Lagos Papers in English Studies: Vol5 73

FROM SCRIPTS TO STEREOTYPES: LINGUISTIC

HUMOR IN TURKISH COMIC STRIPS
DERYA AGIS
M.A. Hacettepe University, English Linguistics

ABSTRACT
In this paper, we aim to analyze Turkish comic strips from a new
perspective. We intend to apply Attardo and Raskin’s (1991) linguistic
humor theory and Bucaria’s proposal on linguistic ambiguities to the
analyses of Turkish comic strips. We observe the linguistic ambiguities
used by politicians, mobsters, housewives and business-women
characterized in Turkish comic strips. We divide the linguistic
ambiguities we observe into three categories, as lexical, syntactic, and
phonological. At the end of the study, we found out that the mobsters use
more lexical, syntactic, and phonological ambiguities than the politicians,
and the business-women use more lexical ambiguities than the
housewives, who use more syntactic and phonological ambiguities than
them. We present our findings within the framework of the study of
Attardo and Raskin (1991), and propose new themes for new researches.

1. INTRODUCTION
We aim to discuss the phonological, syntactic, and lexical ambiguities in Turkish
comic strips that were published in some Turkish magazines in this paper. For doing
so, we give first some background information about the theories through which we
are going to analyze our data. Later we discuss our data and findings with some
examples, and finally, we present new themes for new researches.

1. 1. INFORMATION ON THE REFORMULATED LINGUISTIC HUMOR

THEORY OF RASKIN AND ATTARDO (1991), AND LINGUISTIC
AMBIGUITIES IN JOKES
Attardo and Raskin (1991) propose a theory of verbal and linguistic humor on verbal
jokes ‘as its most representative subset’: this theory is an extension and revision of
Raskin'
s script-based semantic theory of humor (1985) and of Attardo'
s (1989) five-

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level joke representation model (ctd. in Attardo & Raskin, 1991). In this paper, a
hierarchical organization for six knowledge resources (KRs) is explained.
Attardo and Raskin’s (1991) six knowledge resources (KRs), thus, parameters
of joke difference are the following:

1) Language,
2) Narrative strategies,
3) Target,
4) Situation,
5) Logical mechanism, and
6) Script opposition.

The theory that a joke is created by script oppositions, logical mechanisms,

situations, a target, narrative strategies, and language uses is the revision of Attardo’s
five-level model, which suggests that script opposition, such as smart/dumb, and
logical mechanisms, underlying figure-ground relations form the bases of the text of
joke: successively, a template is formulated by juxtaposing oppositions, and figure
and ground reversal, then a target, a stereotype for the joke is selected, and the
situation of the joke, where the joke will occur is presented (i.e., light bulb changing)
(see Attardo & Raskin, 1991). However, the most important part of joke formulation
is the production of the language to be used by selecting the appropriate words,
syntactic structures, and sentence word orders (see Attardo & Raskin, 1991). After
these selections, the text of the joke appears. That is why we chose to observe the
language of jokes. See table 1 on details of the five-level joke representation model
of Attardo:

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Table 1. Attardo’s five-level joke representation model (Attardo & Raskin,

1991)

Concerning the first KR, Attardo and Raskin (1991) argue that many jokes are
similar, thus, there is a joke similarity between jokes, and paraphrases and variants of
jokes in printed documents, as people retell jokes to others, changing several aspects
of these jokes. Here are some examples:

(1) How many Poles does it take to screw in a light bulb? Five. One to hold the
light bulb and four to turn the table he'
s standing on. (Freedman and Hofman, 1980)
(ctd. in Attardo & Raskin, 1991)
(2) The number of Polacks needed to screw in a light bulb? Five--one holds the
bulb and four turn the table. (cf. Clements, 1969: 22) (ctd. in Attardo & Raskin, 1991)

(1) differs from (2), regarding the choices of some words and syntactic
constructions. In (2), the number of replaces how many, and the word Polacks is used
for the word Poles, and needed for does it take, for example. Besides, the last two
sentences of (1) are turned into just one sentence with a dash in (2); as well, a joke is
‘non-casual’, and it aims at entertaining (Attardo & Raskin, 1991).

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Concerning the narrative strategy in a joke, the second KR, a joke may differ
“from (1) in the choice of a narrative strategy. Narrative strategy means the genre, or
rather microgenre of the joke, ‘in other words, whether the text of the joke is set up as
expository, as a riddle, as a question and answer sequence, and so on’” (Attardo &
Raskin, 1991). However, remember that in this case, Gricean maxims are violated
(see Attardo & Raskin, 1991)

(1) How many Poles does it take to screw in a light bulb? Five. One to hold the
light bulb and four to turn the table he'
s standing on. (Freedman and Hofman 1980)
(ctd. in Attardo & Raskin, 1991)
(3) It takes five Poles to screw in a light bulb: one to hold the light bulb and four to
turn the table he'
s standing on. (Attardo & Raskin, 1991)
.
On the target of jokes, the third KR, we can say that each joke is based on the
description of a stereotype. The authors cite the following, regarding the targets of
jokes:

As such, it can be targeted at any individual or

group from whom such behavior is expected. These individuals or
groups are referred to as the target of the joke. In the literature and
personal experience, one runs into the same joke told of the Finns
(Kerman 1980: 455), Newfoundlanders (ibid: 455), Carabinieri
(police) in Italy, Portuguese in Hawaii, West Virginians in Ohio, etc.
As Davies (1990b) conclusively demonstrates, jokes like (1) travel
widely around the world and are repeated in numerous similar
situations (Attardo & Raskin, 1991).
.
Moreover, on the fourth KR, the situation of jokes, every joke has some
propositions, which form the situation of the joke, as in (1). The activity forms the
core of the situation, including the participants, the objects, the instruments, etc. (see
Attardo & Raskin, 1991).
In addition to this, we cannot do without mentioning the fifth KR, the logical
mechanism of jokes: jokes are based on ‘the figure-ground reversal of the gestalt

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psychology,’ thus, on a logical mechanism, which is the fifth KR (see Attardo &
Raskin, 1991); we can see this reversal also in the first example of the researchers,
indicated above. They explain this reversal in the successive manner, concerning (1):

In the light bulb situation, the ground is provided by the static

environment, including, of course, the table or ladder used to reach the
socket, and the figure is the bulb which should be screwed into the
socket by being turned clockwise by the hand of the person doing it
and standing on the table or ladder. Joke (1) reverses the roles by
making the light bulb and the hand holding it static and making the
environment rotate. The figure-ground reversal is the logical
mechanism of joke (1) (Attardo & Raskin, 1991).

However, a simple joke, called “chiasmus” may not have any figure-ground or
paralogical elements, as in the example of the researchers numbered (21):
(21) Being honest isn'
t a question of saying everything you mean. It'
s a question of
meaning everything you say. (Milner 1972: 20) (ctd. in Attardo & Raskin, 1991)

Besides, other logical mechanisms involve analogy, as in the twenty-fourth

example of the authors:

(24) George Bush has a short one. Gorbachev has a longer one. The Pope has it but
does not use it, Madonna does not have it. What is it? A last name. (See HUMOR
4:1; ctd. in Attardo & Raskin, 1991)

This joke leads to “false priming,” and demonstrates an additional linguistic

phenomenon, called “garden path”, which the authors depict in the following way:

Joke (24) exhibits an additional phenomenon known in linguistics as

"false priming" or "garden path." As in the sentence The astronomer
married a star, where the comprehension is hampered by the fact that
astronomer suggests, or primes, an inappropriate meaning of star (the
celestial body meaning instead of the heavenly!), the hearer of joke
(24) is led up the garden path toward the obscene antecedent of "it,"
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that is "penis," even though he or she has no idea if the statements on

Bush and Gorbachev are correct (no commitment to the truth of the
humorous statements illustrated again) (Attardo & Raskin, 1991).

Moreover, the juxtaposition of two different situations, determined by

ambiguity, or homonymy is another type of logical mechanism, as in the thirtieth
example of the authors, Attardo and Raskin (1991):

(30) Who supports Gorbachev? Oh, nobody. He is still able to walk on his own.

In addition to these five parameters, leading to humor, there is another

parameter, or KR, the script opposition, whose explanation is given below:

The main claim of SSTH (Semantic Script

Theory of Humor) is that the text of a joke is always fully or in part
compatible with two distinct scripts and that the two scripts are
opposed to each other in a special way. In other words, the text of the
joke is deliberately ambiguous, at least up to the point, if not to the
very end. The punchline triggers the switch from the one script to the
other by making the hearer backtrack and realize that a different
interpretation was possible from the very beginning (Attardo & Raskin,
1991, my emphasis with my explanation included).

SSTH (Semantic Script Theory of Humor) of Raskin (1985) suggests that there
are three levels of script-opposition: first, the joke opposes ‘the real to the unreal at
the most abstract level’; thus, it opposes ‘the factual reality to an imagined one’;
second, this may assume three possible forms, for existing at a lower level of
abstraction, as ‘the actual vs. non-actual, normal vs. abnormal, and possible vs.
impossible’, and finally, at the lowest level of abstraction, these three can be shown
by the following oppositions: ‘good vs. bad, life vs. death, sex vs. non-sex, money vs.
no-money, high stature vs. low stature’, etc. (see Attardo & Raskin, 1991).
Besides, language determines five KRs, mentioned previously (a target,
narrative strategies, situations, logical mechanisms, and script oppositions) (see
Attardo & Raskin, 1991).
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At this point, we can mention that this theory should be applied to issues
related to linguistic pragmatics, observing the ambiguities in linguistic structures and
word classes. Developing the theory of linguistic humor, Attardo (1994) suggests that
linguistic humor is caused by deviation from proper languages, as in *(1) “occurr”,
etc. But later Attardo, Attardo, Baltes & Petray (2004) define several strategies used
to create ambiguity-based humor in their study of a corpus of two thousand jokes. In
their study, the referential jokes were more numerous than the verbal and alliterative
jokes; only 5.2% of jokes were based on syntactic ambiguity, but lexical ambiguity
was discovered in 92.5% of cases.
Successively, Bucaria (2004) divides (this division is customary in linguistic
literature) semantic ambiguity into three main categories of ambiguity, which are
indicated below:

1) Lexical,
2) Syntactic, and
3) Phonological.

The first category involves noun and verb ambiguity, and syntactic ambiguity
contains not only class ambiguity, but also other types of ambiguity, as it regards the
semantic shifts created by confusion between grammatical categories, and phrasal
attachment and ellipsis (Bucaria, 2004: 281). Phonological ambuiguity involves
meaning confusion, caused by sound resemblances, as in the following example of
Bucaria:

(2) IS THERE A RING OF DEBRIS AROUND URANUS?

The ambiguity in (2) is caused by the phonological string /iuren’s/, that corresponds to
the noun “Uranus”, and to the phrase “your anus”.
In our study, we intend to discover which lexical, syntactic, and phonological
ambiguities are used by different social classes, represented by the characters in
Turkish comic strips. For doing so, first of all, we talk about the previous linguistic
studies conducted on Turkish humor, which affected us, we cite the renovations that
our study inserts into the linguistic humor studies, and we test our hypotheses, based

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on the data we gathered from several Turkish comic strips. Later we conclude that
people from different social classes use different linguistic humor starategies.

1. 2. LITERARURE REVIEW
Several studies were conducted on linguistic humor in Turkish humor texts. Most of
them were based on theories other than Attardo and Raskin’s (1991) theory, based on
six humor strategies.
Most articles on linguistic humor theories’ application to Turkish are on
Nasreddin Hodja. One of them is “Mizahta üstünlük teorisi ve Nasreddin Hoca
Fıkraları” (“Superiority Theory in Humor and anecdotes of Nasreddin Hodja”).
Türkmen (1996) applied the superiority theory of Hobbes to the anecdotes of
Nasreddin Hodja; he suggested that the anecdotes of Nasreddin Hodja involved acts
of being happy, as a bad event had happened to any other living thing, and Nasreddin
Hodja ridiculed those who seemed to be more intelligent and / or richer than him.
This article helped us understand some linguistic terms of humor.
Additionally, Türkmen (1997) dealt with humor theories, which included also
the superiority theory of Hobbes; this article also served us to understand better the
linguistic structures, used for mocking others, who think themselves superior to those,
who are actually superior to them.
Besides, O uz (1997) discussed the methods to be used in researches on
Nasreddin Hodja. He supposed that a Turkish humor element in an anecdote of
Nasreddin Hodja would appear as an element, belonging to another culture, and it was
important to distinguish between the real anecdotes of Nasreddin Hodja and the recent
versions of these anecdotes. Therefore, a good method should be used in analyzing
the origins of linguistic elements of humor that differ from culture to culture.
Sa lam (1997) wrote about the identity of Nasreddin Hodja, and his humor,
explaining the linguistic paradoxes that create humor in anecdotes of Nasreddin
Hodja. After reading this study, we decided to observe the linguistic humor use by
people, belonging to different social classes.
On the other hand, Yakıcı (1997) introduced us to the similar linguistic
elements used in various versions of anecdotes of Nasreddin Hodja, narrated in Turkic
countries: the Azeris call the Turkish Nasreddin Hodja “Molla Nasreddin”, Uighurs
“Nesirdin Efendi”, Uzbeks “Nasriddin Afandi”, and Tatars “Nasreddin Oca”, for
instance. The themes of these anecdotes differ from culture to culture. In this case,
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we become aware of the fact that each linguistic structure of humor involves culture-
specific cognitive elements. While we classify the language of people belonging to
different social classes, preparing our study, we also take into account the dialectical
and regional variations in their speech.
Additionally, a scientific article on linguistic humor, which does not deal with
Nasreddin Hodja, is Mehmet Özmen’s “1990 sonrası mizah dergilerinde mizah dili”
(“The linguistic humor in the humor magazines published after 1990”), which
appeared among the papers of the Third International Turkish Language Congress,
held in 1996. In this paper published in 1999, Özmen gives examples to the uses of
linguistic humor by people speaking diverse regional dialects, observing verbal
conjunctions, uses of tense, aspect, and time in comic strips, morphophonological
particularities of the words that have various senses, effects of the speech disorders on
the language use, intonation types, neologisms, as in vulgar language and slang,
idioms, abbreviations, changes on people’s names, exclamations, and alliterations.
Our study differs from all of these previous studies, as it is based on the
linguistic humor theory of Attardo and Raskin (1991) in testing the lexical
ambiguities employed by people, belonging to different social classes. Moreover, we
also refer to Bucaria’s classification of linguistic ambiguities in linguistic humor
studies. This paper is based on a sociolinguistic research, investigating the language
of Turkish comic strips.

1. 3. HYPOTHESES (RESEARCH QUESTIONS)

In this study we test the following hypotheses, concerning the uses of linguistic
ambiguities in Turkish comic strips:
1. Do the mobsters use more phonological, lexical, and syntactic ambiguities than the
politicians in Turkish comic strips?
2. Do the housewives refer to more syntactic and phonological ambiguities than the
business-women in Turkish comic strips? Meanwhile, do the business-women use
more lexical ambiguities than the housewives in Turkish comic strips?

2. DATA AND METHODOLOGY

We gathered our data from several Turkish comic strips in some comic-strip
magazines. The Turkish magazines of comic strips from which we gathered our data
include Ademler ve Havvalar 3 (2005), Atom (2005/11), Fırt (2005/47), Gırgır
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(2005/47), L-Manyak Uçanhayı (2005/11), Leman (2005/47), Leman (2005/48),

Lombak (2005/11), Kemik (2005/11), Küstah (2005/2), Penguen (2005/47), and
Penguen (2005/48).
As a statistical technique, we used Smith’s Statistical Package for MacOs X in
order to test our hypotheses.

2. 1. DATA ON THE COMPARISON OF THE AMBIGUITIES USED BY

MOBSTERS AND POLITICIANS
Our Chi-square test results show that the mobsters use more lexical, syntactic, and
phonological ambiguities than the politicians in Turkish comic strips. Our hypothesis
is valid with a Chi-square of 10.4223 and a p-value equal to 0.0053 with the
calculation of their expected values, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Ambiguities employed by the mobsters and the politicians in Turkish

comic strips

2. 2. DATA ON THE COMPARISON OF THE AMBIGUITIES USED BY

HOUSEWIVES AND BUSINESS-WOMEN
Our hypothesis that the housewives refer to more syntactic and phonological
ambiguities than the business-women, as the business-women use more lexical
ambiguities than the housewives in Turkish comic strips is valid with its expected
values as the results of the Chi-square test show below in Table 3:

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Table 3. Ambiguities employed by the business-women and the housewives in

Turkish comic strips

Our findings are statistically significant with a Chi-square of 6.7024, and a p-value
equal to 0.0349.
As our results are statistically significant, and our hypotheses are valid, now
we can pass to the next section on some examples to our findings.

3. OBSERVATION OF SAMPLES FROM THE DISCOURSES OF THE

STEREOTYPES
Now let us give some examples to the phonological, lexical, and syntactic ambiguities
used in the dialogues we observed in our study.

3. 1. PHONOLOGICAL AMBIGUITIES
A male mobster, a criminal makes this phonological joke, where both words of sa lar
mean the one who provides something. But we have to mention that in the second
sentence it is a surname, used as if it were a verb phrase:

(1) “Bunu kim sa lar?” (“Who provides this?”)

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“Fikri Sa lar.” (“Fikri Sa lar”; “Fikri provides this”) (Perker,

Uykusuz...[Sleepless...], L-Manyak Uçanhayı, 2005/11)

This joke is typical in Turkish, as Turkish surnames involve also verb phrases. Fikri
Sa lar was a Turkish minister. The sentence provides the figure of a Turkish
prototypical minister. The target, the criminal cannot find a solution to his problem,
and our stereotype refers to a word play. Moreover, the situation is created by the
question that needs to be answered, the script opposition, underlying the joke, is the
fact that nobody can solve the problem of the criminal. In the ground, there is the
problem to solve, a solution to be provided, and in the figure there is nobody.
On the other hand, a politician cannot pronounce the word “dü es”, and plays
with the word, creating other meaningless words, inconvenient to the speech of a
stereotypical politician, and the situation where he exists; thus, a governor must not
speak so incorrectly.

(2) “Pensilvanya dü esi...Düseçi. Yok düse .. “Dü es Dsrevic Sdu e ” gelecekti

bugün.” (“The duchesh of Pennsylvania...The dusech. No duchess.. The duchess
Dserevic Sduchesh would come today”) (Pek, Büyük, ama güzel sözler [Great, but
nice sayings], Leman, 2005/47).

An educated housewife utters a strange word “pröfösör” instead of profesör,

talking to his son. The utterance shows us that the housewife is uneducated here; the
situation in which the housewife refers to an educated person leads to the stereotyping
of that person as an illiterate housewife due to her mispronunciation of a word, which
leads to its loss of meaning.

(3) Housewife: “...pröfösör...”

(“...professor...” in a vulgar mode of use)
(Ya aro lu, Komikaze, Penguen, 2005/47)

Another phonological error is encountered in the speech of a business-woman

who uses –t, instead of –sh; however, she does this, thinking about the English
original form of the verb ‘to chat’, which is ‘çetle mek’ in Turkish. As a result, we

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conclude that the woman has a high cultural level, and forms a good target, i.e., a
perfect stereotype for a business-woman:

(4) A business-woman: “Bayan ismi vererek çetletmis sizle!”

(“He chatted with you introducing himself with a name for women!”)
(Perker, Edim, L-Manyak Uçanhayı, 2005/11)

3. 2. SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITIES
In our study, the syntactic ambiguities are caused by the lack of punctuation marks.
This shows the cultural background of the speakers, which serves to the formation of
targets, thus, stereotypes. The stereotypes make grammatical errors. In this case, also
some script oppositions are found directly in the sentences where the antonyms are
used.
In (5) the lack of a punctuation mark causes a problem in the interpretation of
the sentence. We cannot distinguish between the two sentences, “the dad knows the
mother” and “mom, dad knows (it).” The politician should have used “babam”, thus
the word baba in its the first person singular possesive form. The lack of punctuation
causes our misinterpretation of the sentence. This is the script oppposition, as we do
not expect that politicians or warriors make grammatical errors.

(5) “Baba bilir anne.”

(“Dad knows mom.”)
(Koçak, blishan, Küstah, 2005/2)

As well, a working woman also makes a mistake by referring to two antonyms

in the same sentence, bad and beautiful, but this beautiful is used in the sense of good.
There should be a comma after “demedi” (“he did not say”). “Güzelim” means “my
beautiful”, but here it means “my sweetie pie, my dear”; though, it may also mean “I
am beautiful”, forming a verb phrase. Besides, it can be interpreted also as “my dear
did not say a bad thing”. These three definitions create an ambiguity here without the
use of a comma.

(6) “Kötü demedi güzelim.”

(“He did not say that it was bad, sweetie pie.”)
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(Perker, Uykusuz...[Sleepless...], L-Manyak Uçanhayı, 2005/11)

3. 3. LEXICAL AMBIGUITIES
The humor is caused by a script opposition between war and love in (7). Most words
are also metaphorical in the example. Our target, the defender of a country causes the
script opposition. The stereotype deviates from the properties of a real stereotype
which she forms, and becomes a lover. A war cannot be without an army. Therefore,
as a man and a woman goes to a war alone, another meaning is derived from the
sentence, thinking about a ground other than the battle field with the figures of a man
and a woman as a couple. The female spy wants to go alone with the emperor of the
enemy country to make love chatting just on sex and love. This scene causes the
linguistic humor in (7).

(7) “Bir gün de yanına ordunu alma. kimiz gidelim sava a. Sadece sen ve ben
ba ba a.. Sıcacık canlı canlı sohbetler.” Kadın Casus Eva Bender (“One day don’t
take your army with you. Let’s go to the war together. Just you and me all alone..
Hot and extremely alive chats.” Woman Spy Eva Bender) (Pek, Büyük, ama güzel
sözler [Great, but nice sayings], Leman, 2005/48).

On the other hand, surprisingly, a housewife uses a foreign word ‘warcraft’

instead of a Turkish word. This leads to a script opposition, as the target, the
housewife stereotype knows a foreign word.

(8) “ u warcraft’ı oynadı ın kadar dersine çalı san o lum, imdiye kadar pröfösör
olurdun.” (“If you had studied inas much as you had played with that warcraft, my
son, you would be a professor now.”) (Ya aro lu, Komikaze, Penguen, 2005/47)

Moreover, a male, trying to steal a book from the library in order to sell it says
the following:

(9) “Sanki u anda bütün kütüphanedeki herkes bana bakıyor. Halbuki herkesin
baktı ı tek yer belki de kütüphanedir.” (“I feel as if everyone were looking at me at
this moment. Though, perhaps the only place where everyone looks is the library.”)
(Perker, Uykusuz...[Sleepless...], L-Manyak Uçanhayı, 2005/11)
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The speaker tries to imply that everyone reads a book, or looks at the shelves of the
library in order to find a certain book. In place of the word “kütüphane” (library), the
word “raflar” (shelves) should have been used.
Another script opposition is seen in the speech of an Ottoman sultan, who
adopts the use of an Arabic hero of a fairy tale, Alaaddin, who says “açıl, susam
açıl!” (“Open yourself sesame! Open yourself!”) for wanting something from his
jinni. The hero was calling the jinni for the realization of his wishes. As we see, the
unique occupation of an Ottoman sultan should be just making love and seeing naked
ladies. This behavior is not convenient for a sultan, in fact. Suzan is a female Turkish
name, by the way. She is regarded as a member of the Sultan’s harem in (10).

(10) “Açıl Suzan açıl”

(“Open yourself Suzan open yourself”, thus, “get off your clothes Suzan! Get off your
clothes!”) (Özkan, Kırık Leblebi [Broken roasted chickpeas], Leman, 2005/47)

The best example to the script opposition is in the following example in (11).
We included the fortune teller among the business-women, as she does not stay at
home, and earns her own money. In the sentence, we see the opposition between the
word honest, implied with the relative clause “yalan söylemeyen” (“the one who does
not lie”), and the word ‘pure’, and the use of the verb “yalan söylemek” (to lie). The
target is the stereotype of a fortune teller who earns a lot of money predicting the
future of others by telling many lies without knowing anything about the future. The
situation is excellent. The fortune teller sits and predicts the future of a man, and asks
for money for her lies. No fortune teller tells that s/he is lying, and asks for money for
her / his lies. The language play with oppositions is crucial here, and the speech of
the fortune teller is illogical, as in the real world a fortune teller never admits that s/he
is earning money by lying.

(11) “Bir saf ve yalan söyleyemeyen falcı, üzerinde büyü var diye yalan söyleyip, onu
kaldırmak için senden 500 YTL istiycek... Bu büyüyü kaldırmami istermisin?”
(“A pure fortune teller who never tells lies will tell the lie that there is some magic on
you, and will want 500 New Turkish Liras from you in order to break the spell. Do
you want me to break this spell?”) (Ya aro lu, Komikaze, Penguen, 2005/47)
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4. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

At the end of our study, we found out that the mobsters use more phonological,
lexical, and syntactic ambiguities than the politicians in Turkish comic strips, and the
housewives refer to more syntactic and phonological ambiguities than the business-
women, whereas the business-women use more lexical ambiguities than housewives
in Turkish comic strips.
This is just the first step in Turkish linguistic humor studies based on those
within the framework of the linguistic humor theory of Attardo and Raskin (1991). It
explains the linguistic ambiguities used in Turkish comic strips within the framework
of this theory, differing from the previous studies on Turkish linguistic humor.
To conclude, we can say that our study forms a basis for the Turkish linguistic
humor studies within the framework of the theory of Attardo and Raskin (1991). In
the future, more studies on all the linguistic humor theories of Raskin and Attardo
should be conducted. One of these should observe the understanding of Turkish
humorous texts by Turkish aphasics and learners of Turkish as a second language. As
well, in another research, the linguistic ambiguities used in Turkish riddles should be
compared to those used in Turkish comic strips from a cognitive linguistic point of
view within the framework of the same above-mentioned linguistic humor theories.

5. REFERENCES
Attardo, S. (1994). Linguistic Theories of Humor. Berlin and New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.

Attardo, S., Attardo, D. H., Baltes, P., Petray, M. J. (1994). The linear organization of
jokes; Analysis of two thousand texts. HUMOR: International Journal of
Humor Research 7 (1), pp. 27 – 54.

Attardo & Raskin, V. (1991). Script Theory Revis(it)ed: Joke Similarity and Joke
Representation Model. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 4
(3- 4), pp. 293 – 347.

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Bucaria, C. (2004). Lexical and syntactic ambiguity as a source of humor: The case
of newspaper headlines. Humor 17 – 3, pp. 279 – 309.

O uz, M. (1997). Nasreddin Hoca Ara tırmalarında Metot Meselesi. (The Problem
of Method in the Researches on Nasreddin Hoca). Türk Yurdu, pp. 25 – 27.

Özmen, M. (1999). 1990 Sonrası Mizah Dergilerinde Mizah Dili. (The Linguistic
Humor in the Humor Magazines Published after 1990). Papers of the Third
International Turkish Language Congress, held in 1996. Ankara: Kılıçarslan
Matbaacılık.

Raskin, V. (1985). Semantic mechanisms of humor. Dordrecht & Boston: Reidel.

Sa lam, S. (1997). Nasreddin Hoca: Kimli i ve Mizahı. (Nasreddin Hodja: His

Identity and Humor). Türk Yurdu Pp. 28 – 31.

Türkmen, F. (November 1996). Mizahta Üstünlük Teorisi ve Nasreddin Hoca

Fıkraları. (Superiority Theory in Humor and the Anecdotes of Nasreddin Hodja).
Türk Kültürü, pp. 649 – 655.

Türkmen, F. (1997). Mizah Teorileri ve Nasreddin Hoca. (Theories of Humor and

Nasreddin Hodja). Türk Yurdu, pp. 21 – 24.

Yakıcı, A. (1997). Türk Dünyasında Anlatılan Nasreddin Hoca Fıkralarındaki Bazı

Mü terekler Üzerine. (On Some Similarities between the Anecdotes of
Nasreddin Hodja Narrated in the Turkic World). Türk Yurdu, pp. 34 – 37.

Statistical Tool:

“Smith’s Statistical Paxckage for MacOS X”

http://www.economics.pomona.edu/StatSite/SSP.html
OUR DATA ARE FROM THESE RESOURCES:
Madra, P. (2005). Ademler ve Havvalar 3. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları.
Atom (2005/11)
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Fırt (2005/47)
Gırgır (2005/47)
L-Manyak Uçanhayı (2005/11)
Leman (2005/47)
Leman (2005/48)
Lombak (2005/11)
Kemik (2005/11)
Küstah (2005/2)
Penguen (2005/47)
Penguen (2005/48).

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