Humour plays a big part in how we communicate with each other and is an important way in which we form and maintain relationships. In this lecture I will draw on some key ideas in linguistics to explore how the language of comic literature interacts with our knowledge of the world. This in turn enables us to develop relationships with narrators and characters, and to find amusement (or not!) in what they say and how they say it.

Alice Haines is Lecturer in English Language at the University of Derby where she researches the cognition and linguistics of humour in literature. She has a regular column – Kill the Joke – in Babel: The Language Magazine.

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