The Logic Of The Ludicrous In The Pragmatic Analysis Of Humor

This article examines the mechanisms of verbal humor from a pragmatic and cognitive perspective. Drawing on Madeleine Ferrar’s research , the study argues that humor emerges not from linguistic structure alone but through the interaction of context, speaker intention, and listener interpretation. Key theoretical frameworks—including Grice’s cooperative principle, Raskin’s script-based semantic theory, and Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory—are analyzed to demonstrate how the human mind processes incongruity and derives cognitive reward from reinterpretation.