Linguistic creativity and humour in context

While linguistic creativity is an essential feature of those who actively create instances of verbally expressed humour (VEH), awareness of context is equally indispensable. Humour is primarily cognitive, so it follows that language is the lowest common denominator between speaker/writer and receiver, in order for a joke, pun, quip etc., to achieve its goal and, above all, to be recognised as being humorous in intent. However, over and above familiarity with the formal rules of a common language between interactants, successfully transmitted humour is also context dependent. Context, involves both adherence to pragmatic rules and the recipient’s sociocultural encyclopaedia. And if these two elements were not sufficient, humour also embroils the issue of sense of humour and the moral closeness/distance of our recipient to the object of our humour in order for it to be considered benign.