-
Addressing an audience: Time, place, andgenre in Peter van
Straatens calendar
cartoons
CHARLES FORCEVILLE
Abstract
Cartoons, like other forms of mass media, are aimed not just at
anybody,
but at a multitude of individuals. The extent to which these
numerous indi-
viduals understand the cartoons in the same way depends not only
on their
shared interpretations of the word and image texts themselves,
but also on
interpretation strategies suggested by the (near)identical
circumstances
under which the cartoons are accessed. As Gail Dines points out,
locating
cartoons within the cultural realm of mass communication
requires an
understanding of how these media forms come into existence and
how they
are consumed by the intended audience (1995: 238). To understand
better
how cartoons are processed, it is necessary to generalize about
contextual
factors governing their perception. In this paper I examine
cartoons by the
Dutchman Peter van Straaten that all appeared on a tear-o
calendar in
the year 2001. The question addressed is how the temporal and
spatial cir-
cumstances under which the cartoons are accessed, in combination
with the
generic conventions of the calendar in which they appear,
trigger the activa-
tion of specific cognitive schemata, and thus steer and
constrain possible in-
terpretations. The general framework in which these matters are
discussed
is Sperber and Wilsons (1995) Relevance Theory.
Keywords: Humor reception; Peter van Straaten; cartoons;
relevance
theory; genre.
1. Introduction
A joke is usually directed at a more or less specific audience,
and relies for
its success on the activation of various types of background
knowledge,
Humor 183 (2005), 247278 09331719/05/001802476 Walter de
Gruyter
-
or schemata, by that audience. This is true not only when it is
a verbal
joke told orally and in real time, but also when it is a
multimodal one
relayed to a mass audience and in non-live form. Mass-medial
jokesters
and their audience are aware of at least some of the
circumstances under
which the latter accesses the jokes, and jokesters may exploit
this mutual
awareness. Attempts to generalize about reception circumstances
are im-
portant because they provide insight into what extra-textual
factors sys-
tematically influence the comprehension and appreciation of
jokes and
cartoons.
Drawing on the relevance theory model developed by Sperber
and
Wilson (Sperber and Wilson 1986, 1987, 1995; Wilson and
Sperber
2004), I will show how the appreciation of a dozen cartoons by
the
Dutchman Peter Van Straaten depends partly on the audience
awareness
of three interlocking extra-textual dimensions: time of access;
place of ac-
cess; and genre. I thereby aim to contribute to a theory of
humor that
takes into account pragmatic as well as textual factors.
2. A characterization of Peters Zeurkalender cartoons
Peter van Straaten is one of Hollands best known cartoon
satirists
of bourgeois life. Among many other things, he contributes a
daily
cartoon to the Dutch newspaper het Parool, called Dagelijks
Leven
(Daily Life), and two cartoons to the Dutch weekly magazine
Vrij
Nederlanda political one and a cartoon in the series Het
Literaire
Leven (Literary Life). His cartoons also appear abroad. Since
1994
Van Straaten has moreover released a tear-o calendar. His
calendar
is one among various such calendars published in the
Netherlands.
Competitors include other humorous calendars as well as poetry,
phi-
losophy, and recipe calendars (see e.g., Vanderstraeten 2001).
Since one
tears o a sheet every day, such a calendar is called a
scheurkalender
(scheuren means to tear [o ]). Van Straatens calendar is
called
note the rhymea zeurkalender (zeuren means to whine, to
complain).
Each of the 368 representations of the 2001 edition of the
calendar
(three extra for the first three days of the next year) consists
of a black-
and-white drawing of one or more people situated in a
recognizable set-
ting. Although the characters to some extent represent
stereotypes (the
beautiful girl, the elderly artist, the dull oce manager, etc.),
they
248 C. Forceville
-
are not caricatures. While the humor in Van Straatens work is
not of the
absurd kind that requires a mental turnaround from one script to
another
(as, for instance, in the Gary Larson cartoons serving as
examples in
Smith 1996), there is an underlying tension that qualifies as a
script
opposition (Attardo 2001: 22). This opposition can be formulated
as
the tension between the ways in which things should be properly
said or
done, or simply be, in an ideal world, and the sordid, imperfect
and
disappointing ways in which they actually turn out in Van
Straatens
universe. There is usually a clearly identifiable target
(Attardo 2001:
23) in each cartoon, since almost always somebodys positive
face
is harmedwhether the speakers own, the interlocutors, or a
third
partys. The knowledge resource situation (Attardo 2001: 22 et
passim)
is to be derived mainly from the pictorial part of the cartoons.
Typical
locations in Van Straatens sordid scenarios include chic
restaurants (bad
food, pompous behavior, lack of dining experience), bedrooms
(boring
sex, quick sex, unsatisfactory sex), the home (marital and
parent-child
conflicts), the oce (malingering, sexual harassment, tedium),
the school-
yard (humiliation, power play), the psychotherapists treatment
room (in-
security, miscommunication, erratic expectations), and the pub
(drunken-
ness, desperate flirtations).
Van Straatens cartoons depict a moment in time, and this
sensation of
frozen time is enhanced by the fact that he refrains from using
picto-
rial runes (Kennedy 1982: 600; see also Forceville 2005) such as
speed
and trajectory lines, which give at least a minimal visual
impression of
passing time.1 Moreover, given that the verbal texts invariably
consist of
single-speaker utterances, no narrative development and hence no
narra-
tive strategy (Attardo 2001: ibid.) might seem to be at stake.
However, a
Van Straaten cartoon often derives its humor from a strong
suggestion of
what happened in the seconds, minutes or years before, or will
or might
happen in the seconds, minutes or years ahead.
The text below each drawing is invariably a short utterance
produced
by a character in the drawing; hence the text is never a comment
by
some narrator outside of the story (Bals external narrator,
1997: 22).
There is a single speaker only. While the utterances produced by
Van
Straatens characters are usually not verbally spectacular, and
do not
easily fit Attardos punch and jab lines (funny lines that do not
occur in
segment-final or text-final positions, see Attardo 2001: 29),
the humor
of the cartoons depends partly upon the right word in the right
place, as
well as upon such elusive concepts as rhythm and a good ear for
oral
Addressing an audience in cartoons 249
-
languagemuch as in the purely verbal jokes and humorous
narratives
that Attardo discusses.
To the extent that the text helps clarify, and determine the
interpreta-
tions of, elements in the picture, such as who is talking and
what the
relations between people are, the text, in Barthes sense,
anchors the
picture (Barthes 1986: 28). But to the extent that the humorous
nature of
the representation is a result of combining picture and text,
and would be
lost if either of them were eliminated, Van Straatens texts
relay the
pictures (ibid.). Although it seems that there is usually a
preferred reading
of a cartoon, not all viewers necessarily process the cartoon in
exactly the
same manner. In the next section I will explore this dimension
of Van
Straatens work with reference to relevance theory (Sperber and
Wilson
1995; Wilson and Sperber 2004).
3. A joke is relevant to an individual (or it isnt)
The presenter of a joke is no dierent from the communicator of a
mes-
sage in aiming, in Sperber and Wilsons (henceforward: S&W)
words, at
optimal relevance. This means that she (I will follow S&Ws
practice to
make communicators female and addressees male) intends the
addressee
of the joke to understand it without expending undue energy.
That is,
the message must contain sucient information, conform to
conventional
ways of address, etc. for the addressee to process it, but
ideally no more
than that. In order to achieve this, the sender of the message
makes an
assessment of what the addressee probably already knows, or can
easily
access by being (made) perceptually aware of his environment, in
order
not to overload the message itself with superfluous
information.
Jokes, like messages, always come with the presumption of
rele-
vance, that is, they are presented by the joker to her
addressees with the
presupposition that it will be worth their while to pay
attention and try to
understand. Note that what should count as undue energy in
jokes,
however, may structurally dier from what counts as such in
ordinary
communication inasmuch as a joke always deliberately leaves
something
impliedthis something to be cognitively accessed by the
addressee.
Indeed, the success of a joke crucially hinges upon the
addressee autono-
mously grasping this piece of information; else the jokester has
to explain
this part and thus spoil the joke. So, even without quantifying
what is
undue energy, more eort is required for the uptake of a joke
than for
250 C. Forceville
-
the processing of a piece of ordinary information. This leaves
uninvali-
dated that humor is governed by the presumption of relevance,
and that
the viewer will stop processing at the first interpretation of a
joke he hits
upon that strikes him as relevant (a key element in S&Ws
theory), in the
belief that the jokester will have provided him with the best
possible stim-
ulus under the circumstances (see S&W 1995: 168169)
compatible with
the communicators abilities and preferences (W&S 2004: 612).
As Yus
puts it: Humorists may be willing to keep relevant information
to
themselves, be obscure, be ambiguous, etc. for the sake of
pursuing the
creation of humorous eects, but the principle of relevance
invariably
applies to both humorous and non-humorous discourse (2003:
1298).
A message achieves relevance if the addressee, combining the
message
with assumptions already present in his cognitive environment,
decides
(i) to adopt one or more new assumptions; (ii) to abandon old
assump-
tions in favor of assumptions just communicated; (iii) to
strengthen old
assumptions; or (iv) to weaken old assumptions. The degree of
relevance
depends partly on the nature of the cognitive eects (if you just
heard you
won $1 million they are bigger than when you heard the coee is
ready),
partly on the eort needed to derive the eects: the more eort
needed for
a given eect, the less relevance.
S&W distinguish three subtasks in the comprehension
process:
a. Constructing an appropriate hypothesis about explicit content
(ex-
plicatures) via decoding, disambiguation, reference resolution,
and
other pragmatic enrichment procedures.
b. Constructing an appropriate hypothesis about the intended
contex-
tual assumptions (implicated premises).
c. Constructing an appropriate hypothesis about the intended
contex-
tual implications (implicated conclusions) (W&S 2004:
615).
For present purposes, two concepts in S&Ws (1995) Relevance
Theory
model are specifically pertinent: (1) the claim that relevance
is always
relevance to an individual (S&W 1995: 142 ); and (2) the
distinction be-
tween strong and weak communication (S&W 1995: 176 ). Both
con-
cepts shed light on the issue of multiple readings of cartoons
that Dines
exhorts humor scholars to address in their research (1995: 247).
To illus-
trate (1), consider the following: if Mary wants her husband
Peter to fetch
her the scissors, she is optimally relevant to him if she shouts
to him:
Can you get me the scissors, please? since she knows he knows
where
they are. To a first-time visitor Mary is more likely to shout
something
Addressing an audience in cartoons 251
-
like, Can you get me the scissors, please? They are in the
leftmost
drawer. Since the visitor would not know where they are, she
achieves
relevance by forcing him to expend slightly extra eort (he needs
to pro-
cess not only can you get me the scissors, please? but also they
are in
the leftmost drawer). The point here is that in order to be
optimally rel-
evant a communicator varies the nature of her stimulus,
depending on
what background knowledge she takes her addressee to
possess.
A second important dimension of S&Ws theory is the
distinction be-
tween strong and weak communication. A communicator can choose
a
very explicit stimulus to achieve a cognitive eect in her
audience (often
in turn leading to some sort of behavior following that
cognitive eect),
such as (i) Shut that window! or a very indirect one, such as
(ii) It is
getting a bit chilly in here. In the case of (i), communication,
in S&Ws
terminology, is strong: the message has, given the
circumstances, clearly a
single interpretation; in the case of (ii), communication is
weak: it is a hint
rather than a command or a request, although the intended
cognitive
eect and the desired behavior may be the same. Strong and weak
com-
munication form no either/or pair but are extremes on a
continuum. The
dierence between strong and weak communication has two
important
consequences. First, the more strongly an assumption is
communicated,
the more the responsibility for its actual derivation rests with
the commu-
nicator; the more weakly it is communicated, the more the
responsibility
for its actual derivation rests with the addressee (S&W
1995: 235). Some-
one shouting Close the window! can hardly deny she conveys her
wish
to have the window closed, whereas someone saying Its getting a
bit
chilly in here canupon you kindly closing the windoweasily
disso-
ciate herself from what you did. She might have wanted you to
turn o
the air conditioner instead, or bring her a blanketor simply to
strike
up a conversation. Though you may feel somewhat oended if
your
friendly action is not appreciated, the implicature (Any
assumption
communicated, but not explicitly so, is implicitly communicated:
it is an
implicature, S&W 1995: 182, italics in original) was derived
by you
largely on your own responsibility.
Second, a communicator who chooses weak over strong commu-
nication may create a degree of accidental or deliberate
ambiguity.
S&W discuss the following example: the mediocre composer
Salieri asks
Mozart what he thinks of his, Salieris, music, upon which the
genius
shrewdly replies, I didnt think such music was possible (S&W
1987:
751). Moreover, a communicator indulging in weak
communication
252 C. Forceville
-
aims not necessarily at a single interpretation, but at a range
of inter-
pretations that can coexist. S&W propose the name poetic
eects for
such a situation (S&W 1995: 217; see also Pilkington
2000).
In applying relevance theory to pictorial metaphors in print
adver-
tisements and billboards, I proposed four points of attention
(Force-
ville 1996: 99104) which are no less pertinent to Van Straatens
mass-
communicated cartoons.
Non-co-presence in time. Misunderstandings in mass-medial
com-
munication, including cartoons, are not instantly reparable as
this is
possible in on-line, live conversation between two
interlocutors. Another
consequence of the time gap often inhering in mass-communication
is
that the collective cognitive environment of the audience may
have
changed due to intervening events (say, a war in the Middle
East, the out-
break of a global epidemic disease, a political murder, or a
lasting spate
of exceptionally hot or cold weather) in a way that potentially
aects the
uptake of a cartoon. This is all the more pertinent here since
the cartoons
in the Zeurkalender are conceived and printed long before they
are seen
and enjoyed.
Number of communicators involved. The cartoons have a multitude
of
individual addressees, with widely dierent cognitive
environments.
Clearly, Van Straaten steers his audience into a certain
direction by
making salient certain elements, but idiosyncrasies in the
cognitive envi-
ronment of addressees knowledge and experiences could lead to
interpre-
tations that dier between individuals.
Multimodal character of Van Straatens jokes. While the majority
of
S&Ws examples exemplify verbal utterances, Van Straatens
cartoons
feature a mixture of verbal and pictorial information. Since
non-verbal
communication tends to be less explicit than verbal
communication, the
pictorial component in the cartoons may to some extent lead to
dierent
inference processes in dierent viewers.
Ambiguity of the textual part of the cartoon. In most cases, the
textual
part of the Van Straaten cartoons does not appear to aim at
ambiguity
and vagueness in the manner that many advertising texts do (see
e.g.,
Leech 1966: 161; Tanaka 1994: 36; Hermeren 1999: 79 et passim),
and
other cartoons as well. The texts are seldom characterized by
puns or
other linguistic virtuosities. Indeed, the fact that most of
them are not
funny or remarkable when divorced from the pictures (and vice
versa) tes-
tifies to their ordinariness. While the texts in the cartoons
thus do not as a
rule contain a disjunctor (a word or phrase that, in jokes, is
used in two
Addressing an audience in cartoons 253
-
senses, Attardo 2001: 18), forcing the interpreter to revise his
earlier
understanding of the situation, they may be ambiguous in less
spectacu-
lar ways. The viewer often has to infer the broader situation
for which
the current cartoon is the cue, which leaves room for an
idiosyncratic
interpretation.
From a relevance-oriented perspective what matters is that all
four fea-
tures favor the triggering of weak implicatures which, as we saw
shift the
responsibility for their derivation to the addressee. The use of
implica-
tures also has another consequence: The more information [the
commu-
nicator] leaves implicit, the greater the degree of mutual
understanding
she makes it manifest that she takes to exist between her and
her hearer
(S&W 1995: 218). That is, by the use of implicatures, the
communicator
can aim for intimacy (cf. Cohen 1979: 7).
4. The cognitive environment of Van Straatens audience
I will now argue that Van Straatens calendar cartoons activate
time,
place, and genre-related assumptions in the cognitive
environment of the
audience that steer interpretations, these assumptions being
mutually
manifest to sender and addressees. To demonstrate that reception
con-
ditions sometimes do make a dierence, I will here focus on 12
calendar
cartoons whose success depends partly on (a) the spatiotemporal
circum-
stances under which they are accessed by their audience; and (b)
the
audience awareness of Peters Zeurkalenders generic conventions.
Let
me first briefly discuss these factors.
4.1. Place
Where does a viewer access the Zeurkalender? Humorous tear-o
calen-
dars typically hang in peoples homes rather than at work.
Moreover,
within the home, the toilet is a pet location, as various
sources acknowl-
edge. Thus one reviewer prefers the Zeurkalender over glossy
calendars,
explaining sitting on the toilet and looking at a beautiful
photo or
drawing is nice, but being oered a text or other type of message
every
day is nicer (van Garderen 1999: s.n.), and another begins her
review
of the Zeurkalender with the line Peter van Straatens
Zeurkalender
isbesides paper and lavatory brusha steady attribute
[gevestigde
254 C. Forceville
-
waarde] on many Flemish and Dutch toilets (Vanderstraeten 2001:
47).
Another review starts Its always a good Santa Claus present: a
tear-o
calendar for the smallest room (Ruesink 2002: s.n.). Van
Straaten him-
self alludes to the location by choosing as cover for the
Zeurkalender 2001
a picture with a toilet (Figure 2). It is to be noted that the
location within
the toilet may favor (often standing) men or (invariably
sitting) women (I
owe this observation to Judith Tromp). Another aspect of place
is that
the cartoons are typically directed at a Dutch-speaking
audience, which
means that some specifically Dutch (sub)cultural models and
schemata
are triggered.
4.2. Time
Three dimensions of time are potentially significant in the
cartoons under
discussion: time of the day, day of the week, period in the
year. If the cal-
endar indeed hangs on the toilet, each cartoon is typically seen
when one
goes therehence typically alonebefore leaving for work or
embark-
ing on other daytime activities. But even if the calendar hangs
elsewhere a
sheet is torn o early rather than late in the day.
The day in the year and the day of the week can be objectively
estab-
lished, since they are indicated on the calendar (see Figure 1).
As to the
seasons, these evoke many assumptions, some culturally based,
such as
that winter, in Holland, is prototypically cold and snowy, the
days are
short and the nights are long, and if it freezes long enough the
Elfsteden-
tocht, the legendary ice-skating contest, can be organized. In
spring the
life cycle starts again and new plans are made. Summer is
supposed to
be hot, the season of relaxation, men and women parade in
bathing suits
on beaches or sweat under their sheets at home. In September the
holi-
days are over, people must get back to work or school, autumnal
leaves
begin to fall, winter is approaching, etc.
Anniversaries and other festive days have their own
connotations:
at Christmas time one entertains family and friends, New Years
Eve
has its traditional doughnut balls and apple turnovers as well
as fire-
works, champagne toasts to the new year, and TV highlights of
the one
just over. On April 30 the Queens birthday is celebrated across
the
country . . . . All or most of these assumptions (and many more)
are la-
tently present in the cognitive environment of Van Straatens
audience,
ready to be activated by his cartoons.
Addressing an audience in cartoons 255
-
To a lesser degree this holds for the days of the week. After a
weekend
of relaxation and, often, abundant food and drink, people on
Monday go
back to work or school. By contrast, Friday is the last day of
work, and
the weekend is eagerly awaited. Saturday and Sunday are the days
of lei-
sure, entertainment, sleeping in, sex and churchgoing. Indeed,
the Mon-
days and Saturdays are particularly marked in Peters
Zeurkalender.
Mondays have oce or back to school cartoons (41 out of 53 on
a
conservative count in the 2001 edition), while Saturdays in 47
out of 53
cases show or allude to sexual activity (and 41 of these 47
pictures feature
a bed).
4.3. Genre
It is dicult to overestimate the role of genre in the
interpretation of rep-
resentations of whatever kind. We tend to forget it, because we
are almost
always aware of the genre to which a representation facing us
belongs
and thus automatically activate the conventions that govern
that
genres interpretations.
Siegfried Schmidt claims that literary texts typically create
expectations
geared toward the maximization of aesthetic eects and polyvalent
mean-
ings, whereas for instance front page newspaper articles, by
contrast,
create expectations geared toward the representation of facts
and mono-
valent meanings (Schmidt 1991). Zwaan (1993) en Steen (1994)
found
in experiments that presenting a verbal text as literary or
non-literary
led to systematically dierent uptake among subjects, while
Forceville
(1999) showed that students confronted with a photograph
presented as
part of an advertisement came up with dierent interpretations
from
those who were told about the same photograph that it was an
artistic
picture.
The very fact that we are so good at picking up genre clues
also
entails risks. Altman (1999) emphasizes that institutional
groups (in the
case of film for instance: Hollywood studios, critics, theatre
owners,
fans) have dierent interests in the attribution of a genre to a
speci-
fic text. Consequently groups may, for reasons that serve their
specific
interest, impose a genre on a text. The importance of
genre-attribu-
tion is underlined by Fokkema and Ibsch who, discussing the
genre
of literature with reference to Schmidts work on conventions,
state
that
256 C. Forceville
-
not the structure of literary texts, but the capability and
willingness of hu-man beings to agree upon a rule of conduct (a
convention) are the decisivefactor in reading a text as a literary
textalthough, admittedly, this conventionis usually activated by
textual and/or contextual signals (Fokkema and Ibsch2000: 22).
As to the genre of Van Straaten cartoons, the viewer is
predisposed to be
on the lookout for jokes that are weary, wry, ironic, and mildly
savage,
rather than good-natured, downright bitter, or truly
sadistic.
5. Twelve cartoons in Peters Zeurkalender 2001
In this section 12 cartoons from Peters Zeurkalender 2001 will
be dis-
cussed which have been selected on the basis of their
suitability to
demonstrate the impact of spatiotemporal access and
genre-awareness
on interpretation. The cartoons have been reproduced here in
their
original form, except for one thing: I have deleted from the
original
pictures the day of the week and the date that in the original
calendar
sheets appear above the pictures (except in Figure 1, so as to
give one
cartoon in its original form). The reason for this is that I
want to
enable the readers of the present article to assess for
themselves at
least the contribution of the day and date of access to
interpretation
(place and genre conventions are not so easy to manipulate). My
point
is not that without this awareness the cartoons are no longer
com-
prehensible and/or funny, but that if the three reception
factors under
scrutiny are allowed full play, this provides aspects of humor
not ac-
cessible to those unaware of them.2 In order to emphasize this,
I will
draw on S&Ws already discussed distinction between
explicatures, im-
plicated premises, and implicated conclusions, whereby the focus
will
be on those premises and conclusions that pertain to time,
place, and
genre.
Since the analyses are all mine, I will undoubtedly postulate
premises
and derive implicatures that other readers will not accesssimply
be-
cause their cognitive environments are no copies of mineas well
as
vice versa. Nonetheless I will claim that inasmuch as I share a
consider-
able part of the cognitive environment with other (Dutch)
viewers of Van
Straatens cartoons, while they may not always fully share my
interpreta-
tions they at least will accept them as valid.
Addressing an audience in cartoons 257
-
5.1. Figure 1
Word and image explicatures: An elderly woman watches an
elderly
man, probably her husband, exercising with weights, saying, Ill
miss it,
Jan. Via explicature enrichment, it is understood as referring
to the
mans belly.
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: The date is
5
January. Traditionally in Holland, as in other countries, at the
beginning
of a new year people fervently announce they are going to better
their
lives, losing weight being among the more popular good
intentions.
Implicated conclusions available by access to
time/place/genre:
The man is not just exercising to lose weight; he has made the
traditional
New Year resolve to lose weight. Since New Year intentions tend
to be
abandoned fairly soon, the wifes professed nostalgia for her
husbands
fat belly invites the viewer not only to savor the humorous
notion that a
wife could miss her husbands sagging belly, but in addition to
ponder the
naivety, or irony, of her comment.
5.2. Figure 2
Word and image explicatures: Visible through a half open toilet
door is
a woman, wiping herself, saying Half-way through January and
that
calendar is already finished!
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: The
Zeurka-
lender often hangs in peoples toilets and is naturally supposed
to last an
entire year. The date is 16 January.
Implicated conclusions available by access to
time/place/genre:
This self-referential cartoon suggests that people, many of whom
are on
the toilet when they see the cartoon, might use the calendar as
toilet
paper. Van Straaten thus mocks his own calendar in line with the
spirit
of deflating humor that permeates the calendar.
5.3. Figure 3
Word and image explicatures: A woman sits with her
psychotherapist
(cues: the notebook plus pencil in the lap of the woman on the
left and
258 C. Forceville
-
Figure 1. Ill miss it, Jan.
Addressing an audience in cartoons 259
-
Figure 2. Halfway through January and that calendar is already
finished!
260 C. Forceville
-
Figure 3. I think its about time I became simply happy.
Addressing an audience in cartoons 261
-
the tissue box) and accusingly (?) says, I think its about time
I became
simply happy.
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: The
date,
Wednesday 17 January, is not relevant here, but the place of
access favors
the activation of Dutch schemata in the processing of the
text.
Implicated conclusions available by access to
time/place/genre:
The phrase domweg gelukkig (literally: dumbly happy) makes
extra
implicatures accessible to those viewers who happen to know and
remem-
ber the often anthologized line Domweg gelukkig in de
Dapperstraat
(Dumbly happy in the Dapper street,) by the Dutch poet J. C.
Bloem,
first published in 1947. To those viewers, the patients choice
of phrase
may suggest, for instance, that she consciously or unconsciously
rehashes
a cultural cliche, or inadvertently cites a line written by a
poet whose work
is not particularly well-known for his happy or positive
attitude to life.
5.4. Figure 4
Word and image explicatures: an elderly woman in net stockings
sit-
ting at a table in a pub, asks a man slumped at the bar, Nice,
wasnt it,
last night . . . Did you really mean what you said to me?
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: The day is
a
Sunday, so last night was, in Van Straatens universe, sex
night.
Implicated conclusions available by access to time/place/genre:
The
man, carried away in sexual playor in an attempt to seduce
the
womansaid he loved her, or thought her beautiful, or wanted
to
marry her.
5.5. Figure 5
Word and image explicatures: a man and a woman in fur coats
walk
past a drunkard, sleeping in a doorway. He says, What about it?
He is
having a nice lie-in.
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: The day is
a
Sunday, and the couples fur coats suggest they may be going to,
or have
come from, church.
262 C. Forceville
-
Figure 4. Nice, wasnt it, last night . . . Did you really mean
what you said to me?
Addressing an audience in cartoons 263
-
Figure 5. What about it? He is having a nice lie-in.
264 C. Forceville
-
Implicated conclusions available by access to
time/place/genre:
Church-going is meant to make one more charitable toward ones
fellow
mans suering, particularly in cold January, but instead the
speaker ca-
sually waves away an observation that might cause him to feel
guilt about
not doing anything for this particular man.
5.6. Figure 6
Word and image explicatures: A man in jacket and wearing a bow
tie
has fallen apparently drunk on the marital bed, while his wife
asks him,
Was Harry Mulisch there?
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: The date is
14
March. There refers to the annual Boekenbal, the most
prestigious and
notorious party in the Dutch literary world; Harry Mulisch is
Hollands
most famous living writer. Note that Van Straaten could rely on
press
publicity about the party around this time (and for good measure
he
Figure 6. Was Harry Mulisch there?
Addressing an audience in cartoons 265
-
throws in a card with Boekenbal on it, partly visible in the
left hand
bottom corner).
Implicated conclusions available by access to
time/place/genre:
The wife naively wants to know whether her husband met the
famous
Harry Mulisch, and seems unaware, unlike the viewer, of the
Boekenbals
reputation as an occasion for excessive drinking and outrageous
behavior.
5.7. Figure 7
Word and image explicatures: Flabbergasted, a man looks at his
wife
who lies on the bed crying her heart out, saying, O dear, and I
thought
youd like it enormously.
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: It is April
1,
Fools day, which is traditionally a day on which people are
allowed to
pull one anothers legs in good-natured ways.
Implicated conclusions available by access to time/place/genre:
On
another day, it could refer to any action performed by the man,
and
the cartoon would simply portray another typical Van Straaten
situation
in which a husband and wife are not on the same wavelength.
Today the
date suggests that it refers to a joke the husband honestly
thought
would amuse his wife, making their misunderstanding even more
wryly
funny.
5.8. Figure 8
Word and image explicatures: A man hugs an apparently
younger
woman next to a tree and a river, saying, All right pussycat . .
. . As
soon as Miriam is ready for it, Im going to divorce her. Thanks
to
encyclopaedic knowledge we are aware that Miriam is the mans
wife.
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: It is Friday
the
thirteenth, the proverbially unlucky day.
Implicated conclusions available by access to
time/place/genre:
Generic knowledge of Van Straatens humor does not incline us to
believe
that the man is ever going to leave his wife for his young
lover, but the
day and date further substantiate this suspicion.
266 C. Forceville
-
Figure 7. O dear, and I thought youd like it enormously.
Addressing an audience in cartoons 267
-
Figure 8. All right, pussycat . . . . As soon as Miriam is ready
for it I am going to divorceher.
268 C. Forceville
-
5.9. Figure 9
Word and image explicatures: A man toasts an elderly woman
who
probably just entered the pub and says, My treat, beauty.
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: The date
is
Monday April 30, which is the birthday of the Dutch queen
Beatrix
mother, Princess Juliana (who died in 2004). This is
Koninginnedag, the
day on which the Queens birthday has for decades been
celebrated
nation-wide in Holland, even during Beatrix reign.
Implicated conclusions available by access to
time/place/genre:
Without the date, and its connotations, the woman might have
been the
mans wife, come to fetch him. But given the date many viewers
will be
alerted to the resemblance between the woman and princess
Juliana. Con-
sequently, they may entertain weak implicatures such as that
Juliana
would frequent ordinary pubs, or drink beer with an elderly,
possibly
drunk man; or they may see the resemblance as a reinforcement of
the
widely shared idea of Juliana as an everyday woman (an image
which
she herself relished and promoted).
5.10. Figure 10
Word and image explicatures: A young man brings out a tray
with
drinks to an outdoor terrace where a number of heartily laughing
elderly
people are gathered around a table, saying, Are you still
talking about
the war?
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: The date is
May
4, which is the day the victims of WW II are ocially
commemorated
nation-wide in Holland.
Implicated conclusions available by access to
time/place/genre:
While laughter about the war seems unsuitable anyway, it is
especially in-
appropriate on this day, and may suggest irreverence for the
dead or hint
that the war was for many people not at all so bad a period as
is generally
thought.
Addressing an audience in cartoons 269
-
Figure 9. My treat, beauty.
270 C. Forceville
-
Figure 10. Are you still talking about the war?
Addressing an audience in cartoons 271
-
5.11. Figure 11
Word and image explicatures: Several people are sitting at a
restaurant
table. One woman looks at her plate in disgust, saying Bah, what
a scary
animal! Did I order that?
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: The date is
Oc-
tober 4, National pets day in Holland.
Implicated conclusions available by access to time/place/genre:
A
joke about eating animals (a lobster?) is particularly daring on
the one
day in the year people are supposed to be extra kind to
them.
5.12. Figure 12
Word and image explicatures: A woman looks down on the street
from
an upper story window, addressing a lonely man, standing in the
dark,
who looks up at her, saying, Sorry Jan, tonight doesnt suit me
very
well. Another time, OK?
Implicated premises pertaining to time/place/genre: It is
December
24, Christmas Eve.
Implicated conclusions available by access to
time/place/genre:
Invitations for festivities on Christmas Eve are usually planned
long in
advance. A man who casually drops by a woman on this evening
for
what, considering the Zeurkalenders generic conventions, is no
doubt
casual sex, must be a particularly desperate or sad case.
6. Conclusions
A number of Peter Van Straatens cartoons have been shown to owe
part
of their meaning potential to three specific aspects of context:
their time
and place of access, and their generic conventions. In this
manner I have
made a case for the impact of generalizable extra-textual
factors aecting
the interpretation of cartoons. These three interconnected
aspects have
been formulated in terms of implicated premises; the potential
extra
interpretations thus made available have been formulated in
terms of
implicated conclusions (W&S 2004). Sperber and Wilsons key
idea that
272 C. Forceville
-
Figure 11. Bah, what a scary animal! Did I order that?
Addressing an audience in cartoons 273
-
Figure 12. Sorry Jan, tonight doesnt suit me very well. Another
time, OK?
274 C. Forceville
-
relevance is always relevance to an individual is demonstrated
to func-
tion in mass-medial communication no less than in face-to-face
com-
munication and joke-telling. Any dierences in interpretation
among
individual viewers that arise will not only depend on how
text-internal
cues (i.e., the picture and the utterance underneath it) are
understood,
but also on which implicated time, place, and genre-based
premises are
activated. Somebody who does not recognize the line from the
poet
Bloem (Figure 3) will miss part of the joke, just as somebody
who does
not recognize Juliana (Figure 6) will. And a viewer aware of Van
Straa-
tens monday work joke convention may derive additional humorfrom
Figure 6, the Royal family traditionally being on heavy
ceremonial
duty on this particular day.
Assuming that the cognitive eect Van Straaten wants to bring
about
in his audience is a smile or a laugh, we have to conclude that
the extra-
textual factors discussed here sometimes lead to the
introduction of as-
sumptions in the cognitive environment of the audience, and
sometimes
to their strengthening (S&W 1995: 108 ). The date in Figure
6 (Fools
day) is necessary for the explicature enrichment of it to joke,
and in
Figure 12 (Pets day) the day adds an assumption (this is the one
day of
the year one is extra kind to animals) not available textually.
Hence in
these two examples relevant assumptions are introduced. In other
car-
toons the extra-textual factors strengthen rather than introduce
assump-
tions: Laughing about the war is inappropriate, laughing about
the war
on May 4 is excessively inappropriate (Figure 10). Our suspicion
that
the man in Figure 8 will never leave his wife Miriam is
strengthened,
not introduced, by the date Friday the 13th (and possibly by
generic
expectations).
Sperber and Wilsons concept of poetic eects is pertinent in
how
Van Straatens cartoons achieve relevance. Once an assumption
has
been triggered, viewers may, at their own responsibility, add
further
assumptions building on it, and hence derive more weak
implicatures.
The word dumbly (Figure 3) to some viewers perhaps suggests
an
implicit contrast with the dicult, smart way of becoming happy
at a
psychotherapist i.e., through psychoanalysis. As soon as a
viewer has
recognized Juliana in Figure 6 he can entertain all sorts of
assumptions
(ranging from: the former queen got lost in a pub; she prefers
to
celebrate her birthday in an ordinary pub rather than with the
rest of
the Royal family; Juliana is not recognized by one of her
subjects;
the queen is not amused ) which in turn can give rise to
further
Addressing an audience in cartoons 275
-
cognitive eects. In this way cartoons interpretations can vary
per
individual.
I see as one of the strengths of the findings presented here
that they
are to some extent experimentally testable, and hence verifiable
and falsi-
fiable. While the fact that experiments require strongly
controlled con-
ditions (such as that subjects answer questions or perform tasks
in a
laboratory situation) inevitably aects the interpretations when
compared
with how they would have occurred under natural circumstances
(such as
stumbling, barely awake, to the toilet and grimace at Peters
cartoon-of-
the-day), certain variables can be controlled. Particularly the
impact of
time can be empirically investigated, since it is easily
manipulable. In
each case where, as I have proposed, a specific day of the week
(Monday,
Saturday, Sunday) and/or a specific date (Friday the 13th; the
fourth of
May; Christmas Eve) supplies extra premises, and hence
potentially leads
to more implicatures, this information can in a control group
either be
omitted, or changed to an irrelevant day or date. The impact of
place is
conveniently testable inasmuch as the place of access is
Holland: by
showing a number of complete cartoons, i.e., including days and
dates
(e.g., 4 May and 30 April) both to a Dutch audience and (with
apt trans-
lations) to a non-Dutch audience, this impact could be measured.
The
role of generic conventions in the interpretation process could
be tested
by showing a number of Van Straaten cartoons to one group of
(Dutch)
subjects familiar with his work, and another group who has never
seen it,
allowing for predictions such as that the first group would more
quickly
recognize the two women in Figure 3 as a therapist and her
client than
the second group; or that more people in the first than in the
second
group will say that the man in Figure 8 will not divorce his
wife. Such
researchwhich can be extended to other comedy genres
(newspaper
cartoons, stand-up comedy, pornographic jokes on internet
sites)also
brings the examination of jokes and cartoons into the broader
realm of
cognition studies.
University of Amsterdam
Notes
Correspondence address: [email protected] am indebted to
Harmonie publishers, especially Marielle Boukens and Elsbeth Louis,
forproviding me with an intact copy of Peters Zeurkalender 2001 and
to Peter van Straaten
276 C. Forceville
-
for permission to reprint his cartoons. I thank Etienne
Forceville and Tom van Klingeren fortechnical help with the
pictures. All translations from Dutch (in Van Straatens cartoons
andDutch secondary sources) are mine. I have benefited from
comments by Kurt Feyaerts,Geert Brone, two anonymous peer
reviewers, and the editor-in-chief of Humor on earlierdrafts of
this paper. A version of the paper was presented at the
international Semiotics con-ference at Lumie`re II University,
Lyon, France, July 2004.1. Smith (1996) refers to various subtypes
of pictorial runes, such as waftaroms (smell
lines), hites, vites, and dites (lines indicating horizontal,
vertical and diagonal direc-tion of movement respectively), and
agitrons, lines around a body or body part sug-gesting motion.
2. Since Van Straaten regularly collects his best cartoons,
readers could indeed comeacross the same cartoons in one of his
books without the days and dates (for instance,at least seven
cartoons from Peters Zeurkalender (2001) also occur in Van
Straaten(2001).
References
Altman, Rick1999 Film/Genre. London: British Film Institute.
Attardo, Salvatore2001 Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic
Analysis. Berlin/New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.Bal, Mieke
1997 Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2nd ed. Toronto:
University ofToronto Press.
Barthes, Roland1986[1964]
Rhetoric of the image. In Barthes, Roland, The Responsibility of
Forms.Trans. by Richard Howard. Oxford: Blackwell, 2140.
Cohen, Ted1979 Metaphor and the cultivation of intimacy. In
Sacks, Sheldon (ed.), On
Metaphor. London: University of Chicago Press, 110.Dines,
Gail
1995 Toward a critical sociological analysis of cartoons. Humor:
InternationalJournal of Humor Research 8 (3), 237255.
Fokkema, Douwe, and Elrud Ibsch2000 Knowledge and Commitment: A
Problem-Oriented Approach to Literary
Studies. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.Forceville,
Charles
1996 Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. London/New York:
Routledge.1999 Art or ad? The eect of genre-attribution on the
interpretation of images.
SPIEL 18 (2), 279300.2005 Visual representations of the
Idealized Cognitive Model of anger in the
Asterix album La Zizanie. Journal of Pragmatics 37 (1),
6988.Hermeren, Lars
1999 English for Sale: A Study of the Language of Advertising.
Lund: Lund Uni-versity Press.
Kennedy, John M.1982 Metaphor in pictures. Perception 11,
589605.
Addressing an audience in cartoons 277
-
Leech, Georey N.1966 English in Advertising: A Linguistic Study
of Advertising in Great Britain.
London: Longman.Pilkington, Adrian
2000 Poetic Eects. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.Ruesink, Martin
2002 Elke dag een blaadje [A sheet for every dayReview of
various tear-ocalendars.] BN/De Stem 23 November 2002, s.n.
Schmidt, Siegfried J.1991 Literary systems as self-organizing
systems. In Ibsch, Elrud, Dick Schram,
and Gerard Steen (eds.), Empirical Studies of Literature.
Amsterdam/Atlanta GA: Rodopi, 413424.
Smith, Ken1996 Laughing at the way we see: The role of visual
organizing principles in car-
toon humor. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 9
(1), 1938.Sperber, Deirdre, and Dan Wilson
1986 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford:
Blackwell.1987 Precis of Relevance: Communication and Cognition.
Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 10 (4), 697710 and 736751 (Authors response).1995
Relevance: Communication and Cognition, 2nd expanded ed.
Oxford:
Blackwell.Steen, Gerard
1994 Understanding Metaphor in Literature: An Empirical
Approach. London:Longman.
Tanaka, Keiko1994 Advertising Language: A Pragmatic Approach to
Advertisements in Britain
and Japan. London/New York: Routledge.Van Garderen, Fred
1999 Elke dag een glimlach [A smile for every day. Review of
Peters Zeurka-lender 2000] Nieuwsblad van het Noorden 8-10-99,
s.n.
Van Straaten, Peter2000 Peters Zeurkalender 2001. Amsterdam: De
Harmonie.2001 Mensen Onder Elkaar in Duizend-en-een Tekeningen.
Amsterdam: De
Harmonie.Vanderstraeten, Margot
2001 Scheurpapier [Review of various tear-o calendars] DSM
Magazine 20,November 2001, 4749.
Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber2004 Relevance Theory. In
Laurence R. Horn and Gregory Ward (eds.), The
Handbook of Pragmatics. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 607632.Yus,
Francisco
2003 Humor and the search for relevance. Journal of Pragmatics
35, 12951331.Zwaan, Rolf A.
1993 Aspects of Literary Comprehension: A Cognitive Approach.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
278 C. Forceville