The Semiotics of Murphy’s Law. Second Part. Theatrical Microunivers. A Semio-Pragmatic Approach

The authors seek to interpret the production/ reception mechanism of the joke through a Linguistic, Logical and Encyclopedic approach of the act of humor. The offer of murphology as a referential document for the argumentation of joke as a ludical act is representative in the theory of the acts of language especially through the social function of laughter.

Each of Murphy’s Law consists of a dialogical de-doubling, with a transmitter provided with linguistic, rhetoric and encyclopedic “savoir” as well as persuasive power on the level of ennounciation and with a receiver (also possessing an interpretive “savoir-faire”, a quality that makes him/her) accede to the hidden meaning of the joke, often presented as a paradox set up by a disorienting isotopy. On the textual level, nevertheless, there is a complice and an innocent, object of the explicit signifiance, both being actors and engaging into various interpretative mechanisms of the meaning (fundamental vs contextual).

The semiotical application of the joke is based on deconstruction, materialized in the opposition between behavioural norm and linguistical norm. The typology of jokes is offered by murphology, opera aperta, in the proper sense, once it receives in its corpus newly experienced laws.