Comedy: The Mastery of DiscourseHarvester Wheatsheaf, 1993 - 186 pages From Shakespeare to light-bulb jokes, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of the nature and function of comedy in our society. Drawing on theories of language from Foucault, Levi-Strauss and Lacan, it argues that joking is both a pleasurable and necessary function of using language. |
Contents
Joking and Discourse | 12 |
Joking as the Abuse of Language | 34 |
The Third Position | 58 |
Copyright | |
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action actually affective implication anti-jokes appears Aristophanes Audience's behaviour breach Butts Chapter characteristic claim comedy texts comedy's comic characters comic texts commedia dell'arte confirmation constitutes constructed conventional Coronation Street cultural defined degraded Del Boy discursive exchange discursive power distinction Duchess of Malfi effect elements entails example excess female Fools and Horses formulation Frazer Freud's function fundamental funny gender genre groups human humour identified identity ideological Imaginary individual inept intrinsically involves jokers joking intention joking texts joking's jokingly kind Lacan language-use laugh Lévi-Strauss linguistic literary criticism male manipulation marked masculine material meaning mechanism operation pantomime Dame parallel particular patriarchy pattern performance phallus play pleasure position potency produce proper psychic psychoanalysis recognised relationship represent response semantic space sense sexual signifying structures situation comedy social codes someone speaker speaking specific subjectivity suggest Symbolic Law taboo targets Teller and Audience textual theories Tom and Jerry transgression utterance words