wjr@frog.UUCP (STella Calvert) (02/09/86)
In article <1335@gitpyr.UUCP> jkr@gitpyr.UUCP (J. Kenneth Riviere) writes: >Why are puns considered to be offensive? I have come to the >conclusion that puns are considered painful to the listeners since there is >at least a subconsious understanding that there cannot be humor unless it >involves pain for someone. Since puns do not explicitly degrade, insult, or >otherwise hurt anyone the pain involved must be experienced by the listeners. >Just a thought. How about this for an explanation of the "offensive" character of puns. When we hear a sentence, and reparsing it yields punishment, our expectations and reality grind together. And this contrast between our ideals (a non-ambiguous utterance) and the reality (a punjab in the linguistic processor) can be pungent enough to bring tears to the eyes. Note that I've cross-posted this train of discussion to net.nlang, in the hope that some readers of that group can help us on this one. If you followup, please edit the newsgroup line so the good people in nlang don't get afflicted with irrelevant traffic. Or punt me for creating a monster. BTW, I suspect this conflict between ideal and implementation is a large part of the "pain" and perceived offensiveness of all jokes. Any comments? STella Calvert Every man and every woman is a star. Guest on: ...!decvax!frog!wjr Life: Baltimore!AnnArbor!Smyrna!<LotsOfHitchhikingAndShortVisits> !SantaCruz!Berkeley!AnnArbor!Taxachusetts Future: ... (!L5!TheBelt!InterstellarSpace)