Why does humor fail or occur unexpectedly? — an account of humor within an extended relevance theory

Intended humors would fail while serious communications would unexpectedly be funny. To explain these situations, this paper reanalyzes the reception of verbal humor within an extended relevance theory by introducing the emotive level of communication. We propose that producing humor is the communicator's affective intention. The recognition of the affective intention to produce humor includes three sub-tasks at the emotive level of communication: the INFORMATION relies on the recognition of the speaker's informative intention. The IMPLICATED PREMISES are constructed on the basis of the identification and the resolution of the incongruity. The IMPLICATED CONCLUSIONS are inferred from the information, the appropriate premises and the context. Obstacles to achieving the humorous effect may be found in each sub-task, due to the divergences of interlocutors' cognitive backgrounds. Moreover, the unintendedly made incongruity will lead to the misunderstanding of communicator's affective intention and trigger unexpected humor.