On the discourse of satire (review)

How does satire fit into existing models of discourse? Paul Simpson attempts to deal with this issue in On the discourse of satire. Ch. 1 introduces the reader to the specific coverage that S has planned. He informs the reader and rationalizes the fact that approximately two-thirds of the material ‘is the controversial satirical publication, Private Eye magazine’ (11). He promises to not only contextualize passages used but also provide the larger context on which satirical humor is dependent. American readers are encouraged to think of The Onion to get a sense of satirical news writing.

In ‘Linguistic approaches to humor’, the author reviews the relevant studies and theories to find a place for his model, including a taxonomy of puns and a discussion of intentional vs. unintentional humor. He describes the general tenets of the semantic script theory of humor and the general theory of verbal humor to set up a description of his model later in the text. Sprinkled throughout are examples of humor to illustrate his points.

‘Literary-critical approaches to satirical humor’ attempts to deal with the author’s ‘dissatisfaction with the manner by which the concept of satire has been dealt with in literary criticism’ (47). The chapter’s foci are to identify the issues dealt with by critics, and then to explore how this work might fit into the current model, with special emphasis on irony.

In ‘Satire as discourse’ S begins to more formally discuss the general discursive characteristics of satire including not only a bottom-up but also a top-down approach (positioning satire as a higher-order form of discourse). He extends and modifies his previous SMUT (setting, method, uptake, and target) model and attempts to position satire with other discourse. It turns out that SMUT is good, but alas, we need more.

‘Ways of doing satire’ is less a comprehensive survey than it is an examination of some basic techniques of satirical design. One such issue addressed is the reconciliation within a model of satire with both humorous discourse that is not satire and non-humorous discourse itself. Ch. 6, ‘Satirical uptake’, shifts to ‘how and where the addressee is situated in the interactive event that is satirical discourse’ (154). Again, the author addresses the issue at different levels of analysis. ‘When satire goes wrong’ discusses, well, when satire goes wrong. S uses two descriptive examples to support his analysis: Alan Clark vs. the Evening Standard and Larry Flynt vs. the US District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

The final chapter, ‘Analysing satire as discourse’, is broken into subsections. The overview deals with the theoretical compatibility of other models. ‘Extension’ imagines a synthesis of different research traditions, and ‘Development’ raises the issue of generalization. Culture, longitudinal applications, and greater contextualization are considered in brief.

On the discourse of satire presents an in-depth treatment of satire as a special case not only of humor in general but of humor as discourse specifically as well. S accomplishes this with the aid of satirical examples throughout the text. This text should prove valuable to the specialist, though not enough foundation is provided for the more inexperienced ‘linguistic humorologist’. The less sophisticated reader will need to work from the reference list to grasp a full understanding of the present analysis.