Playing with words : humour in the English language

 Content: Introduction  1.     The nature of humour  Principles of humour, Fun with words, Grammatical ambiguities, Transpositions, Mixing styles, Language in context, Dashing expectations, Clever connections, Logic, or lack thereof , Satire, parody, irony and sarcasm  2.     What do people joke about?  The cultural background, Beliefs and attitudes, Subject matter , Insults  3.     Where humour is to be found  Professional humour, Amateur humour  4.     Laughs in the lexicon  Compounds, Blends,  Prefixes and suffixes, Euphemism, Colourful language, Names  5.     Puns  Basic puns, Puns across word boundaries, Puns involving phrases, Cross-language puns, Substituting a similar word  6.        Grammatical ambiguities  Which part of speech?, Scope, Participial clauses, Co-ordination, Missing subjects and objects, Pronouns and other problems of reference  7.     Jokes  Stories, Books, Book titles, Shortest books, Blonde jokes, Cannibal jokes, Dumb jokes, Definitions, Generalisations and exhortations, Graffiti, Headlines, How many x\'s does it take to change a light globe?, Knock Knock!, Oxymora and other self-contradictions  Questions  Signs, Stickers, Tom Swifties, Wellerisms, What do you get if you cross x with y?, What is the difference between x and y?  8.     Wit  9.     Language in context  10.       Errors  Slips of the tongue and mispronunciation, Accents and lisps, Malapropisms, Misinterpretations, Misspellings, Mispunctuation, Grammar as she is spoke, Logic or lack thereof  11.      Rhymes  Nursery rhymes, Children\'s verses, Adult verses, Limericks, Clerihews, Verse today  12.       Beyond a joke