Bad puns aside, there’s many theories in the scientific literature (from cognitive psychology, linguistics and AI) that describe the mechanisms of puns (and many other types of jokes, really), and they mostly talk about deviations from a script/subverting expectations and norms (Hanks’ theory of norms)/accessing a non-default interpretation that is different from the default one (Giora’s optimal innovation hypothesis).
I found this article [1] to be much more enlightening [2]. The problem is not so much that puns are bad, but that so many puns are just bad puns.
As described here [3],
> "It's not enough to just substitute a word that sounds the same (aka a 'homophone'); for example, which is funnier, 'Be kind to your dentist because he has fillings too' or 'She ate my breakfast role'? You probably said the first pun, because the meaning of the substitute word also makes sense in the context of the sentence, and it’s this second meaning that actually makes the joke funny."
Very interesting stuff. I wonder how they would explain the fact that most people seem to dislike verbal puns. Being one of those people who enjoy them, I never really understood other people's dislike for them and it keeps puzzling me.
Sorry, I laughed. I'm astounded by how much the British like puns as opposed to Americans. I've heard British audiences audibly gasp at the high quality of a pun, like it took their breaths away.
Reductively I'd say the prey is the audience in that case, for not being smart enough to see it coming. The best puns are heavily telegraphed yet somehow totally unpredictable. They're clever mirrorings of things everyone is already familiar with, but still didn't see coming.
I'm surprised to see the ancient Sumerian dog joke[1] left out in this overview. It's an excellent example of an ancient pun that loses almost all meaning when translated directly ("a dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one'."), based entirely on the way a specific verb is composed.
AFAICT, this (the punmaking, and language games in general) is actually a prime attribute of PL researchers, at least in several major PL subdisciplines. It's been awhile since I've cracked open the POPL proceedings or the like, but ... wow, just wow.
One of my favorites was a (peer-reviewed, published!) paper with this gem of a footnote in the first column: This work supported in part by cinder blocks.
Bad puns aside, there’s many theories in the scientific literature (from cognitive psychology, linguistics and AI) that describe the mechanisms of puns (and many other types of jokes, really), and they mostly talk about deviations from a script/subverting expectations and norms (Hanks’ theory of norms)/accessing a non-default interpretation that is different from the default one (Giora’s optimal innovation hypothesis).
For the interested reader, i suggest starting with Raskin https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110198492...
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