Salvatore Attardo
Biographic Data
| ID | 745125 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Salvatore Attardo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Salvatore |
| FAMILY NAME | Attardo |
| SIGNATURE | ATTARDO S |
| AFFILIATIONS | East Texas A&M University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1578-4242 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 60 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 594 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Horisk, Claire: Dangerous Jokes. How Racism and Sexism Weaponize Humor
Satire, honey and tears: How The Onion and The Babylon Bee do satire
Although American news satire trends towards the left side of the political spectrum, satire is not unique to liberal viewpoints. Conservative news satire, published by outlets such as The Babylon Bee , lend evidence to the ability for right-wing views to be advanced using satirical methods. Despite political differences, existing comparisons of left- and right-wing news satire suggest a high degree of structural similarity. In contrast, qualitat…
Conversational humor as an emergent property of context
In this position paper, we suggest that unplanned conversational humor should be considered an emergent property of context, defined as the dynamic mental representation of the situation in which the interactants find themselves, and that it is soft assembled in many cases, rather than negotiated, that is, there is no assumption of cooperation or even coordination among the interactants. Conversational humor may be negotiated or jointly construct…
Humor in The Age of The Internet: The Case of Transmedial Humor
The paper discusses the changes in humor that have occurred since the advent of the internet, in the past quarter of a century. The cognitive mechanisms that produce humor have not changed. However, since 2000, roughly when the Internet 2.0 (social web) is said to have started, there have been some minor changes at the level of slang, and especially the introduction of emojis, emoticons, and emotes. At the discursive level, the introduction of la…
Linguistic Theories of Humor
Linguistic Theories of Humor appeared thirty years ago. It attracted a lot of attention and ended up being one of the most quoted books in the linguistics of humor. Partly due to its broad coverage which includes both theoretical and socio-pragmatic aspects and partly due to the depth of its bibliography it remained an indispensable reference in many areas, despite the growth of the field. The original fully corrected text is supplemented by a lo…
Comedic convergence: Humor responses to verbal irony in text messages
Sienkiewicz, Matt and Nick Marx: That’s not funny: how the right makes comedy work for them
This slim book (it comes in at 229 pages including the bibliography and index, but the text is just shy of 200 pages) is an interesting and important book. It is based on the premise that humor scholars have neglected the field of right-wing humor. As prime evidence of this they quote Young (2020), a book dedicated to the explanation of why the right is psychologically incapable of producing humor and prefers outrage, whereas the left has histori…
“Dr. Shelby, that’s a world record!”: Frame breaking in experimental settings
Participation in experimental studies can be conceptualized as Goffmanian frames, i.e. a set of rules which include the fact the experimenter will be observing participant behavior through (the recording of) the experiment. This study is focused on frame breaches in 16 video- and audio-recorded dyadic conversations taking place in an experimental setting. Our main conclusion is that the experimental frame is conceptualized by participants as incl…
The Linguistics of Humor: An Introduction
This book is the first comprehensive systematic introduction to the linguistics of humor. Assuming no background in humor studies at all, and an elementary knowledge of linguistics, all the terminology and conceptual apparatus of humor studies are introduced, as well as all the linguistic concepts necessary to understand the most up-to-date formulations in the linguistics and applied linguistics of humor. The book is not limited to the theoretica…
Smiling and the Negotiation of Humor in Conversation
This study investigates the function of smiling intensity as a nondiscrete marker of humor in conversation. The smiling intensity of participants in eight conversational dyads was measured relative to the occurrence of humorous and nonhumorous events in the conversation. A relationship was found between higher smiling intensity and the occurrence of humorous event across conversations, thus confirming the value of smiling as a marker of humor. Th…
Is smiling during humor so obvious? A cross-cultural comparison of smiling behavior in humorous sequences in American English and French interactions
The present article is part of a larger cross-cultural research project on speaker-hearer smiling behavior in humorous and non-humorous conversations in American English and French. The American corpus consists of eight computer-mediated interactions between English native speakers, and the French one consists of four face-to-face interactions between French native speakers. The goal of the study is twofold: first, we analyze the link between smi…
The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor
In 1899, French poet Alcanter de Brahm proposed that ironists should use a specific punctuation mark known as the ironic sign to guide their readers explicitly in an ironic interpretation of an utterance. The irony mark would be a spoiler alert, and thereby reduce the pleasure of using irony. In order to help the receiver to detect the intention of the communicator, she may use less overt signals, named irony markers. The first group of markers i…
Two lessons from Christie Davies
Two important methodological lessons are highlighted, using examples from Christie Davies' work: the significance of negative evidence and of terminological precision
Smiling synchronicity and gaze patterns in dyadic humorous conversations
This present article is part of a larger study on speaker-hearer allocation of attentional resources in face-to-face interactions. The goal of the paper is twofold: first, we present results concerning the degree of correlation, in computer-mediated conversation, between speaker’s timing and intensity of smiling when humor is either present or absent in the conversation. The results were obtained from the analysis of five dyadic interactions betw…
Mary Beard: Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling and Cracking Up
Encyclopedia of Humor Studies
Encyclopedia of Humor Studies
Linguistic Theories of Humor
So this English professor comes into class and starts talking about the textual organization of jokes, the taxonomy of puns, the relations between the linguistic form and the content of humorous texts, and other past and current topics in language-based research into humor. At the end he stuffs all
Prosody and humor
Preview this article: Prosody and humor, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/pc.19.2.01att-1.gif
Prosodic and multimodal markers of humor in conversation
This case study extends the findings of Pickering et al. 2009 to the domain of conversational humor. We find that, as was the case in humorous narratives, conversational humor is not marked by higher pitch or volume, increased speech rate, or significant pauses. Unlike narrative humor, conversational humor is not produced at a lower pitch and slower rate than non-humorous parts of the text. We find that smiling and laughter tend to occur with hum…
Timing in the performance of jokes
The notion of timing in humor is often mentioned as a very significant issue, and yet very little has been written about it. The paper reviews the scant literature on the subject and narrows down the definition of timing as comprising pauses and speech rate. The discussions of timing in the literature see it either as a speeding up or slowing down of speech rate. Using data collected from twenty joke performances, we show that speakers do not sig…
Resolutions and their incongruities: Further thoughts on Logical Mechanisms
This paper is a contribution to the study of the resolution of incongruities in humor. We reject some criticisms of logical mechanisms and analyze three different types of incongruities in humorous texts: completely backgrounded, backgrounded, and foregrounded. Only the latter are addressed by logical mechanisms. We identify a mechanism of “incongruity shifting” which may be a candidate for “deep” logical mechanism (along the lines of “parallelis…
Failed humor: Issues in non-native speakers' appreciation and understanding of humor
What is it that makes humor difficult to understand and appreciate in a second language (L2)? Despite advances in research in both L2 pragmatics and humor studies, scholars have as yet had little to say on this topic. In interviews, learners themselves pinpoint culture, vocabulary, and the speed at which playful talk often takes place as difficulties. Yet, as we know, hypothetical self-reports of language use can be quite unreliable. Thus, this e…
Linguistic Theories of Humor
Introduction: Humor in contemporary American poetry
Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model
Irony as relevant inappropriateness
Multimodal markers of irony and sarcasm
Two studies using multimodal stimuli collected from television situation comedies show that there exist markers of irony and sarcasm which involve intonational and visual clues. Our first conclusion is that there exists no "ironical intonation" per se, but rather that pitch is a contrastive marker for irony or sarcasm. Our second conclusion is that there exists a facial expression, characterized as a "blank face," which is a visual marker of iron…
The semantic foundations of cognitive theories of humor
Violation of conversational maxims and cooperation: The case of jokes
Script oppositions and logical mechanisms: Modeling incongruities and their resolutions
Failed humor: Issues in non-native speakers' appreciation and understanding of humor
What is it that makes humor difficult to understand and appreciate in a second language (L2)? Despite advances in research in both L2 pragmatics and humor studies, scholars have as yet had little to say on this topic. In interviews, learners themselves pinpoint culture, vocabulary, and the speed at which playful talk often takes place as difficulties. Yet, as we know, hypothetical self-reports of language use can be quite unreliable. Thus, this e…
Reactions to irony in discourse: Evidence for the Least Disruption Principle
The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor
In 1899, French poet Alcanter de Brahm proposed that ironists should use a specific punctuation mark known as the ironic sign to guide their readers explicitly in an ironic interpretation of an utterance. The irony mark would be a spoiler alert, and thereby reduce the pleasure of using irony. In order to help the receiver to detect the intention of the communicator, she may use less overt signals, named irony markers. The first group of markers i…
Introduction: The Pragmatics of Humor
Locutionary and perlocutionary cooperation: The perlocutionary cooperative principle
Toward an empirical verification of the General Theory of Verbal Humor
The present study derives hypotheses from the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) and tests them on a sample of 534 subjects. Subjects are presented with three sets of jokes, each consisting of an anchor joke and comparison jokes in which variations in one and only one of the six Knowledge Resources (KR), script Opposition (SO), logical mechanism (LM), Situation (SI) target (TA), narrative strategy (NS), andlanguage (LA) occurred. Subjects rate…
Resolutions and their incongruities: Further thoughts on Logical Mechanisms
This paper is a contribution to the study of the resolution of incongruities in humor. We reject some criticisms of logical mechanisms and analyze three different types of incongruities in humorous texts: completely backgrounded, backgrounded, and foregrounded. Only the latter are addressed by logical mechanisms. We identify a mechanism of “incongruity shifting” which may be a candidate for “deep” logical mechanism (along the lines of “parallelis…
Jokes as a text type
The authors discuss the opportunity of and provide evidence for the identification of a text type particular to the joke. They present a set of features shared by all jokes, which can be taken as the basis of the construction of a definition of jokes. They then show that jokes satisfy all seven textual requirements, as presented in an influential definition of textuality
The analysis of humorous narratives
The linear organization of jokes: Analysis of two thousand texts
Trends in European humor research: Toward a text model
Timing in the performance of jokes
The notion of timing in humor is often mentioned as a very significant issue, and yet very little has been written about it. The paper reviews the scant literature on the subject and narrows down the definition of timing as comprising pauses and speech rate. The discussions of timing in the literature see it either as a speeding up or slowing down of speech rate. Using data collected from twenty joke performances, we show that speakers do not sig…
L'Humour dans la Conversation Familière: Description et Analyse Linguistiques
Satire, honey and tears: How The Onion and The Babylon Bee do satire
Although American news satire trends towards the left side of the political spectrum, satire is not unique to liberal viewpoints. Conservative news satire, published by outlets such as The Babylon Bee , lend evidence to the ability for right-wing views to be advanced using satirical methods. Despite political differences, existing comparisons of left- and right-wing news satire suggest a high degree of structural similarity. In contrast, qualitat…
Smiling and the Negotiation of Humor in Conversation
This study investigates the function of smiling intensity as a nondiscrete marker of humor in conversation. The smiling intensity of participants in eight conversational dyads was measured relative to the occurrence of humorous and nonhumorous events in the conversation. A relationship was found between higher smiling intensity and the occurrence of humorous event across conversations, thus confirming the value of smiling as a marker of humor. Th…
Pragmatics: Critical concepts
Smiling synchronicity and gaze patterns in dyadic humorous conversations
This present article is part of a larger study on speaker-hearer allocation of attentional resources in face-to-face interactions. The goal of the paper is twofold: first, we present results concerning the degree of correlation, in computer-mediated conversation, between speaker’s timing and intensity of smiling when humor is either present or absent in the conversation. The results were obtained from the analysis of five dyadic interactions betw…
Prosodic Markers of Saliency in Humorous Narratives
Much of what we think we know about the performance of humor relies on our intuitions about prosody (e.g., “it's all about timing”); however, this has never been empirically tested. Thus, the central question addressed in this article is whether speakers mark punch lines in jokes prosodically and, if so, how. To answer this question, this article unites both the recently emerged research agenda grounding spoken discourse analysis in the precision…
Cognitive linguistics and humor
There are a number of problems with the articles in this issue. As I read the articles in this guest edited issue of
Trends in European humor research: Toward a text model
La pragmatique
Nouvelles approches des connecteurs argumentatifs, temporels et reformulatifs
The Violation of Grice’s Maxims in Jokes
Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1990), pp. 355-362
Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model
Resolving Semantic Ambiguity
Jokes as a text type
The authors discuss the opportunity of and provide evidence for the identification of a text type particular to the joke. They present a set of features shared by all jokes, which can be taken as the basis of the construction of a definition of jokes. They then show that jokes satisfy all seven textual requirements, as presented in an influential definition of textuality
Introduction: Humor research east of the Atlantic
Toward an empirical verification of the General Theory of Verbal Humor
The present study derives hypotheses from the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) and tests them on a sample of 534 subjects. Subjects are presented with three sets of jokes, each consisting of an anchor joke and comparison jokes in which variations in one and only one of the six Knowledge Resources (KR), script Opposition (SO), logical mechanism (LM), Situation (SI) target (TA), narrative strategy (NS), andlanguage (LA) occurred. Subjects rate…
Sémantique cognitive
Violation of conversational maxims and cooperation: The case of jokes
Non-literalness and non-bona-fîde in language: An approach to formal and computational treatments of humor
The paper is devoted to the study of humor as an important pragmatic phenomenon bearing on cognition, and, more specifically, as a cooperative mode of non-bona-fide communication. Several computational models of humor are presented in increasing order of complexity and shown to reveal important cognitive structures in jokes. On the basis of these limited implementations, the concept of a full-fledged computational model for the understanding and …
The linear organization of jokes: Analysis of two thousand texts
Semantic interpretation and the resolution of ambiguity
Advertising Language. A Pragmatic Approach to Advertisements in Britain and Japan
Linguistic Theories of Humor
Competition and cooperation: Beyond Gricean pragmatics
An argument is presented for augmenting Gricean pragmatics with cognitively significant information about whether the participants in the interaction share the same goals, the same amount of information, and the degree of their awareness of both. The additions handle situations of competitive conversational exchanges, where the cooperative principle has been claimed to be inoperative, and show that cooperation underlies competitive exchanges as w…
The semantic foundations of cognitive theories of humor
Locutionary and perlocutionary cooperation: The perlocutionary cooperative principle
The analysis of humorous narratives
Are socio-pragmatics and (Neo)-Gricean pragmatics incompatible
Pragmatics: Critical concepts
Irony as relevant inappropriateness
Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis
This book presents a theory of long humorous texts based on a revision and an upgrade of the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH), a decade after its first proposal. The theory is informed by current research in psycholinguistics and cognitive science. It is predicated on the fact that there are humorous mechanisms in long texts that have no counterpart in jokes. The book includes a number of case studies, among them Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur S…
Script oppositions and logical mechanisms: Modeling incongruities and their resolutions
Psychology (46 works) · Linguistics (37 works) · Philosophy (35 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (34 works) · Humor Studies and Applications (33 works) · Computer Science (22 works) · Philosophy (19 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Pragmatics (12 works) · Cognitive science (10 works)