Submitted by tomski on 17 April, 2018 - 23:04.
WA Distinguished Professors' Lectures Series features internationally renowned scholars visiting the Faculty of English to share their research and professional expertise with WA faculty and students. The Faculty of English welcomes everyone to a lecture on Humour and (Un)truthfulness by prof. dr hab. Marta Dynel, Department of Pragmatics, Institute of English Studies,University of Łódź. The lecture will take place on April 19, 2018, at 6:30 p.m. in room C1, Collegium Novum.
Humour and (Un)truthfulness
by
Prof. dr hab. Marta Dynel
Thursday, April 19, 6:30 p.m.,
room C1, Collegium Novum
This presentation gives a theoretical insight into the complex relationships between conversational humour and truthfulness/untruthfulness. For this purpose, following a neo-Gricean tradition, a distinction is drawn be tween overt and covert untruthfulness (Dynel 2016, 2018 cf. Vincent Marrelli 2003, 2004), based on the type of non-fulfilment of Grice’s first maxim of Quality. Consequently, three aspects of the humour–(un)truthfulness interface are explored against the backdrop of the relevant literature, which is critically examined. Firstly, humour is frequently considered a paratelic, playful activity enclosed within a special frame/key. Thereby, truthfulness is thought to be suspended (cf. Raskin 1985; Raskin and Attardo 1994; Attardo 1994). It is then posited that, in technical terms, humour can sometimes (but not always) originate in overt untruthfulness, with no truthful meanings being communicated. Reaching this conclusion is possible thanks to the clarification of ambivalent but prevalent terms, such as: “jocularity”, “kidding” or “non-seriousness”. Secondly, humour tends to be seen a vehicle for truthful meanings,conveyed implicitly or explicitly, overtly or covertly (e.g. Mulkay 1988,
Kotthoff 2007, Oring 2003, Simpson 2003). In order to communicate serious truthful meanings, the speaker can swiftly enter and leave the humorous frame or even merge both frames (e.g. Emerson 1969), sometimes producing an utterance that is inherently ambiguous in terms of its (non)serious intent (e.g. Dynel 2011, Holt 2016, Haugh 2016). Among other things, humour can coincide with other phenomena capitalising on overt untruthfulness, namely Quality-based figures of speech (hyperbole, metaphor and irony, in particular).Thirdly, the paper addresses the interdependence between humour and covert untruthfulness, the two notions which are sometimes presented as being mutually exclusive (e.g. Chisholm and Feehan 1977). A distinction must be made between playful deception, i.e. humour capitalising on deception (such as put-ons, or garden-path witticisms), which is instantly revealed to the deceived individual; and genuine deception of a target conducive to humorous experience/vicarious pleasure on the part of a non-deceived hearer.
