Using counterfactuals to display facts – the case of satirical humor

Satire has not been given the humorologists’ attention to an extent that would do justice to the amount of humor satire actually holds. Therefore, the intention of this paper is to shed light on satire as humorous discourse, with an emphasis on counterfactuals. Interestingly enough, counterfactuals...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Maslo Adi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Sciendo 2016-12-01
Series:ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics)
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1515/exell-2017-0010
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1832576243800735744
author Maslo Adi
author_facet Maslo Adi
author_sort Maslo Adi
collection DOAJ
description Satire has not been given the humorologists’ attention to an extent that would do justice to the amount of humor satire actually holds. Therefore, the intention of this paper is to shed light on satire as humorous discourse, with an emphasis on counterfactuals. Interestingly enough, counterfactuals oppose the actual state of affairs; rhetorically however, they show potential to reveal the truth. Political satire is an area of conflict between truth and falsehood which is exactly why this type of satire is discussed in this paper. Tools from Cognitive Linguistics – framing and blending – are utilized to show to what extent counterfactuals are actually false and how they essentially contribute to satire. Examples of political satire are selected from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.
format Article
id doaj-art-113311b2eb8d4f6f8eeab607d391754d
institution Kabale University
issn 2303-4858
language English
publishDate 2016-12-01
publisher Sciendo
record_format Article
series ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics)
spelling doaj-art-113311b2eb8d4f6f8eeab607d391754d2025-01-31T08:34:32ZengSciendoExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics)2303-48582016-12-014211612610.1515/exell-2017-0010exell-2017-0010Using counterfactuals to display facts – the case of satirical humorMaslo Adi0Džemal Bijedić University of MostarSatire has not been given the humorologists’ attention to an extent that would do justice to the amount of humor satire actually holds. Therefore, the intention of this paper is to shed light on satire as humorous discourse, with an emphasis on counterfactuals. Interestingly enough, counterfactuals oppose the actual state of affairs; rhetorically however, they show potential to reveal the truth. Political satire is an area of conflict between truth and falsehood which is exactly why this type of satire is discussed in this paper. Tools from Cognitive Linguistics – framing and blending – are utilized to show to what extent counterfactuals are actually false and how they essentially contribute to satire. Examples of political satire are selected from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.https://doi.org/10.1515/exell-2017-0010satirecounterfactualscognitive linguisticsframingblendingthe daily show
spellingShingle Maslo Adi
Using counterfactuals to display facts – the case of satirical humor
ExELL (Explorations in English Language and Linguistics)
satire
counterfactuals
cognitive linguistics
framing
blending
the daily show
title Using counterfactuals to display facts – the case of satirical humor
title_full Using counterfactuals to display facts – the case of satirical humor
title_fullStr Using counterfactuals to display facts – the case of satirical humor
title_full_unstemmed Using counterfactuals to display facts – the case of satirical humor
title_short Using counterfactuals to display facts – the case of satirical humor
title_sort using counterfactuals to display facts the case of satirical humor
topic satire
counterfactuals
cognitive linguistics
framing
blending
the daily show
url https://doi.org/10.1515/exell-2017-0010
work_keys_str_mv AT masloadi usingcounterfactualstodisplayfactsthecaseofsatiricalhumor