Cunning Linguists

Today's Language Log post about puns (riffing off an article in the New York Times last month) includes this section that pretty well sums up why I don't like most comedies, despite continuing to believe that I do have a sense of humor:

More important than brevity, I think, is the difference in the point of non-linguistic and linguistic humor. Non-linguistic humor turns primarily on character and situation and tends to embody a "moral story", conveying beliefs about what people should be like and how they should act — if only to put down certain classes of people or people who act in certain ways. (Another vein of non-linguistic humor turns on the vagaries of chance.)

Linguistic humor can do this, but it often doesn't. Instead, it's "just" play with language. Typically, it will have the surprise value of non-linguistic humor, but a moral story doesn't usually figure into it.

Some of the commenters on Tartakovsky's piece noted, in effect, that non-linguistic humor is often aggressive, cruel, or mocking, while purely linguistic humor mostly lacks such import. These commenters — reasonably enough, to my mind — celebrate the pleasurable playfulness of linguistic humor, in contrast.

Meanwhile, do you know where I can get scrod in Boston?"

Cunning Linguists

Today's Language Log post about puns (riffing off an article in the New York Times last month) includes this section that pretty well sums up why I don't like most comedies, despite continuing to believe that I do have a sense of humor:

More important than brevity, I think, is the difference in the point of non-linguistic and linguistic humor. Non-linguistic humor turns primarily on character and situation and tends to embody a "moral story", conveying beliefs about what people should be like and how they should act — if only to put down certain classes of people or people who act in certain ways. (Another vein of non-linguistic humor turns on the vagaries of chance.)

Linguistic humor can do this, but it often doesn't. Instead, it's "just" play with language. Typically, it will have the surprise value of non-linguistic humor, but a moral story doesn't usually figure into it.

Some of the commenters on Tartakovsky's piece noted, in effect, that non-linguistic humor is often aggressive, cruel, or mocking, while purely linguistic humor mostly lacks such import. These commenters — reasonably enough, to my mind — celebrate the pleasurable playfulness of linguistic humor, in contrast.

Meanwhile, do you know where I can get scrod in Boston?"