Contrastive Study of Logical Mechanisms Causing Incongruity in Persian and English Sitcoms

In this article the logical mechanisms (LMs) applied in Persian and American sitcoms have been observed and investigated based on incongruity in humor.The data was mainly collected based on the LMs whichexisted in the two series studied: How I met your mother and GhavehTalkh (Bitter Coffee). The framework used to analyze the data encompassedd the 27 logical mechanisms introduced by Attardo (2008) among which False Analogy, Figure ground reversal, Juxtaposition, Faulty Reasoning, Parallelism, Garden Path, and Referential Ambiguity were detected in the above mentioned sticoms.The main research questions of the study strive to come to the answers to issues like the distribution and different use of LMs in American and Iranian sitcoms, the effect of the structure of the use of LM in each sitcom and its humorous effect on the speakers of each culture, and whether LMs tend to be a universal or language specific concept.. In the end, it is encouraging to know that the findings of such studies can provide teachers, students, and experts in the field of education with some insights on humor production and humor interpretation in order to help their students better understand foreign comedy and culture which will in turn lead to better language production.

Keywords:

logical mechanisms , humor interpretation , incongruity , false analogy , figure-ground reversal