A Pragmalinguistic Basis of Humor in Some Iraqi Newspapers

Abstract

This paper presents a pragmalinguistic approach to the study of humor in some Iraqi newspapers. It also aims at probing into the linguistic bases involved in constructing humorous headlines. The writers of these newspapers are expected to carefully construct their humorous acts to guarantee humor success. Factors such as relevance, contextual situation and background knowledge facilitate the interpretation process for the readers to figure out the intended implicatures of the humorous speech acts. The core of the study relates to humor as a genre of linguistic and pragmatic interaction used in Iraqi daily newspapers. The paper discusses humor in newspapers' headlines in relation to a number of theoretical models: Relevance Theory, Speech Acts Theory, Grice's Cooperative Principle and Halliday's Functional Theory. The study reveals that the reason behind the choice of any type of humor by the writer is whether  or not it increases the degree of the perceived credibility of the perlocutionary effects of the intended humorous acts..