Pragmatics of Humor in Operah Winfrey and Piers Morgan Shows

Humor is the quality of being amusing or comic in literature and speech. It is sometimes used to enhance the utterances so as to make them more comfortable since it is considered a common element of human interaction. That is why it has been given a considerable attention by many scholars from different fields of knowledge such as linguistics, psychology and sociology. In linguistics, many scholars have tried to define humor and to show its functions and the factors that enable the humor act to be adequate and interesting. This led many theories and approaches to be formulated in order to study humor from different perspectives among which the incongruity theory by Kant (1790) and the relief theory by Morreall [1]. In addition, the non-observance of Grice’s conversational maxims [2] can be used as a means of creating humor. As such, the present study is intended with the aims of pragmatically analyzing humor as a strategic means by which participants achieve their goals in interpersonal interaction, in particular in TV talk shows, namely, Oprah Winfrey Show and Piers Morgan Show. It also aims to investigate the way by which participants shift the topic of interaction whenever they try to avoid a certain topic by adopting a humorous style. The study has come to the conclusion that there are many factors that affect humor in TV talk shows including the personality of the host and his/her interviewees, the topic of interaction and the way through which a character deals with a certain topic.