Metaphor in humorous discourse

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“Metaphor in humorous discourse”

Introduction

It is well known that funniness depends on every person’s own sense of humour but an interesting situation that goes through the construction of humorous discourse is the use of metaphors as a tool to develop, for example, a joke. Then, surfing through the different linguistic theories of humour, the most important element that will always be present is the sense of duality or bisociation, as recalls Koestler (1964). A duality of two opposites that also happens to exist in the use of the metaphor, the “dual” situation is the basis for theories like the Semantic Script Theory of Humour “SSTH” by Raskin, later renamed as General Theory of Verbal Humor or GTVH along with Attardo, who in 2001 develops the theory to a further extent for any humorous text and not only jokes. Now, it is this inherent duality that comes within the humorous discourse that we will further explain and connect its relation with the metaphor as a process with humourous purpose that one could not perceive as so, after a simple syntax analysis. Then, we will focus this essay on the explanation of the use of  metaphor to create humorous discourse considering the steps and elements that are part of its process.

1. A brief description of the metaphor used in  humorous discourse

Metaphor has been traditionally regarded as a rhetorical figure of speech and as part of poetry or literature, that is, as a type of extraordinary rather than ordinary language (Lakoff and Johnson, 2003) but Lakoff and Johnson have pointed out that it is actually more common than we consciously realise it is, working on demonstrations between the nineties and the beginning of the 21st century to show its frequency. But, what is a metaphor?  First of all,  if we look out for the oxford dictionary definition, we will encounter with  “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action(...)”. Then, to understand the real message behind a metaphor we would need to make associations or comparisons r. Generally the way a metaphor works is by using the ”X is Y” formula, for example in the famous “time is money”. Also, there are different types of metaphors, like the dead metaphors that after being so used can even become an idiom as they no longer have that much power, when on the other side, creative metaphors hit the interpreter as it is a unique comparison. According to their function, Lakoff and Johnson (2003) have classified metaphors into structural, ontological and orientational. The structural metaphors allows speakers to understand the target domain by using the structure of the source domain. The conceptual metaphor “time is motion”, where time is seen as a movement or in examples like “Time is flying by” and the ontological metaphors provide definition to the abstract domain. Then we can think of abstract concepts as physical entities.

To conceptualize the definition of the metaphor, we can say that it is the reflection of a relation between the semantic vehicle, also known as base or source, and the semantic tenor, also named topic or target. Basically an implicit comparison of two concepts which may seem hard to connect at first glimpse, but revealed their familiarity by analogy.

Lakoff and Johnson base their theory on the existence of two conceptual domains: source and target, to form the conceptual metaphor, CM, which is connection between two semantic domains, one being closer to the physical experience (more concrete), and the abstract domain. The first named source, the last, target domain. The source is from where the metaphorical expressions are brought. And we perceive a similarity between concepts, at the same time that we perceive a dissimilarity, that is when we experience “tension” and translate it into laughter (Kyratzis, 2003) as the metaphor is perceived as such.

2.  What is humour? A brief description of humour

Other point that it is needed  to be defined is  humour if we look for the definition  in oxford dictionary ,we will find out that humour  is “the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech” ,but in this case we will prefer the attardo’s , verbal humour will be defined as incongruity expressed by the means of a linguistic system (Attardo 1994: 96).

There are two theories of  humour which purpose is explaining and predicting all instances of verbal humour ; Attardo’s (1994, 2001) General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) and its predecessor, Semantic-Script Theory of Humour (SSTH), developed by Raskin (1985)

the fundamental idea behind these two theories is the fact that humour consists of two facets, a semantic and pragmatic one(Prodanović-Stankić)

the most prevalent type of verbal humour is the conversational humour, that seems to found in everyday use of language represents a significant challenge for both SSTH and GTVH as it involves both linguistic and extralinguistic aspects (Prodanović-Stankić ). Dynell (2011) defines conversational humor as relevantly interwoven into conversations, both spoken and written, whether private, institutional or mediated.

Humor it is been analyzed from different points of view . From the perspective of cognitive science, philosophers and linguists.it was analyze why people laugh, and it is concluded that humor is a culture -conditionate aspect. People need to understand the world and the context to create humor .

Humour is an important matter in our lives ,it is presents in everyday relationships, humor “represents a central aspect of our everyday conversation and it is a general fact that all humans naturally participate in humorous speech and behavior” (Schwarz ,2010).

According to Krikmann (2006) states that, in general, theories of verbal humor are divided into three groups: superiority, relief and incongruity theory. In this section, the three aspect  will be briefly explained, considering ideas reviewed by Schwarz (2010) and Krikmann (2006).

In this theory the superiority aspect says that, we laugh at these individuals because we feel happiness at feeling superior to them.The relief theory considers humor as a release of tension This  theory is more interested in the psychological effects of humor and, finally the incongruity theory is essentially cognitive and describes humor as the response to the awareness of incongruity (ambiguity or inappropriateness) between two ideas.

3. The relation between metaphor and humour.

It should  be clarified that both humor and metaphor are related in some aspect as Forceville said “it should be mentioned that both humour and metaphor very often share the common feature of multimodality (Forceville ,2008), which means that the target and source when it comes to metaphors, or the scripts activated in the creation of humour may belong to different modes (Forceville and Urios-Aparisi ,2009).

Nevertheless , even when  there are some similarities between metaphors and humour in terms of structure, this are motivated by different reasons . In that term , Kyratzis (2003) rightfully brought up the question concerning the humorous potential of metaphors. Kyratzis (Kyratzis, 2003)in his study obtained the   results that   indicate that during a conversation, speakers tend to reconstruct metaphors in order to create a humorous effect, actually they go through the process of de-blending (Kyratzis ,2003),

In other point , Kyratzis (2003) mentions  two aspects relevant  for linguistic theories of humor , duality and tension. The concept of duality has been explained as two different and opposing in some way scenarios; this duality is not detected at first by the person who is processing the text; a certain element in the text betrays this duality; the processor at some point realises the duality, the opposition, and, consequently, the tension between the two scenarios; the tension is translated into laughter (Kyratzis, 2003).

Duality is also present in metaphors, although here the boundaries between the two  domains  are fused. The root of metaphors involves the idea of two concepts brought together, interacting with each other and, most importantly, having clear boundaries between them. In both humor and metaphor two dissimilar or incongruent concepts are joined, although the nature and purpose of this blending is different for each case.

 Dynel(2009) explains that the potential humorousness of metaphors lies in the incongruity between both domains, which are somehow congruous even if we are not able to see that at first. She characterized incongruity as emphasizing the differences between both concepts. Consequently, humorous metaphors are the ones that have unusual correspondences between domains. In Dynel (2009)   words: a metaphor is humorous when the dissimilarities between the tenor and vehicle loom large, while the points of convergence are covert. The perception of incongruous ideas with the simultaneous expectation of a metaphorical comparison forces the listener to seek similarities among the attributes of the concepts, and thereby to resolve the incongruity.

Dynel (2009) adds that incongruity itself, or distance between domains, does not guarantee the humorousness of a novel metaphor. In fact, she hypothesizes that the character of the domains involved may have an important role for the humorous potential of metaphors, because there are not distance measurement techniques, therefore this can be evaluated only intuitively.

In Dynel’s (2009) point of view, the central humorous capacity resides, however, in the incongruity between the topic and the vehicle and their attributes, which are, nevertheless, somehow congruous, even if this may be difficult to observe initially. This phenomenon can be approached in a number of ways. Several postulates are propounded below with a view to describing (even if not necessarily unequivocally determining) the underpinnings of incongruity based, humorous metaphors. It should also be mentioned that these linguistic phenomena can be observed both from the speaker’s/producer’s and the hearer’s/listener’s/interpreter’s perspective, for the latter it is considered to be able to conduct the comprehension process, as intended by the former. The method of presentation assumed here conforms to the interpreter’s purview.

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