an investigation into some typical linguistic factors causing laughter in british funny stories = nghiên cứu về những yếu tố ngôn ngữ gây cười điển hình trong một số truyện cười nước anh

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THI ̣ KIM PHƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO SOME TYPICAL LINGUI

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THI ̣ KIM PHƯƠNG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO SOME TYPICAL LINGUISTIC FACTORS CAUSING LAUGHTER IN

BRITISH FUNNY STORIES

Nghiên cứu về những yếu tố ngôn ngữ gây cười điển hình trong một số truyện cười nước Anh

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

HA NOI - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THI ̣ KIM PHƯƠNG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO SOME TYPICAL LINGUISTIC FACTORS CAUSING LAUGHTER IN

BRITISH FUNNY STORIES

Nghiên cứu về những yếu tố ngôn ngữ gây cười điển hình trong một số truyện cười nước Anh

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: Associate Professor Võ Đại Quang, Ph.D

HA NOI - 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Objectives of the study 1

4 Scope of the study: 2

5 Design of the study 2

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Theoretical background: 4

1.1.1 Humor 4

1.1.2 British humor 5

1.1.3 Funny stories and Jokes 5

1.1.4 Pun 6

1.1.5 Ambiguity 6

1.1.6 Lexical ambiguity 7

1.1.6.1 Polysemy 8

1.1.6.2 Homonymy is traditionally defined as different words with the same forms In Lyons (1995, p.55), homonyms are classified into absolute and partial ones 8

1.1.6.3 Polysemy vs Homonymy 11

1.1.6.4 Transference of meaning: 11

1.1.7 Grammatical ambiguity 13

1.1.7.1 Morphology 13

1.1.7.2 Syntax 13

1.2 Previous works 14

1.3 Summary: 16

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 17

2.1 Research governing principles 17

2.1.1 Research question 17

2.1.2 Data types to be collected 17

2.2 Research methods 18

2.2.1 Major methods: 18

2.2.1 Techniques for data collection 19

2.2.2 Techniques for data analysis 19

2.3 Summary: 20

CHAPTER 3: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 21

3.1 Data Analysis 21

3.1.1 Lexical ambiguity: 21

3.1.2 Grammatical ambiguity: 26

3.1.2.1 Morphological ambiguity: 26

3.1.2.2 Syntactic ambiguity: 28

3.2 Findings and discussions: 33

3.2.1 Findings: 33

3.2.2 Discussions and implication for language teaching and learning 34

3.3 Summary: 34

PART III: CONCLUSION 36

1 Recapitulation 36

2 Concluding remarks 36

3 Limitations 37

4 Suggestions for further study 37

REFERENCES 39 APPENDIX I

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Peoples from all over the world, with different cultures and lifestyles, seem to have one thing in common – sense of humor There are a great amount of funny stories from culture to culture Each culture has its own typical joke-making characteristics

Reading funny stories helps people relax with great efficiency The way Vietnamese learners read and understand Vietnamese jokes is not quite similar to the way English people do English learners may have some difficulties in reading between the lines in some funny stories if they don‟t have the needed cultural and linguistic background

In my opinion, a research into linguistic factor causing laughter in British funny stories will bring about benefits to readers and pedagogical implications for teaching and translation And, this is the rationale for my study

2 Aims of the study

The purposes of the research are as follows:

 To help English learners have a clear understanding of linguistic features available in English funny stories or jokes

 To help English learners discover an interesting part of English besides complicated grammar points or long complex reading passages

 To help English learners communicate more successfully with native speakers via joke understanding

3 Objectives of the study

This study is an investigation into British funny stories and their linguistic features with reference to cultural perspective to point out the typical factors that cause

laughter In doing this, typical features causing laughter in funny stories can be pointed out

This objective can be further elaborated into the following research question:

What are the typical linguistic features that cause laughter in British funny stories?

4 Scope of the study:

The issues raised in this thesis are investigated from both linguistic and cultural perspective The study primarily deals with research issues from a linguistic approach Furthermore, there is a difference in humour creating way from country to country so the stories are also studied under culture perspective

As the exploitation of linguistic features in funny stories is quite huge and diversified, and the number of stories has been increasing year after year, the analysis is supposed

to be selective rather than comprehensive in three senses: (i) only two groups of stories are chosen, (ii) only 33 stories are selected as typical samples and (iii) in each group, just some stories are picked up for a further in-depth study

5 Design of the study

In addition to “References” and “Appendix” parts, the study consists of three main parts:

Part 1: Introduction This part discusses the rationale, scope, aims, objectives, and

design of the study

Part 2: Development This part is divided into three chapters:

Chapter 1, Literature review, presents the previous studies related to the topic and a

brief theoretical background with such concepts and conceptions as Humor, British humour, Funny stories and jokes, Punning, Ambiguity, Lexical ambiguity, Grammatical ambiguity

Chapter 2, Methodology, describes the research-governing principles, data collection

instruments and data analysis procedure

Chapter 3, Analysis and Discussions, offers a detailed analysis of the data, the results obtained and discussions of these results

Part 3: Conclusion This is the last part of the thesis which provides a recapitulation

of the main points presented, concluding remarks on the research objectives, limitations, and suggestions for further studies

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background:

1.1.1 Humor

Humor is not as easy to define as it seems There have been several people who tried

to find out something about humour Avner Ziv from Israel gives one example to define humour:

Humor is defined as a social message intended to produce laughter or smiling

As with any social message, it fulfills certain functions, uses certain techniques, has content, and is used in certain situations These aspects of humor can be understood as relating to the questions of why people use humor (its functions), how it is transmitted (techniques), what it communicates (content), and where and when it is communicated (situation) Some of these aspects of humor are universal, characterizing humor everywhere Others are more influenced by culture.

Another definition is found in Merriam-Webster's entry on the word “humour”: that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing

These definitions pretty much capture the essence of what could be called our general definition of humor, and they do capture the basics of what humor is, but there is more to humor than just the ability to make people laugh or to be able to laugh

at funny things While laughter is indeed a typical reaction to humor, things are more complicated than that Something is perceived as humorous even though nobody laughs at it people laugh at things that not really humorous, as laughter can also be an emotional response to fear or embarrassment Therefore, humor cannot be defined simply as something that makes you laugh The response to humor is important in the

definition of something as humorous, but there are aspects and details to humor and laughter which are sometimes overlooked

1.1.2 British humor

The British have a unique sense of humour Of all the characteristics which the English are known all over the world, the sense of humour is one of the best-known and most positively regarded In England, you may consider humour a way of getting along in society Britain is the only country in the world which is inordinately proud

of its sense of humour In other countries, if they find you inadequate or they hate you, they will call you stupid, ill-mannered In Britain, they will say that you have no sense of humour This is the final condemnation, the total dismissal

1.1.3 Funny stories and Jokes

Funny stories are the stories that are told to make people laugh (Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary) It is characterized by humorous phenomena There are two theories for what people find humorous, incongruity theory, superiority theory The most popular theory of why we find jokes funny revolves around the

concept of „incongruity‟ The idea is that we laugh at things that surprise us because

they seem out of place It‟s funny when clowns wear outrageously large shoes, people have especially big noses or politicians tell the truth In the same way, many jokes are funny because they involve ideas that run against our expectations “A bear walks into

a bar Animals talk.” And so on But there is more to this theory than such simple forms of incongruity In many jokes, there is an apparent incongruity between the set-

up and the punch line Scientists refer to this as the „incongruity-resolution‟ theory

We resolve the incongruity caused by the punch line, and the accompanying feeling of sudden surprise makes us laugh

The superiority theory also explains why we laugh at certain types of jokes Many

jokes make us feel superior to other people In these types of jokes, people appear stupid because they have misunderstood an obvious situation, made a stupid mistake, been the hapless victim of unfortunate circumstance or have been made to look stupid

by someone else According to the theory, these jokes cause us to laugh because they make us feel superior to other people

According to the definition on Wikipedia, a joke is a question, short story, or depiction of a situation made with the intent of being humorous To achieve this end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices Jokes may have a punch-line that will end the sentence to make it humorous Their purposes are typically for the entertainment of friends and onlookers The desired response is generally laughter; when this does not happen the joke is said to have "fallen flat"

1.1.4 Pun

According to Wikipedia, the pun, or also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or

of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect

Because of the multiple meanings of words or similar sounding words that helps cause ambiguities and laughter to readers or listeners However, not most of people can apply pun in their daily conversations because pun is an art of using and playing with words Moreover, the listeners also have a wide range of vocabulary and knowledge of local or regional dialects and particular cultures to understand the intentional use of words of the speakers Pun expresses the beauty of words; therefore it differs from another kind of word play- malapropism Malapropism is an amusing mistake somebody makes when they use a word with sounds similar to the word they want to use but means something different Pun mentioned here is to emphasize the art of playing with words based on linguistics factors such as phonology, homophony, morphology, etc

1.1.5 Ambiguity

According to Wikipedia, ambiguity of information is the ability to express more than one interpretation It is generally contrasted with vagueness, in that specific and distinct interpretations are permitted (although some may not be immediately apparent), whereas with information that is vague it is difficult to form any

interpretation at the desired level of specificity Ambiguity describes the linguistic phenomenon whereby expressions are potentially understood in two or more ways: an ambiguous expression has more than one interpretation in its context

There are two types of ambiguity: grammatical and lexical ambiguity Lexical and structural ambiguity is frequent enough to present a substantial challenge to natural language processing The fact that ambiguity occurs on so many linguistic levels in language especially in jokes or funny stories make it difficult for English learners understand the humour Studies on the linguistic causes of ambiguity are perhaps is really helpful in the field of humor research

1.1.6 Lexical ambiguity

According to Fromkin et al (1983, p 207), lexical ambiguity is created by a word which can be understood in more than one way For example, the sentence:

“She cannot bear children”

may be understood to mean either “She cannot tolerate children” or “She is unable to give birth to children” It is the word „bear‟ with one form and two different meanings that gives rise to the lexical ambiguity in the sentence

Similarly, this lexical ambiguity is traditionally illustrated with the word „bank‟ which may mean either as “a business establishment in which money is kept for saving or commercial purposes or is invested, supplied for loans, or exchanged” or “the slope of land adjoining a body of water, especially adjoining a river, lake, or channel” The sentences:

I went to the bank

We finally reached the bank

I was on my way to the bank

contain the ambiguous word „bank‟, thus they are lexically ambiguous

1.1.6.1 Polysemy

A polyseme is a word or phrase with different, but related senses English has many words which are polysemous A case of polysemy is, according to Hurford and Heasley (1983, p 123), the one where a word has two more closely related senses

„Mouth‟ (of a river versus of an animal) is an example of polysemy as the two senses are clearly related by the concepts of an opening from the interior of some solid mass

to the outside, and of a place of issue at the end of some long narrow channel Another example of polysemy is „guard‟ meaning either “a person who guards, sentinel” or “solid protective shield, e.g round machinery” for both meanings contain the concept of protection against danger

Polysemy is undeniably a main cause of lexical ambiguity

1.1.6.2 Homonymy is traditionally defined as different words with the same forms

In Lyons (1995, p.55), homonyms are classified into absolute and partial ones

Absolute homonyms will satisfy the three conditions of:

(i) unrelatedness in meaning,

(ii) identity of all their forms, and

(iii) grammatical equivalence of their identical forms

The two words „bank‟ with two different meanings of either “a business establishment

in which money is kept for saving or commercial purposes or is invested, supplied for loans, or exchanged” or “the slope of land adjoining a body of water, especially adjoining a river, lake, or channel” is a good illustration of absolute homonyms

Partial homonyms are those with one minimally identical form and one or two, but

not all the above three conditions of absolute homonyms satisfied For example, the verbs „find‟ and „found‟ share the word-form found but not find, finding, etc., or found, founding, etc., and as a form of „find‟, found is not grammatically equivalent

to found as a form of „found‟ These two words „found‟ result in lexical ambiguity in:

They found hospitals and charitable institutions

„Found‟ in this sentence might be understood to mean “discover” or “establish” There are two kinds of partial homonyms

Homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in

meaning The words may be spelt the same, such as rose (flower) and rose (past tense

of "rise"), or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too Homophones that are spelt the same are also both homographs and homonyms Homophones that are spelled differently are also called heterographs The term

"homophone" may also apply to units longer or shorter than words, such as phrases, letters or groups of letters that are pronounced the same as another phrase, letter or group of letters

Grammatically equivalent homophones may cause ambiguity in spoken English, as is exemplified in the utterance:

My brother likes sweets/ suites

It is lexically ambiguous because sweets and suites are the plural forms of the two different words „sweet‟ and „suite‟, respectively These forms have the same pronunciation /swi:ts/ but different meanings: „sweet‟ meaning “a small piece of sweet food made of sugar or chocolate, etc.” and „suite‟ meaning “a set of matching furniture for a room” They are homophones and nouns

This level of language provides the great sources of puns in English that can spawn a number of lexical ambiguities and misunderstanding for listeners Usually, the speaker intentionally uses homophonic factors to cause difficulties for listeners at first and then make them bend their minds to think further of the joke to discover what it really means based on phonologically induced ambiguity Homophone is widely used

in English joke

Homographs (those identical in spelling only) - may also give rise to lexical

ambiguity in case they have the same lexical categories

Grammatically equivalent homographs, meanwhile, may bring about the ambiguity in written English An example to illustrate is the word „leads‟ in:

They provided those leads

“Leads” is the plural form of „lead‟ „Lead‟, pronounced as /li:d/ with the meaning “a guiding suggestion or example”, “a clue” or “a length of rope, leather, etc fastened to

an animal, usually a dog to control it”, is a homograph of „lead‟, pronounced as /led/ with the meaning “a thin stick of graphite used in pencils”

It is important to note that when homonyms can occur in the same position in utterances, the result is lexical ambiguity However, quite often, when homonyms belong to different lexical categories, they do not give rise to the ambiguity For instance, right /rait/ meaning “a morally just or legal claim” is a noun while right /rait/ meaning “properly or correctly” is an adverb; tear /tiə/ meaning “a drop of salty liquid that flows from the eye” is a noun; tear /teə/ meaning “to pull apart or into pieces by force” is a verb; seen /si:n/ is a form of the verb “see”; scene /si:n/ is an unrelated noun In these cases, absolute homonyms, homographs and homophones are not the cause of the ambiguity

Interestingly enough, homonyms, though creating ambiguity when in the same position in utterances, are good candidates for humour

The following passage is an example:

“Mine is a long and sad tale”, said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing

“It is a long tail, certainly”, said Alice looking with wonder at the Mouse‟s tail, “but why do you call it sad?”

1.1.6.3 Polysemy vs Homonymy

Polysemy is, however, distinguished from homonymy not only according to the

criterion of relatedness in meaning but also to that of etymology The problem arising

is, therefore, to decide when we have polysemy and when we have homonymy as in Palmer (1981, p.102) When several words have the same forms from the same origin, but unrelated meanings, should they be treated as homonyms or polysemous words?

We have to decide whether a particular item is to be handled in terms of polysemy or homonymy because a polysemous word will be treated as a single entry, while a homonymous one will have a separate entry

It is obvious that whether the meaning of words are related or unrelated, the multiple meanings of words often give rise to lexical ambiguity The sentence:

“The bachelor finally died.”

is lexically ambiguous due to the multiple meanings of „bachelor‟ including (a) “a man who has never married”, (b) “a young knight serving under the banner of another”, (c) “someone with a first degree”, and (d) “a young male unmated fur seal during the mating season”

1.1.6.4 Transference of meaning:

A word may have both a “literal” meaning and one or more “transferred” meaning, which is the cause of the multiplicity of meaning or a polysemous word; the result is thus lexical ambiguity

Metonymy:

One kind of transference of meaning is metonymy, the transference of meaning from one object to another based on the association of contiguity of notions, i.e instead of the name of one object or notion, we use the name of another because these objects are associated and closely related: „The kettle boils‟ instead of „The water in the kettle boils‟, „crown‟ instead of „monarchy‟

According to Nguyen Hoa (2004, p 113), the main different cases of metonymy are: the name of container used instead of the thing container, e.g., „to drink a glass‟; names of past of human body used as symbols, e.g., „to have a good eye‟, „kind heart‟; the concrete used instead of abstract, e.g., „from the cradle to the grave‟; the material used for the things made of it, e.g., „canvass‟, „glass‟; the name of authors instead of their works, e.g., „Shakespeare‟, „Picasso‟; and the part instead of the whole and vice versa, e.g., „roof‟ for „house‟ or „bike‟ for the part of a bike in „to repair a bike‟

(11) He is a fox

Of all kinds of transference of meaning, metaphor is the most familiar The term

“metaphor” refers to cases where a word appears to have both a “literal” and a

“transferred” meaning, which are easily and clearly identified The easy and clear identification of meaning in a case of metaphor is its distinctive feature while in other cases of transference, it is not always clear which should be considered literal and which transferred To illustrate, we assume that words such as „hand‟, „foot‟, „face‟ and „eye‟ apply first to the body from which they deserve their literal meanings but in other cases such as „hand of clock‟, „foot of the mountain‟, „face of a clock‟ and „eyes

of a needle‟, they have their transferred meanings

Fromkin et al (1983, p.227) state that in English, metaphor is a violation of semantic rules to create figurative meanings The sentence:

(12) Walls have ears

is an illustration for the breaking of semantic rules In other words, it is certainly anomalous It can, however, be interpreted as meaning “you can be overheard even when you think nobody is listening” It is consequently ambiguous in some sense Transference of meaning obviously brings about the multiple meanings of the words

or constitutes polysemy, thus causing lexical ambiguity

1.1.7 Grammatical ambiguity

1.1.7.1 Morphology

The term morphology is generally attributed to the German poet, novelist, playwright, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who coined it early in the nineteenth century in a biological context Its etymology is Greek: morph - means „shape, form‟, and morphology is the study of form or forms In linguistics, morphology refers to the mental system involved in word formation or to the branch of linguistics that deal with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed

This kind of pun requires the speakers to have wide knowledge of vocabulary to use it precisely and artistically Playing on the morphological properties of words is rather interesting because in some utterances there are many words used nearly the same but they are obviously different in meanings

1.1.7.2 Syntax

Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of meanings of single words, but from

the relationship between the words and clauses of a sentence, and the sentence structure implied thereby When a reader can reasonably interpret the same sentence

as having more than one possible structure, the text is equivocal and meets the

definition of syntactic ambiguity

When a sentence can be interpreted in more than one way, it is grammatically ambiguous, as exemplified in the following sentence (Hurford & Heasley, 1983, p 121):

“Visiting relatives can be boring” which can be interpreted in two ways:

It can be boring to visit relatives

Relatives who are visiting can be boring

1.2 Previous works

Regarding the linguistic theories of humor, several previous studies have been conducted in the linguistic study of humor (Raskin, 1985; Chiaro, 1992; Ross, 1998) These theorists mainly focus on how the humor is achieved by the use of language

In the light of the Cooperative Principles proposed by Grice (1975), Raskin (1985) proposes the non-bona-fide mode of joke-telling:

(i) Maxim of Quantity: give exactly as much information as is necessary for the joke;

(ii) Maxim of Quality: say only what is compatible with the world of the joke;

(iii) Maxim of Relation: say only what is relevant to the joke

(iv) Maxim of Manner: tell the joke efficiently

Associated with this mode, the joke-telling occurs in four situations by the combination of the two possibilities in (i) & (ii) with two possibilities in (iii) &(iv): (i) The speaker makes the joke unintentionally; (ii) The speaker makes the joke intentionally; (iii)The hearer does not expect a joke; (iv) The hearer expects a joke

Besides, Chiaro (1992) examines the verbal techniques of jokes She claims that the humorous effect in jokes is created by the uses of puns- word play and ambiguities She classifies two groups of language techniques of jokes: the first one is slips of tongue including metathesis, malapropisms and misplaced words; the second one is deliberate word play, that is playing with graphology, playing with sounds, playing with word boundaries, playing with formation, playing with lexis, playing with syntax and playing with the rules of conversation Another important issue about linguistic analysis of humor is based on ambiguity Ambiguity refers to a word or phase that has more than one meaning Hence, humorous effect is created by wordplay Pepicello

and Weisberg (1983) state that the linguistic humor in jokes is based on the manipulation of phonological, morphological or syntactic features to produce ambiguities And, they outline 12 types of linguistic humor in jokes, including homonym, minimal distinction, deliberate distortions, shifts of stress, and the like After all, ambiguities are the most salient features misleading the understanding These ambiguities can be a result of the possibilities of words, which are either semantically or phonologically ambiguous in terms of the idea the speaker tries to declare (Nilsen & Nilsen, 1994)

Likewise, Ross (1998) attempts to divide ambiguities into four subcategories: phonology, graphology, morphology, lexis, and syntax According Ross‟s analysis, first, “phonology” is related to sound systems in a language For example, homophones in jokes refer to word of the same pronunciation but with different spellings and two possible interpretations Second, “graphology” signifies how a language is represented visually Next, “morphology” refers to the ways of word construction Morpheme is the smallest meaning unit of logic Lexis also refers to the word system of a language In addition to phonology, the lexicon, or vocabulary, is also a source of puns Finally, in terms of the syntactic structure, meaning is produced

by the way of how words, phases, and clauses are arranged In order to understand the syntactic ambiguities, EFL learners have to undertake a systematic level of analysis

As a result, they are led to develop an awareness of syntactic function and get the possible interpretations of sentence structures

These previous studies provide general background knowledge to deal with this problem The examples above prove that lexical ambiguity is a complicated problem

to cope with, especially for English learners, whose vocabulary and knowledge of interpretation is limited Ambiguity is a pervasive phenomenon in language which occurs at all levels of linguistic analysis Resolving the ambiguity necessarily designates one specific lexical entry, which, in turn, automatically disambiguates the semantic representation (and vice versa)

1.3 Summary:

This chapter has briefly reviewed theory of funny stories/ jokes and some linguistic issues which cause laughter in funny stories They are Ambiguity, Lexical Ambiguity and Grammatical Ambiguity In each of these theories, the author has pointed out some details and sample analyses In short, this chapter serves as the theoretical foundation for the study

The following chapters are spared for the presentation of the methodology, the analysis, findings established and discussions and some implications regarding humour creating features in British funny stories

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 2.1 Research governing principles

2.1.2 Data types to be collected

The data collected for this study includes stories in which laughter is caused by linguistic factors Besides, all the chosen stories are in British settings The reasons for the author‟s choice are:

+ The British are famous for their humour and it is famous all over the world They have special way of creating laughter in their funny stories and jokes

+ The understanding of the subjects‟ record is believed to be necessary for data analysis; therefore; the following parameters are taken into consideration:

Lexical ambiguity Grammatical ambiguity However, it is such a hard job to know whether the story is originally British or not because funny stories are universal Therefore, carefulness is a must in the selection

of the stories for investigation

Data authenticity

To ensure the reliability of the research, the stories selected are of British origin and from reliable sources such as books, websites, articles, newspapers…so they will have different ways of creating humour and also ensure the authenticity of the study

Data sources

In order to answer the research questions already stated in the very first part, the number of 33 jokes/ funny stories is collected As for the source, all the stories are collected from books, websites and other materials

+ As for books, books about funny stories are collected and studied They are a valuable source to gather essential information for the thesis

Main material is: Truyện tiếu lâm Anh, Nhà Xuất Bản Thanh Hóa

+ As for websites, they are the tool that is made use of The websites are a huge source of funny stories

Three basic websites are:

allows us to investigate each specific case In fact, it is really helpful to fulfill the task

of defining the linguistic factors that cause laughter in each funny story mentioned The strategical method used in the present study is inductive method, which means considerations and evaluations mainly come from analyzing statistical data

2.2.1 Techniques for data collection

The author chooses to collect data from some published books and some reliable websites in order to demonstrate how humor is created through linguistic factors in funny stories The data collected are British funny stories They are intended to be

analyzed against the two aspects of lexical and grammar to find out major humour

creating way in British jokes

The samples are collected from Truyện tiếu lâm Anh, Nhà Xuất Bản Thanh Hóa;

Syntactic Ambiguity as a Device in British Humour, María Teresa Sánchez Roura and

website http://thejokes.co.uk/british-humour.php

The samples have been carried out with funny stories whose humor mechanisms are based on linguistic factors The author investigates randomly 33 funny stories and jokes using linguistic factors to create laughter The author identifies which of the linguistic factor are used in each story and which are used most frequently

2.2.2 Techniques for data analysis

A collection of 33 British funny stories / jokes will be taken into consideration regarding the linguistic means For each group, the stories are classified into different groups with different linguistic means to create fun Based on the results, we will provide findings, discussion and some implications for pedagogy and translation The result of this study will be presented based on the statistics regarding the humour creating way analyzed The way to have better understanding British funny stories will be pointed out in a painstaking presentation and an analysis of some typical samples taken from the stories collected

Data categorizing: Funny stories that are collected from websites and books

mentioned above are categorized into different groups with different linguistic features that cause laughter

Data describing: With different groups of funny stories classified, description of

their typical linguistic features causing laughter is herein provided

After using quantification and classification to identify the linguistic factors that cause laughter into different categories, we can base on the result of the classification to make some conclusions in the study

2.3 Summary:

To sum up, the major method employed in this study is a qualitative one The procedure for the qualitative data analysis in this study is:

+ Collecting data which are British funny stories which are linguistically ambiguous

+ Basing on the data collected, we classify the samples into categories in terms of linguistic aspects

+ By analyzing the funny stories in each category, we point out typical linguistic factors causing laughter, predict the difficulties that Vietnamese learners have to deal with and point out some implications

CHAPTER 3: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Data Analysis

3.1.1 Lexical ambiguity:

This level of language provides the mechanisms for a large number of funny stories in English English speaking people often employ this technique – using lexical ambiguity or punning to create humour in their stories

Lexical ambiguities are produced when a set of sounds can be said or understood in more than one way One word might be made to sound like another word This may

be because the words sound so similar, or it may be because of the way we mark out the word when we say it In this level, polysemy and homonymy are undeniably the main method in punning

(1)

How did you get that big red lump on your nose?

I smelt a brose while I was working in the garden

But there is no „b‟ in rose

There was in this one

In (1), for example, „brose‟, „rose‟, „b‟ are homophones that are used intentionally to cause laughter The „b‟ that the speaker wants to emphasize is intelligently combined with the word „rose‟ so that „brose‟ - „b‟ and „bee‟ are pronounced similarly „Bee‟ is what the speaker wants his friend to realize in his joke deeply If he said to his friend the reason why he had a red lump on his nose directly, there would be nothing impressive and funny Therefore, pun used here is very effective

(2) That doesn‟t matter