Knock knock.
Who’s there?
To.
To who?
Actually, it’s to whom.
I loved knock-knock jokes as a kid. The linguistics of humor has been studied for a long time. It goes all the way back to Roman philosopher Cicero, who made a distinction between “de re” and “de dicto” humor, modernly known as “referential” (uses context and external information) and “verbal” (wordplay and puns) humor.
An ongoing challenge for linguists today is how to explain humor linguistically. Linguist Salvatore Attardo is an expert in humor and outlines the main theories. I would like to recap three of these:
The Semantic Turn: The Isotopy-Disjunction Model. This theory essentially states that a joke had three parts:
- The set-up: Knock knock.
- The incongruity (i.e., the part that doesn’t make sense): Who’s there? Wire. Wire who?
- The punchline: Wire you asking me all these questions?
The Semantic-Script Theory of Humor (SSTH): One of the most influential theories. The creator, Victor Raskin, believed that in order to convey humor, the joke should…
- Consists of two scripts (a script is more than just a word, it also includes the semantic information around it. It could be two parts of a sentence or multiple sentences.)
- Its two scripts are opposite. They should be related so the sentence is logical but oppose each other in a “funny” way.
General theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH): Raskin’s expansion of SSTH. GTVH presents six Knowledge Resources as what makes up a joke (some are optional):
- Script Opposition: Script opposition (what Raskin outlined in SSTH).
- Logical Mechanism: Whatever connects the scripts. It could be simple, like a pun, or more drawn out, like a metaphor.
- Situation: Environment where the joke takes place.
- Target: Who the joke is making fun of.
- Narrative Strategy: How the text is organized. (ex: In the joke about a duck walking up to a lemonade stand, the narrative strategy is how each verse begins with a new day.)
- Language: How it is pulled together and verbalized.
While it’s fun to try categorizing and explaining jokes linguistically, I don’t think there will ever be an all-encompassing theory of humor since humor constantly changes and varies across languages.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Toodle.
Toodle who?
Toodle-doo!
Read more:
Attardo, Salvatore. “Humor in Language.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. March 29, 2017. Oxford University Press. 7. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.342
Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Author(s): Victor Raskin. Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1979), pp. 325-335. Available from: https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/BLS/article/view/2164/1934