A new approach to the stylistic analysis of humour

Abstract

This article presents a new model of humour that can be used in the successful analysis of how and why literature can be found humorous. It deconstructs the theory that the perception of incongruity leads to the recognition of humour, proposing instead that the relationship between humour and incongruity is, in fact, the reverse of that generally assumed. I propose that humour is a process through which the familiar is brought to attention. One way this can occur is by drawing attention to the unnoticed contrasts between objects, making the familiar appear incongruous. The process can be modelled as a subjective construal (Langacker, 2008) in which the participants, and the process itself, are made prominent. This draws attention to the relationship between participants and to their shared experience of the world. I present an illustrative case study of subtle literary humour with an analysis of a passage from the short story ‘The Mouse’ by Saki (1910), demonstrating that, by modelling humour in the way I propose, it can be successfully explained using frameworks already in use in stylistic investigation.