| This dissertation examines various strategies for producing laughter as they are inscribed in the texts of dramatic plays. In order to achieve this objective a theoretical model that is based on a number of semantic and semiotic concepts has been established. This model has been further supported by the analyses of six plays: Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Moliere's The Would-be Gentleman, Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters, Buchner's Woyzeck, Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear, and Frayn's Noises Off.;The thesis distinguishes between two main types of strategies for producing laughter--alazonic and ironic--that are further divided into four techniques and two setups. In alazonic strategies cryptic noise is the result of arbitrary modifications whose identification depends on the audience's subjective judgment. In ironic strategies, on the other hand, understanding is momentarily prevented because a message appears in a unique, highly conventionalized context that has no equivalent in our extra-theatrical experience. Accordingly, an ironically distorted message can be interpreted only if the spectators' personal knowledge is supplemented by additional information whose sole purpose is to expand their cognitive abilities. This approach is therefore called deciphering rather than decoding. The dissertation ends by suggesting that dramaturgical strategies for producing laughter are always an interaction of different techniques and setups.;The argument itself begins with the assumption that, despite many similarities, laughter in the theatre differs significantly from laughter in everyday life. While in everyday life laughter is one's reaction to a situation from the actual world, theatrical laughter is, conversely, the spectators' response to a fictional, theatrical world. Since such a world is thought to be formulated through the messages that are being transmitted from the stage, the cause of theatrical laughter is here defined as the spectators' perception of an irregularity in this communication, that is, as the audience's detection, and subsequent removal, of intentional, cryptic noise. Theatrical laughter is in this sense described as the expression of the spectators' pleasure in understanding the meaning of erroneously encoded, or as they are also called, distorted messages. |
