A PRAGMATIC STUDY OF HUMOR IN ENGLISH JOKES AND RIDDLES
Keywords:
humor, the mode of study, jokes, riddles.Abstract
The present study aims at checking and interpreting humor in English jokes and riddles addressing culturally sensitive areas and this is why they have not received a lot of academic attention from applied linguists. As we know language is a vehicle of communication whereby one person conveys messages to another for a range of different purposes, e.g., laughing, informing, persuading, criticizing, (im)politeness …etc., whether directly or indirectly. This study is an attempt to see how much a pragmatic analysis can help in understanding humor in English jokes and riddles. Then, the study discusses pragmatically how humor violates all attitudes of Searle (1969). The study also discusses jokes and in which way their formation process is similar and different from riddles. Such study of this linguistic phenomenon confirms a proof that language is not only a reflection of the objective world but a process of social construction.