O entrelaçamento de referentes nas recategorizações em piadas: qual o papel das cadeias referenciais?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the issue of referentiation based on the following question: What is the role of referential chains in the recategorization of the referent, as the trigger for the humor in jokes? The issue will be critically discussed based on the theoretical and empirical findings of the following research: Lima (2003), Leite (2007), Cavalcante (2011, 2012), Custódio Filho (2012) and Cavalcante et al. (2014). The reflections will focus on the semantic and on the social cognitive criteria of the recategorizations in referential chains, be they explicitly performed by noun phrases, or not, in triggering laughter in written jokes. The analyzed texts were taken from two publications in journals that address exclusively the jokes. It is concluded that the intertwining of objects, or the relation between them, although forming very short chains in this genre, trigger the production of the meaning of the joke.