NEO-GRICEAN APPROACHES IN PRAGMATICS TO THE STUDY OF VERBAL HUMOR: THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL SYNTHESIS

Abstract

Among modern cognitive approaches to uncovering the mechanism of humor generation, the most famous are the Semantic Script Theory of Humor and its improved version – the General Theory of Verbal Humor, which are united under the umbrella of frame/script incongruity inherent in humor. This study is devoted to one of the most discussed pragmatic approaches, which is a part of the General Theory of Verbal Humor, the so-called neo-Gricean theory of Raskin and Attardo. It consists in the fact that jokes, as well as other comic forms, constitute a non-bona-fide mode of communication, which is opposed to the Gricean model and accordingly, it is guided by the humour cooperative principle. On the basis of the analysis of these authors conception (Attardo & Raskin 1994; Attardo 1993, 2003, 2017, etc.) on non-observance of cooperative maxims in a humorous message a zone of productive criticism was highlighted, namely: insufficient distinction between the concepts of 'violation' vs 'flout' of maxims (Dynel 2008, 2013); lack of proper interest in the social context and emotional background of communication, presupposed by Relevance Theory and Politeness Theory, and, accordingly, the communicative norms are limited only by the cooperative principle of Grice; the lack of criteria for intentional violation of communicative maxims, necessary for the identification of humorous implicatures. The comic effect is more likely to be recognised, if, in the course of interpretation, the addressee discovers a repeated maxim flouting, as well as possible ignoring of other norms. Therefore, it is proposed to include to the generally accepted list of Grice's maxims Leach's principle of politeness, which is mostly focused not on the substantive aspect of communication, but on the social one: the speaker's attitude towards third parties in a status-role hierarchy. The obtained results of the theoretical exploration are integrated into an improved model of humor interpretation and illustrated by a intent-analysis of a verbal joke.