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In:Metapragmatics of Humor: Current research trends
Edited by Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 14] 2016
► pp. 57–77

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Beyond verbal incongruity

A genre-specific model for the interpretation of humor in political cartoons

 | University of Iowa
Published online: 24 November 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.14.04gue
Abstract
The General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo and Raskin 1991) opened the path to study the mechanisms of humor. Research on the comprehension and production of cartoons has traditionally adopted cognitive-semantic theories to explain how readers interpret their humorous messages. While perfectly applicable, these theories focus on the linguistic components of cartoons, analyzing exclusively the text in their speech balloons or captions with little to no attention paid to what the visual components add to their meaning. This paper analyzes the nature of cartoons as narrative monomodal or multimodal ensembles and revisits previous approaches with the goal of proposing a new genre-specific model for the understanding of their humorous messages.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Definition of the genre
  • 3.Linguistic approaches to humor
    • 3.1Semantic-cognitive theories
    • 3.2Cognitive theories
  • 4.A genre-specific perspective
  • 5.Analysis
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (45)
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Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Dunbar, Robin I. M. & Emma Stirling-Middleton
2024. Why cartoons make (some of) us smile. HUMOR 37:1 ► pp. 5 ff. DOI logo
Pavlina, Svetlana Yu.
2021. Covid-Related Issues Visual Representation in British and American Cartoons. Current Issues in Philology and Pedagogical Linguistics :3(2021) ► pp. 131 ff. DOI logo
Sędek, Magdalena
2019. Humor gráfico como herramienta de crítica sociopolítica: aplicación de la TGHV al análisis de las viñetas de prensa. Neophilologica 31 ► pp. 339 ff. DOI logo

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