Semiotics of humor: Unraveling the dynamics of resemiotization
By: Jan Chovanec and Villy Tsakona Guest Editors
| ARTICLE INFO: Volume: 11 Issue: 01:Summer 2025 ISSN: 2459-2943 DOI: 10.18680/hss.2025.0001 Pages: 5-27 Lic.: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
ABSTRACT
Τhe meaning-potential of humor – whatever traditional or modern forms it takes – is inseparably linked to the social context, which not only provides the background for the un/successful deployment of humor, but also ends up being shaped by the humor used therein. From a semiotic perspective, humor involves both the handling of complex, socially embedded, and publicly shared meanings, as well as individualized personal motivations that underlie interlocutors’ intentions and eventual communicative effects. In our view, there are two semiotic processes involved in the creation of humor: the first-order level of semiotization,1 which resides in the particular incongruity- resolution mechanism, i.e., a device that is fundamental to signs operating in the service of humor; and the higher-order level of resemiotization (Iedema 2001; 2003), which captures the shifts of meaning from context to context, i.e., a property that arises from the common intertextual function of humor and explains how signification ‘floats’ (after Laclau 2000) across contexts in the sense that it may engender multiple, even opposing interpretations.
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