2. Language and Humour
The view taken of humour and jokes in this dissertation is that they are essentially
social activities. For example, Dascal (1985) contrasts feet-tickling and
joking; the former is causal and does not require that the recipient recognises
the actor’s intention, whereas jokes do. In other words, ‘jokes
are mediated by consciousness’ (p.96.). The topic of humour is complex
indeed and the following survey will consider it from the perspectives of
linguistics, psychology, and sociology respectively. Though treated here separately
these aspects of humour in practice are experienced as one.