MusICian

Semantics and Pragmatics – Meaning in ‘Lame’ Jokes

In what we call ‘lame’ jokes, we sometimes understand the gist of the jokes purely based on pragmatics, as the semantics of the jokes would not yield a funny reading. In fact, the word ‘lame’ in ‘lame jokes’ yields a totally different meaning (instead of lame: inability to walk properly) Here are some examples[1]:

1. What do you call a fly with no wings? A walk.

2. Why was the Tomato blushing? Because he saw the salad dressing.

3. A termite walks into a barroom and asks, "Is the bar tender here?”

4. When is a car not a car? When it turns into a driveway

5. What do you call a sheep with no legs? A cloud.

If we reconstruct the sentences, not all the meanings of the 2^nd part of these jokes would make logical answers to their previous questions/statements:

1. *A walk is a fly with no wings.

2. *The salad dressing made the Tomato blush.

3. *A termite asked for the bar tender in a barroom.

4. *When a car turns into a driveway, it is not a car.

5. *A cloud is a sheep with no legs.

1 and 5 might still be funny if we understood the images that were intended. But 2, 3 and 4 would be strange. Retaining their original structure, we now attempt to decode all jokes, with full reference to their imagery and our knowledge of words:

1. A fly flies. So if it has no wings, it would have to walk. Hence it is now a walk.

2. The tomato blushed because he saw the salad dressing (changing clothes).

3. The termite asked if the bar was tender there in the barroom.

4. When a car turns (morphs) into a driveway, it is now a driveway.

5. Clouds look like sheep with no legs: a large ball of cotton.

But why are they not funny anymore? These lame jokes have to retain their sentence structure in order to look or sound funny. Let us look at more lame jokes and evaluate the postulation above:

6. Why did the skeleton cross the road? To get to the body shop.

7. Why can’t skeletons play music in church? They have no organs.

8. What do you get when you squeeze an olive? Oliver Twist.

9. What’s the difference between a mosquito and a fly? A mosquito can fly, but a fly can’t mosquito.

10. A pork pie walks into a bar and the barman says, “Sorry we don’t serve food in here.”

Examples 6-10, if restructured, would lose their effectiveness as lame jokes, just like examples 1-5. Hence, lame jokes require pragmatic knowledge to decode, but at the same time require semantic structuring to be effective. To end this paper, I shall present a long, final lame joke:

            A young man comes into the doctors and says, "Doc, is it hereditary to lose your memory?" "No," the doctor replies, "Why?" "Well," the man says, "both of my parents are. For example, one day my mother wanted some Ice Cream, so she went out to get so me. But my father stopped her, telling her that he would get some. ‘Alright,’ she said, ‘I’ll write it down’. ‘no’, he says, ‘just tell me, I won’t forget’. ‘Okay’, she says, ‘I want some vanilla ice cream in a cone’. ‘Okay’, he says. He leaves; come s back half an hour later, gives his wife a bag. "What!" she screams. "This is a cheeseburger, you idiot! I wanted a hamburger!"

Try restructuring this and still make it as funny!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 16th, 2006 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.