Abstract:

Joking and laughing are essential human traits in everyday communication. Each culture has their own humourous traditions and subjects of laughter. A common trigger of laughter is the linguistic ambiguities in verbal humour. The linguistic ambiguity is one of the mechanisms of turning a text into a humourous one. Ambiguities occur when more than one meaning of an utterance arises. This makes the Linguistic ambiguities work as a switching mechanism for shifting from one semantic script into another which can have an unexpected and/or humourous effect. Comparative linguo-cultural analysis of short humourous texts in both English and Bulgarian languages reveals which are the most common types of linguistic ambiguities used in verbal jokes and, which are the most preferred genres of jokes containing linguistic ambiguities. Comparative analysis on the jokes mechanisms can shed light on the cultural differences in verbal humour practices and linguistic traditions. The types of linguistic ambiguities in verbal jokes reveal cultural preferences encoded in linguistic features

Keywords:

Linguistic ambiguity, Verbal joke, Linguocultural analysis.