Linguistic Theories of Humor, 2nd Edition

5 Semiotic and Text Theories

This chapter presents a number of theories that do not belong to a school of linguistics as clearly as the structuralist theories (Chapters 2–3), the script-based theories (Chapter 6), or the sociolinguistic theories (Chapter 10). They all share, however, an interest in the global perception of the humorous text in its context. Another common feature of these theories is their interest in literary types of humor or their connections with literary phenomena. The organization of the chapter is as follows: some semiotic theories are reviewed, beginning with Koestler’s cognitive bisociation model (a common source of inspiration for semiotic theories), and finally several theories at the boundary between linguistics ...