Rhetorical and relational structure of jokes in "She Stoops to Conquer"

Abstract EN

It is significant to be familiar with the relational indicators in the structure of jokes.

This is considered as among the essential steps to disclose the underlying rhetorical and relational structure of texts in general and those of jokes in specific.

In other words, relational indicators are one of the basic ways by which a reader can correctly and efficiently decode a text.

This paper investigates the role of three kinds of relational indicators in a corpus of some jokes taken from "She Stoops to Conquer" to disclose the underlying rhetorical patterns, viz., the problem-solution patterns.

The study comes out with the main finding that these patterns have different variations which are governed by the nature of their constituent elements and the way these elements interrelate.

Based on its findings, the study comes out with a number of conclusions concerning how jokes are hierarchically structured and the role played by the relational indicators in such texts.