The Pragmatics of Humour across Discourse Domains -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- Pragmatics and linguistic research into humour -- 1. Pragmatics as the backdrop for humour research -- 2. The content of this volume -- References -- Part 1. Stylistic figures as forms of humour -- 1.1 Irony -- Will anticipating irony facilitate it immediately? -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Testing the expectation hypothesis: initial and late processes -- 3. General discussion -- Acknowledgement -- References -- "That's not ironic, that's just stupid" -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Approaches to irony -- 3. Developing a broad-based account of irony -- 3.1 Irony in real-time interaction -- 3.2 Irony and everyday use: Some corpus observations -- 3.3 Debating irony in the public sphere -- 3.4 Irony: How many categories? -- 4. Concluding remarks -- References -- Irony via "surrealism" -- 1. Irony: Definition and necessary conditions -- 1.1 The problem of a theoretical definition -- 1.2 Necessary conditions -- 2. Being absurd or "surrealistic": A strategy for irony -- 2.1 Everyday surrealism -- 2.2 How does it work? -- 3. The "split nature" of irony -- 3.1 The hypothesis -- 3.2 Criteria -- 4. Conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 1.2 Puns and other wordplay -- The role of syllables and morphemes as mechanisms in humorous pun formation -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Language, linguistic ambiguity, and puns -- 2.1 Phonological ambiguity -- 2.2 Lexical ambiguity -- 2.3 Syntactic ambiguity -- 3. Methodology -- 4. Inter-author discrepancies -- 4.1 Genre -- 4.2 Phonological category eliminated -- 4.3 Classifying word class change -- 4.4 Presuming spoken counterpart -- 5. Syllabic and morphological mechanisms -- 5.1 Syllabic ambiguity -- 5.2 Morphological ambiguity -- 5.3 Hanging syllables/morphemes -- 5.4 Morpheme inflation.

6. Using syllabic and morphological mechanisms for ambiguity categorization -- 6.1 Ambiguity categorization matrix -- 7. Conclusions -- References -- Websites Used for Data Collection -- Context-sensitive aspects of Shakespeare's use of puns in comedies -- 1. Preliminaries -- 1.1 The definition of a pun -- 1.2 Participants' social roles -- 2. A note on the empirical data and the method -- 3. Shakespeare's punning vis-à-vis public social roles -- 3.1 The Clown: Costard (LLL) -- 3.2 The Page: Speed (TGV) -- 4. Concluding remarks -- References -- Primary sources -- Dimensions of incongruity in register humour -- 1. Incongruity of register -- 2. Incongruity as difference along dimensions -- 3. Existing lexical resources -- 4. A corpus-based model of register -- 5. Stage 1: Refining the mechanisms -- 5.1 The initial corpus set -- 5.2 Computing coordinates -- 5.3 Distance metrics -- 5.4 Testing the settings -- 6. Experimenting with different corpora -- 7. Detecting jokes -- 8. Abstracting the space -- 9. More subtle models -- 9.1 Phrases and idioms -- 9.2 Multiple incongruous items -- 9.3 The role of neutral material -- 10. Conclusions -- References -- Part 2. (Non)interactive forms of humour -- 2.1 Jokes -- Displays of "new" gender arrangements in Russian jokes -- 1. Introduction -- 2. "Doing gender" and making fun -- 3. Joke as a genre and its sources -- 4. The General Theory of Verbal Humor -- 5. Gender displays in jokes -- 5.1 Traditional gender displays -- 5.2 Jocular presentation of matrimonial life -- 5.3 Jocular presentation of courtship -- 5.4 Heterosexuality and homosexuality -- 6. Conclusion -- References -- Understanding ethnic humour in Romanian jokes -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The debate on aggressiveness -- 3. Analytical framework -- 3.1 Raskin's approach to ethnic humour -- 3.2 The comparative study of ethnic humour.

3.3 The notions of "ethnic script" and "ethnic joke" adopted in this study -- 4. Methodology -- 5. Analysis, findings and discussion -- 5.1 Quantitative analysis -- 5.2 Qualitative analysis -- 5.3 Background to the leading ethnic minorities in Romania: The language issue -- 5.4 Language distortion jokes about the Roma and Hungarians -- 6. Conclusions -- References -- Jokes available at: -- Sexuality in Anglo-American anti-proverbs -- 1. Research background and terminology -- 2. Discussion -- 2.1 Sexual intercourse -- 2.2 Female and male parts of body -- 2.3 Variety is the spice of love -- 2.4 Culturally taboo and less accepted erotic pleasures -- 2.5 Procreation and birth control -- 2.6 Miscellaneous -- 3. Summary -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 2.2 Conversational humour -- Joker in the pack -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Background concepts -- 2.1 Frame -- 2.2 Keying -- 2.3 Carnival -- 3. Humorous framing -- 3.1 Contextualisation cues -- 3.2 Non-humorous/serious vs. humorous frame -- 3.3 Humorous and non-humorous frames overlapping -- 4. Distinguishing frames: The speaker's intentions and the hearer's recognition thereof -- 5. Conclusions -- References -- Humour in quasi-conversations -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1 Conversational humour and natural (real-life) conversation -- 1.2 Fictional conversation (scripted dialogue) -- 1.3 From written conversation to quasi-conversation -- 2. Live text commentary as a quasi-conversation -- 3. Conversational humour in live text commentary -- 3.1 Retorts -- 3.2 Teasing -- 3.3 Banter -- 4. Conclusion -- References -- Humour and the integration of new staff in the workplace -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Data and methodology -- 3. Analysis: Examples of humour in context -- 3.1 Humour, solidarity and integration -- 3.2 Humour, power and boundaries -- 3.3 Subversive humour -- 4. Conclusion -- References.

Appendix: Transcription conventions -- Part 3. Forms of humour in public discourse -- Parody in the light of the incongruity-resolution model -- 1. Parody -- 2. Scripts -- 3. The incongruity-resolution model -- 4. Parody, scripts and the IR model -- 5. Case study -- 5.1 Parody processing model in practice ("Post-box Ceremony") -- 5.2 Prototypical script for a political event -- 5.3 Manifestations of incongruity -- 5.4 Incongruity manifested non-verbally -- 5.5 Incongruity manifested verbally -- 6. Conclusions -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Appendix: Titles of sketches used in the analysis: -- "I'll be there for you!" On participation-based sitcom humour -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Participants in film discourse -- 3. Sitcom humour reliant on participation phenomena -- 3.1 Recipients' participation in a character's self-talk -- 3.2 Recipients' participation in a character's inner monologue -- 3.3 Recipients' participation in characters' consecutive interactions -- 3.4 Recipients' participation in simultaneous interactions -- 3.5 Recipients' recognition of overhearers -- 3.6 Attitude of concealment or disguisement towards recipients -- 3.7 Speakers' peculiar assigning of hearer roles -- 4. Summary and final comments -- References -- "Losers, poltroons and nudniks" in Woody Allen's Mere Anarchy -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Thematic variations on failure -- 3. The loser type and other character correlates -- 4. Linguistic humour and incongruity -- 5. Script oppositions in Mere Anarchy -- 6. Stylistic devices conveying comic incongruity -- 6.1 Simile -- 6.2 Understatement -- 6.3 Irony -- 7. Conclusion -- References -- Notes on humour and persuasion in advertising and legal discourse -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Humour and advertising -- 3. Humour in court -- 4. Theoretical models on persuasion (and humour) -- 5. Caveats and applications -- References.

Comic takeover or comic makeover? -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Humour and translation -- 2.1 Translating humour: Problems and solutions -- 2.2 Defining humour -- 2.3 Identifying humour -- 3. Translation as a source of humour -- 3.1. Mistranslation -- 3.2 Bilingual puns, translation and interference -- 4. Conclusions -- References -- Name index -- Subject index.