The cover of Salvatore Attardo's The linguistics of humor features four stock photographs, illustrating diverse means by which humor surfaces in everyday communicative practice: for example, conversations between friends, engagements with mobile technology, and reading books or other published media. Even nonverbal ‘units’ of humor such as winks, side-eyes, and knowing looks are represented on the cover.
Needless to say, humor extends beyond these milieus. Indeed, it is immanently affective and subjective: felt, as well as observed or performed. It can turn us on, or turn us off, and this complicates easy empirical descriptions of humor. Humor is more than just its ‘cognitive component’ (47), through which it can be recognized, perceived, and evaluated as, well … funny. It is also fun.
It is therefore pleasing that Attardo is an engaging, enjoyable writer, whose accounts of prior research makes the study of humor (appropriately) humorous: examining how ‘funny’ works across multiple contexts, in a truly captivating way. With that said, the book is also rigorous.
Each of the cover's means of accessing/expressing humor in social life are ably described in this accessible introduction to humor studies for linguistics. Throughout, Attardo combines comprehensiveness and strong attention to detail with his distinct (and entertaining) voice. He makes clear that humor is there to be enjoyed—when we are ‘keyed’ into it in discourse (following Goffman), but also, when we reflect upon it analytically. Attardo demonstrates a clear passion for unpacking humor (and comedic practices/performances) as human, relational phenomena—in other words, understanding wit, irony, sarcasm, farce, parody, and other modes of amusement as central to what makes life enjoyable.
As Attardo notes, despite long-standing difficulties with empirical and definitional detail in humor studies (outlined in the handy chapter on ‘methodological preliminaries’), these prior terminological shortcomings merely reflect the fact that things as basic as ‘jokes’ are structurally and contextually ambiguous. Humorous (and meta-humorous) utterances, texts, and practices iteratively disrupt the form, content, and manner of delivery which they are iteratively presumed or expected to have. Scripted for incongruity, humor's deviation from prior ‘scripts’ for how it happens (or what it means socially) is sometimes precisely the point.
Attardo, luckily, guides the reader well through more theoretically and meta-theoretically challenging discussions of these aspects of humor as they arise (with each body chapter divided along familiar, subdisciplinary lines). With ‘humor’ understood in basic terms as the ‘generic designation for the subject of inquiry of humor studies’ (p. 7, my emphasis), he leaves ample room for difference and plurality—highlighting how any given subject of inquiry within humor studies is rather a series of subjects, conceivable in diverse ways.
This elementary book is well-structured and presented for readers without prior training in humor studies. Overall, it provides a clear foundation for understanding humor's embedding in linguistic practice, and its distinct (yet overlapping) cognitive, emotional, and physiological/embodied manifestations. As awkward as it can sometimes be to explain a joke, I enjoyed every aspect of this enlightening, eye-opening book.
