Presupposition and implicature as humor-generating mechanisms in discourse

Abstract

This article examines presupposition and conversational implicature as interrelated pragmatic mechanisms involved in the production and interpretation of humorous discourse. Humor often relies not on the literal meaning of an utterance but on meanings inferred from context, shared knowledge, communicative expectations, and manipulated assumptions. Presupposition is viewed as backgrounded information treated as already accepted or recoverable, while implicature refers to contextually inferred meaning beyond what is explicitly stated. The study argues that humorous effects frequently emerge from the interaction between these two levels of implicit meaning, particularly through unexpected presuppositions, cancelled inferences, flouting of conversational expectations, and reinterpretation of prior assumptions. Drawing on Gricean pragmatics, relevance-oriented approaches, and research on verbal humor, the article considers presupposition triggers, maxim flouting, scalar and particularized implicatures, irony, ambiguity, and inferential reversal. The analysis shows that humor is an inferential phenomenon shaped by linguistic form, contextual knowledge, and the recipient’s recognition of a non-literal communicative frame.