On the role of vigilance in the interpretation of puns

Abstract

Humans are vigilant against deception and misinterpretation thanks to a set of cognitive mechanisms that monitor their interlocutors’ benevolence, credibility, competence and preferences, as well as the plausibility and acceptability of the interpretative hypotheses constructed. This paper explores the role of these mechanisms in the comprehension of puns. Through purposeful ambiguity, these bias the audience to an interpretation which, despite initially receiving some credibility, must be dismissed in order for the audience to arrive at a less salient interpretation. In doing so, this paper suggests an approach to their comprehension that differs from previous relevance-theoretic ones, which regard optimal relevance as the criterion determining the acceptability of interpretative hypotheses. Vigilance mechanisms are here argued to be essential for the audience to consider additional interpretative hypotheses, as these mechanisms alert the audience to the punster’s jocular intention, which surfaces in the production of a text amenable to reinterpretation. They also trigger a sophisticated processing strategy that encourages the audience to backtrack in order to detect the reinterpretable part of the text. This involves metarepresentation, as the audience need to attribute to the communicator the intention to transmit a different message.