Understanding Language through Humor - Softcover

Dubinsky, Stanley; Holcomb, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521713889 ISBN 13: 9780521713887

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Students often struggle to understand linguistic concepts through examples of language data provided in class or in texts. Presented with ambiguous information, students frequently respond that they don't 'get it'. The solution is to find an example of humour that relies on the targeted ambiguity. Once they laugh at the joke, they have tacitly understood the concept, and then it is only a matter of explaining why they found it funny. Utilizing cartoons and jokes illustrating linguistic concepts, this book makes it easy to understand these concepts, while keeping the reader's attention and interest. Organized like a course textbook in linguistics, it covers all the major topics in a typical linguistics survey course, including communication systems, phonetics and phonology, morphemes, words, phrases, sentences, language use, discourses, child language acquisition and language variation, while avoiding technical terminology.

About this title

About the Authors

Stanley Dubinsky is Professor of Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. His primary areas of research are syntax, semantics and linguistic theory.

Chris Holcomb is an Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. His primary research interests include histories of rhetoric, humor, discourse analysis and prose style.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521713889
• ISBN 13: 9780521713887
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 212