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Vol. 13 No. 4 (2026)
International Multidisciplinary Journal for Research & Development

Articles

HUMOUR AS A PRAGMATIC AND STYLISTIC DEVICE IN MARK TWAIN’S “THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER” AND GAFUR GULOM’S “SHUM BOLA”

Published 2026-04-08

  • Adizova Madina Komilovna

Adizova Madina Komilovna
A Teacher at the Department of foreign languages and social science at Asia International University, Bukhara, Uzbekistan

Abstract

Humour occupies a central place in literary discourse not only as a means of entertainment, but also as a communicative and artistic instrument through which texts construct character, regulate social relations, and expose the contradictions of their cultural worlds. In linguistic research, humour is treated as a discourse phenomenon linked to pragmatics, irony, sarcasm, and conversational cooperation; Salvatore Attardo’s overview emphasizes that humor in language is studied through semantic, pragmatic, discourse, and interactional models, including the social functions of solidarity and exclusion.

Keywords

This research uses a comparative textual analysis supported by concepts from humor studies, pragmatics, and stylistics. The theoretical framework is drawn primarily from Attardo’s “Humor in Language,” which presents humor as a discourse-based and pragmatically significant phenomenon, and from broader theoretical resources such as The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, John Morreall’s Philosophy of Humor, and The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, especially its discussion of irony and humor in neo-Gricean pragmatic terms.

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References

  1. Attardo, Salvatore. Humor in Language. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford University Press, 2017. – Available at: https://academic.oup.com (Accessed 8 April 2026).
  2. Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain Project Online, University of California Press, 2017. – Available at: https://www.marktwainproject.org (Accessed 8 April 2026).
  3. Attardo, Salvatore, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor. Routledge, 2022. – Available at: https://www.routledge.com (Accessed 8 April 2026).
  4. Morreall, John. Philosophy of Humor. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2012. – Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu (Accessed 8 April 2026).
  5. Dynel, Marta. “Irony and Humor.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought. Cambridge University Press, 2023. – Available at: https://www.cambridge.org (Accessed 8 April 2026).
  6. Caron, James E. “The Arc of Mark Twain’s Satire, or Tom Sawyer the Moral Snag.” American Literary Realism, 2018. – Available at: https://www.jstor.org (Accessed 8 April 2026).
  7. Berdiyeva, Sitora. “Conveying Uzbek National Humor in ‘Shum Bola’ and Evaluating Its Translational Equivalence in English.” Modern Science and Research, 2025. – Available at: https://inlibrary.uz (Accessed 8 April 2026).
  8. Tojiboyeva, M. “Childhood and Social Criticism in Gafur Ghulam’s ‘Shum Bola’.” Journal of Multidisciplinary Sciences and Innovations, 2025. – Available at: https://inlibrary.uz (Accessed 8 April 2026).
  9. The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought. Cambridge University Press, 2023. – Available at: https://www.cambridge.org (Accessed 8 April 2026).
  10. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain Project Online: authoritative text with explanatory notes and original illustrations. University of California Press, 2017. – Available at: https://www.marktwainproject.org (Accessed 8 April 2026).

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