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The Relevance-Based Model of Context in Processing Puns

While the essential role context plays in the understanding of expressions and utterances has never been questioned, the way it is perceived has evolved from a static factor established prior to the process of utterance interpretation, indeed a prerequisite for processing information, to a dynamic entity which emerges in this process. The latter view is espoused by relevance theorists, who define context as “the set of premises used in interpreting an utterance” (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95: 15) and treat it as a mental construct undergoing diverse modifications as the comprehender of an utterance processes and interprets incoming verbal information and other communicative signals supplied by the communicator. The aim of this paper is to consider the usefulness of this model of context for analyzing the derivation of meaning in puns, i.e. utterances in which, instead of its usual function of allowing the comprehender to resolve ambiguities ubiquitous in language and communication, the context plays a different role of leading him to entertain, and often to accept two diverse readings. The paper will start with a brief characterization of the most striking features of puns (in section 2), followed by the discussion (in section 3) of the limitations of the most widely accepted approach to pun comprehension, namely Attardo’s (1994) connectordisjunctor model. In section 4 the notion of context as it is understood in relevance theory will be examined, and its potential for accountingcc for the key properties of puns (the oscillating effect and the ‘connecting’ role of the pivotal expression) will be put to the test in sections 5 and 6. The paper will close with a handful of concluding remarks.