Humor, Rhetoric, and Prose
Styles
by Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen
27 1
The Revision Process
“Shitty First Drafts”
• “All good writers write them. This is how they end
up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.”
• “I know some very great writers. Not one of them
writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them
does, but we don not like her very much.”
• “Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking
dictation from God every morning.”
(Lamott [2009]: 112-113)
27 2
Not the First Draft—The Zero Draft
• Donald Murray, an editor at Time magazine
won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. He said that
most professional writers live by the maxim
that „writing is rewriting.‟”
• Peter Drucker calls his first draft „the zero
draft‟—after that he can start counting.”
(Murray 117)
27 3
• “To produce a progression of drafts, each of which
says more and says it more clearly, the writer has to
develop a special kind of reading skill.”
• “Writers must learn to be their own best enemy.
They must detach themselves from their own pages
so that they can apply both their caring and their
craft to their own work.”
• “Such detachment is not easy. Science finction
writer Ray Bradbury supposedly puts each
manuscript away for a year to the day and then
rereads it as a stranger.”
(Murray [2009]: 118)
27 4
• John Ciardi, the poet, adds, “The last act of the
writing must be to become one‟s own reader. It is,
I suppose, a schizophrenic process, to begin
passionately and to end critically, to begin hot and
to end cold; and, more important, to be passion-hot
and critic-cold at the same time.”
• Author Eleanor Estes says, “At the end of each
revision, a manuscript may look…worked over,
torn apart, pinned together, added to, deleted from,
words changed and words changed back. Yet the
book must maintain its original freshness and
spontaneity.”
(Murray [2009]: 118)
27 5
Simplicity
• William Zinsser says that “The reader is someone with an
attention span of about 30 seconds—a person assailed by
many forces competing for attention. At one time those forces
were relatively few: newspapers, magazines, radio, spouse,
children, pets. Today they also include a galaxy of electronic
devices for receiving entertainment and information—
television, VCRs, DVDs, CDs, video games, the Internet, e-mail,
cell phones, BlackBerries, iPids.
• It won‟t do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to
keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it‟s
usually because the writer hasn‟t been careful enough.
(Zinser [2009]: 130-131)
27 6
Aristotle and Rhetoric
• Aristotle gave us the concepts of ethos, pathos and
logos (so we would be aware of the author‟s
perspective (1st person), the audience‟s perspective
(2nd person), and the logical perspective (3rd person).
• Aristotle also gave us inventio (the systematic
discovery of argument) and techne (the learned art
or craft-like knowledge of oratory).
(Graban [2008] 400)
27 7
Aristotle Again
• Aristotle also discussed how to argue
suitably for the occasion (e.g., judicial,
deliberative, or epideictic), how to recognize
the topics relevant for particular audiences,
and how to adjust the speech to the
audience‟s needs, knowledge, and desires.
• He discussed how authors could use wit and
irony to hide their intentions.
(Graban [2008] 401)
27 8
Humorous Rhetoric Today
• “Humor has been linked with critical
expression and argumentative writing since
the 18th-century social and political satire
(Reeves). Research into the language of
humor suggests that many comic forms are
effective means of supporting risk-taking
behavior (Tower), recognizing and reversing
power structures (France), challenging social
orders (Smith), allaying fear, and promoting
dialogic resistance (Greenbaum).”
(Graban [2008] 415).
27 9
• There are encouraging testimonials about
using humor in rhetorical pedagogy to
promote critical thinking (Weber; Daiute),
build community, and encourage intellectual
play and invention (Holcomb).
• At the Conference on College Composition
and Communication, there is an annual
“Humor Night” which has been published as
The Rhetoric of Laughter: The Best and Worst
of Humor Night (Guth).
(Graban [2008] 415)
27 10
• The principal rhetoric and composition
journals have features like “Rire du Jour,”
and funny poems, funny titles, and humorous
polylogs, which point to humor‟s ability to
transcend, and sometimes help solve
everyday problems.
• Humor is also used to deal with such
dissonant topics as error (Williams), grammar
(Hartwell), institutional assessment (Levy),
and students‟ right to their own language.”
(Graban [2008] 415)
27 11
A Sampling of
Humorous Treatments of Serious Topics
• Regina Barreca‟s They Used to Call me Snow White,
but I Drifted,
• Regina Barreca‟s Untamed and Unabashed: Essays
on Women and Humor in British Literature,
• Ronald Berk‟s Professors are from Mars, Students
are from Snickers,
• Gail Finney‟s Look Who‟s Laughing: Gender and
Comedy,
(Graban [2008] 435, 438)
27 12
• Constance Hale‟s Sin and Syntax: How to
Craft Wickedly Effective Prose,
• Phil Hall‟s “Giving Silliness a Chance,”
• Sharon Lockyer and Michael Pickering‟s
“Dear Shit-Shovellers: Humor , Censure and
the Discourse of Complaint,”
• M. Macaulay and C. Brice‟s “Don‟t Touch my
Projectile: Gender Bias and Stereotyping in
Syntactic Examples,”
(Graban [2008] 440, 442)
27 13
• Maureen McMahon‟s “Are We Having Fun
Yet? Humor in the English Class,”
• Alleen and Don Nilsen‟s “The Straw Man
Meets His Match: Six Arguments for
Studying Humor in English Classes,”
• Don Nilsen‟s “The Nature of Implication: Or
How to Write Between the Lines,”
• Don Nilsen‟s “The Wheat and Chaff
Approach to Teaching Composition: Nine
Steps to Becoming the Perfect Writer.”
(Graban [2008] 442-443)
27 14
POINT OF VIEW:
THE NOVEL: THE AD: THE TEXT BOOK:
ETHOS PATHOS LOGOS
TOUGH SWEET STUFFY
1ST PERSON 2ND PERSON 3RD PERSON
SUBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVE OBJECTIVE
INFORMAL INTIMATE FORMAL
27 15
TOUGH LANGUAGE
• Tough language is the rhetoric of Frederic
Henry in Ernest Hemingway‟s Farewell to
Arms:
• “In the late summer of that year we lived in a
house in a village that looked across the
river and the plain to the mountains. In the
bed of the river there were pebbles and
boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the
water was clear and swiftly moving and blue
in the channels.”
27 16
• It is the language of intimacy, the language of
no pretentions. The words are simple and the
grammar is simple.
• The writing is not planned, but just happens,
in a stream of consciousness kind of way—
you are there.
• The sentences are short and choppy. If there
is conjunction it is coordination, not
subordination.
• It is the language of the loosened tie and the
rolled up shirt sleeves, with no pretentious
multi-syllable or low-frequency words.
27 17
• Being egocentric, it is subjective, and
whether it is written from the author
participant or the author omniscient point of
view, it is concerned with communicating
people‟s innermost feelings.
• Tough language is the language of fiction,
and therefore the process of “in medias res”
is totally appropriate to this style—”In the late
summer of that year we lived in a house in a
village that looked across the river and the
plain to the mountain.
27 18
SWEET LANGUAGE
• Sweet language is the language of
advertisors. Walker Gibson calls this
language AROMA (Advertising Rhetoric
of Madison Avenue).
• Sweet language is listener-oriented in
an attempt to seduce listeners into
buying products they don‟t want or
need.
27 19
• It is language full of innovative
spellings, creative grammar, and wild
punctuation.
• Sweet writing contains many sentence
fragments, and would rather flaunt a
grammatical rule than conform to it:
“Winston tastes good like a cigarette
should. What do you want, good
grammar, or good taste?”
27 20
• Sweet language is the language of
sensationalism, the language of superlatives
and hyperbole.
• It is the language of diversion; it plays tricks
on the reader with its puns, its word
coinages, its humor, its packaging, its sex,
and other aspects which have nothing to do
with the product itself.
• It is informal, or sometimes even intimate or
cutesy in tone.
27 21
• Contractions, clippings, blendings, and
deletions abound, making it all the more
cryptic and intimate.
• It‟s full of slang expressions like “no
doubt about it,” “cut it out,” and “where
else?” It can be cutesy, as in “Dry skin?
Not me, darling. Every inch of little me
is as smooth as (well, you know what).”
27 22
• Gibson says that a common kind of coinage
in sweet language is the noun-adjunct
construction (a noun modified by another
noun).
• We see this kind of coinage in
“Speakerphone,” “Fooderama living,”
“decorator colors,” and “Supermarket
selection.”
• The Bell Company praises the beauties of its
“hands-free, group-talk, across-the-room
telephone.
27 23
STUFFY LANGUAGE
• Where tough language is I-oriented,
and sweet language is you-oriented,
stuffy language is it-oriented.
• It is the language of laboratory
experiments , of research papers and
theses and dissertations and scholarly
books, and academia in general.
27 24
• Stuffy language is highly grammatical
and highly formal.
• The syntax contains a great deal of
subordination, and the sentences are
frequently long and complex.
• Infinitives, gerunds, present and past
participial constructions, nominative
absolutes, perfect, progressive, and
passive constructions are almost
totally confined to this style of writing.
27 25
• It is an impersonal style to the extent that
first-person pronouns are seldom allowed.
For this and other reasons, passive
constructions and impersonal constructions
with abstract subjects are common.
• Stuffy language is also the language of
limitations, restrictions and qualifications
because the writer doesn‟t want to make
claims beyond the evidence.
• Limiting (as opposed to descriptive)
adjectives are frequent, as are prepositional
phrases and relative clauses.
27 26
!THE BIRMINGHAM RIOTS:
REPORTED IN THREE DIFFERENT STYLES
• “The police and firemen drove
hundreds of rioting Negroes off
the streets today with high
pressure hoses and an
armored car.”
• New York Times May 8, 1963
27 27
• !“Three times during the day, waves
of shouting, rock-throwing Negroes
had poured into the downtown
business district, to be scattered
and driven back by battering
streams of water from high-
pressure hoses and swinging clubs
of policement and highway
patrolmen.”
New York Herald Tribune
27 28
• !“The blaze of bombs, the
flash of blades, the eerie
glow of fire, the keening
cries of hatred, the wild
dance of terror at night—all
this was Birmingham,
Alabama.”
Time, May 7, 1963
27 29
!SUMMARY OF WORD DEVELOPMENT:
THE NOVEL: THE AD: THE TEXT BOOK:
COLLOQUIAL COLLOQUIAL FORMAL
SLANG: CHARACTER SLANG: AD NO SLANG
DEPENDENT DEPENDENT
MODALS
GERUNDS
INFINITIVES
PERFECTS
PROGRESSIVES
SPELLING = SPELLINGS = SPELLINGS =
CHARACTER CREATIVE CORRECT
DEPENDENT
ANGLO-SAXON ANGLO-SAXON INKHORN TERMS
WORDS WORDS GREEK & LATIN
27 30
!SUMMARY OF SENTENCE DEVELOPMENT:
THE NOVEL: THE AD: THE TEXT BOOK:
VARIED SHORT, CHOPPY LONG, COMPLICATED
FRAGMENTS PERFECT GRAMMAR
COMMA SPLICES
SIMPLE SIMPLE LONG & COMPLEX
RESTRICTIVE MODIFIER
SIMPLE SENTENCES COMPOUND &
COMPLEX SENTENCES
CASUAL PUNCTUATION PERFECT PUNCTUATION
RHETORICAL SENTENCES DON‟T
QUESTIONS MAKE CLAIMS BEYOND
IMPERATIVES EVIDENCE
THEY,YOU,
27 31
!SUMMARY OF PARAGRAPH AND DISCOURSE DEVELOPMENT!
THE NOVEL: THE AD: THE TEXT BOOK:
STREAM OF CASUAL STRUCTURED
CONSCIOUSNESS
INDUCTIVE WHATEVER DEDUCTIVE
NOTE: THE NEWSPAPER IS SUPER DEDUCTIVE BECAUSE
PEOPLE READ HEADLINES; AND MAYBE FIRST PARAGRAPH
(WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHY, WHERE, HOW); AND LATER
MATERIALS GET BURIED OR CUT
MUCH INUENDO INTIMATE & CUTESY CAUSAL
AND IMPLICATION
27 32
!!SUMMARY OF USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
THE NOVEL: THE AD: THE TEXT BOOK:
AUTHOR PARTICIPANT DEPENDS AUTHOR
AUTHOR OBSERVANT OBSERVANT
AUTHOR OMNISCIENT
MAINLY TROPES: MAINLY SCHEMES: LITERAL
IN MEDIAS RES ALLITERATION
METAPHOR ASSONANCE
IRONY RHYME
POETIC JUSTICE CUTESY TONE
SIMILES
ALLEGORIES
27 33
!!!SUMMARY OF PUNCTUATION
THE NOVEL: THE AD: THE TEXT BOOK:
CREATIVE CREATIVE FORMAL USE OF:
PUNCTUATION PUNCTUATION SEMI COLONS
PERIODS
PARENTHESES
DASHES
HYPHENS
RESTRICTIVE AND
NON-RESTRICTIVE
CLAUSES
PROPER
CAPITALIZATION
USE OF ELIPSES …
[SIC]
BRACKETS, ETC.
27 34
(Eschholz-Rosa-Clark [2009]: 105)
27 35
Humor and Rhetoric Web Site
MLA HANDBOOK:
www.mlahandbook.org
The The Impotence of Proofreading (Taylor Mali):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_rwB5_3PQc
Related PowerPoints
• Archetypes
27 37
References:
Aronson, Linda. Television Writing: The Ground Rules of Series, Serials
and Sitcoms. Sydney, Australia: Southwood Press, 2000.
Asp, Elissa D. “Knowledge and Laughter: An Approach to Socio-Cognitive
Linguistics.” in Discourse in Society: Systematic Functional
Perspectives. Eds. P. H. Fries and M. Gregory. Norwood, NJ: Ablxex,
1995, 141-158.
Attardo, Salvatore. “Cognitive Stylistics of Humorous Texts.” in Cognitive
Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text Analysis. Amsterdam,
Netherlands, John Benjamins, 2002, 231-250.
Attardo, Salvatore. Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis.
New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter, 2001.
Attardo, Salvatore. “On the Pragmatic Nature of Irony and Its Rhetorical
Aspects.” in Pragmatics in 2000. Ed. Eniko Nemeth. Antwerp, Belgium,
2001, 52-66
Barry, Anita K. English Grammar: Language as Human Behavior, 2nd
Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2002.
27 38
Behrens, Laurence, and Leonard J. Rosen. “Varieties of Humor.” Writing
and Reading Across the Curriculum, 3rd Edition. Glenview, IL: Scott
Foresman, 1988, 301-379.
Berger, Arthur Asa. The Art of Comedy Writing. Paperback: Edison, NJ:
Transaction Press, 2010.
Berger, Arthur Asa. “The Rhetoric of Laughter: The Techniques Used in
Humor.” Blind Men and Elephants: Perspectives on Humor New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1995. 51-64.
Bergmann, Linda S. “Funny Papers: Initiation and Subversion in First-Year
Writing.” Journal of Teaching Writing 14 (1995): 21-39.
Bete, Tim. “Writing: Improve the Quality of Your Writing by Adjusting the
Density of Humor.” Writer‟s Digest 85.1 (2005): 56-57.
Betts Van Dyk, Krista. “From the Plaint to the Comic: Kenneth Burke‟s
Twoards a Better Life.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 36.1 (2006): 30-55.
27 39
Billig, Michael. “Humour and Hatred: The Racist Jokes of the Ku Klux
Clan.” Discourse and Society 12.3 (2001): 267-289.
Bowen, Barbara C. “Ciceronian Wit and Renaissance Rhetoric.” Rhetorica
16.4 (1998): 409-429.
Brent, Mike. The Everything Guide to Comedy Writing. MA: Adams Media,
2009.
Campbell, George. “Of Wit, Humor, and Ridicule.” in Essays on Rhetoric.
Ed. Dudley Bailey. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1965, 120-
136.
Carrell, Amy T. Audience/Community, Situation, and Language: A
Linguistic/Rhetorical Theory of Verbal Humor. Unpublished Ph.D.
Dissertation, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University, 1993.
Chlopicki, Wladyslaw. “Humorous and Non-Humorous Stories: Are There
Differences in Frame-Based Recognition?” Stylistika 10 (2001): 59-78.
Culpeper, Jonathan. Language and Characterization: People in Plays and
Other Texts. London, England: Longman, 2001.
27 40
Daiute, Collette. “Play as Thought: Thinking Strategies of Young
Writers.” Harvard Educational Review 59.1 (1989): 1-23.
Davis, D. Diane. Breaking Up (at) Totality: A Rhetoric of Laughter.
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000.
Davis, Dineh. “Communication and Humor” (Raskin [2008] 543-
568).
Ermida, Isabel. Humour, Language and Narrative: Towards a
Discourse Analysis of Literary Comedy. Minho, Portugal:
University of Minho, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, 2002.
Eschholz, Paul, Alfred Rosa, and Virginia Clark. Language
Awareness: Readings for College Writers: 10TH Edition. New
York, NY: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009.
Felder, Julie E. “Using Humor in the Writing Classroom.” Teaching
English in the Two-Year College 19.1 (1992): 39ff.
27 41
France, A. “Assigning Places: The Function of Introductory
Composition as a Cultural Discourse.” College English 55.6
(1993): 593-609.
Gajda, Stanislaw, ed. “Style and Humor.” Special Issue of Stylistika
10 (2001).
Gee, James Paul. Introduction to Discourse Analysis. New York,
NY: Routledge, 1999.
Gee, James Paul, et. al. “Language, Class, and Identity: Teenagers
Fashioning Themselves through Language.” Linguistics and
Education 12.2 (2001): 175-194.
Gibson, Walker. Tough, Sweet and Stuffy: An Essay on Modern
American Prose Styles. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1966.
27 42
Graban, Tarez Samra. “Beyond „Wit and Persuasion‟: Rhetoric,
Composition, and Humor” (Raskin [2008] 399-448).
Gee, James Paul. Social Languages and Literacies. London,
England: Palmer Press, 1991.
Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us about
Learning and Literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave/Macmillan,
2003.
Grant, Mary. The Ancient Rhetorical Theories of the Laughable.
Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Studies in
Language and Literature # 21, 1924.
Gruner, Charles. “Effect of Humor on Speaker Ethos and
Audience Information Gain.” Journal of Communication 17
(1967): 228-233.
27 43
Guth, Hans P., Gabriele L. Rico, John Ruszkiewicz, and Bill Bridges. The
Rhetoric of Laughter: The Best and Worst of Humor Night. Fort Worth,
TX: Harcourt Brace, 1996.
Hale, Constance. Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose
New York, NY: Broadway Books, 1999.
Hall, Phil. “Giving Sillilness a Chance.” Writing Lab Newsletter 9.9 (1985):
7-8.
Helitzer, Melvin. Comedy Writing Secrets: How to Think Funny, Write
Funny, Act Funny, and Get Paid for It. Cincinnati, OH: Writer‟s Digest
Books, 2005.
Holcomb, Chris. “„A Man in a Painted Garment‟: The Social Function of
Jesting in Elizabethan Rhetoric and Courtesy Manuals.” HUMOR:
International Journal of Humor Research 13.4 (2000): 429-456.
Howell, Tes. “Two Cognitive Approaches to Humorous Narratives.” (Popa
and Attardo [2007]: 55-71).
27 44
Huffman, Lois E. “Helping At-Risk College Students Help
Themselves through Humor: A Reading and Writing Strategy.”
Forum for Reading 24 (1993): 32-42.
Jordan, G. “Humor in Tutorials.” The Writing Lab Newsletter 15.9
(1991): 8, 10.
Kaufer, David. “Irony and Rhetorical Strategy.” Philosophy and
Rhetoric 10.2 (1977): 90-110.
Kuipers, Giselinde. “The Difference between a Surinamese and a
Turk: Public Discourse, Digital Disaster Jokes, and the
Functions of Laughter after 9/11.” Journal of American Culture
28.1 (2005): 70-84.
Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts.” (Eschholz [2009]: 112-114).
Levasseur, David G., and Kevin W. Dean. “The Dole Humor Myth
and the Risks of Recontextualizilng Rhetoric.” The Southern
Communication Journal 62 (1996): 56-72.
27 45
Levy, Jonathan. “Using HAC-Guided Responsive Journal Writing to Assess
Problem Solving Abilities: Preliminary Correlations.” Research in the
Teaching of English 29.3 (1995): 355-359.
Lockyer, Sharon, and Michael Pickering. “Dear Shit-Shovellers: Humour,
Censure and the Discourse of Complaint.” Discourse and Society 12.5
(2001): 633-651.
Lunsford, Andrea A., and John J. Ruszkiewicz. Humor in Argument:
Everything‟s an Argument, 2nd Edition. New York, NY: Bedford/St.
Martin‟s, 1999.
Mey, Jacob. Pragmatics: An Introduction, 2nd Edition. Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2001.
Miller, Susan. Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition. Carbondale,
IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.
Muller, William Edward. The Use of Humor as a Heuristic, Liberatory Tool in
the Composing Process. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan, 1991.
27 46
Murray, Donald M. “The Maker‟s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts.”
(Eschholz [2009]: 117-121).
Myers, Greg. “The Rhetoric of Irony in Academic Writing.” Written
Communication 7.4 (1990): 419-455.
Nash, Walter. The Language of Humour: Style and Technique in Comic
Discourse. London, England: Longman, 1985.
Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen. Encyclopedia of 20th Century
American Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood/Oryx, 2000.
Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen. “The Straw Man Meets His
Match: Six Arguments for Study Humor in English Classes.” The
English Journal 88.4 (1999): 34-42.
27 47
Nilsen, Don L. F. “The Nature of Implication: Or How to Write
Between the Lines.” College Composition and Communication
25.5 (1974): 417-421.
Nilsen, Don L. F. “Humor Scholarship on Rhetoric and Discourse
Analysis.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 21.2 (1991): 62-65.
Nilsen, Don L. F. “Humor Studies Related to Composition,
Rhetoric, and Discourse Theory.” English Leadership Quarterly
18.3 (1996): 10-12.
Nilsen, Don L. F. “Language Play and Rhetorical Devices.” Humor
Scholarship: A Research Bibliography Westport, CT:
Greenwood, 1993, 59-112.
Nilsen, Don L. F. “The Wheat and Chaff Approach to Teaching
Composition: Nine Steps to Becoming the Perfect Writer.”
Arizona English Bulletin 30.1 (1987): 32-36.
27 48
Norrick, Neal, and Alice Spitz. “The Interplay of Humor and Conflict
in Conversational and Scripted Humorous Performance.”
HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 23.1 (2010): 83-
112.
Oring, Elliott. “Jokes and the Discourse on Disaster: The Challenger
Shuttle Explosion and Its Joke Cycle.” Journal of American
Folklore 100 (1987): 276-286.
Peterson, L., and F. Strebeigh. “Teaching Humorous Writing.” in
Collective Wisdom Eds. S. J. Stang and R. Wiltenburg. New York,
NY: Random House, 1988, 206-210.
Pieper, Gail W. “The Scoop on Good Humor.” The Technical Writing
Teacher 14.2 (1987): 174-177.
Pizzini, Franca. “Communication Hierarchies in Humor: Gender
Differences in the Obstetrical/Gynaecological Setting.” Discourse
and Society 2 (1991): 477-488.
27 49
Popa, Diana, and Salvatore Attardo, eds. New
Approaches to the Linguistics of Humor. Galati:
Dunarea de Jos University Press, 2007.
Raskin, Victor, ed. Primer of Humor Research. New
York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008.
Rishel, Mary Ann. Writing Humor: Creativity and the
Comic Mind. Detroit, MY: Wayne State University
Press, 2002.
Rose, Mike, and Malcom Kiniry. “What‟s Funny?
Investigating the Comic.” in Critical Strategies for
Academic Writing. Eds. Mike Rose and Malcolm
Kiniry. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin‟s, 1990, 664-
736.
Schiffrin, Deborah. Approaches to Discourse. Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 1994.
Sherwood, Steve. “Humor and the Serious Tutor.” The
Writing Center Journal 13.2 (1993): 3-12.
Simpson, Paul. On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a
Stylistic Model of Satirical Humour. Amsterdam,
Netherlands: John Benjamins, 2003.
Smith, Stephen A. “Humor as Rhetoric and Cultural
Argument.” Journal of American Culture 16.2 (1993):
51-63.
Tsakona, Villy. “Jab Lines in Narrative Jokes.” HUMOR:
International Journal of Humor Research. 16.3 (2003):
315-329.
27 51
Volpe, Michael. “The Persuasive Force of Humor: Cicero‟s Defense
of Caelius.” Quarterly Journal of Speech Communication 63
(1977): 311-323.
Weber, Alan. “Playful Writing for Critical Thinking: Four
Approaches to Writing.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult
Literacy 43.6 (2000): 562-568.
Williams, David. Sin Boldly! Dr. Dave‟s Guide to Writing the College
Paper. New York, NY: Persius Publishing, 2000.
Zajdman, Anat. “Contextualization of Canned Jokes in Discourse.”
HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 4.1 (1991): 23-
40.
Zinsser, William. “Simplicity.” (Eschholz, Rosa & Clark [2009]: 129-
131).
27 52