The Humour Techniques of BBC’s “Letter from the President”: An Insight
Keywords:
comic locus, genus, humour, inference, pragmaticsAbstract
This paper examines the relevance of pragmatic considerations to the explication of humorous discourse. The “Letter from the President” column of BBC Focus on Africa Magazine is taken as the reference data. The incongruity theory of humour in it various manifestations is subscribed to in examining the relevance of juxtaposing linguistic and situational factors in humour creation. The analyses found that the key to the humour
in all these situations in the extracts lies in juxtaposing several discordant linguistic or situational elements. Lexical items are not given their usual collocations but serve as tools that reflect words or expressions in the language or allude to references in the extra-linguistic world. This explains the fact that the language of humour necessarily involves the integration of linguistic code and contextual elements. The latter is more important here because whereas a given physical movement can produce laughter, it is inconceivable for a linguistic item to produce hilarity exclusively by itself.
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