L’interprétation échoïque comme clé du comique verbal chez Ionesco
The interpretation of the echo as the key of the verbal humor in case of Ionesco

Summary/Abstract: Our paper concerns the verbal comic which is to be found in the theatre of Eugène Ionesco, explained as echoic interpretation (a component of the relevance theory, elaborated by Dan Sperber & Deidre Wilson 1986/1995). When the interpretations of someone else’s thought achieve relevance by informing the hearer of the fact that the speaker has in mind what so-and-so said, and has a certain attitude to it, Sperber & Wilson consider that they are echoic interpretations. An important source of the verbal comic in Ionesco’s theatre is the wordplay and our contribution consists in bringing a further argument for a fact shown by Anne Reboul (1991) – that the wordplays are traces of the author’s presence in the theatrical discourse. This further argument is the presence of the echoic interpretation at the level of the wordplays’ mechanism.

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