ABSTRACT
Stylistics is a tradition of research that explores literature using the models, methods, and techniques of contemporary linguistics. This chapter explores core issues and topics in the analysis of humor and impoliteness, exploring the role and impact of what calls the "double articulation" effect of most TV-mediated productions, which would include dramatic representations of impoliteness. It explores methodologies for analysis of humor and impoliteness and provides a sample analysis. A perennial debate around the stylistic analyses of humor and, one imagines, around the linguistic analysis of humor more generally, is the relationship between formal patterns in text and the capacity of these patterns to induce a humorous reaction in readers, viewers, or listeners. Other challenges for the stylistic analysis of humor include the development of a theoretically more "joined up" approach to the relationship between comic writing and other genres of discourse, especially genres of discourse that comprise or embrace certain types of stylistic incongruity.
