REFRAMING MECHANISM AS A PRODUCTIVE MEANS OF PRODUCING HUMOROUS EFFECT

Abstract

The article focuses on interpreting humour as an integral component of human communication. The author highlights the importance studying humour in relation to language, communication and cognition, and stresses the interdisciplinary character of this phenomenon. The article goes into the history of cognition-orientated studies of humour, related to analyzing the ways and means of receiving, processing, storing and managing the structures of human knowledge in human mind. The paper substantiates the necessity to pay detailed attention to studying verbal and non-verbal irony as a basis for world perception in the epoch of postmodernism, including literature, represented by a British fantasy writer Terry Pratchett. The article demonstrates the efficiency of applying the method of frame modeling, which makes it possible to explicate the lingual-cognitive mechanisms underlying the production of humorous effect, as well as state their peculiarities. The latter fact is substantiated by the recent studies results in the field of cognitive science, which have proven that humorous effect is produced as the result of intercrossing of two independent contexts at the point of bissociation, when the two absolutely divergent contexts seem co-related to the recipient, which leads to cognitive dissonance, compensated by laughter. In this context the author quotes the works by M Minsky, W. Fry, S. Attardo, according to which, humour is caused by unexpected turn of semantic scenarios: using a particular frame of knowledge contributes to particular expectations, whereas abrupt change of frames (reframing) tricks the context expectations and leads to producing humorous effect. The article mentions three types of frame models (types of reframing mechanisms suggested by Boldyrieva A. Y.) that contribute to humorous effect, however the author pays close attention to examining only one model, i.e. unexpected turn of divergent frames. The results of the analysis prove that the abovementioned frame model involves such mental oppositions as possible/ impossible, rational/irrational, top/bottom, etc. These, in their turn, are verbalized by such language means as irony, pun, antigradation, etc. The author outlines the perspectives of further study, i.e., the analysis of the alternative productive cognitive models of producing humorous effect in contemporary English postmodern literary fiction.