Grice's Punchline

by JLS
for the GC

-- KRAMER in "Funny you should mention that":

"Cavett relates that Linkletter would spoil jokes by making explicit what is usually left for the audience to realize."

Good. There's also the punchline. Calvin has a good one at that in the youtube link provided by Kramer about the 'honeymoon' frame or 'script': 'it's all about the f*ck'.

The closest Grice came to humour, explicitly is what he 'shaggy dog'. I mean, why else choose

"The dog is shaggy" as an example of predication.

I like to think he was having a long shaggy dog story in mind. Or not.

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Conversational structures of joke telling is very good. Atkinson/Heritage have a piece in their "Conversation Analysis" book with C. U. P. which I should revise. Of course we have to consider various contexts:

1 co-participant.

2 co-participants,

etc.

It seems it has to be (b) at least, to count as 'spoiling' or 'killing' the joke by explicaturising the implicature.

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Note this is like the 'enthymeme', only different. A punchline does not really need to be involved in what Kramer is commenting above.

Making explicit the implicit should be criminalised. I know it killed Grice.