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Conversational Maxims
MASTER IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS

MASTER DISSERTATION

THE ROLE OF CONVERSATIONAL MAXIMS,
IMPLICATURE AND PRESUPPOSITION IN THE
CREATION OF HUMOUR: AN ANALYSIS OF WOODY
ALLEN’S ANYTHING ELSE

Department of English Philology I, UCM
STUDENT: Ramiro Nieto Álvaro
TUTOR: Dr. Marta Begoña Carretero Lapeyre
Septiembre de 2011

1

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................4
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................... 5
1.1 Framework and outline................................................................................................5
1.2. Research hypothesis and aim of the study..................................................................6
1.3. Overview of the method............................................................................................. 7
1.4. Description of the data................................................................................................8
1.4.1. Plot and characters........................................................................................ 9
1.4.2. Film poster analysis......................................................................................... 10
1.5. Context and “double level” …...... ………………………………………………...15
2. Humour in Woody Allen’s Anything Else.............................................................. 17
2.1 What is humour?........................................................................................................17
2.1.1. The laughter..................................................................................................... 20
2.2. Humour vs. Comedy.................................................................................................22
2.3. Rhetorical



References: Attardo, S. (1994) Linguistic Theories of Humour. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. — (2001) Humour and irony in interaction: From Mode Adoption to Failure of Detection . In Anolli, L., Ciceri, R Austin, J.L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press Bergson, H Bousoño, C. (1970) Teoría de la expresión poética. Madrid: Gredos. Brown, P. & S. Levinson, (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carretero, M. (2004) Levinson 's Presumptive Meanings: A neo-Gricean approach to pragmatics. In Carretero, M., Herrera-Soler, H., Kristiansen, G — (1999) Presupposition versus implicature: similarities and differences . Conferencia impartida Elsaesser, T. & Emile Poppe (1991) Film and linguistics. Amsterdam & Nijmegen. Ermida, I. (2011) The language of comic narratives. Humour construction in short stories . Journal of Pragmatics 4, 25-38. Firth, J.R. (1935) The technique of semantic. In Firth, J. R. (ed.). Fodor, J.D. (1979) The King of France is false. In C.-K. Oh and D.A. Dinneen (eds.) Syntax and Semantics 11: Presupposition, 200-220 Freud, S. (1905) El chiste y su relación con el inconsciente. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Gazdar, G. (1979) Pragmatics: Iimplicature, Presupposition and Logical Form. New York: Academic. Greenall, A.K. (2006) Entry “Maxims and Flouting” of the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics Semantics. Vol.3. Speech Acts. New York: Academic. 41-58. Reprinted in S. Davis (ed.1991). — (1989) Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hay, J. (2001) The pragmatics of humour support . HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 14, 55-82. Hösle, V. (2002) Woody Allen. Filosofía del humor. Barcelona: Tusquets. Translated from German by Carlos Fortea. Kotthoff, H. (2000) On the complexities of women 's image politics in humorous narratives . Journal of Pragmatics 32, 55-80. Krees, G. and T. Van Leeuwen (2006) Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design . London: Routledge. Labov, W and Fanshel, D. (1977) Therapeutic Discourse. New York: Academic Press. Lax, E. (2008) Conversaciones con Woody Allen. Barcelona: Debolsillo Translated from English by Ángeles Leiva. Leech, G. (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. Harlow: Longman. Levinson, S. C. (1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — (2000) Presumptive Meanings. The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature . London, England and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Meibauer, J. (2005) Entry “Implicature” of the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. 568-581. Raskin, V. (1985) Semantic Mechanisms of Humour. Dordrecht: Reidel. Saad, M. (2007) Los mecanismos lingüísticos del humor en Juyūt al-‘ankabūt y undūq al-dunyā de Ibrāhīm ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Māzinī Saeed, J. (1997) Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell. Schopenhauer, A. (1818) El mundo como voluntad y representación. Book I. CH 18. 78 Simpson, P (2006) Entry “Humour: Stylistic Approaches” of the Encyclopedia of Language and Schwarz, N. (1996) Cognition and Communication: Judgmental Biases, Research Methods, and the Logic of Conversation Schegloff, E. (1972) Notes on a Conversational Practice: Formulating Place. In Sudnow (Ed.). Schegloff, E. and Sacks, H. (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica 7/4: 289-327. Stubbs, M (1983) Discourse Analysis: The Sociolinguistic Analysis of Natural Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Thomas, J. (1995) Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. London & New York: Longman. Temprano, E. (1999) El arte de la risa. Barcelona: Seix Barral. Tsui, A.B.M (1994) English Conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilson, D. (1975) Presuppositions and Non-Truth Conditional Semantics. New York: Academic Press. Wilson, D. and Sperber, D. (1979) Ordered entailments: an alternative to presuppositional theories. Allen, W. (2003) Anything Else (screenplay transcript): http://www.scriptorama.com/movie_scripts/a/anything-else-script-transcriptwoody.html

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