ABSTRACT
Properly considered the scope of a chapter titled “humor and pragmatics” would encompass so much material, under the expansionist definitions of pragmatics dominant in the field, as to render it moot, as its contents would be duplicated by most of the entries in the sociolinguistics and applied linguistics chapters. Therefore, this chapter will be limited, for practical reasons only, to the relationship between humor and the principle of cooperation, on the one hand, and the more general category of the “implicit” on the other hand. Readers interested in the social, variationist, conversational, discursive, etc. aspects of the subject should consult the relevant chapters.
