NOTES1. Giora uses departures from the expression Body and soul and subjects' judgments of humor to determine what is optimally innovative / humorous: the plural form Bodies and souls was deemed too familiar to be humorous, the paronymic proper names Bobby and Saul too creative, but the expression body and sole (with the homophone for "soul" the only departure from the original expression) was deemed humorous and therefore optimally innovative.2. This effort need not be translated into a longer reading time. Names of domains in website addresses -which have been compared and, in some cases, assimilated to brand names and slogans (Handler [2018: 295]) -may take part in humorous productions involving lexical creativity, but they do not hamper reading and processing as long as they are short. Wordplay is also associated, in Freud's theory of humorous economy of words and condensation of thoughts, with the economy of psychic release involved in processing the playful production (Ruchon [2018]).
ABSTRACTSThis paper analyses how proper names fit in the incongruity resolution theory of humor, more specifically Bergson (1911)'s theory of humor as rigidification (and related distraction and exaggeration). The relevant properties of proper names, such as their rigid format and semantic unanalysability, their high degree of lexicalization, and their potential role as parangons, are explained in order to suggest possible metalinguistic script oppositions that could describe how proper names, as lexical units, are used in humorous contexts.Cet article s'intéresse aux liens entre les noms propres en anglais et les théories de l'humour fondées sur l'incongruité et sa résolution, en particulier la théorie bergsonienne de la raideur mécanique et des phénomènes adjacents de distraction et exagération (1911). Le figement morphosyntaxique des noms propres, leur impossible analyse sémantique, leur haut degré de lexicalisation et leur capacité à devenir des parangons sont étudiés afin de faire émerger de potentielles oppositions de scripts expliquant comment les noms propres, en tant qu'unités lexicales, favorisent la production d'un humour reposant sur des bases métalinguistiques.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.