“Girding up the Loins”: A Cognitive Sematic Analysis of Humorous Expressions
“Girding up the Loins”: A Cognitive Sematic Analysis of Humorous Expressions

Summary/Abstract: A large number of humorous linguistic expressions in English (and also in other languages)are characterized by such cognitive processes as metonymy, metaphor, and conceptualintegration, or blending. However, these figurative devices are neither sufficient nor necessaryfor humorous effects. Following other researchers, I suggest that in order to account forhumorous expressions we need the notion of conceptual incongruity, or incompatibility insideor between frames of knowledge. In the paper I will take stock of some of the commonlyoccurring types of incongruity, or incompatibility, in my data of humorous expressions. I willaccount for the existence of a large number of metonymy-, metaphor-, and blending-basedhumorous expressions by proposing that these figurative devices create or facilitate thecreation of incongruities. The analyses of a number of humorous expressions will make itpossible to suggest a rough and sketchy cognitive linguistic account of the humorous effect ofthese expressions.

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