Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 155–159

www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Book review

Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Humor Research 6.

Salvatore Attardo, Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2001. 238 pp. DM
176 (hb)

This is the second major contribution to humor studies of the researcher based in
Youngstown, Ohio, now also Associate Editor of Humor: International Journal of
Humor Research. Seven years after he published his first book, Linguistic Theories of
Humor (1994) [see the review in the Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 593–610],
Attardo presents us with a new excellent study, the sixth installment in the ground-
breaking Humor Research series (of which his first book was No. 1), which develops
Chapter 8 of the 1994 study, focusing on the exciting subfield of humorous texts
longer than jokes. From what one can see from the extensive bibliography of the
new book (over 200 items), the prolific scholar plans to write still another book, this
time on theoretical pragmatics.
In fact, Attardo has brought into the book-length study under review several
strains of his earlier research, including a good number of articles (e.g., Attardo
1988, 1996) and a special issue of Humor (Attardo and Chabanne, 1992) he had co-
edited, which aimed at developing the ‘‘text model’’ of jokes and longer texts.
Notably, he was the first researcher I know of who led a team of scholars in order to
analyze statistically the corpus of 2000 jokes (Attardo et al., 1994) and conclude that
the joke is a text-type that has peculiar textual characteristics. This line of thinking is
clearly noticeable in the theoretical approach he takes in the current book, too.
Most importantly, however, the book is another step in refining the General
Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), which was put forward in the seminal 1991
article Attardo co-authored with Victor Raskin (Attardo and Raskin, 1991), with six
Knowledge Resources accounting for joke funniness (script opposition, logical
mechanism, situation, target, narrative strategy and language). This is the funda-
mental tool which allows the author to analyze the longer texts he sets out to tackle.
The work undertaken by the author to pin down the elusive logical mechanism of
humor is of particular importance [cf. Attardo et al., in press), as so far 27 of them
have been defined, including false analogy, potency mapping or reasoning from false
0378-2166/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
PII: S0378-2166(02)00062-0
156 Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 155–159

premises. As Attardo acknowledges, this area badly needs more research (cf. Ch•o-
picki, in press).
In order to apply the theory, the author clarifies a few methodological issues in the
Preface and in Chapter 1, where he also restates the basic tenets of the semantic script
theory developed by Raskin (1984) and of GTVH. Namely, he adopts a practical
‘‘middle of the road’’ theory of text interpretation, leaving out the audience and the
speaker as ‘‘marginal issues’’, and focusing on the idealized analysis of the text (thus not
discourse), determined by the structure of humorous narrative. He claims (p. 31) that

the text itself becomes the foundation of its own interpretation. In other words: if the text has more or
less explicit traces leading to a given interpretation, then that interpretation is more likely to be a
viable one for the text. . . .[for example] Borges suggests . . . that one could read Saint Theresa’s Imi-
tation of Jesus Christ as if it had been written by De Sade, thus changing the meaning of the text. This
is true. However, the text itself would not contain any trace of this interpretation (or at least few). On
the other hand, the text will contain numerous, obvious traces of the Catholic faith of its author.

This is persuasive; nonetheless, leaving out the rich cognitive processes that take
place even in the ‘‘ideal’’ reader’s mind is tantamount to limiting the scope of humor
research much more than necessary. Attardo seems to point us in the right direction
when discussing textual semantics (notably the text world representation—TWR) in
Chapter 3; although this part does not contain any detailed semantic analyses, it does
show that semantic theory is largely compatible with current psycholinguistic
research on text processing.
The area that is left out is very interesting and promising, although it is very difficult
and intuitive indeed, and intuition is rejected by Attardo as a method of analysis: he
claims that he is not selective in the choice of humorous lines he wants to analyze—
he analyzes them all, and gives an example of that in the lengthy Chapter 8.
Although he admits that he may be wrong in classifying some lines as humorous, he
claims, rightly so, that this does not put into question the entire analysis, especially
that the length of text gives one ‘‘statistical reassurance’’ (p. 34). And this is where
the formal linguistic analysis differs from traditional literary criticism: ‘‘[W]e can say
that objectively such and such a stretch of text is humorous, because of such and
such factors. Any interpretation of the text starts from this objective hard core of
semantic analysis’’ (pp. 34–35).
He also argues that the book is not a study in narratology, although there are avenues
where the two ventures cross. The research question the book attempts to answer is the
following: ‘‘[H]ow do narrative texts longer than jokes function as humorous texts?’’ (p.
viii). In order to do that, he presents the classification of humorous texts (p. 99): plots
with serious fabulae (with or without jab lines—an apt neologism referring to humor-
ous lines which are not punch lines), humorous plots ending on a punch line, those
having a humorous central narrative complication, those using metanarrative dis-
ruption, those using coincidences, those using hyperdetermined (multilayered)
humor and those using diffuse disjunction (without any ‘‘explicit traces’’ of humor,
but relying on register humor or irony). This is an interesting, novel classification,
although its divisions are not entirely discrete and can be combined: humorous texts
can e.g., end on a punch line, have a humorous central complication, and use
 Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 155–159 157

metanarrative disruption at the same time, cf. Woody Allen’s ‘‘Kugelmas Epi-
sode’’, 1980; this does not undermine the value of the classification, but rather
points to the need for further research (cf. a comparable classification in Ch•opicki,
2001).
The most valuable part of the book are doubtless the case studies: passages from a
sitcom, a poem, a picaresque narrative, a strand from a novel and two analyses of
short stories—one in a synthetic form and one first-ever published full analysis of a
long humorous story (‘‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’’ by Oscar Wilde; the story and
the analysis take nearly 40 pages of the book). This variety constitutes evidence of the
fact that the scope of GTVH is not limited to narrative texts, but the theory can be
applied to any humorous text at all. The above tenet is upheld by Chapter 4 too, where
some intermediate texts which cover the ground between jokes and longer narratives,
such as jokes in conversation and stand-up routines, joke telling contests and joke
cycles, are briefly discussed. The latter is the only category which receives more than a
brief mention, with many examples of first and second generation jokes, meta-jokes and
intertextual (para) jokes, with or without a narrative frame breach, my favorite being:
‘‘How many dull people does it take to change a light bulb? One’’ (p. 78).
Altogether this constitutes a considerable variety and a continuum from the sim-
plest joke to the most sophisticated humorous novel: all this could in theory be
covered by GTVH. This is remarkable as it proves the great versatility of the theory;
what it does not prove, however, is that GTVH can fully account for the process of
reception of the text by the ‘‘ideal’’ audience: I believe that e.g., the role of text-
specific frames of such entities as characters, places, objects and events should be
taken into account too (cf. Emmot, 1997; Ch•opicki, in press). Attardo does mention
in passing that humorous lines tend to cluster around target characters such as Lord
Savile (in Oscar Wilde’s text), but this area definitely requires development. None-
theless, Attardo’s treatment of humorous texts constitutes a remarkable progress in
linguistics of humor and as such could only be welcome.
The book also offers a new account of irony, which is claimed to be broader than the
earlier theories of irony and sees it as contextually inappropriate and at the same time
relevant, with the principle of least disruption of the CP being preserved. Since the
theory has recently been presented to the readers of the Journal of Pragmatics (Attardo,
2000), I will not discuss the details, but just mention the fact that the author sees a great
deal of affinity between irony and register humor, both being examples of ‘‘diffuse dis-
junction’’ (Chapter 6). Instead, I will comment briefly on the classification of humorous
lines and their employment in what Attardo calls vector analysis.
Apart from punch lines and jab lines mentioned earlier, Attardo discusses the
whole range of other useful notions of his own invention, which are to deal with the
hitherto unexplored complexity of humor in longer texts, notably a strand (sequence
of jab lines), a substrand, a central and a peripheral strand, a stack (a group of
related strands), a comb (a strand with more than 3 lines occurring relatively close to
one another in the text), a bridge (a strand with two groups of lines occurring at a
relative distance in the text), a hapax bridge (a strand with just two salient lines,
unrelated to other lines, occurring at a distance), as well as serious relief (an unfunny
stretch of text in an otherwise funny story).
158 Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 155–159

Attardo uses these terms to analyze Wilde’s story in quantitative terms. In his
analysis, the 12,500-words-long story contains 253 jab/punch lines, which are inter-
estingly grouped along what he calls the text vector (the linear presentation of the
text, segmented in 100-words chunks), with line/text ratios varying immensely from
18 (the greatest) to 366 (the lowest). The conclusion is that the vector analysis exhi-
bits a wave-like configuration of humor (presented graphically on p. 204), with at
least three highest-density sections dispersed throughout the text (including the
opening section, and excluding the ending, where there are fewer jab lines). This
conclusion, as the author himself emphasizes, cannot be compared to the results of
any other analyses of this sort as they are simply not available, but I am sure they
will soon be produced by young scholars influenced by the book under review.
This avenue of research is certainly promising, but I cannot help posing some
critical questions: Is that statistical approach not overstretching itself? Are we not
overemphasizing structure at the expense of content? Would it not be wiser to focus
more on the quality of the lines than on their sheer numbers? I do acknowledge the
fact that the author did his best to analyze all the humorous lines in Wilde’s story,
but some summary presentation would be essential in order to assess the distribu-
tion of script oppositions and other knowledge resources occurring throughout the
story, and possibly the links with targets and other characters. Then the picture of
humor in the story would certainly be fuller, as humor in short stories is primarily
linked to human characters. Then we would also have an opportunity to compare
the GTVH results with the available literary analyses of the story.
On the technical side, the book is not faultless, misprints and various other
inaccuracies are present here and there (esp. in the analyses in Chapter 8), but this
does not in any way undermine the value of this erudite, groundbreaking and
inspiring book. I look forward to reading further books on humor by Salvatore
Attardo. It is sheer scholarly pleasure, although perhaps I would not exactly call it
fun.

References

Attardo, Salvatore, 1988. Trends in European humor research: towards a text model. Humor 1, 349–369.
Attardo, Salvatore, 1994. Linguistic Theories of Humor. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, New York.
Attardo, Salvatore, 1996. Humor theory beyond jokes: the treatment of humorous texts at large. In:
Hulstijn, J., Nijholt, A. (Eds.), Automatic Interpretation and Generation of Verbal Humor: Proceed-
ings of the Twelfth Twente Workshop on Language Technology Joint with International Workshop on
Computational Humor. University of Twente, Enschede, pp. 87–101.
Attardo, Salvatore, 2000. Irony as relevant appropriateness. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 793–826.
Attardo, Salvatore, Chabanne, Jean-Charles, 1992. Jokes as text-type. Humor 5, 165–176.
Attardo, Salvatore, Raskin, Victor, 1991. Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation
model. Humor 4, 293–347.
Attardo, Salvatore, et al., 1994. The linear organization of jokes: analysis of two thousand texts. Humor
7, 27–54.
Attardo, Salvatore et al. Script oppositions and logical mechanisms: modeling incongruities and their
resolutions. Humor (in press).
 Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 155–159 159

Ch•opicki, W•adys•aw, 2001. Humorous and non-humorous stories: are there differences in frame-based
reception? Stylistyka 10, 59–78.
Ch•opicki, W•adys•aw. Pragmatic analysis of humor in jokes and short stories. Proceedings of the 21st
PALA Conference, Budapest, April 2001 (in press).
Emmott, Catherine, 1997. Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Raskin, Victor, 1984. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Reidel, Dordrecht.

Wl/ adysl/ aw Chl/ opicki, PhD, Institute of English Philology and Postgraduate School for Translation and
Interpreting, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland; published in humor studies (in Humor), advertis-
.
ing, English, interested in translation studies and business communication; author of O humorze powaznie
(Taking humor seriously), Kraków: PAN, 1995; co-authored Poradnik ortograficzny dla Polaków: Jcce˛zyk
angielski (Spelling and punctuation guide for Poles: English), Kraków: PWN, 1995 and Angielski w pols-
kiej reklamie (English in Polish advertising), Kraków: PWN, 2000. PhD thesis Sophistication in Humor:
Character Frames. completed in 2000 (to be published).

W•adys•aw Ch•opicki
Jagiellonian University, Institute of English Philology
al. Mickiewicza 9, 31-120 Kraków, Poland
E-mail address: chlopick@vela.filg.uj.edu.pl