Lying and Humour

AbstractThere appears to be a paucity of research on the topic of humour and lying both in interdisciplinary humour studies and in the linguistic or philosophical scholarship on deception, whilst claims and proposals can be found only intermittently in both fields. This chapter addresses the interface between humour and lying, as well as other forms of deception, taking account of two groups of phenomena: categories of humour which pivot on deception/lying and genuine deception/lying which exerts humorous effects. Thus, several notions are elucidated: garden-path humour, put-ons and other lie-based teasing, lying to the recipient, deceptive autotelic humour, and genuine lying in multi-party interactions. Also, against the backdrop of humour theory, a number of postulates are put forward to explain the humorous potential of deception, with lying as a case in point.