INFERRING SHORT AMBIGUITY-CENTRED JOKES (PUNS):  A PROPOSAL FOR CLASSIFICATION

Beyond the Frontiers: Perspectives on Pragmatic Theory and Practice (2026) [pp. 113-135]  

AUTHOR(S) / АУТОР(И): Francisco Yus
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.46793/BeyondFront.113Y
ABSTRACT / САЖЕТАК:

According to relevance theory, hearers invariably follow a specific inferential path when interpreting utterances, basically starting with the most accessible interpretation and stopping when they find the one that is deemed most satisfactory and supposedly matching the speaker’s intended interpretation. This basic criterion also applies to humorous communication, whose interpretive strategies can be predicted and manipulated for the sake of humour. The objective of this paper is to analyse these predictions – like the joke creator’s – in terms of the inferential steps that the hearer is bound to go through and which information from context they are likely to retrieve and combine with text inference when interpreting a specific variety of short ambiguity-centred jokes (puns). With the aid of the notion of preparatory discourse, four Cases are isolated and then duplicated for one or two of these preparatory discourses and depending on the inferential outcome applied to the potentially ambiguous term (connector) in the joke.

KEYWORDS / КЉУЧНЕ РЕЧИ:

puns, ambiguity, relevance theory, humour, jokes

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT / ПРОЈЕКАТ:
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