Humor Humor Discourse - Relevance Theory Cognitive Explained

This paper argues that "the incongruity theory of humor" have tended to confuse the core of humor with a mechanism used in its creation. According to Relevance Theory, humor - just like metaphor, hyperbole and other loose talk figures - is not deliberate and blatant violations of the maxim of CP, but communication of the intention of the humor utterance. According to RT, intentional humor is communicator's recognition of the incongruity of relevance expectations, to the assumption of the utterance attributed to someone else. It is produced by breaking or stimulating the schema of communicator's relevance expectations.