one sense” as stated by Hurford

and Heasley (2001:121)

Regarding paraphrasing, Hurford and Heasley (2001) assert that a word or sentence

is considered ambiguous if and only if it has at least two paraphrases that are not themselves paraphrases of one another A good case in point can be found in:

(3) The chicken is ready to eat

It is possible to give two paraphrases of this original sentence, which are shown in (3a) and (3b) below:

(3a) The chicken is ready to be eaten

(3b) The chicken is ready to be fed/ to eat its food

Sentence (3a) does, clearly, not share the same meaning as sentence (3b) and vice versa as they mention two different events Therefore, they are not paraphrases of each other, which then makes it linguistically reasonable to conclude that sentence (3) is ambiguous

Let us note that ambiguity should and must be distinguished from vagueness While

the former has several denotations (as can be seen through various examples in the paper), the latter consists of ONE denotation which is indefinite Consider the use of “red” in the following sentence:

(4) Sarah has bought a red dress

The underlined expression herein is vague as dark pink or dark orange can both denote the color red of the sentence It is obvious that vagueness has nothing to do with lack of

knowledge as we all know how the expression is and the sentence‟s truthvalue is neither true nor false

2.1.3 Types of linguistic ambiguity in English

Also in their linguistic works, Oaks (1994), Walton (1996) and Hurford and Heasley (2001) clearly categorize ambiguity into two main strands, making up a well-built

framework for English language in terms of ambiguity, namely lexical ambiguity, which

results from the ambiguity of a word or any lexical constituents within the sentence, and

structural (or grammatical) ambiguity, in which the lexical items of a sentence are

realized to relate to each other in various ways, even though none of the individual items are ambiguous This can be well exemplified in sentence (5) below:

(5) John lives near the bank

Apparently, the word “bank” herein, due to its multiple meanings of either “an organization or a place that provides a financial service” or “the land sloping up along each side of a river or canal”, has created two separate interpretations of sentence (5) which, consequently, is considered an ambiguous sentence More specifically, sentence (5) is a case of lexical ambiguity

Another example of lexically ambiguous sentence can be found in (6):

(6) She can‟t bear the children

In any dictionary, the verb “bear” can be defined as either “to give birth to somebody” or

“to accept something unpleasant without complaining”, which results in the fact that sentence (6) can be understood as either:

(6a) She is not able to give birth to children

or (6b) She is not able to tolerate the children

Similarly, the sentence (7):

(7) Visiting relatives can be boring

(Hurford and Heasley, 2001:121) can be interpreted in two ways:

(7a) It can be boring to visit relatives

or (7b) The relatives who are going to visit [us] can be boring

It is clear that one surface structure in sentence (7) can make up two deep structures in sentence (7a) and (7b), which then create two sentences totally distinguished from each other in terms of meaning It is the different grammatical interpretations of sentence (7) that make it confusing, thus, sentence (7) is structurally or grammatically ambiguous Sentence (8) below can help to further explain this type of ambiguity in English (8) Every man loves a woman

Apparently, there are two distinct readings attached to this sentence: for each man on earth, there is woman of his own and he loves her, or, alternatively, there exists a special woman who is loved by all (of the) men

In a nutshell, this framework of lexical and grammatical ambiguities has surely conditioned the current paper to be conducted and serves well as a firm ground, on which the answers to the research question are expected to be revealed in next chapter

2.2 English verbal jokes

An essential preliminary step to the discussion of any application of linguistic research to verbal jokes should be to specify what is meant by the broader key term of

“humor” and how verbal jokes differ from some other types of humor This section is entirely devoted to giving a clear and thorough image of this

2.2.1 The notion of Humor

Humor is mysterious (Lew, 1996), which has been the focus of a good number of scholarly studies in the perspectives of philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology and linguistics While the other fields see humor as one and the same phenomenon, linguists analyzing it potentially operate its semantic and sociolinguistic (or pragmatic) mechanisms (Dynel, 2009)

Nevertheless, as found out by Keith-Spiegel (1972), when it comes to the field of linguistics, humor has posed a difficulty in finding a theoretical definition in the most general sense, thus, the argument that humor is undefinable has been advanced several times (Escarpit, 1960) There are three possible reasons to account for this “hard nut”

First, there has been no general agreement on how to give a full definition to this notion Second, humor research has such a long tradition that throughout periods of time, the

findings of previous papers are revised and refuted Finally, as stated clearly earlier in this

paper, humor has attracted considerable interests from various disciplines, each of which

has applied a specific set of definition and methodologies of humor

From this recognition, this current paper has no ambition to propose any expectedly

more insightful definition of Humor but rather aims at exploring types of humorous

stimuli, in which “verbal jokes” is regarded as one set

2.2.2 What counts as “verbal jokes”?

2.2.2.1 Definitions of verbal jokes

Of various humorous stimuli, linguists including Raskin (1985), Attardo and Raskin (1991), Chiaro (1992), Attardo (1994), Norrick (1993), Lew (1996), Alexander (1997), among many others, have paid much attention to verbal humor due to various means of language or text that the humor exploits However, the clearest and most tangible representatives or prototypical forms that are used to measure verbal humor are verbal jokes, orally produced in conversations or published in collections Thus, talking about verbal humor is, for most of the time, to mean verbal jokes rather than any other of its manifestations (allusion, puns and the likes)

The sense of “joke” can intuitively be grasped by both linguists and non-linguists for its familiarity in everyday conversational situations However, it is doubtful to say that the term itself is not far from straightforward just as the case of the notion “Humor” Most frequently, verbal jokes are defined on the basis of its constituents Hockett (1972) and Sherzer (1985) agree that the so-called verbal jokes are texts conveyed primarily by means

of language rather than any non-verbal acts like visual or graphical mode of presentation like cartoons or silent films These two big figures in linguistic field also stress that verbal jokes involve the situation of a narrative or conversation presented in a build-up (or set-up) and the final constituents of the text which trigger surprises by shedding new light on the build-up called punchline or punch (with the former commonly heard in everyday language) This may be well illustrated in the example below:

(9) “Do you believe in clubs for young people?”

“Only when kindness fails.”

(Pepicello and Weisberg, 1983:79)

It is rational to understand the word “clubs” in the first line intends to mean “a group of people who meet together regularly for a particular activity” but the response after that shows its reference to “weapons” As a result, between what is expected in the dialogue and what actually happens in the situation, there exists a conflict that potentially makes

people laugh or at least astonished This is called “incongruity theory” by Keith-Spiegel

(1972:7) and Nash (1985:7) and simplified by Helzron (1991) into a more concise definition of verbal jokes- “a short humorous piece of oral literature in which the funniness culminated in the first sentence, called the punchline” (pp.65- 66) Attardo and Chabanne (1992:169) further elaborate:

[…] jokes are very short narrative fictions reduced to the most economical form The narratives are most generally focused on a short dialogue (often not more than two lines) between rarely more than two characters (never more than four) The essential pattern is that the verbal joke is oriented to and by a punch line, which lies at the end of the text The function of the narrative is that of providing enough contextual information for the punch lie

to build upon, or rather to be incongruous with (cited in Lew, 1996:11)

On the ground of Incongruity theory, Raskin (1985) proposes his Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor, claiming, “…a text can be characterized as a single-joke

carrying text if both of the conditions in (108) are satisfied

(108) (i) The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scripts

(ii) The two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite in a special sense […]” (p.99)

Herein, verbal jokes are seen from their different interpretations that two hearers of the jokes may arrive at

For the purposes of the current paper, Helzron‟s concise definition and Incongruity theory by Keith-Spiegel (1972) appear to be the most suitable lodestar assuring that the

research process is scientifically approved

2.2.2.2 Types of verbal jokes

Attardo (1994) affirms in Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis that

the prominences of verbal jokes in particular and jokes in general are resulted from the fact that they are distinctively short, popular in everyday talks, easy to collect and quite simple

as they seem to use only one source of humorous stimuli Also in this outstanding piece of

work, Attardo categorizes any verbal-joke-carrying text into two subsets: canned (or narrative) jokes and conversational jokes, which are distinguished from one another by the

level of contextual (and co-textual as well) support that the two types of text involve

Specifically, canned jokes are said to be context-free in that whenever it comes to a

certain situation, it matters little which certain joke should be told By contrast,

conversational jokes show up spontaneously in conversational events and are

comparatively context-bound That is to say, canned jokes are available to be used repeatedly in various contexts, while their counterpart is typically limited to the events that they originate from

For a more detailed description of the canned and conversational jokes, see Fry (1963), Raskin (1985), Attardo (1994) and Paakkinen (2010)

It should also be noted in this part that as the data used for this specific research are published verbal-joke-carrying texts, there is no risk of confusion between the two types of jokes as all of them are context-free, and thus, are merely canned jokes

2.2.2.3 Verbal jokes versus other types of humor

“Jokes” forms a specific type of humorous stimuli; consequently, “verbal jokes” is one type of verbal humor Henceforth, it is clear that we are able to differentiate verbal jokes from at least one other type of humor Alexander (1997) says, in fact, there are fifteen types of humor including joke, gag (practical joke), crack (a biting comment), epigram (a short witty poem or saying), pun (wordplay), howler (flower of speech), spoonerism (transposition of the first sounds of spoken words), irony, sarcasm, satire, parody, caricature, impersonation, sardonic (heartless, bitter) humor and misprint This

section will examine attempts at briefly presenting basic differences between jokes and some commonly heard subsets of humor

to some arguments below, which should be noted critically:

1) Laughter is not limited to conveying amusement and/or funniness Attardo (1994) points out laughter can also be a sign of embarrassment and bewilderment

2) Laughter can originate from humor but it can also be stimulated naturally (through some chemicals like hallucinogens)

3) Humor exhibits sometimes laughter, sometimes smiles or mild responses or even

no responses (in the case that no funniness appreciation is reached) (Lew, 1996) 4) Laughter can be observed overtly but for many times, it is simulated (Jefferson, 1985)

Puns

Puns or wordplay is considered by Ritchie (2004) as one of the simplest form of

jokes, which, in the most common sense, is associated with the sound of the word

Consider the following example of puns:

(10) Why did the cookie cry?

Because its mother had been away for so long

(Pepicello and Green, 1984:59) For this specific pun, it matters very little in terms of humorous stimuli if the pun is not read aloud In its oral presentation of the text, the pun raises two conflicting strings

between “away for” and “a wafer”, with the latter related more directly to the “cookie” in the first line

Other instances of this kind of joke can be found in:

(11) A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumor

And (12) At a pizza shop: 7 days without pizza makes one weak

In the two puns, it is the clever use of language (sense of humor vs sense of rumor and 7 days one week vs 7 days one weak) that makes the puns interesting

A note-worthy point to make herein is proposed from recognition that while jokes often bring about laughter, puns do not require themselves to be funny all the time

Satire, irony and sarcasm

While puns and jokes can be appreciated in any situation, satire, irony and sarcasm

can only engender laughter if taken into specific contexts That is to say, they are typically context-bound

Satire is most frequently used in literature, which, according to Blake (2007), “aims

to ridicule, to prick pretensions, to expose hypocrisy…Satire distorts and exaggerates.”(p.16) To illustrate this point, the scholar gives an example from a TV show about the armed conflict between USA and Iraq:

(13) Now there are reports from Baghdad that officials are taking brides for favors,

giving jobs to their relatives, taking money under the table from contractors You know what this means? The war is less than a weak old, and already they have an American-style democracy (p.17)

This is a very good case in point of satire as it both exaggerates the degree of corruption

and presents a bitter criticism towards those holding power

Irony and sarcasm can be treated together as in many cases and for many times, one

is made use of to explain the other Alexander (1997) defines Irony as a word or group of

word whose intended meaning is opposite to its usual sense Paakkinen (2010) sees the

matter from the same angle when saying irony is an event or a result that contradicts what

is expected from the word use Take the expression: “Good boy” when one breaks the vase while playing football inside as an example of this

Likewise, sarcasm, in Blake‟s word (2007), “usually involves someone saying

something that is the opposite of what is appropriate, often in a derisive or mocking tone.”

(p.21) All in all, irony and sarcasm refer to the same phenomenon (a comment opposite to

what is meant), yet, sarcasm is often escorted by a mocking tone As a result, “sarcasm is

not a very effective vehicle for communication”, as suggested by Jorgensen (1996:619)

Allusion

Allusion, as defined by Sager (n.d.), refers briefly, explicitly or implicitly, to a person, place or event, or any other literary work or passage, which may be both humorous and humorless The following example may help to clarify his point better:

(14) Loving him too deeply is her Achilles heel

The “Achilles heel” in here is an allusive image referring to a hero of Greek mythology called Achilles who could only be defeated when hit by his heel Therefore, “Achilles heel” associates with weaknesses or shortcomings In the example above, the fact that she loves him too deeply is her weakness In short, allusions in humor are concerned with

extra-linguistic knowledge (knowledge about the world) that requires speakers and hearers

to arrive at the same awareness of this in order to reach the intended meaning

2.2.3 What makes a joke a joke?

2.2.3.1 The role of linguistic ambiguity in verbal jokes

Both Incongruity theory and Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor described in

previous section have accounted for the most apparent feature and humorous mechanism of

many verbal jokes: double meanings, which misleads the hearer, followed by the

punch-line (Nash, 1985)

Refer to jokes (1), (2) and (9) for a detailed analysis of their double meanings

This diversity of semantic interpretation actually takes on the form of linguistic ambiguity As Shultz and Horibe (1974) find out, “a thorough analysis of hundreds of verbal jokes by the authors indicated that many of them depend on some sort of linguistic ambiguity for a successful resolution” (p.13) Similarly, Paulos (1980:85) asserts: “a joke can thus be considered a kind of structured ambiguity, the punch line precipitating the catastrophe of switching interpretations.”

It should, perhaps, be noted not only that verbal jokes commonly exhibit linguistic ambiguity but also that in a well-built joke, the clue signaling the realization of ambiguity should coincide with the punch of the joke However, the ambiguous string does not need

to be so placed In fact, many cases have proved that this appears at an earlier point in the text of the joke Attardo (1994) reaches the conclusion when finding out 80% of his data exhibit such a pattern

2.2.3.2 Factors towards appreciating verbal jokes’ funniness

Ambiguity theories in verbal jokes also suggest the major reasons for not seeing a joke as funny, which reckon that the joke recipients (readers or hearers), especially the language learners, may not perceive the linguistic ambiguity involved in the joke as their vocabulary and knowledge of interpretation are limited Lew (1996) further comments on this issue that “whether a given recipient evaluates a joke (or other stimulus) as funny, and

to what degree, depends on a wide range of factors, including the following: cultural and ethnic identity, set of attitudes, identification with characters and subject, mode of delivery

of the stimulus, mood, sex, age, family traditions, situational setting, and most certainly a host of other factors Moreover, different factors contribute with different weight for different people Social and personality differences in humor appreciation are important and active fields of humor studies” (p.57) This linguist also cites the works of various outstanding scholars on the same field that share his view Cunningham 1962, Zippin 1966, Leventhal and Mace 1970, Chapman 1973, Cantor 1976, Suls 1977, Lundell 1993 are as such

Besides, according to Nash (1985:4), personal taste is a “crucial aspect of humor, so

it is unlikely that any two people will coincide in their raking of the jokes.” Temporary

mood, taboo subjects or words, the joke type and style also contribute a great deal to the appreciation of the joke, which psychologically explains the fact that one acknowledges the text as “joke but not a funny one” (Nash, 1985:8) Additionally, Nash (1985) realizes that for many times, the humor in general and the jokes in particular make us laugh even though it is hard to explain why, like the case of (15) below:

(15) Weather forecast for tonight: dark

(Nash, 1985:4) Sentence (15) states the obvious, which is odd of a forecast; but then again, it is ridiculous that the weather forecast does state the obvious things Perhaps, this could be the comment

on this joke

In general, from the findings of previous studies, determinants towards the joke understanding and seeing the joke texts as funny can be divided into some branches as follows:

a Cultural and ethnic identity: referring to the social differences between people of

different ethnicities in one country as well people of different nationalities This

factor actually aims at the key feature of verbal jokes, which is culture-based

b Personal taste or the so-called “personal differences” by Lew (1996): including

identification with the subject, set of attitudes, mood, sex, family tradition and the likes Those factors, in fact, can change over time and situations, affecting greatly the way one and the same person appreciates a single joke

c Mode of delivery: referring to the types and forms of the joke, whether it is written

or spoken Quality and tone of voice, pace and speed of speaking and intonation are also considered governing factors Nevertheless, they are all related to spoken jokes, which need a detailed phonetic analysis, therefore, should be treated as out of the scope of this paper In addition, context of delivery is included in this type, which states that when told in different places, in different situational settings, a certain joke may receive different reactions

d Clever use of language: this factor in fact targets at the language ability of the joke

recipients, which asserts that the jokes‟ funniness can be appreciated only when the

hearers of the jokes share the implication of the joke-tellers If it is hard for the recipients to understand what is being told, it causes much trouble for them to respond or to see the joke text as a funny one

2.2.4 Social functions of verbal jokes

As analyzed in previous chapter, verbal humor, specifically verbal jokes, serves several functions of a language, which can be summarized as its social functions or communicative functions The influences of humor on the process of communication, in

Attardo‟s opinion (1994), can be classified into four groups namely Social management, Decommitment, Mediation and Defunctionalization Yet, his classification witnesses a

large degree of overlapping among different groups Therefore, to make it more concise and easier to follow, this paper is expected to adapt and present two most visible social

functions of verbal jokes, which are Social management and Defunctionalization

Social management

Advocates of this argument agree that verbal jokes help to facilitate in-group interactions, enhance in-group solidarity and reject out-group cases The assumption of this lies in that if two or more speakers laugh together about one joke text, they share some knowledge upon which the joke is based, hence, they can “break the ice” to initiate the conversation and further move the conversation on Conversely, if a speaker laughs about the joke and the other does not, there exist no bonding-effects between them, thus, they tend to belong to two different groups

Defunctionalization

Sometimes known as the Interpersonal functions, Defunctionalization, as proposed

by Guiraud (1976) and Attardo (1994), refers to social functions of verbal jokes in a more concrete sense (in a more specific situation of human interactions) This function illustrates that verbal jokes, for many times, are used not for information transmission but for playful purposes, especially in the case of nonsense jokes Therefore, verbal jokes are governed by rules of games rather than rules of languages Speakers are free to take part in the joke exchange and appreciation for, simply, entertaining themselves

To sum up, it seems appropriate to relate the social or communicative functions of verbal jokes to the general model of communication suggested by Jakobson (1960:69)

Figure 1: Jakobson‟s general model of communication

2.3 Reviewing studies on the practice of linguistic ambiguity in humor and other registers

It is easy to find a good number of papers on linguistic ambiguity and its application in the discipline of psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics, in which advertisements are the most typical registers chosen due to their hardly uncommon presence in everyday conversations and situations Oaks (1994) finds out that morphology and structurals play a vital role in featuring a useful strategy for advertising languages Similarly, structural ambiguity and phonological ambiguity, beside lexical ambiguity, are considered the two great elements constituting the humorous mechanisms of headlines- another favored research area of cognitive linguistics (Leno 1990, 1992; Bell 1991, Alexander 1997, Reah 1998, Bucaria 2004)

Despite the existence of numerous studies on the application of linguistic ambiguity

in other disciplines, papers on the same subject matter in the particular register of verbal jokes are rare to be found In 1984, Pepicello and Green were the pioneers tackling a part

of this hard nut when investigating the language of riddles and reaching the conclusion that

in riddles particularly, morphological and structural ambiguity show their privilege

(16) When is coffee like the soil?- When it is ground

The joke-carrying sentence in fact exploits morphological ambiguity which is generated on the basis of the morpheme “ground” as a past participle (of the verb “to grind”) and as a noun (meaning “the solid surface of the earth”)

In Attardo‟s (1994) paper on the theory of humor, of the 2000 humorous texts, lexical ambiguity gains its power while structural ambiguity is much far behind Not ultimately aiming at various types of linguistic ambiguity involved in the texts, Chiaro (1992) in his work “The language of jokes” firmly believes that the essence of humor is

surprise, innovation and rule-breaking, the funniness of which can be appreciated by a

number of factors (see the previous section for more details)

Finally, a detailed study on the exploitation of ambiguity in verbal jokes is offered

by Lew (1996), which has provided a firm base and been the chief stimulus for the current paper Lew has shown his great efforts in categorizing types of linguistic ambiguity involved in the jokes with a large number of classes being proposed Also, he indicates here and there in his study some factors that govern the appreciation of the jokes‟ funniness However, Lew simply stops at listing the factors without explanation or testing those factors onto specific respondents Moreover, it causes no difficulty seeing that his categories are too many with some classes being trivial or overlapping

Generally, the chapter so far has taken into consideration different theoretical grounds for the current work regarding those on Linguistic semantics and its subset of linguistic ambiguity, and especially on verbal jokes and issues of verbal jokes Various studies on the same field have also been reviewed with the researcher’s sincere respects to their strengths and critical comments on their limitations It is hoped that the current paper can rationally and thoroughly tackle the previous shortcomings and give a full answer to the primary objectives set in advance Next chapter, with a linguistic analysis of

50 chosen verbal jokes, is to present a detailed discussion on the research methodology applied for the paper and how findings of the paper can be exposed

CHAPTER 3: DISCUSSION AND FINDINGS

Coming up next to the review of previous studies is the detailed description of research design which is the use of qualitative research, exploratory-interpretive research to be more specific The basis on which the analytical framework for the paper is built and data are collected will also be investigated thoroughly Additionally, the chapter places a strong emphasis on linguistically analyzing the way in which different types of linguistic ambiguity become a source of funniness in chosen joke texts, which is the critical aim of the paper; from the ground of which, new types of English verbal jokes based on linguistic ambiguity are expected to be proposed

3.1 Research methodology

3.1.1 Analytical framework of linguistic ambiguity in English

As clearly defined in chapter 2, Linguistic ambiguity in English frequently exists in

the form of lexical ambiguity and structural (or grammatical) ambiguity, with the former

by far being more common Nevertheless, recent studies in the field of Linguistic semantics have raised a hot discussion on a more detailed classification of Linguistic ambiguity, which extends the available framework of the subject matter Three most

prominent authors in the field are Empson (1949), Shultz and Pilon (1973) and Walton (1996), whose works have conditioned the current paper to have its reliable analytical framework for the being-discussed subject

From his observation, Empson (1949) has published a book entitled “Seven types

of ambiguity”, which clearly categorizes ambiguity into: comparative ambiguity, or metaphor (two things that have different properties are said to be alike), double metaphors,

or resolution (two or more different metaphors are used at once), context (two ideas or

notions connected through a context can be given simultaneously in a single word),

complexity (two disconnected or different ideas are combined to make clear a complicated state within the mind of the author), fortune confusion or simile (an idea is come up by the

author only during the stage of writing, which lies between two other statements made by

the author), invented interpretations (when the author leaves his message intentionally

vague, the readers are forced to make up a meaning of the text As every reader is different, their invented interpretations often conflict with those of the author and other readers),

contradiction (two or more opposite notions of the same text are connected only through

the text itself and illustrate an inevitable division in the author‟s thought process)

Clearly, the classification by Empson is rather vague and not well-supported as he proposes the theory on the basis of literary works, poetry to be more specific Hence, it may work extremely well in the case of literature research rather than the current paper

On the other hand, Shultz and Pilon (1973), when researching different age stages

of children‟s ability to detect linguistic ambiguity, draw a conclusion about the relationship

between lexical ambiguity and phonological ambiguity (so-called phonetic ambiguity) The

two authors assert, “Phonological ambiguity occurs when a given phonological sequence can be interpreted in more than one way This can result from a confusion about the boundaries between words (e.g “eighty cups” and “eight tea cups”)” (p.1) They also

conclude that the ability to detect phonological ambiguity first appears when the child reaches the age of 6-9 Phonological ambiguity can also be seen through the similar

phonological representations between “Some other I‟ve seen” and “Some mother I‟ve

seen” found out by Nash (1985) This has proved the significance of phonological ambiguity, which should be considered another type of Linguistic ambiguity beside lexical

and structural ones

Walton (1996), furthermore, gives out an applicable model of ambiguity types

including three sets of ambiguous sentences namely potential, actual and imaginary ambiguity, with each divided into smaller branches Figure 2 below will help to further

explain this point:

Figure 2: Types of ambiguity (adapted from Walton 1996)

According to this outstanding linguist, Potential ambiguity occurs when a word or

sentence is ambiguous in and of itself, regardless its co-text in a sentence or paragraph

Lexical and Structural ambiguity, therefore, belong to this subset Inflective ambiguity, the third type of Potential ambiguity, actually makes use of both lexical and structural

ambiguities Actual ambiguity, in Walton‟s opinion, happens during the action of the

speaking, providing that there exist no ambiguities of the lexical and structural items Of

the two subcategories of Actual ambiguity, Pragmatic ambiguity is described as a

statement not having enough information to arrive at the intended meaning, while

Extraneous ambiguity arises as a result of the fact that the provided information has redundant or unnecessary details Finally, Imaginary ambiguity lies in a fixed meaning of a

word, which seems to convey a different meaning arrived at by a different communication

recipient Emphatic and Suggestive ambiguity, in fact, are the subcategories of this type

Unlike Empson‟s classification of ambiguity, Walton‟s model appears to be too

trivial and covers a quite broad scope of linguistics, which should be applied for English verbalized humor, much broader a term than English verbal jokes, the subject matter of the current study (see chapter 1, section 1.3 for the detailed differentiation of the two terms) However, to fully attain the aims and objectives put forward of the paper, Walton‟s

model of ambiguity types is exploited with a visible awareness of the researcher that adaptation is crucially needed

Broadly speaking, the analytical framework of linguistic ambiguity applied for the current paper spins around the four fundamental types: lexical, structural, phonological and pragmatic ambiguity (a general term used to aim at both pragmatic and extraneous ambiguities by Walton 1996), which has been adapted critically from the trust-worthy works mentioned above in English linguistics In short, the framework that works as guidelines for the paper is summarized as follows:

Types of linguistic ambiguity General definition

1 Lexical ambiguity The ambiguity of a word or lexical constituents

within the sentence (Hurford and Heaseley, 2001)

2 Structural ambiguity

The ambiguity of various ways in which the lexical items of a sentence are said to relate to each other (Hurford and Heaseley, 2001)

3 Phonological ambiguity The ambiguity of sound similarities between two

words or phrases (Shultz and Pilon, 1973)

4 Pragmatic ambiguity

The ambiguity aroused when not enough or excess information is provided, which leads to the fact that intended messages are misinterpreted (Walton, 1996) Figure 3: Analytical framework of linguistic ambiguity in English

A detailed discussion of these ambiguity types will be given in later sections, in which each type‟s features and examples are analyzed thoroughly

3.1.2 Selection of data

Aiming at seeking a rational answer to the proposed research question, the paper made use of 50 English verbal jokes coming from various published and unpublished sources Generally, the corpus of the paper were randomly chosen from huge joke collections by well-known tellers, which are cited in detail following the jokes Others that are left without specific reference information are come up with via useful Internet search engines with the key words of “ambiguous verbal jokes” or “verbal jokes that involve ambiguity.” A full bibliography of these sources can be found in the reference list attached

to this paper Besides, ambiguous lexis of some jokes that are taken for analysis in the

main content of this paper are denoted clearly with the help of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English and Oxford Wordpower Dictionary The whole collection of

jokes used as data for the paper are listed accordingly with their categories in Appendix 1 attached to the main paper

3.1.3 Research design

Due to its particular features of an explanatory study, which makes use of and interprets text data, the current paper is designed in the form of a qualitative research From the standpoint of Reichardt and Cook (1979), qualitative research deals with naturalistic and uncontrolled observation, which is subjective, close to the data, exploratory, descriptive and process-oriented Apparently, these characteristics work

distinctively well when applied to this study To be more specific, Paradigm 1 of Research

design (Pure forms) proposed by Grotjahn (1987:59-60) has been considered as the firm

skeleton for the paper, which is exploratory-interpretive and elaborated as:

3.2 Types of linguistic ambiguity used as a source of constructing funniness in English verbal jokes

Analyzing the corpus (50 ambiguity-based verbal jokes as described in detail in

previous section), the paper has come to a conclusion about FIVE types of ambiguity that

can be used in verbal jokes (an extension of the analytical framework of ambiguity in

English applied for the paper) It is the discussion on how these types of linguistic ambiguity become a source of funniness in the chosen jokes that the paper now turns to, in which a detailed description and analysis of each type‟s features and examples are proposed

3.2.1 Lexical ambiguity

As clearly defined in the analytical framework above, lexical ambiguity is aroused

at the level of word and a word is ambiguous when it has more than one interpretation resulted from the fact that more than one lexical meaning is associated with it (Hurford and

3.2.1.1 Polysemy and homonymy

It is undeniable that polysemy is one of the major causes of lexical ambiguity,

which is defined by Hurford and Heasley (2001) as cases in which a word has two or more

senses that are very closely related An example of this can be found in the words “earth”

and “Earth”, which mean either “our planet” or “soil” with both meanings containing the concept of “land” and used at different levels of generality To put it another way, the number of contexts in which a single meaning of the word can occur is different

On the contrary, a case of homonymy is said to be matters of “mere accident or

coincidence” (Hurford and Heasley, 2001:123), which consist of an ambiguous word whose two or more senses are “far apart from each other and not obviously related to each other in any way” (p.123) The word “bank” in sentence (5) and “bear” in sentence (6) (see chapter 2) are good examples of this as there would actually be no clear conceptual connection between the two meanings that each of the two words can convey

Apparently, homonymy and polysemy have a close relation to each other, which are

often treated with one another as superficially, they are phenomena that refer to various meanings associated with one and the same general phonetic forms (Nguyen Hoa, 2004) Also in Nguyen Hoa (2004), the first and foremost criterion used to distinguish between

homonymy and polysemy is semantic relatedness (or relatedness of meanings) This

scholar takes the view that if various meanings of one and the same form are interrelated, they make up a polysematic word, orelse, if these meanings do not share any conceptual connections in any way, words associated with each meaning are called homonyms

However, in practice, it is not an easy task to draw a clear line between a homonym and a polyseme without consulting a detailed dictionary about etymology, even a good dictionary may not well explain all the subtle distinctions between the uses and the senses

of a word Hence, in this paper, the researcher would be wise if not teasing the two apart but grouping them in the same category

Reconsider joke (1) mentioned in chapter 1:

(1) In the diner of a southbound train, a honeymoon couple notices two nuns at another

table When neither could identify the religious habit, the husband volunteered to settle the question

“Pardon me, Sisters,” he said, pausing politely before the nuns‟ table, “but would you mind telling me your Order?”

One of the nuns smiled at him “Not at all,” she said cheerfully “Lam chops- and they‟re delicious!”

(Hoke 1965:194) The joke is a typical example of a lexical-ambiguity based one due to the double meanings

of the ambiguous “order” which means either “a group of people living under religious rules” or “a request to make or supply food” (Once again to remind that hereafter, no efforts will be made on trying to figure out whether the two meanings share the same concept) Replacing all suitable occurrences of the word “order”, in other words, removing the ambiguity in the joke and synchronizing them with the responses of the nuns, we may have two different scenarios:

(1a) In the diner of a southbound train, a honeymoon couple notices two nuns at another

table When neither could identify the religious habit, the husband volunteered to settle the question

“Pardon me, Sisters,” he said, pausing politely before the nuns‟ table, “but would

you mind telling me your rank?”

One of the nuns smiled at him “Not at all,” she said cheerfully “Lam chops- and they‟re delicious!”

(1b) In the diner of a southbound train, a honeymoon couple notices two nuns at another

table When neither could identify the religious habit, the husband volunteered to settle the question

“Pardon me, Sisters,” he said, pausing politely before the nuns‟ table, “but would

you mind telling me your food order?”

One of the nuns smiled at him “Not at all,” she said cheerfully “Lam chops- and they‟re delicious!”

Obviously at this point, there is no ambiguity in (1a) and (1b), however, no humor is detected accordingly

In the same way, joke (9)

(9) “Do you believe in clubs for young people?”

“Only when kindness fails.”

(Pepicello and Weisberg, 1983:79 )

is another example of polysemy and homonymy used in verbal jokes due to the double

meanings of the lexis “club” (refer to chapter 2, section 2.2.2.1 for the detailed explanation)

Another case in point occurs in the school setting of joke (17) below:

(17) The following conversation took place between two teachers:

“Do you allow your boys to smoke?”

“I‟m afraid not.”

“Can they drink?”

“No, by all means, no.”

“What about dates?”

“Oh, that‟s quite all right, as long as they don‟t eat too many.”

(Misztal, 1990: 148)

It is easy to see the lexical item of “dates” is the ambiguous unit, which has two far apart semantic interpretations: “a meeting with a person of the opposite sex” and “a sweet brown sticky fruit that grows on a palm tree” Herein, undoubtedly, the answerer was only aware

of the second reading of the word “dates” while the intended meaning that the questioner was trying to convey lies in the first one, which, consequently gives the rise to the punch line of the joke, thus, making people laugh

Joke (18) below witnesses the courtroom setting:

(18) “Have you ever appeared as a witness in a suit before?” asked the judge

“Why of course!” replied the young girl

“Will you please tell the jury what suit it was?”

“It was a pink suit,” she replied quickly, “with red collar and cuffs, and buttons all the way down the front.”

The word “pen” frequently occurs in everyday conversations as “an instrument for writing with ink”, so, it is a fact that someone working with pens may convey the image

that he/she has a writing-related career, like in the case of the second speaker in the following joke:

(19) “You should meet my husband He makes his living with his pen.”

“Oh, so he is a writer?”

“No, he raises pigs.”

(Misztal, 1990:509) The funniness of the joke revealed in the punchline shows that actually what the first speaker meant by “pen” was not that meaning frequently denoted but was “a small piece of land surrounded by a fence in which farm animals are kept”

Vocabulary gap between adults and children is also a cause of lexical ambiguity

Let us now spend a moment on the jokes that follow:

(20) A lady sent her little girl to see the doctor When she returned, the fond mother

said:

“Mary, did the doctor treat you?”

“No, he charged me two dollars.”

(Misztal, 1990:832) (21) Booking Clerk (at small village station): “You‟ll have to change twice before you

get to York.”

Little girl (unused to traveling): “Goodness me! And I‟ve only brought the clothes I‟ll be standing up in.”

(Potcheptov, 1974: 159) Clearly, in joke (20), the phrase “to treat somebody” meant by the mother refers to “to give medical care and attention to a person”, whereas it was understood simply by the little girl

as “to give somebody something enjoyable, especially food and entertainment, at one‟s own expense.” And the fact that she had to spend two dollars for the doctor seemed to annoy her quite a lot, which brings about a mirth response on reading the joke from readers

Likewise, in joke (21), the fact of two-time transmission in order to get to a place was misinterpreted as “to take off one‟s clothes and put others on”, making the talk a funny joke

Some more jokes in the setting of adult-child talks, which elaborate more on the speakers‟ differences in development stages of language, can be found in jokes (22), (23) and (24) below:

(22) Teacher: “You can‟t sleep in my class.”

Student: “If you didn‟t talk so loud I could.”

(Misztal, 1990:143) (23) Stern librarian: “Please be quiet The people near you can‟t read.”

Small boy: “Well, they ought to be ashamed of themselves! I‟ve been able to read since I was six.”

(Hoke, 1965:6) (24) Big sister‟s date was trying to make friends with the young son of the house as he

waited for her to finish dressing

“I think I have met all of your family except your Uncle Joe,” he said “Which side

of the house does he look like?”

The small boy hesitated “The side with the bay window,” he said finally

(Hoke, 1965:92) Jokes (22) and (23), clearly, experience the same phenomenon resulted from the multiple meanings of the modal auxiliary “can” In both joke texts, it is apparent that this modal

auxiliary is merely perceived by the two small children with the meaning of an ability, which is contrary to the intended message of an obligation and a possibility by the teacher

and the librarian, respectively

More specifically, the two joke texts would be disambiguated if a more straightforward usage of “can” were inserted like in the case of:

(22a) Teacher: “You mustn‟t sleep in my class.”

(23a) Stern librarian: “Please be quiet It is impossible for the people near you to read.”

In these substituted scenarios, no ambiguous strings are conveyed, leaving little likelihood that the small listeners misinterpret (by accident or on purpose) the actual utterance meanings by the adults However, in (22a) and (23a), no humor is attached to the sentences, and no jokes are detected accordingly

The same happens to joke (24), in which the lexical phrase “side of the house” is intentionally used to refer to “the branch of the family, related to the mother or father” by the sister‟s boyfriend but simply interpreted as “either of the two halves of the family‟s building” by the small boy This contradiction in thoughts of the two speakers has, indeed, made up the humorous stimulus of the joke text

Some other cases of homonymy and polysemy ambiguity can be well illustrated in

two possible interpretations of the lexis “dying” (present participle of the verb “to die” or

“to long/ thirst for”), “quick” (“moving fast” or “staying alive”) and “sound” (“to give out

a sound” or “to pronounce”) in the following single joke-carrying texts

(25) (Pointing to the cemetery) Did you know this is the dead centre of Sheffield?

People are dying to get in there

(26) There are only two kinds of pedestrians- the quick and the dead

(Nash, 1985: 19) (27) “What‟s orange and sounds like a parrot?”

“A carrot.”

3.2.1.2 Homophones

Classified as a special case of homonymy (McArthur 1992, Nguyen Hoa 2004),

homophones are defined as words that have identical pronunciation forms (absolutely and partially) but different spellings and different or unrelated meanings The case of the

colour “red” in the below traditional joke can exemplify this type of joke:

(28) What‟s black and white and red all over?- A newspaper