An investigation into some typical linguistic factors causing laughter in british funny stories m a thesis linguistics 60 22 15

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ̃ NGUYÊN THI ̣KIM PHƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO SOME TYPICAL LINGUISTIC FACTORS CAUSING LAUGHTER IN BRITISH FUNNY STORIES Nghiên cứu yếu tố ngôn ngữ gây cười điển hình số truyện cười nước Anh M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 HA NOI - 2012 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ̃ NGUYÊN THI ̣KIM PHƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO SOME TYPICAL LINGUISTIC FACTORS CAUSING LAUGHTER IN BRITISH FUNNY STORIES Nghiên cứu yếu tố ngơn ngữ gây cười điển hình số truyện cười nước Anh M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: Associate Professor Võ Đại Quang, Ph.D HA NOI - 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study .1 Objectives of the study Scope of the study: .2 Design of the study PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .4 1.1 Theoretical background: 1.1.1 Humor 1.1.2 British humor .5 1.1.3 Funny stories and Jokes 1.1.4 Pun 1.1.5 Ambiguity .6 1.1.6 Lexical ambiguity 1.1.6.1 Polysemy 1.1.6.2 Homonymy is traditionally defined as different words with the same forms In Lyons (1995, p.55), homonyms are classified into absolute and partial ones 1.1.6.3 Polysemy vs Homonymy 11 1.1.6.4 Transference of meaning: 11 1.1.7 Grammatical ambiguity 13 1.1.7.1 Morphology 13 1.1.7.2 Syntax 13 1.2 Previous works 14 1.3 Summary: 16 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 17 2.1 Research governing principles 17 i 2.1.1 Research question 17 2.1.2 Data types to be collected 17 2.2 Research methods 18 2.2.1 Major methods: 18 2.2.1 Techniques for data collection 19 2.2.2 Techniques for data analysis 19 2.3 Summary: 20 CHAPTER 3: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 21 3.1 Data Analysis 21 3.1.1 Lexical ambiguity: 21 3.1.2 Grammatical ambiguity: 26 3.1.2.1 Morphological ambiguity: 26 3.1.2.2 Syntactic ambiguity: 28 3.2 Findings and discussions: 33 3.2.1 Findings: 33 3.2.2 Discussions and implication for language teaching and learning 34 3.3 Summary: 34 PART III: CONCLUSION 36 Recapitulation 36 Concluding remarks 36 Limitations 37 Suggestions for further study 37 REFERENCES 39 APPENDIX I ii PART I: INTRODUCTION Rationale Peoples from all over the world, with different cultures and lifestyles, seem to have one thing in common – sense of humor There are a great amount of funny stories from culture to culture Each culture has its own typical joke-making characteristics Reading funny stories helps people relax with great efficiency The way Vietnamese learners read and understand Vietnamese jokes is not quite similar to the way English people English learners may have some difficulties in reading between the lines in some funny stories if they don‟t have the needed cultural and linguistic background In my opinion, a research into linguistic factor causing laughter in British funny stories will bring about benefits to readers and pedagogical implications for teaching and translation And, this is the rationale for my study Aims of the study The purposes of the research are as follows:  To help English learners have a clear understanding of linguistic features available in English funny stories or jokes  To help English learners discover an interesting part of English besides complicated grammar points or long complex reading passages  To help English learners communicate more successfully with native speakers via joke understanding Objectives of the study This study is an investigation into British funny stories and their linguistic features with reference to cultural perspective to point out the typical factors that cause laughter In doing this, typical features causing laughter in funny stories can be pointed out This objective can be further elaborated into the following research question: What are the typical linguistic features that cause laughter in British funny stories? Scope of the study: The issues raised in this thesis are investigated from both linguistic and cultural perspective The study primarily deals with research issues from a linguistic approach Furthermore, there is a difference in humour creating way from country to country so the stories are also studied under culture perspective As the exploitation of linguistic features in funny stories is quite huge and diversified, and the number of stories has been increasing year after year, the analysis is supposed to be selective rather than comprehensive in three senses: (i) only two groups of stories are chosen, (ii) only 33 stories are selected as typical samples and (iii) in each group, just some stories are picked up for a further in-depth study Design of the study In addition to “References” and “Appendix” parts, the study consists of three main parts: Part 1: Introduction This part discusses the rationale, scope, aims, objectives, and design of the study Part 2: Development This part is divided into three chapters: Chapter 1, Literature review, presents the previous studies related to the topic and a brief theoretical background with such concepts and conceptions as Humor, British humour, Funny stories and jokes, Punning, Ambiguity, Lexical ambiguity, Grammatical ambiguity Chapter 2, Methodology, describes the research-governing principles, data collection instruments and data analysis procedure Chapter 3, Analysis and Discussions, offers a detailed analysis of the data, the results obtained and discussions of these results Part 3: Conclusion This is the last part of the thesis which provides a recapitulation of the main points presented, concluding remarks on the research objectives, limitations, and suggestions for further studies PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background: 1.1.1 Humor Humor is not as easy to define as it seems There have been several people who tried to find out something about humour Avner Ziv from Israel gives one example to define humour: Humor is defined as a social message intended to produce laughter or smiling As with any social message, it fulfills certain functions, uses certain techniques, has content, and is used in certain situations These aspects of humor can be understood as relating to the questions of why people use humor (its functions), how it is transmitted (techniques), what it communicates (content), and where and when it is communicated (situation) Some of these aspects of humor are universal, characterizing humor everywhere Others are more influenced by culture Another definition is found in Merriam-Webster's entry on the word “humour”: that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing These definitions pretty much capture the essence of what could be called our general definition of humor, and they capture the basics of what humor is, but there is more to humor than just the ability to make people laugh or to be able to laugh at funny things While laughter is indeed a typical reaction to humor, things are more complicated than that Something is perceived as humorous even though nobody laughs at it people laugh at things that not really humorous, as laughter can also be an emotional response to fear or embarrassment Therefore, humor cannot be defined simply as something that makes you laugh The response to humor is important in the definition of something as humorous, but there are aspects and details to humor and laughter which are sometimes overlooked 1.1.2 British humor The British have a unique sense of humour Of all the characteristics which the English are known all over the world, the sense of humour is one of the best-known and most positively regarded In England, you may consider humour a way of getting along in society Britain is the only country in the world which is inordinately proud of its sense of humour In other countries, if they find you inadequate or they hate you, they will call you stupid, ill-mannered In Britain, they will say that you have no sense of humour This is the final condemnation, the total dismissal 1.1.3 Funny stories and Jokes Funny stories are the stories that are told to make people laugh (Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary) It is characterized by humorous phenomena There are two theories for what people find humorous, incongruity theory, superiority theory The most popular theory of why we find jokes funny revolves around the concept of „incongruity‟ The idea is that we laugh at things that surprise us because they seem out of place It‟s funny when clowns wear outrageously large shoes, people have especially big noses or politicians tell the truth In the same way, many jokes are funny because they involve ideas that run against our expectations “A bear walks into a bar Animals talk.” And so on But there is more to this theory than such simple forms of incongruity In many jokes, there is an apparent incongruity between the setup and the punch line Scientists refer to this as the „incongruity-resolution‟ theory We resolve the incongruity caused by the punch line, and the accompanying feeling of sudden surprise makes us laugh The superiority theory also explains why we laugh at certain types of jokes Many jokes make us feel superior to other people In these types of jokes, people appear stupid because they have misunderstood an obvious situation, made a stupid mistake, been the hapless victim of unfortunate circumstance or have been made to look stupid by someone else According to the theory, these jokes cause us to laugh because they make us feel superior to other people According to the definition on Wikipedia, a joke is a question, short story, or depiction of a situation made with the intent of being humorous To achieve this end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices Jokes may have a punch-line that will end the sentence to make it humorous Their purposes are typically for the entertainment of friends and onlookers The desired response is generally laughter; when this does not happen the joke is said to have "fallen flat" 1.1.4 Pun According to Wikipedia, the pun, or also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect Because of the multiple meanings of words or similar sounding words that helps cause ambiguities and laughter to readers or listeners However, not most of people can apply pun in their daily conversations because pun is an art of using and playing with words Moreover, the listeners also have a wide range of vocabulary and knowledge of local or regional dialects and particular cultures to understand the intentional use of words of the speakers Pun expresses the beauty of words; therefore it differs from another kind of word play- malapropism Malapropism is an amusing mistake somebody makes when they use a word with sounds similar to the word they want to use but means something different Pun mentioned here is to emphasize the art of playing with words based on linguistics factors such as phonology, homophony, morphology, etc 1.1.5 Ambiguity According to Wikipedia, ambiguity of information is the ability to express more than one interpretation It is generally contrasted with vagueness, in that specific and distinct interpretations are permitted (although some may not be immediately apparent), whereas with information that is vague it is difficult to form any transitive or intransitive, and therefore, there will be misunderstanding and laughter The following stories are examples for this: (31) Stern Librarian: Please, be quiet! The people near you can't read Small Boy: Why, they ought to be ashamed of themselves! I've been able to read since I was six In (31), the librarian means "read" in the object-deleting sense – a transitive verbs but deleting objects, whereas the child interprets it in the intransitive sense, which means that the little boy understands “can‟t read” as “illiterate – don‟t know how to read” (32) Comedian Dick Gregory tells of walking up to a lunch counter in Mississippi during the day of racial segregation The waitress said to him, “We don‟t serve colored people.” “That‟s fine,” he replied, “I don‟t eat colored people I‟d like a piece of chicken.” (33) Customer: Do you serve lamb? Waiter: I'm sorry, sir We don‟t allow animals to diner here In (31), (32), the verb “serve” has two interpretations with two different structures: “Serve somebody something” means gives somebody food or drink and “serve something to somebody” The lack of one of the two objects causes ambiguity in these funny stories In (31), the structure must be understood “serve somebody”, but the listener understands it like “serve something” In (32), the structure must be understood “serve something to somebody”, but the listener understands it like “serve somebody” 32 3.2 Findings and discussions 3.2.1 Findings As already mentioned, the stories collected were divided into two groups: lexical ambiguity and grammatical ambiguity On the total of 33 stories, the majority was found to be grammatical ambiguity which account for 57.6 percent, and the rest 42.4 percent presented lexical ambiguity The following tables show the linguistic ambiguity in the stories Types of ambiguity Number Percentage Table 1: Classification of the linguistic factors causing laughter Types of Grammatical ambiguity Number Percentage Table 2: Classification of the Grammatical ambiguity causing laughter The results show that ambiguity is the source of humour in funny stories, and they occur mainly in two language aspects: lexical and grammar Among all 33 stories collected, the majority was found to be grammatically ambiguous, and a small number of stories use lexical ambiguity in creating humour When analyzing the stories in lexical aspect, polysemy and homonymy are the major causes of humour When analyzing the stories in grammtical aspect, syntactic ambiguity is the main cause of humour which accounts for 73.7% while morphological ambiguity makes up 26.3% of the cases With syntactic ambiguity, most of the cases, funny stories use the ambiguity in prepositional phrase to create 33 humour In other cases, the verbs which can be understood in two ways, both transitive and intransitive are used to create ambiguity and therefore make readers laugh 3.2.2 Discussions It is a fact that lexical and grammatical ambiguity is the major means of humour creating in British funny stories and jokes There are of course other ways to create laughter in jokes; however, these two ways seem to be the popularly used Therefore, English learners should pay great attention to the word choice and grammar patterns in English stories if they want to understand them fully Words with multiple meanings are used to create ambiguity and laughter in funny stories, so that learners should have a wide understanding of the vocabulary Besides, the arrangement of words, especially prepositional phrases, is of great importance The lack of grammar signals often provides high opportunities for grammatical ambiguity Funny stories can create humour in classroom which contributes a positive environment for learning Using funny stories in teaching can help reduce tension, increase enjoyment and therefore facilitate learning process Through funny stories, different linguistic aspects of language are illustrated Students can know more about English vocabulary and grammar, about English sense of humour and have better understanding of the language they are trying to acquire Funny stories are used a lot in daily communication so that understanding funny stories will help learners better communicate with foreigners and minimize the miscommunication 3.3 Summary In this chapter, the author investigates some linguistic factors in some chosen English funny stories The data analysis reveals that linguistic ambiguity can be detected in many English funny stories The analysis shows that ambiguities are important to 34 evoke misunderstanding which leads to laughter in funny stories I have seen that it is necessary for English learners to have some understanding of linguistics factors like grammar, morphology, polysemy, and homonymy in order to understand British funny stories and also to create humorous situations in daily communication However, working out the implicature of native funny stories is not an easy task for non-native speakers The study indicates that in order to properly understand funny stories, the readers are required to have considerable background knowledge To sum up, jokes are quite interesting for English learners besides a number of long reading passages or complicated grammar points in text books Jokes sometime are a breeze to bring something new and fresh to them It is necessary for students to apply what they have learnt about linguistics to read and check whether they can completely understand English jokes – a channel of daily communication 35 PART III: CONCLUSION Recapitulation The study has demonstrated typical features causing laughter in British funny stories ranging from lexical aspect to grammatical one The major points presented in this thesis are: (i) The first part of the study deals with background knowledge for the study in which aspects of humour and linguistic factors are demonstrated (ii) The second part is concerned with linguistic features of English jokes/ funny stories that create laughter for readers (iii) The third part is about the findings established from the analysis and some discussions (iiii) The last part is the conclusions with concluding remarks, some limitations and suggestions for further studies Concluding remarks The thesis title is “An Investigation into Some Typical Linguistic Factors Causing Laughter in British Funny Stories” Within the scope of this master thesis, the author focused on two basic fields of linguistic to examine the list of thirty-three British funny stories/ jokes – lexical and grammatical aspects The analysis of these English jokes and funny stories has shown that English stories use ambiguity both syntactically and semantically to create laughter The following are summaries on the analysis which have been done in this master thesis: • Ambiguity is the main cause of laughter in British funny stories There are of course many ways to create laughter in funny stories; however, using ambiguity seems to be a typical and really useful means of humour creating 36 • More than half of the stories analyzed are grammatically ambiguous By using the structure which can be understood in two different ways; the stories, therefore, bring misunderstanding and then laughter to readers There are two cases: syntactic ambiguity and morphological ambiguity In most of the cases, funny stories use the ambiguity in prepositional phrase to create humour In some cases, the verbs in the stories can be understood in two ways, both transitive and intransitive, which create ambiguity and therefore make readers laugh • Besides that, a great amount of stories bring about laughter for readers because they are lexically ambiguous The stories are ambiguous because there are some words in the stories that have more than one meaning cause misunderstanding and laughter for readers When analyzing the stories in lexical aspect, polysemy and homonymy are the major causes of humour I know that the limited given English jokes are not enough to test the given theories Nevertheless, I have tried to analyze and summarize the most distinguishing features of linguistics that can create laughter via those jokes The thesis has solved all the aims mentioned in the introduction We have also found out the answers to the research question raised in the methodology part of the thesis Limitations The study has investigated funny stories in terms of its linguistic features The application of the findings into teaching and translation has also been pointed out However, there is possibly shortage of stories in the process of collecting data This may result in some mistakes in the study Furthermore, humour and funny stories are something considered universal, so it is difficult to know exactly whether a story is British or not Suggestions for further study 37 Most of what has been raised and discussed is viewed from the perspective of linguistic features A more insightful look into funny stories can be obtained if cultural traits behind those stories are taken into consideration For this reason, it is herein suggested that there should be more future academic works conducted in this direction Therefore, further studies may focus on funny stories in different culture discourse, in order to understand the stories; readers must get some general knowledge about the culture 38 REFERENCES Books Antony J Chapman Hugh C Foot (1976), Humor and Laughter: theory, research and applications, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Attardo, S (1994), Linguistic Theories of Humor, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter Austin, J.L ( 1962), How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press Austin, J.L (1955), How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press Avner, Z Characteristics of Jewish Humor: Amazon.ca, Anat Zajdman Crystal, D (1992), Introducing lingluistics, Harlow: Penguin Đoàn Minh, Chu Xuân Nguyên (1993) Truyện tiếu lâm Anh, Nhà Xuất Bản Thanh Hóa Fromkin, V et al (1983) An Introduction to Language Second Australian Edition 10 Hockett, Charles (1972), Jokes, Studies in linguistics in honor of George L Trager, ed by Estellie Smith, New York: Mouton 11 Hurford, J.R and Heasley, B (1983) Semantics: A Coursebook London and New York: Cambridge University Press 12 Hurford, James R & Brendan Heasley (1983/1996) Semantics: a Coursebook Cambridge: Cambridge university Press 13 Jackson, H & Amvela E Z (2000).Words, Meaning and Vocabulary New York: Cassell 14 Lyons J (1995) Linguistic Semantics An Introduction, Cambridge University Press 15 Lyons, J (1994) Language and Linguistics An Introduction, Cambridge University Press 16 Lyons, J (1977) Semantics Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 17 28 María, T Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour, (1995): 20939 18 Mouton de Gruyter (2001), Humourous texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis, New York 19 Nguyen Hoa ( 2004), Understanding English Semantics, Hanoi National University 20 Nguyen Hoa (2000), An Introduction to Discourse Analysis Hanoi National University 21 Nguyen Hoa (2004) Understanding English Semantics Hanoi: VNU Publishing House 22 Palmer F R (1981) Semantics Second Edition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 23 Ross, A (1998) The Language of Humor, London: Routledge 24 Searle, J.R (1969), Speech Acts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 25 Sherzer, Joel (1985), Puns and jokes, Handbook of discourse analysis: discourse and dialogue, ed by Teun A Van Dijk, London: Academic Press Websites: http://books.google.com.vn/books? http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pun http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/funny http://thejokes.co.uk/british-humour.php http://www.1729.com/wiki/whatishumor.html http://www.basicjokes.com/djoke http://www.Englishcouncil.org/learnerenglish-central-magazine-jokes.htm http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humour http://www.rd.com/all-jokes.do 40 http://www.richardwiseman.com/LaughLab/incon.html http://www.scribd.com/doc/62132948/The-Linguistic-Analysis-of-Jokes http://www.tienganhonline.net/pages/world-english.htm 41 APPENDIX ENGLISH FUNNY STORIES/ JOKES (1) How did you get that big red lump on your nose? I smelt a brose while I was working in the garden But there is no „b‟ in rose There was in this one Grammar with laughter (Woolard, 1999) (2) That doesn‟t matter Customer: I would like a book, please! Bookseller: Something light? Customer: That doesn‟t matter I have my car with me Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (3) Light sleeper Doctor, when I go to bed, I wake up every thirty minutes Are you a light sleeper? No, I sleep in the dark Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (4) In this box, I have a 10-foot snake! You can‟t fool me, snakes don‟t have feet Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (5) Mum: During the last year my boy has grown another foot Neighbor: Remarkable; on his left leg or on his right one? Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (6) What is even harder than diamond? Paying for it Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (7) Why did you park your car on the yellow lines? Because the sign says “FINE FOR PARKING” Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (8) You have to be rich to play golf Then why are there so many poor players I Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (9) Rattle snake A city boy was visiting his cousin on the farm Walking through the pasture one day, he heard the buzz of a rattle snake and went over to investigate “Come away from there!” his cousin shouted “Don‟t you know that when you go near a rattle he strikes?” “My goodness!” exclaimed the city boy, “have they got a Union too?” Truyện tiếu lâm Anh (10) I met a beggar this morning who said he hadn‟t had a bite in weeks So I bit him (11) You‟ll burst Mother: Johnny, if you eat more cake, you‟ll burst Johnny: Well, pass the cake and get out of the way http://thejokes.co.uk/britishhumour.php (12) Fred goes into a hotel and says to the receptionist 'I'd like a room please.' Receptionist: 'Single, Sir?' Fred: 'Yes, but I am engaged.' http://thejokes.co.uk/british-humour.php (13) Doctor, my son has swallowed a bullet Well, don‟t point him at me! Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (14) Waiter, will my hamburger be long? No sir, it will be round and flat Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (15) Dad, does a dishwasher wash dishes? Yes, Billy That‟s right! And does a bus driver drive buses? Yes And does a weightlifter lift weights? Yes Why all the questions? Well, does a shoplifter lift shops? (16) We‟re advertising for a new cashier in next week‟s Morning Post But you hired a new cashier last week! I know, but he isn‟t honest But you can‟t judge people by their appearance II I‟m not I‟m judging him by his disappearance! (17) He may not have been actually disgruntled, but he was certainly far from gruntled (Wodehouse cited by Morreall (1983: 70) (18) What's the wife of a hippie called? Mississippi http://thejokes.co.uk/british-humour.php (19) A: B: C: Where does your mother come from? Alaska Never mind I‟ll ask her myself http://thejokes.co.uk/british-humour.php (20) Loy: Let's eat up the street Roy: No, thanks; I don't like concrete Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (21) Teacher, to Sam, who had just knocked Mac down: Sam, did you also strike Mac in the excitement? Sam: No, sir, I struck him in the stomach (22) Haughty Lady: Must I stick the stamp on myself? Haughty Clerk: I think you‟ll accomplish more, madam, if you stick it on the package Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (23) Customer: Do you have any wall-paper? Assistant: Lots of it Customer: Can I put it on myself? Assistant: Well, yes; but it looks better on the wall Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (24) Doctor, doctor, my hair keeps falling out; can you suggest anything to keep it in? How about a cardboard box? Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour III (25) Patient: Doctor, doctor, I‟ve broken my arm in several places Doctor: You should stop going to these places, then Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (26) Your dog's been chasing a man on a bicycle Don't be stupid! My dog can't ride a bike Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (27) Waiter: We have almost everything on the menu Customer: I can see that Will you please bring me a clean one? Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (28) Teacher: Sally, you're pretty dirty Sally: Yes; and I'm even prettier when I'm clean Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (29) Sam: There is a butcher who is 29 years old, and feet inches tall; he wears a size hat, and size shoes What does he weigh? Ham: I give up; what? Sam: Meat, of course! Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (30) A group of tourists in an Austrian city were dining in a restaurant One of the musicians started playing a haunting, vaguely familiar melody, buy none of them could recall its name They called the waiter over, and asked him to find out what the musician was playing He padded across the dining-room, and then returned in triumph to announce: Violin! Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (31) Stern Librarian: Please, be quiet! The people near you can't read Small Boy: Why, they ought to be ashamed of themselves! I've been able to read since I was six Truyện tiếu lâm Anh (32) Comedian Dick Gregory tells of walking up to a lunch counter in Mississippi during the day of racial segregation The waitress said to him, “We don‟t serve colored people.” IV “That‟s fine,” he replied, “I don‟t eat colored people I‟d like a piece of chicken.” Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour (33) Customer: Do you serve lamb? Waiter: I'm sorry, sir We don‟t allow animals to diner here http://thejokes.co.uk/british-humour.php V ... regarding the humour creating way analyzed The way to have better understanding British funny stories will be pointed out in a painstaking presentation and an analysis of some typical samples taken... the majority was found to be grammatically ambiguous, and a small number of stories use lexical ambiguity in creating humour When analyzing the stories in lexical aspect, polysemy and homonymy are... “someone with a first degree”, and (d) ? ?a young male unmated fur seal during the mating season” 1.1.6.4 Transference of meaning: A word may have both a “literal” meaning and one or more “transferred”