Homonímia em anedotas: uma análise da ambiguidade lexical como efeito de humor

Abstract

This research aimed at analyzing semantically the genre anecdote and exploring the use of homonyms, as part of its text microstructure, in the production of humor effect. This work is grounded by the study of homonymy and text genres, since both of these fields cooperate and depend on each other for the analysis of the phenomena explored. Humor is a stable constituent of the genre anecdote, whereas homonymy is one of the resources used as a way to ensure such effect. The books “As mais rápiadas de Ary Toledo” and “As melhores piadas do planeta e da Casseta também” were analyzed and lexical ambiguities within those books were selected, and the next step taken was that the anecdotes were classified by having homonymy and polyssemy as their humor basis; further, it was possible to select cases of homonymy in order to write this article. Thus, the analysis had as its target the way the feature of homonymy as meaning incompatibility is used as humor in the genre, through the attempt to approximate unusual meanings which are not related; it was possible to verify that humor, within all the structures observed, is a result of the trigger that operates on meaning after meaning through the use of homonyms.