The Goon Show – Pioneers of Absurd Humour A Cultural and Linguistic Analysis of the Language of Humour Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des Magistergrades an der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz vorgelegt von Michael Wappl am Institut für Anglistik Begutachter: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Univ.-Doz. Dr. David Newby, B.A., M.Sc. Graz, Juli 2009 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Research questions 1 1.2 Material and Methodology 2 2. The Phenomenon of Humour 4 2.1 Humour, Laughter, Joke 4 2.2 The Three Theories of Humour 7 2.2.1 Superiority Theory 8 2.2.2 Release Theory 10 2.2.3 Incongruity Theory 13 2.3The Theories of Humour in The Goon Show 21 3. Linguistic Mechanisms of Verbal Humour 22 3.1 Phonology 22 3.2 Morphology 23 3.3 Syntax 25 3.4 Semantics 29 3.5 Pragmatics 32 3.6 Slips of the Tongue 33 4. The Absurd – a phenomenon of philosophy and literature 35 5. The story of The Goon Show 43 5.1 The characters in The Goon Show 50 6. Analysis of Examples of Humour from The Goon Show 55 6.1 Analysis of Examples of Verbal Humour 55 6.1.1 Phonology 55 6.1.2 Morphology 56 6.1.3 Syntax 57 6.1.4 Semantics 58 6.1.5 Pragmatics 62 6.1.6 Slips of the Tongue 64 6.1.7 Interplay of linguistic mechanisms in examples of verbal humour 65 6.2 Analysis of Examples of Absurd Humour 68 6.2.1Absurdness of language and meaning 68 6.2.1 Absurdness of concept and situation 72 6.3 Analysis of Examples of Radio-Specific Humour 81 6.3.1 Radio-specific humour depending on the conventions of radio drama 82 6.3.2 Radio-specific humour depending on sound effects 86 6.4 Analysis of Examples of Running Jokes 88 7. Conclusion 93 8. Abstract 97 9. Deutsche Zusammenfassung 99 10. Bibliography 101 Acknowledgements First and most of all, I have to thank my sister, Christina, and my parents, Josefa and Heinz. They were the ones who encouraged me to challenge this project and supported me morally and financially. Secondly, I want to thank my friends Sascha, Robert and Wolfgang and my colleagues from the scouts (Most of all Indy, Stefan, Steff, Gerhild and Ingrid) for lending me an ear and listening to my doubts and worries whenever I needed it. Thirdly, I want to thank my colleagues Gerhild Kastrun, Andreas Kaplan, Mario Piffer and Lars Roesky for reading through some chapters and giving me advice. Then I have to thank Dr. David Newby for his continuous support and academic guidance. Also I want to thank my German teacher from school, Mag. Ernst Saller, who introduced me to the world of The Goon Show . Finally, I want to thank the Goons. Thank you Spike Milligan for writing the scripts; and Peter Sellers, Michael Bentine and Harry Secombe for acting them out together with him. The Goon Show provides people with endless hours of amusement and is a cultural landmark in comedy and humour. 1 Introduction My interest in The Goon Show can be dated back to when I was in sixth grade in gymnasium. Our German teacher Mag. Ernst Saller played the famous “What time is it Eccles?”- sketch to us in one of his exceptional lessons. After this lesson I asked him to copy a few episodes on tape for me. Although I did not understand much of their conversations when I listened to them the first time, the Goons have always been in my mind from that time on. At university the interest in The Goon Show was combined with my interest in the field of linguistics. This happened in a seminar called “Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Comedy”, which sparked my interest to unravel how humour works through the right use of language. This diploma thesis tries to unveil how the various techniques and mechanisms of humour were applied in my favourite radio comedy series, The Goon Show . 1.1 Research question In the course of this paper the following questions will be considered: • What is the secret behind the success of The Goon Show ? • What are the underlying structures of their humour? • To which of the three theories of humour does their kind of humour belong? • What are the mechanisms of humour in The Goon Show ? In the course of this diploma thesis these research questions will be pursued from a theoretical and practical point of view. The theoretical part starts in chapter 2 with a brief definition of the terms “humour”, “laughter” and “joke” to set the limits of one term in relation to the other. Then social, psychological and philosophical theories about the nature of humour, namely the Superiority, the Psychic Release and the Incongruity Theory of Humour, will be surveyed in chapter 2.2. The theoretical part of this thesis continues in chapter 3 and 4, which consider basic mechanisms of humour within verbal and absurd humour. Chapter 3 will take a close look at linguistic mechanisms of humour taken from the linguistic fields of Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics and the phenomenon of Slips of the Tongue. - 1 - Then Chapter 4 directs the scope to the phenomenon of the absurd. In this chapter the absurd will be approached from linguistic and philosophical perspectives and considerations will be given to how it was applied in The Theatre of the Absurd. Chapters 3 and 4 provide the mechanisms of verbal and absurd humour and therefore also the tools for the analysis of humour, which will be applied in the analysis of extracts from The Goon Show in chapter 6. The next chapter, chapter 5, is a transitional section between the theoretical and practical part of this paper. It contains an overview of the history of The Goon Show , which also provides a short biography of its protagonists and the development of its format throughout the ten series. Furthermore, a separate section on the characters is included to give a better insight into the fictional world of The Goon Show . This is meant to show the relation these characters take towards each other in the dialogues, and offers a first overview of their catch phrases. For the analysis of humorous extracts from The Goon Show in chapter 6, the examples of humour are classified into four categories. These categories are Verbal Humour, Absurd Humour, Radio Specific Humour and Running Jokes. Each of these sections shows how the appropriate mechanisms of humour were applied in the episodes of The Goon Show . In addition to that, this chapter tries to demonstrate which of the three theories, which are examined in chapter 2, the humour in The Goon Show is built on. Finally, chapter 7 will recapitulate the main theories from the previous chapters in order to consider whether and how the research questions are answered. It therefore demonstrates where the success of The Goon Show resides. Further it attempts to explain why The Goon Show is still the most often repeated radio programme in the world. 1.2 Material and Methodology For the purpose of analysing examples of humour in chapter 6, 55 episodes were selected from the 169 episodes of the 8 available series (recordings of series one and partly also two are no longer available). The transcripts of these episodes were either taken from the BBC Transcription Service or downloaded from a Goon Show fan website called “ The Goon Show Site”, on which listeners were asked to post their versions of transcriptions from their private recordings of Goon Show episodes. “All transcripts have been transcribed by a small but hardworking group of Goon fans across the world“, wrote the editor of this webpage Lee Inskip (Inskip,2003 ed. http://www.thegoonshow.net/script.asp). - 2 - From this resulting corpus the most telling and humorous passages were marked and subsequently analysed concerning the mechanisms of humour found in these extracts. These examples were then categories according to the mechanisms of humour in The Goon Show . In addition to that, this examination is meant to reveal which of the three theories of humour, presented in chapter 2, is the predominant one in The Goon Show . - 3 - 2 The Phenomenon of Humour 2.1 Humour, Laughter and Jokes Humour has been the subject of intensive philosophical, psychological, sociological, linguistic and cultural research. The definition of humour as such could be the topic of a whole diploma thesis. Scholars even argue that humour cannot be defined. “As a matter of fact, the claim that humour is undefinable has been advanced several times”, confirms Escarpit (1960). (quoted in Attardo 1994: 3). Over decades the terms “humour,” “laughter“ and also “joke” have been used interchangeably, sometimes even synonymously, by different researchers. Immanuel Kant in his work Critique of Judgement (1790) talks about “laughter“ as an effect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into nothing. Henri Bergson also calls the phenomenon “laughter” in his book Le Rire, or Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1900), which includes an early version of the Incongruity Theory. Sigmund Freud, the most prominent proponent of the Psychic Release Theory, refers to “jokes” when he describes the mechanisms of humour in his treatment Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905). Most of the other researchers of Theories of Humour refer to “humour”, when they describe the phenomenon of arising laughter by various means such as jokes. The term “humour” in this thesis will be used as an umbrella term incorporating the terms “laughter” and “joke” somehow in it.