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DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.59.11.16
How to Cite:
Taranenko, L., & Aleksenko, S. (2022). Prosodic means’ interaction in realising the anecdote humorous effect. Amazonia
Investiga, 11(59), 172-183. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.59.11.16
Prosodic means’ interaction in realising the anecdote humorous effect
Взаємодія просодичних засобів реалізації гумористичного ефекту анекдоту
Received: November 12, 2022 Accepted: December 15, 2022
Written by:
Larysa Taranenko53
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4533-9986
Svitlana Aleksenko54
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7187-8791
Abstract
In the paper, on the basis of auditory analysis of
English spoken anecdotes the authors come up
with the system of prosodic means that serve to
create the text humorous effect. To define the
specificity of a complex interaction of emotional,
pragmatic, structural and semantic factors of
prosodic means ’ functioning in English
anecdotes, we substantiated two algorithmic
models presenting the text story-line
development: one being similar to the structure
of the fairy tale (introduction → commentary →
code), and the other one resembling the riddle
(topic → commentary → code). By way of using
these models as well as the traditional method of
linguistic interpretation of the auditory analysis
results, the authors substantiate the specificity of
prosodic, lexico-grammatical and stylistic means
interaction of an English anecdote oral
actualisation functioning within its structural
components. It has been found out that
realisation of the anecdote humorous effect is
ensured by the predominance of the
unidirectional functioning of the language means
of all levels with the leading role of prosodic
means aimed at drawing the listeners’ attention
to the anecdote’s two-plane semantics and its key
lexical units, thus stimulating their thinking
activities while decoding the humour of the
anecdote. The authors come to the conclusion
that the application of a functional-and-energetic
approach to the study of a complex interaction of
emotional, pragmatic, semantic and structural
factors makes it possible to present a
comprehensive description of invariant and
variant prosodic patterns of any type of texts.
53
Doctor of Sciences in Philology, Full Professor, Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Ukraine.
54
PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, Sumy A.S Makarenko State Pedagogical University, Ukraine.
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Keywords: anecdote, humorous effect,
structure, prosodic organisation, language
means’ interplay.
Introduction
The study and description of humorous text
features have been of interest to researchers from
various branches of linguistics. The existence of
a wide area of studies focused on this issue is
quite common due to indispensable presence of
humour in human life and its significant role in a
person’s everyday communicative activities
(Aristotle, 340BC; McLachlan, 2022). Among
the variety of humorous texts, an anecdote
undoubtedly takes up the leading position since
it serves both as an important vehicle for
expressing emotions, attitudes and concerns of its
recipients as well as a handy communicative
device with a definite pragmatic orientation
(Oring, 1986, p. 122-123). Another characteristic
feature of an anecdote is its inherent ability to be
recreated with each new recounting by different
narrators in various circumstances or socio-
cultural situations and thus with somehow
different prosodic presentation given that each
narration is a reflection of the moment.
At the same time, engaging the listeners into
comprehension of the anecdote’s humour and
arousing their emotional response largely
depends upon the skillfulness of the narrator to
make a use of prosodic means. By applying
intonation patterns in accord with the text
semantics and making clear prosodic contrasts
and emphases, a good narrator may engage
his/her audience totally, directing or redirecting
their thoughts, emotions, and, in some cases,
even their behavior as well (Ginzburg et al.,
2020).
The aim of the present paper is to define a set of
invariant prosodic features of the anecdote oral
actualisation that serve to create its humorous
effect by way of identifying the correlation
between emotional, pragmatic and structural
features of an anecdote and its prosodic
organisation.
Theoretical Framework
At the current stage of phonetic development, the
study of prosodic means organising the texts of
various genres inevitably requires turning to the
methods of multivariative analysis, which allow
determining the regularities of a complex
interaction of structural, communicative-
pragmatic and prosodic characteristics of the
narrated texts. Consequently, it seems expedient
to apply in our research methodological
provisions of the speech energetic theory, put
forward by Alla Kalyta (2015). The substantiated
methodology allows a researcher to study the
text’s prosody as a result of a complex interplay
of emotional, pragmatic, semantic and structural
factors.
Therefore, viewing any text as a structural and
semantic unity, it is worth emphasising, in the
first place, that language units the text is made up
of are capable of producing an essential influence
on its structural and semantic characteristics. It is
under these circumstances that language means
being driven by the author’s idea can acquire new
additional meanings generated by the content
within the framework of the text (Turaieva, 2012,
p. 10–11).
Prior to the analysis of the text humorous effect
realisation, it’s expedient to resort to Aristotle
(350BC) who pointed to the necessity to take into
account the mode of the text presentation
(lexical, grammatical and stylistic organisation
of the text), the manner of its presentation
(intonation contours and paralingual means) as
well as the object of the text presentation (the
target audience or recipients).
Thus, there arises a necessity for the prosodic
analysis of an anecdote oral actualisation aimed
at defining an interrelation between its prosodic
patterns on the one hand, and semantic, stylistic
and structural features, on the other hand.
Describing the specificity of language means’
functioning in the text of an anecdote, one should
mention that it is socio-culturally pre-
conditioned. In this regard, M. Bakhtin pointed
out that the nature of an anecdote is based on the
inherent to human beings’ culture binary
perception of the world, explained by the
necessity to construct the world or life differently
from the real one (Bakhtin, 1984, pp. 99-100,
73-74).
This opinion is shared by A. Karasik (2001), who
emphasises that the two-facet nature of the
anecdote is based on the contrast between reality
and an imaginary or conditional state of affairs as
well as points out that it is reality that is ridiculed
in anecdotes. At the same time, the logic of
anecdotes can be constructed in such a way that
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the imaginary or “another” world is based on a
“pseudo-norm” or stereotype, the deviation from
which is discussed in the text of the anecdote.
V. Raskin (1985, p. 25–26) also put forward the
theory of a binary, or the two-level essence of the
anecdote. Advancing the idea of a clear
orientation of the text of an anecdote at two
different oppositional planes of reflecting reality,
Raskin singles out the following main types of
humorous utterances: mockery, laughing at
oneself, riddle, pun, protest humour, etc.
In the process of unfolding the content and
pragmatic potential of the anecdote, the technique
of changing the method of communication is often
used, connected with the need to tune the listener
to its perception with the help of meta-text input.
At the same time, the mechanisms of humorous
effect creation are based on the play of meanings,
which arises as a result of two meaningful
realities’ collision within the listener’s cognitive
sphere. According to I. Fnagy (1982, p. 64), such
duality of content, which is at the heart of
anecdotes, is created by combining the literal
meaning of the sentence with the idiomatic one
formed in the context of an anecdote.
Since the anecdote is built on the basis of semantic
contrast or by the use of the elements of
incompatibility (Attardo, 1994; Attardo, 2017),
the initial contradiction at the beginning of the text
is exacerbated to its extreme up till the tension is
relieved, thus causing a laughing discharge. The
outlined mechanism diverts the story in a
completely unpredictable direction and, by using
a multitude of certain methods and means, leads to
a completely unexpected and impressive result
(Oring, 1986, p. 125). As a result, the
inconsistency and incongruity of the conclusion in
the anecdote appears as a trap (Oring 2011) into
which one of the characters or the addressee falls
into, or as a mockery of logical constructions.
From a cognitive point of view, laughter arises as
a result of the listener’s imaginary interpretation
of the surrounding reality and is determined by
the structures, content, organisation of
representations of knowledge and the processes
that control them (Ortony et al., 1988). It becomes
obvious that the play of overt and covert
meanings lies at the heart of the language play,
which is of fundamental importance for the
anecdotes’ functioning.
Thus, since an anecdotic narrative subordinates
to the creation of humour, it is also characterised
by the interplay of verbal and non-verbal
techniques that help the anecdote’s narrator
divert the flow of its events into an unpredictable
course. The ambiguity in the text of anecdotes is
usually described by the following stylistic
techniques: metaphor, metonymy, polysemy,
homonymy, ellipsis, inversion, lexical repetition,
syntactic parallelism, the use of antonyms and
idiomatic expressions, similes, puns, oxymoron,
zeugma, pragmatic anomalies, and the word play
within the syntactic level or semantic ambiguity
achieved by the use of foreign words.
However, it is important to understand that
prosodic organisation of the text of an anecdote
remains to be potentially the most significant
resource for the correlation of the deep structures
of the anecdote two-level semantics against the
background of other linguistic means.
Methodology
The results of our previous studies of English
small form folk texts’ prosodic organisation
(Taranenko, 2017) confirm the expediency of
searching, in the first place, for an invariant
algorithmic pattern of the anecdotes’ structure
based on the analysis of their plots, or story-line
development. This algorithmic pattern, or model,
will serve as the methodological basis for
defining the prosodic means’ interplay in
creating the humorous effect of an anecdote.
To meet this methodological requirement, we,
first of all, searched for a model functioning as a
hierarchical system of elements that comprises
main structural components of the anecdote plot.
The second step presupposed a concise
explanation of the plot elements’ content.
Considering this, we have undertaken a
substantiation of the invariant algorithmic pattern
of the English anecdotes’ structure based on the
analysis of their plot development.
As is known, an anecdote is the text constructed
according to specific rules since any funny short
story per se doesn’t make an anecdote. At the
same time, almost any funny story may be
recounted as the anecdote when its text changed
correspondingly.
Most anecdotes are made-up narratives similar to
fairy-tales, some of them having the form of a
riddle or a proverb. Unlike that of a fairy-tale, the
form of an anecdote aligns the narrative
sequences within its plot with the comic effect
achieved owing to unexpected plot twists (Oring,
1986, p. 125). This seems to be the driving force
behind the tendency to subdivide fairy-tales
according to their motifs into three main classes:
fairy-tales about animals, fairy-tales proper and
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anecdote like fairy-tales (Green, 1997,
pp. 17-19).
Searching for the anecdote’s compositional
structure, it is to be mentioned that the discourse
of an anecdote is known to be of a pure
anthropocentric nature having two anthropo-
centres within: that of the author and that of the
personage. The specificity of an anecdote as a
modern folklore genre, as compared with the
traditional folklore, lies in a rather complicated
structure of the represented picture of normative
values, which is connected (Tabulova, 2007,
p. 16) with the subject of their evaluation, i.e.
introspective consciousness of the intelligentsia.
This structure is three-fold in an anecdote: “the
norm – the stereotype – the anti-norm” (ibid.).
Thus, the text of an anecdote is superimposed on
a certain basic layer serving as a starting point.
V. Karasik believes (1997, p. 150) that the basic
textual layer of an anecdote is made of its
denouement and ending as well as a dynamic
model of an anecdote plot development. At the
same time, an anecdote usually combines two
incompatible statuses: improbability alongside
with reality, or the psychological possibility of an
event.
Due to the very nature of an anecdote, its
structural and communicative organisation is
characterised by a block-like composition with
complex syntactic unities being the most
acceptable way of splitting it into meaningful
parts. This presupposes singling out the text of an
anecdote into two parts: the author’s words and
direct speech (Kuznetsova, 2010, p. 16-17).
As it follows, there are two main varieties of
anecdotes as their content suggests: a narration
about a certain event if their structure is similar
to that of a fairy-tale, and a witty short dialogue
if their structure is close to that of a riddle or a
proverb. Taking such a viewpoint as a basis for
modelling an anecdote’s composition, we have
come up with its structural variety models as
shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Algorithmic patterns of the anecdote story-line development according to its plot elements:
a) approaching the structure of a riddle or proverb; b) approaching the structure of a fairy-tale.
As is seen from Figure 1, the structural blocks’
chain of an anecdote actualised according to the
scheme “a” comprises the following algorithmic
sequence: topic → commentary → punchline,
while the structural algorithm of anecdotes
composed by the scheme “b”, has such a
sequence: exposition → commentary →
punchline. Then, considering the difference in
the content of the so-called “anecdote-riddle”
and the “anecdote-tale”, at the lower level of their
structural systems we introduced specific plot
elements directly related to these differences.
Thus, the plot elements of the Fig. 1a are
presented by the following chain: referents →
characteristics → action → punchline.
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As an example of the plot elements correlation in
accordance with the 1a model, let us consider the
following anecdote:
(1) “Let us see whether you are smart at
arithmetic, Charley! I have twenty shillings
and borrow fifty from your aunt and thirty
from your dad. What does that make?”
“Debts, uncle!”.
In this text the “enquiry about the boy’s
mathematical abilities” serves as the referent, the
characteristics is presented by “a mathematical
task”, the action is displayed by “the imaginary
mathematical action”, while the punchline is in
“the child’s unbiased response”.
Tackling the specificities of an anecdote’s
structure which, according to scheme “b” (Fig. 1)
resembles the structure of a fairy tale, we are to
mention the viewpoint presented by V. Karasik
(1997, p. 152) who qualified the anecdote as a
typical narrative, consisting of an exposition, the
plot development, and the climax in its full or
condensed form.
A more elaborate, though, is a structural model
of a humorous text put forward by W. Labov and
J. Waletzky (1967, p. 41). It comprises five
elements: a) abstract (a gist of what a story will
be about), b) orientation (sets the time, place, and
introduces the characters), c) complication of the
events (recounts the main events that form the
story), d) resolution (suggests resolutions of the
events), e) coda, or punch line (serves as a link
between the plot and its narration).
Let’s not leave out the well-known opinion that
structural elements of an anecdote contribute to
its climax, usually termed as a punchline (Green,
1997, p. 17-19), or ironic meaning formation
(Kuznetsova, 2010, p. 16), an unexpected witty
ending (Propp, 2012, p. 228) based on pun, or the
effect of defeated expectancy.
Summarising the aforementioned, we have
outlined an algorithmic sequence of the
generalised plot elements content as shown on
the lower hierarchical level of the model “b” (see
Fig. 1): 1) the scene → the characters →
development of the events → emergence of a
problem → the punchline.
The following text may serve as an example of
an anecdote content unfolding in accordance
with the scheme given on the Fig.1b:
(2) A talkative passenger asked a lady who
was in the same compartment: “Have you
any family,.madam?”
“Yes, sir, one son,” she answered.
“Indeed! Does he smoke?” he continued to
ask.
“No, sir, he has never touched a cigarette,”
she said.
“So.much the better, madam. Tobacco is
poison. Does he belong to a club?” asked the
.passenger.
“He has never .set
foot in one,” she
answered.
“Then I congratulate you. Does he come
.home late at .night?” he asked again.
“Never. He always goes to bed directly after
dinner,” she said.
“He is a model young man, madam. How old
is he?” asked the passenger.
“Ten months today,” was the answer.
In the given example, the anecdote plot elements
are marked by the following content: “a train
compartment” (the scene) → “a chatty passenger
and a woman” (the characters) → “an inquiry
about the woman’s son’s habits” (development
of the events) → “an inquiry about the woman’s
son’s age” (emergence of a problem) → “an
unexpected answer of the woman” (punchline).
Thus, it seems expedient to use the substantiated
structural models of the anecdote’s plot
unfolding (see Fig. 1) in the course of our
experimental study of prosodic regularities and
dynamics of English anecdotes’ emotional and
pragmatic potentials’ changes while producing
the text humorous effect. One of the models is
close to the structure of a fairy-tale (exposition
→ commentary → punchline), while the other
one resembles the composition of a riddle (topic
→ commentary → punchline). Each of the
structural components of the presented models
contains a series of similar plot elements (Fig. 1).
While setting tasks for phoneticians, special
attention should be given to defining the impact
of these differences in the anecdotes’ structural
models on their invariant and variant prosodic
patterns.
Results and Discussion
In the course of our experimental study we
analysed 75 spoken English anecdotes (2022)
having total duration of 32 minutes.
The results of the auditory analysis attested to the
correlation between the type of the anecdote’s
structural model and prosodic means of its
actualisation. It has been found out that in
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anecdotes that have the form of a narration about
a certain event and are similar in their structure
to a fairy-tale, an introductory element contains
those plot elements which help a listener
immerse into the situation and get them
acquainted with the characters and the scene, as
in the examples:
As it ensues from the examples above, an
introductory plot element of an anecdote, similar
to the “exposition” in a fairy-tale, is characterised
by short intonation groups consisting at most of
three rhythmic groups; the variation of voice
range from mid to widened; the use of checked
heads, gradually descending stepping or broken
descending stepping heads, a low falling tone in
the terminal rhythmic group, as well as moderate
tempo and loudness. In other words, introductory
component of an anecdote is formed by neutral
intonation parameters and, accordingly, is
distinguished by a low level of emotional and
pragmatic potentials. The increase of its
emotional potential is evident only in certain
lexical units pronounced mostly with an
accidental pitch rise to attract the listener’s
attention to the details essential for the situation
development and comprehension of an anecdote
punchline.
In cases when the structure of an anecdote is
close to that of a riddle or a proverb, an anecdote
is, as a rule, presented in the form of a short witty
dialogue whose elements form the following
algorithmic sequence: topic → commentary →
punchline. Despite the lapidary text of such
anecdotes, as the model suggests, their “topic” is
characterised by prosodic contours similar to
those of the “exposition” of anecdotes actualised
according to the model outlined above, for
instance:
The examples illustrate that a listener’s
acquaintance with an anecdote’s referent
(characters, situation, scene, etc.) is carried out,
as it was mentioned above, by means of
emotionally neutral intonation components,
namely: a checked head, gradually descending
stepping and broken descending stepping heads,
rising-falling intonation contour, a low falling
terminal tone (in affirmative sentences) or a low
rising tone (in general questions), moderate
tempo and loudness, absence of abrupt pitch
fluctuations. At the same time, the rhematic
elements of the “topic”, which are to be fixed in
a recipient’s memory as crucial for an anecdote
decoding, can be marked by the special rise and
a high falling tone of an emphatic configuration
(i.e. a rising pitch movement within a nuclear
syllable and a falling or level one in the tail).
Thus, the initial structural elements in anecdotes
of both models are distinguished by low level of
emotional and pragmatic potentials, which are
prosodically actualised via neutral parameters of
intonation components.
At the same time, the structural element
“commentary”, which resembles a fairy-tale, is
characterised by a greater variety of intonation
means, due to actualisation of such plot elements
as “development of the events” and “emergence
of a problem”, for example:
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Prosodic organisation of these texts and other
similar fragments indicates the increase of their
emotional potential to the middle level, being
highlighted, in the first place, by a sufficient
number of pitch intervals, mostly at the “pre-
terminal part –nucleus” juncture (|loose /pants; –
or a \girl; A \girl; –for\give me; I didn’t /know,
etc.), high falling terminal tones and the
combination of several kinetic tones within one
intonation group (…that \you were her \mother).
Moreover, “commentaries” in anecdotes of this
structural model are distinguished by the
interaction of prosodic means conveying various
emotional states, feelings or attitudes of the
characters to the described situation or problem.
In the analysed example above, the combination
of pitch intervals with a high or mid-level rising
tone (e.g., long /hair; is it a /boy), which goes
through all pitch zones and stands out with an
increased intensity, serves to convey
dissatisfaction and annoyance of the anecdote’s
personage, his astonishment and surprise caused
by misunderstanding.
As we can see, the wider or narrower the pitch
interval in different segments of the intonation
group of “the commentary” is, the higher
becomes its emotional potential.
The study of prosodic organisation of the
“commentary” within the anecdotes unfolding
according to the model close to that of a riddle
proves that although they are characterised by a
lesser variation of intonation components, the
leading means of their prosodic organisation is a
widened pitch interval, for example:
In the given example, the contrasted pitch levels
occurring in different segments of intonation
groups (“pre-head – head”, “pre-terminal part –
nucleus”), actualisation of the falling tones of
different pitch levels, and the presence of
perceptive pauses altogether enhance semantic
contrasts within the “commentary” attracting the
recipient’s attention to them.
If the “topic” of an anecdote starts with an
enquiry for information pronounced with the
rising tone of low or slowed down rate of its
movement, the “commentary” usually contains
the reaction to this enquiry which due to a high
falling tone acquires sincere sounding, with
enthusiasm and interest as well as with a shade of
encouraging inducement, for example:
The transition from the “commentary” to the
final component of an anecdote “punchline” is
marked by a mid or short-length pause in both
structural varieties of anecdotes. “Punchline” as
an unexpected denouement of an anecdote
designed to create a comic effect stands out with
the highest level of emotional and pragmatic
potential, expressed on the prosodic level by the
following emphatic prosodic means: slowed down
tempo, increased loudness, timbre modifications,
pitch level contrasts, the combination of two
kinetic tones within one intonation group, mixed
rhythmic structures, as in the examples:
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The data obtained during the auditory analysis
proved that “punchline” can be manifested in the form of a rhetorical question or an exclamatory
sentence, e.g.:
The aforementioned examples show that both the
rhetorical question and exclamatory sentence are
pronounced with emphatic parameters of
intonation components. In the first excerpt such
means are represented by the combination of a
high pre-head with a low-level head, a high rising
terminal tone preceded by a positive widened
pitch interval and a perceptive pause whose
interplay gives the rhetorical question of a
punchline the meaning of sarcastic surprise with
a hint of reproach. The exclamatory sentence,
being uttered with increased loudness at a high
pitch, adds an unexpectedly optimistic sounding
and a general positive tonality to the anecdote.
Inversion has also been registered within the
structural element “punchline” which serves to
enhance an utterance or any of its part
emotionally by way of breaking its syntactic
structure, for instance:
The example testifies to the inversion being
marked by a widened pitch range, a wave-like
movement of the tone formed by a mid-raised
pre-head and a high falling-rising terminal tone
of a wide range. Such a synergic one-way
interaction of stylistic and prosodic means
contributes to the overall emotional colouring of
the “punchline”, making it stand out against the
mostly neutral intonation organisation of other
plot elements and attracting the listener’s
attention to it.
The unexpected denouement of an anecdote can
also be enhanced by elliptical sentences within
the “punchline” pronounced with emphatic
intonation parameters, for instance:
In the given example, the accentual prominence
of the “punchline” is attained by both the absence
of the principal parts of the sentence and the
widened voice range realisation, having the key
word pronounced with a high falling tone of a
decreased rate of its movement changes. Such a
unidirectional interaction of grammatical and
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suprasegmental language means boosts up the
anecdote’s humorous effect.
The auditory analysis also revealed that
regardless of the model of an anecdote structure
the listener’s perception of the transition from the
“commentary” to “punchline” is realised due to
semantic contrasts amplified by prosodic means.
For example, in the utterance “\Oh \no! | If |that’s
the ↑good /news, | then |what’s the \bad |news?” ||
(Good news) the lexical unit “good” marked with
an accidental rise is opposed to the word “bad”
pronounced with a high falling terminal tone of a
wide range, which is perceived as the key one
owing to a preceding positive wide pitch interval.
In the following example there is a contrast
between several lexical units (promise, child,
school, home) which occur both in the
“commentary” and the “punchline”. It is their
distant realisation that ensures a tight linkage
between these structural components of an
anecdote:
As we can see from the example, due to the
difference in prosodic actualisation of the word
“promise” used in adjacent structural components
(the falling head accentuating the word “not” in the
first instance and a rising tone – in the second one,
being preceded by that word “will” which is
pronounced with the highest intensity and a high
falling tone of a wide range), the listeners acquire
the opportunity to perceive various implicit
meanings of the word “promise”, which helps
them trigger the search for associations while
decoding an anecdote. In a similar way, the
recipient perceives the contrasted prosodic
prominence of the word “child” used in adjacent
structural elements (the falling head in the
“commentary” and a high falling tone of a wide
range in the “punchline”). This word, owing to
its prosodically highlighted functioning acquires
the status of the key word, while its distant
placement within the text contributes to liaising
information in the adjacent plot elements and the
listener’s overall comprehension, and thus to the
adequate decoding of an anecdote’s punchline.
There is an interesting fact that some notional
words of the “commentary” may lose their
utterance stress (e.g. says) in order to intensify
those words that are more important for the
anecdote’s meaning comprehension. It follows
that thanks to prosodic contrasts actualised in the
text of an anecdote, the semantic focus is located
on those lexical units that help the listener
perceive the humour of an anecdote. By
interacting in this way, the semantic and prosodic
contrasts of the anecdote serve to boost up its
emotional and pragmatic potentials, which
gradually increase towards the “punchline”.
To define the prosodic patterns that serve the
humorous effect creation, it proved expedient to
come up with the regularities of prosodic means’
accompaniment of other language levels means
(lexical, grammatical, and stylistic). The
anecdote given below is an example of an
idiomatic expression used in the structural
component “punchline”:
(20)
The example demonstrates that prosodically the
idiom is marked by the broken descending
stepping head with a falling-rising terminal tone
preconditioned semantically and structurally. A
touch of humour in this expression is decoded
only on comprehension of the following lines
(…“you’d better spit it out. It is nitric acid.”),
due to their wide voice range, descending sliding
scale, high falling tone of a wide range and
increased loudness. Such a combination of
lexical and prosodic means facilitates not only
the expansion of the meaning of the idiomatic
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expression (from the figurative one in the
“commentary” of an anecdote to the literal one in
its “punchline”) but also adds an ironic and
mocking sounding to the whole text and makes
the utterance, containing the anecdote punchline,
stand out and convey the text humour.
Another frequent way of creating a humorous
effect in an anecdote is the use of antonyms in its
adjacent components as can be seen from the
example below:
The example and its intonogram testify to the fact
that detached antonyms (thick – in the
“commentary” and thin – in the “punchline”) are
interconnected both semantically and
grammatically since they are the constituents of
two parallel constructions. The antonyms are
marked on the suprasegmental level by a so-
called mirrored intonation pattern, i.e. gradually
descending and ascending sliding heads
functioning in adjacent intonation groups. Here it
becomes obvious that the antonymous lexical
units “thick” and “thin” play a crucial role in the
comic effect formation, whose adequate
decoding is attained by their prosodic
accentuation against the background of prosodic
organisation of the anecdote adjacent structural
components. This is achieved by the prosodic
opposition of the intonation group if the ice is as
thick as she \thinks, characterised by a simple
regular rhythm due to even distribution of the
utterance stress, to the following intonation
group (but if the ice is as thin as \I |think), whose
rhythmic regularity is broken on account of a
high falling tone on a personal pronoun “I” and a
partial stress on the notional word (think). This
and similar examples prove that antonymous
lexical units are capable of producing the
anecdote humorous effect when used in
adjoining plot elements and accompanied by
contrastive prosodic parameters, in particular, as
it is shown in the example above, with the
contrastive pitch movement in adjacent
intonation groups: a falling movement in the
head of the first one and the rising – in the second
one which is quite natural since a fact is stated in
the first intonation group, while in the second one
some denial or disagreement is delivered.
Another typical feature of anecdotes is that their
comic effect is realised with the help of
polysemantic lexical units, prosodically marked
by emphatic uses of intonation components, for
instance:
In the context of this anecdote, the word “light”
having the initial meaning of “a rather
entertaining genre of literature” acquires the
meaning of “not heavy, easy”. The listener gets
the opportunity to unambiguously perceive the
anecdote’s implicit meaning thanks to the
prosodic distinction of this lexeme as a key unit
(request for additional, clarifying information)
by means of a high rising terminal tone
intensified by a widened positive pitch interval at
the juncture of the head and the nuclear group. It
is this emphatic prosodic arrangement of a
polysemantic lexical unit, that in the context of
an anecdote reveals several meanings
simultaneously. This serves to attract the
recipients’ attention and arouse their interest in
finding out the essence of the anecdote.
The outlined prevalence of a one-way interaction
of an anecdote’s lexical units’ semantics, its
grammatical means, stylistic devices and
prosodic organisation can, in our opinion, trigger
in a listener’s psychic sphere a cognitive
mechanism of searching for associations aimed
at the correct decoding of anecdote content.
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Conclusions
The carried out analysis suggests that the creation
of the anecdote’s humorous effect largely depends
on prosodic accompaniment of its lexico-
grammatical and stylistic means and is achieved
by way of parallelism of supra-segmental units,
contrasts of pitch levels within intonation
contours, fluctuations in loudness and tempo as
well as variability in timbre.
We believe that interplay of verbal and non-verbal
means within the text of an anecdote generates in
the recipients’ psychic sphere a cognitive
mechanism aimed at searching for associations
that help them correctly decode the humorous
content of the text.
The performed analysis of the anecdote’s
linguistic specificity allowed us to single out the
following features of its textual organisation: the
use of figurative language to evoke a definite
idea in the recipients’ mind as well as the ability
to produce a mini-performance with the use of
non-verbal means aimed at making the listener
laugh. The mechanism of laughter in the
anecdote largely depends on semantic play,
achieved as a result of the collision of two
meaningful planes within one short text which
creates a certain ambiguity to be interpreted in
the individual’s psychic sphere.
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