Toward a Theoretical Framework for the Study of Humor in Literature and the Other Arts

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 67-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Farber
1985 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 4-6
Author(s):  
William Hill ◽  
Dennis Lape

The lights dim. The students stir nervously, not sure of what to expect of the strobe light and the background music from "Thriller." The student course guide had recommended American Humor in Literature and Politics, but no one had been able to locate a living survivor to provide a personal testimony. Two middle-aged men of spacious girths enter the room and begin calling the roll. One looks like he might be a Democrat. The other one doesn't. As they alternate calling student names, crack terrible puns, and climb in and out of fright wigs and false noses, it begins to dawn on the class why no Ishmael has stepped forward to tell the story of American Humor.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamid Gittan Jewad ◽  
Zargham Ghabanchi ◽  
Mohammad Ghazanfari

This research tackles two chapters from the Holy Quran, the sura of Prophet Yusuf, and the sura of the Cave (al-Kahf) to find out whether the theories of Leech (1983) and Brown and Levinson (1987) can be applied to find out the positive and negative politeness strategies and the politeness maxims. The Leech’s model (1983) consists of six maxims, and for Brown and Levinson (1987), consists of two major politeness strategies. It consists of two principles of politeness, where one of them is positive, and the other is negative politeness. This study aims at investigating politeness strategies, and politeness principle linguistically in two Suras from the Holy Quran, how politeness strategies and politeness maxims used within the Holy Quran. This study tries to investigate the image of the main characters in the most sacred book. A qualitative approach is employed to provide interpretations of selected verses. In this paper, we will discuss the politeness strategies, positive and negative politeness strategies, and politeness maxims. The study falls into two parts. It begins briefly to overview the theoretical framework underlying politeness, in particular discussing some definitions of politeness and politeness principle and its maxims, exploring the face theory and its strategies by Brown and Levinson, and how far these strategies affect polite style then, dealing with politeness maxims by Leech. The other part displays a practical application of what has presented theoretically. Also, the researcher examined the politeness strategies, and politeness maxims of two Suras (Yusuf and Al-Kahf). Moreover, the study observed that approximately the majority of negative politeness in two suras then positive politeness, and the last one is politeness maxims.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Jesús Escobar Sevilla

The object of this study is to explore the relation between identity and space in Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies (1999). I will gauge how subjects adjust to their environments and to which means they resort to conserve, negate meaning. It appears that through the perusal of border consciousness subjects negotiate their identities, which leads them to understand the Other and, by extension, themselves. In fact, as the sense of belonging operates on the multi-layered and deterritorialised location of home, I will thus illustrate that whilst some subjects are hindered by forces of dislocation, cultural hybridity, others reassert a sense of transnational belonging in a third space. I shall include an introductory note on the theoretical framework and a section on food adding to the more detailed literature discussion of identity negotiation at stake.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 1576-1599
Author(s):  
Razieh Kashefi Khishan ◽  
Maryam Iraji

The purpose of this research is an analytical analysis of the compression process (including deletion and merging) in old cinematic films compared to new cinematic films in Persian language. The old cinematic films selected for this study include two films, "Kaiser" and "Treasure of the Qaroon," and new cinematic films that examine two films," Life+1 Day "and “Lottery.” The theoretical framework has been used in Cognitive Phonology, Bybee (1999). The method of the present study is descriptive-analytical, and data collection is in library method. All the data has been pulled out from the dialouge of films, which been examined the compression process in the old and new films separately. In this research, we first examine the Utterance and discourse of the intended films in detail. At the end of the work, the elements of the Persian language are analyzed. The results indicate that the compression process in Persian language films has been araised, and in cases where more compressions have been done, their frequency has been higher. That is, in " Life+1 Day and “Lottery’s film, there are more compression processes than "Kaiser" and Treasure of the Qaroon’s film. The fact that the two categories of nouns and verbs are part of the basic entity of a phrase, such that if these categories are frequent then they are compressed or eliminated. On the other hand, the presence of an adjective, adverb, or letter to describe the replacement of noun or verb in the conceptual connection, which is sufficient to represent them, and this will support with Bybee's view point. So the compression, deleting or merging processes in data has shown less frequently.


Author(s):  
Pininta Veronika Silalahi

Marriage is one of the culture universals being that it is contracted in every society of the world, but its mode of contract varies from one society to the other. Marriage is one of life’s major passages, one of the most profound rites of passage that a person or a couple can experience. In many cultures, marriage is generally made known to the public through marriage ceremony. This paper unravels the semiotics of a marriage tradition in Batak Toba Society. Batak Toba is one of the ethnic groups of Batak society, which is still doing wedding tradition as one of its cultural activities. The theoretical framework applied is the conception of signs by Charles Sanders Peirce. According to Peirce, ‘meaning’ is a triadic relation between a sign, an object, and an interpretant. There are three types of signs: icon, index and symbol. This work will reveal the meaning of icons, indexes and symbols in the marriage tradition.


Author(s):  
Eva Saether ◽  
Alagi Mbye ◽  
Reza Shayesteh

This article examines the role of creativity in the Iranian-Swedish association music school in Malmö and Maali's Music School in Gambia. Section 1 outlines the theoretical framework which combines Vygotsky's theories of creativity with current discussions in ethnomusicology on the value and nature of cultural meetings. Section 2 presents an overview of how the concept of the Other has been used in the present study, in seeking insights from the epistemology of non-Western cultures. Section 3 describes how creativity is conceived and practised in the Gambian and Persian/Swedish examples. Section 4 describes the approach used in course development for music teacher education, while Section 5 presents a summary of key principles and approaches.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Johannes Grove

This essay proposes that despite an ingrained awareness in the Uniting Reformed Church and the other members of the Dutch Reformed Church family that church division was born from socio-political and theological factors, the orientation of all parties to the unification process was to prioritise the theological conviction side and downplay the socio-political, allowing it to function surreptitiously and essentially undermining the possibilities for greater progress. This essay will highlight the discourse of church assemblies indicating the trends and arguments relating to unification. It will secondly draw on the reflections of the Afro-American philosopher Cornel West to cast light on the tasks of any church unification process that strive to enhance both reconciliation and transformation. In the light of the theoretical framework of West, it will proceed to posit certain tasks that the unification process must address in order to make any sustained progress.  


2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Barrick ◽  
C. Bryan Cloyd ◽  
Brian C. Spilker

This study experimentally investigates the effects of confirmation bias underlying staff-level tax research on supervisors' initial assessments and recommendations made during the review process for tax research memoranda. The theoretical framework underlying our hypotheses posits that tax professionals strive to make recommendations that meet both accuracy and advocacy objectives. Participants in our study addressed a client scenario in which both objectives could not be met because the client-preferred position did not have a “realistic possibility” of being successfully defended on its merits. In this context, we find that supervisors are more persuaded by an unbiased memo correctly concluding that the client-preferred position is not appropriate than by a biased memo reaching the same conclusion. This result suggests that when tax research memoranda are not consistent with the client advocacy objective, professionals are more persuaded by memoranda that fulfill their accuracy objective. On the other hand, we also find that supervisors are more persuaded by a biased memo incorrectly concluding in favor of the client's preferred position than by a biased memo correctly concluding that the client-preferred position is inappropriate. This result suggests that, when neither memorandum meets the accuracy objective, supervisors are more persuaded by memoranda that offer encouragement that their advocacy objective might be met than by those that do not. Finally, results also indicate that supervisors act to correct confirmation bias by requesting more rework of staff who prepare biased memos than of staff who prepare unbiased memos.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaila Sultana

This paper contributes to a recent development in Applied Linguistics that encourages research from trans- approaches. Drawing on the results of an ethnographic research project carried out in a university of Bangladesh. It is illustrated how young adults actively and reflexively use a mixture of codes, modes, genres, and popular cultural texts in their language practices within the historical and spatial realities of their lives. The paper shows that the interpretive capacity of heteroglossia increases when complemented by an understanding derived from transgressive approaches to language. The paper proposes a reconceptualised version of heteroglossia, namely transglossia, which explores the fixity and fluidity of language in the 21th Century. On the one hand, transglossia is a theoretical framework that addresses the transcendence and transformation of meaning in heteroglossic voices. On the other hand, a transglossic framework untangles the social, historical, political, ideological, and spatial realities within which voices emerge. Overall, it is suggested that transglossia and a transglossic framework can provide us with an understanding of language that notions such as code-mixing or code-switching or any language-centric analysis fail to unveil.


2020 ◽  
Vol 102 (4) ◽  
pp. 648-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damon Clark ◽  
David Gill ◽  
Victoria Prowse ◽  
Mark Rush

Will college students who set goals work harder and perform better? We report two field experiments that involved four thousand college students. One experiment asked treated students to set goals for performance in the course; the other asked treated students to set goals for a particular task (completing online practice exams). Task-based goals had robust positive effects on the level of task completion and marginally significant positive effects on course performance. Performance-based goals had positive but small and statistically insignificant effects on course performance. A theoretical framework that builds on present bias and loss aversion helps to interpret our results.


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