The construction of humor in Spanish and French comic strips: A sociolinguistic perspective.

摘要

Given the sparse empirical and cross-linguistic evidence in prior humor scholarship, the primary objective of this thesis is to analyze the construction of humor in a corpus consisting of approximately 200 pages of comic strips from ten Spanish-speaking and ten French-speaking authors. Because the majority of humor research focuses solely on Anglo-Saxon humor, a secondary objective is to explore stylistic differences between the two language groups. As most humor scholars have written from the perspective of psychology or philosophy, this work also aims to provide fresh insights on the topic by applying certain sociolinguistic and pragmatic concepts in its analysis. Of particular relevance are Brown and Levinson's notion of social face and Grice's Conversational Maxims, which allow seemingly disparate examples of humor to be grouped under the rubric of incongruity.;A significant methodological contribution of the thesis is its taxonomy of incongruities, developed through analysis of recurring patterns of incongruity in the corpus. While the complexity of humor cannot be explained by this taxonomy alone, in providing a metalanguage allowing precise identification of humorous incongruity, it serves as a framework upon which future researchers may base analysis of any specific instance of humor.;Five humor theories are evaluated and shown to be inadequate in explaining humor in the comic strip genre. This study refines incongruity theory by showing that, at least in the case of comic strips, incongruity must be meaningful, densely layered, and of multiple types. It must not upset or offend the subject, and its meaning must not be explicitly stated. No fundamental differences in humor construction were found between the Spanish and French data, although some evidence suggested that French comics may involve more targeting of groups considered weak or vulnerable. In general, however, stylistic differences among comic strip authors of the same language group were found to be as least as great as those among authors of different language groups. These findings suggest that the fundamental principles of humor construction may be universal, and that difficulties in humor appreciation across languages and cultures are likely attributable to incomplete linguistic or cultural knowledge.