Логичке неправилности и стилске фигуре као извор вербалног лингвистичког хумора у енглеском и српском језику
Logical Irregularities and Stylistic Devices as the Source of Verbal Linguistic Humour in the English and Serbian Language

Summary/Abstract: This paper is concerned with logical irregularities and stylistic devices as the sources of humour within the scope of verbal linguistic jokes at lexeme level. The comparative method was employed with the aim of obtaining the systematic survey of English and Serbian jokes in which logical irregularities and stylistic devices are the sources of humour. This interlingual contrastive study was accomplished by an arbitrary selection of written jokes derived from Serbo-Croatian and British or American English-speaking countries respectively. It is concluded that 84.61% of all subcategories are realised in both languages, of course, owing to the universal nature of these mechanisms itself. By means of this, the assumed universal nature of linguistic humour at the lexeme level when logical irregularities and stylistic devices are concerned is substantiated. Only 15,38% of subcategories are not found in one of the languages, precisely 2 out of 13 subcategories. Furthermore, these mechanisms make 21,66% of English and 21,17 % of Serbian corpus respectively. This percentage share irrefutably demonstrates that, although they do not play a key role in linguistic humour at the lexeme level, logical irregularities and the creative use of language mirrored in stylistic devices are an important trigger of this type of humour.

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