Major Humor Theories

1.1. Major Modern Theories of Humor

There are many theories of humour which aim is to provide the best explanation of what humour is, what role it plays in different fields of studies, and what kind of things would be counted as humorous. Although there are only a few linguistic studies on humour, there are plenty of theories that would help to understand and appreciate humour as a part of linguistics as there is no agreement of what is humorous. As shown in Attardo (1994,table 1.2, p.47), theories of humour consist of three major categories: cognitive, social, psychoanalytical. These groups are further divided into smaller units. Among them there are three commonly known and accepted modern categories: incongruity theories, superiority

As its name suggests, it is used to release tension or bad energy that accumulate in people’s bodies and eventually have to be released through laughter (Attardo,1994,p.50). The next theory, the Semantic Script Theory has been formulated by Raskin. The most important parameters in this theory is script. The script is used to represent the text and constitutes the knowledge of the situation described in the given joke. The joke includes two situations that can be interpreted in two different scripts. The meaning of the first script, which meaning is more obvious, usually distinguishes from the second, which is rather not seen from the beginning by the reader (Ritchie, 2004). The General Theory of Verbal Humour is one of the frequently used in the jokes analysis. It has been proposed by Raskin and Attardo and their claim that this theory demands six parametres. These parameteres are known as Knowledge Resources and have to be used simultaneously (Attardo,1994,p.9). In accordance with the General Theory of Verbal Humour, a joke is determined by Knowledge Resources (Ritchie, 2004) and these parameteres are used to examine elements included in jokes The six Knowledge Resources in this theory

Script Opposition (SO) – it refers to the SSTH. Scripts mirrors situations described in the text of the joke. Here, they are required in order to interpret the text. Among these scripts are various topics such as real (unreal), dumb (clever), possible (impossible) 2. Logical Mechanism (LM) – it has to do with the specific mechanism that connects scripts in the given joke. These mechanisms can include puns, exchange of roles, obvious errors or faulty logic 3. Situation (SI) – situation means the setting of the joke, and it includes everything depicted in the joke: participants, objects, surrounding, or