Prosodic means’ interaction in realising the anecdote humorous effect

Abstract

In the paper, on the basis of auditory analysis of English spoken anecdotes the authors come up with the system of prosodic means that serve to create the text humorous effect. To define the specificity of a complex interaction of emotional, pragmatic, structural and semantic factors of prosodic means’ functioning in English anecdotes, we substantiated two algorithmic models presenting the text story-line development: one being similar to the structure of the fairy tale (introduction → commentary → code), and the other one resembling the riddle (topic → commentary → code). By way of using these models as well as the traditional method of linguistic interpretation of the auditory analysis results, the authors substantiate the specificity of prosodic, lexico-grammatical and stylistic means interaction of an English anecdote oral actualisation functioning within its structural components. It has been found out that realisation of the anecdote humorous effect is ensured by the predominance of the unidirectional functioning of the language means of all levels with the leading role of prosodic means aimed at drawing the listeners’ attention to the anecdote’s two-plane semantics and its key lexical units, thus stimulating their thinking activities while decoding the humour of the anecdote. The authors come to the conclusion that the application of a functional-and-energetic approach to the study of a complex interaction of emotional, pragmatic, semantic and structural factors makes it possible to present a comprehensive description of invariant and variant prosodic patterns of any type of texts.