Analyzing jokes with the Intersecting Circles Model of humorous communication

Abstract

Speakers of jokes are aware of the human cognitively rooted relevance-seeking inferential procedure (Sperber and Wilson 1995) and predict (i.e. metarepresent) the interlocutor’s steps leading to a valid interpretation of the utterance(s) in the joke. Specifically, speakers can predict (a) the accessibility to certain information which builds up a proper scenario for understanding the joke (make-sense frame), (b) the inferential steps taken to turn the words uttered into contextualized meaningful propositions (utterance interpretation), and (c) the awareness of cultural stereotypes regarding professions, nationalities, connoted places, sex roles, etc. (cultural frame). This inferred information (a-c) is exploited to generate humorous effects. In previous research (Yus forthcoming), the Intersecting Circles Model was proposed. It comprises seven types of jokes depending on whether the joke only relies on one of (a-c) or on combinations of them, which entails analyzing the extent to which (a-c) play or do not play a role in the generation of humorous effects. In this paper, 1000 jokes are analyzed and fitted into a type or combinations of (a-c). Several interesting humor-generating patterns are also isolated inside the seven preliminary joke types covered by the Model.