Question

This open-ended question asks you to analyze the references as information packaging devices. The text is a joke in the "bar joke" genre. Follow the prompts and be specific and thorough in your answer.

Bar Joke:

A Frenchman walks into a bar. He has a parrot on his shoulder and the parrot is wearing a baseball cap. The bartender says, “Hey, that’s neat—where did you get that?” And the parrot says, “France—they’ve got millions of them there.

Prompts to guide your analysis:

Jokes often contain new information at the beginning: Where do you note new information? How is it packaged linguistically? Where do you note given information ? Are there any linguistic elements that mark givenness? What are they? Which elements might be considered as signaling accessible information that is not explicitly evoked but inferrable/accessible? Any deixis? Overall, what is the source of the humor in this joke and how do linguistic devices (reference, deixis, information structure) give rise to the humor here?

Answer 1

Answer: in this bar joke, new information is introduced at the beginning, which is the fact that the Frenchman has a parrot on his shoulder wearing a baseball cap. This new information is packaged linguistically by using descriptive phrases like "He has a parrot on his shoulder" and "the parrot is wearing a baseball cap."

Given information in the joke includes the fact that the Frenchman is in a bar and that the parrot is from France. The given information is presented without much linguistic marking.

There are linguistic elements that mark givenness in the joke. For example, the word "neat" in the bartender's statement "Hey, that's neat" implies that the presence of a parrot on a person's shoulder is something unusual or interesting. This implies that the bartender already knows about parrots being in France and finds it interesting to see one in the bar.

Elements that can be considered as signaling accessible information that is not explicitly evoked but inferable/accessible include deixis. In this joke, the use of deixis is not explicitly mentioned, but we can infer that the Frenchman is referring to France when he says "France—they've got millions of them there." This implies that the parrots being talked about are from France.

The source of the humor in this joke lies in the unexpectedness of the punchline. The bartender asks where the Frenchman got the parrot, expecting a specific location or store, but the parrot's response of "France—they've got millions of them there" is unexpected and humorous. The linguistic devices of reference, deixis, and information structure contribute to the humor by creating a contrast between the expected answer and the unexpected answer, leading to a humorous outcome.

Step-by-step explanation: