How to do things with jokes: Speech acts in standup comedy In How to Do Things with Words (1962), the philosopher John Austin claimed that we use words to do things in the world, not merely to express a state of affairs. This proposal introduced speech acts, and essentially initiated the study of linguistic pragmatics. Speech acts in everyday communication include persuading, apologizing, criticizing, humiliating, complimenting and a host of other intended behaviours. Austin accentuated the idea of speaker intention, on one hand, and hearer’s response to that intention if successfully conveyed, on the other. We consider some of the speech acts used in the work of selected standup comedians to analyse the way they determine the relationship of performer and audience. We argue that there is a reciprocal relationship between the licensing of certain speech acts in standup comedy, and the success of these speech acts in shaping the social lives of the audience. We show that this relationship is at the forefront of standup comedy’s social impact and that it can generate heightened consciousness of the social and political environment of the time. Finally, we consider the question of whether socially critical standup can have any noticeable effect on the attitudes or behaviour of both live and digitally mediated audiences.

The mechanisms involved in the production and understanding of puns-the way the Logical Mechanism (LM) operates over the Script Overlap (SOv) and Script Oppositeness (SOp)-form part of the array of analytic tools that are used to investigate the processing of puns and indeed other forms of linguistic humor. This chapter presents evidence for the idea that tacit knowledge of language is recruited by puns. The crucial element in the processing of a pun is that it relies for its humorous impact on listeners' competence that is listeners' tacit knowledge of the rules of their language. Puns are discussed in the next section in terms of the linguistic levels of grammatical knowledge that they recruit. However, for the purpose of the pun the syllable pink is considered Cratylically, that is it shares the morphemic status of pink. The pun here allows the hearer, on reflection, to consider the non-compositional nature of the frozen chunks we use in everyday language.

By examining the nature of English cryptic crossword puzzle clues and their solutions, this article considers a peculiar interaction between some linguistic phenomena occurring in oral language and some elements of written language not normally regarded as linguistic units. Cryptic clues are analysed in relation to the mechanisms used in linguistic jokes, and they are shown to resemble, extend and augment these, based on the different rules of combination for spoken and written language elements. Cryptic crosswords are shown to use linguistic as well as puzzle-solving rules in the service of language play. In so doing, they illuminate the human tendency to play with objects and to transform them as needed.

Signed languages are the natural languages used by Deaf' people .They are visual-gestural languages, produced using the hands and the face and made without sound.~ Signed languages are fully capable of expressing the range of human experience.Yet, there is a reluctance on the part of the professional and academic community to accept the fact that signed languages are natural languages just like any other natural language.However, for good reason, this reluctance Is not shared by linguists.The community of linguists long ago accepted that signed languages are natural languages, the first language of some people, the second language of many more.Linguists think that not only are signed languages worthy of study, from a formal point of view, but also that, as languages which utilize a different modality, they can shed light on a number of issues, pertaining to the relationship between language and the brain, the relationship of language to speech, and the human capacity for communication through the medium of language.Why then has the professional community who work with deaf people found it so difficult to accept that signed languages are languages fundamentally just like any other?The first issue seems to be about who has the authority to decide on the status of signed languages as languages.Refusing to acknowledge the language of a group of people amounts to linguistic oppression.For members of the professional and legislative community to make judgments about what is or is not a language is a very serious matter.It may seem harsh to suggest that deaf people are the target of linguistic oppression by the wider society of which they are a part.Yet, this is a claim that is often made.the parents sign, the deaf child will have no language delay, as it has been shown that deaf children of deaf parents reach all the same milestones as do hearing children of hearing parents, at roughly the same age.Like all parents, the deaf couple nught want their child to share in their culture, rather than feel that she has to go off in search of another speech community in which she feels comfortable and accepted.For many hearing people unfamiliar with these issues, the attitude of deaf parents to the possible deafness of their child seems rather irresponsible and radical.This is natural if people view deafiiess as an illness to be cured, or a disability to be coped with, a problem that requires a solution.In fact, much more radical is the point of view of those who wish no more deaf children to be bom.Alexander Graham Bell, son of a deaf mother, and husband of a deaf woman, tried to introduce legislation forbidding deaf people from intermarriage.He attempted to ensure that deaf people have minimal interaction with one another, and he advocated that in some cases, deaf people should be sterilized.He wrote and campaigned widely for a eugenic solution to the problem of congenital deafness.There is, to this day, an Alexander Graham Bell Society, dedicated to the eradication of congenital deafness.Deaf fears of the eradication of their variety of the human race are not based merely on phantasies of persecution.It is probably true to say that just like any other expectant parents, deaf people want more than anything else for thrii children to be healthy.In general, deaf people are not, however, worried about giving birth to a child who is deaf Those parents who are themselves children of hearing parents know what it means not to use the same language as their parents.Deaf children of deaf parents have not directly experienced the same communication diflBculties in their homes.Hearing people, on the other hand, particularly those with young families, or those in the process of planning families, tend to become very anxious when the topic of deafness is raised.It is a profound fear for most hearing people that their child could be bom deaf This is natural enough, since the majority of hearing people know very little about deafiiess.What they know is that if you have a deaf child he or she will be difficult to communicate with.The child will need special care, and will have to undergo years of speech-training.Education will not be a simple business.The child will be "handicapped."

In this paper 1 we examine two aspects of constructions involving classifier handshapes in interaction with the syntax of an utterance. 'The first aspect we examine is the requirement that in South Afiican Sign Language, classifier predicates2 are preceded by at least one element in the topic position3 of a sentence. Accordingly, we explore the syntactic constraints on sign order in the use of classifier predicates in South Afiican Sign Language (henceforth SASL). Whereas it seems obvious that in signed language sentences involving classifier constructions, the lexical NPs should first be identified, this requirement, and the constraints on this requirement have not really been explored in the literature. We know, for instance, that in American Sign Language (henceforth ASL) and SASL (at least) a sentence may not contain more than two topics (except in a listing construction)4. Many sentences containing classifier predicates have at least three lexical NPs thematically, e.g., in a signed language utterance with the English meaning, The woman put the cup on the table, but only two of the NPs may occur as topics. We thus examine what may and may not appear in topic positions in these constructions (and whether or not these restrictions are detennined by thematic roles). Further, we examine the syntactic relationship between classifier predicates and the items occurring in topic positions.

This paper presents a syntactic analysis of Topics in American Sign Language (henceforward ASL), in the Principles and Parameters framework (Chomsky 1986 a,b, 1991,1992)1. Topics in American Sign Language occur in a structural position to the left of the Complementizer Phrase. Researchers have previougJy identified topics by a particularnon-manuaI marking, thought to accompany all topics.: In this paper, a distinction is drawn between base-generated and moved topics, and, moreover, there is shown to be a difference among the non-manual markings accompanying at least three different sorts of topics. In addition, topic position is shown to be structurally present in embedded as well as main clauses. Extraction is argued to be possible from within an embedded clause to the topic position of the main clause, in the case of non-finite embedded clauses. A maximum of two topics can beadjoinedto·CP inASL. If the sentence has two topics, only some combinations of the different sorts of topics areallowed.

This article examines some of the options that South African Sign Language offers for the representation of multiple perspectives on an event. The authors focus on picture descriptions that use classifier predicates. They show that signers use constructed action in conjunction with classifier predicates to create simultaneous multiple perspectives on an event. Signers also use classifier predicates and constructed action sequentially to shift perspectives back and forth within an utterance. The authors conclude that the modality of space allows users of a sign language to apply several active articulators simultaneously to communicate multiple perspectives on an event; the differences in the representational repertoire of the articulators allow perspective changes to follow one another rapidly.

In this article we discuss the signed language used by the Deaf community in South Africa, and examine the historical conditions for its emergence. We describe the legal and actual situation of South Afiican Sign Language in South Africa today, larly in relation to schooling. We investigate the different factors that underlie the claims that there is more than one sign language in South Africa, and we spell out the practical consequences of accepting these claims without further examination.

In April 1994, South Africa held its first democratic elections, and as a result of the election of the new government, the policy of apartheid which had governed each and every aspect of the lives of all South Africans, was officially abolished. Needless to say, the simple abolition of apartheid did little to affect the many years of profound damage, and the heritage of apartheid will be with us for many years to come. The consequences of the policy of apartheid can nowhere more clearly be seen than in the structure of education provision in South Africa. Deaf people in South Africa have been affected by the policies of apartheid, and its educational and linguistic consequences, in a profound and thoroughgoing way.

This document provides an interface by which you can access digitized QuickTime movies exemplifying the grammatical ASL constructions cited in NKBAM 1997, as signed by native signers. On the pages that follow, the examples are presented in gloss form. Next to the examples are one or more movie icons (multiple icons indicate that multiple sample movies are available; in some cases, the example is signed by more than one native signer). Click on a movie icon to view the associated sample movie. Note that in order for the links to the movies to work correctly, the movie files must be located in a subfolder/directory named "movies"; the "movies" directory and this document should be located in the same folder/directory. In some cases, the sample movie may contain vocabulary that is different from the cited example (i. e., a different name, a different noun, etc. ); however, the movie still serves to illustrate the relevant construction.