Language and Humor

American writer E. B. White once said: “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it“ (“E.B. White” 2013). Whether the following dissection also causes death is up to the reader, although the analyzing of a joke usually tends to take the fun out of it. But what made us laugh in the first place? What is humor (for)? Is it a relief of mental energy, is it to establish superiority, is it the incongruity between what we expect and experience, is it a little bit of everything? Or could it be none of the above? To clarify this matter, the humor of George Carlin will be analyzed exemplarily. George Denis Patrick Carlin (1937 - 2008) was an actor, writer, satirist, social critic and a comedian. He was posthumously awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, won five Grammy Awards and ranked second on Comedy Central’s list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time. Most importantly, this book aims to analyze his skilled use and awareness of the English language, whose peculiarities are featured more often than any other theme in his performances, to show whether Carlin could not only be seen as a comedian, but also as a linguist.