ABSTRACT
There is a great deal of past exploration of humour expressed in language. From that, we derive some generalisations which inform the organisation of our framework. There are four broad functions that language can play in a joke: as communicative medium, as knowledge which allows word play, as the subject matter of the joke, and as a means of adding nuances to a text using different styles. These have some implications for our model of joke comprehension. Each viewpoint must have its own rules of language, although these will usually be almost identical, by way of inheritance. These separate language systems can vary in how salient particular linguistic structures are, which texts are comprehensible and the range of registers available. For word play, the language rules of the joke world, or of joke characters, can be non-standard in strange ways, comparable to the flawed internal logic which shows up in many jokes.
