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The aim of the study is to shed light on how linguistic humor is understood. The starting point of the paper is the supposition that viewers of humorous television programs must engage in some form of quasi-pragmatic analysis of language if they are to comprehend the linguistic humor with which they are presented. Through the application of theories of language use, linguistic data from television comedies are analyzed, and possible ways of viewers’ comprehension thereof are suggested. Episodes of the television series Blackadder, Only Fools and Horses, The Big Bang Theory, and The Two Ronnies are the sources of data. The findings show the importance of context and schemata in the interpretation of meaning, and the distinction between pragmatic and semantic meaning is also highlighted as a method of comprehension. It is demonstrated that Grice’s Cooperative Principle provides an appropriate analytical framework for understanding a wide range of humorous interactions. In addition, the implications that the presence of various speech acts in comedy programs have for meaning are also touched upon.
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