• Omer Ibrahim Silby
• Prof. Jasim Mohammed Abbas (Ph.D.)

Abstract Stand-up comedy builds humour less through what is said than through what audiences are invited to infer, which places it at the intersection of stylistics and pragmatics. Previous research has largely examined humour through either a stylistic or a pragmatic lens, leaving the interaction between the two underexplored. This study investigates how foregrounding, in the sense developed by Leech and Short (2007), and conversational implicature, as theorised by Grice (1975), interact in the construction and interpretation of humour in British stand-up comedy. An integrated Stylistic-Pragmatic Model is proposed, synthesising foregrounding, the Cooperative Principle, Verschueren’s (1999) contextual adaptation, and Attardo’s (1994) incongruity-resolution into a single four-level analytical procedure. The model is applied to a purposive sample of fifteen excerpts drawn from three performances: Jimmy Carr’s Funny Business (2016), Ricky Gervais’s Humanity (2018), and a compilation of Milton Jones’s appearances on Live at the Apollo (BBC). Semantic deviation underlies the foregrounding in all fifteen excerpts, realised through a varied repertoire of devices; all four Gricean maxims occur as primary flouts, with Quality dominant in ten excerpts; and every implicature recovered is particularised rather than generalised. Interpretation is resolved chiefly in the mental and social worlds, with no excerpt resolved primarily in the physical world. The findings indicate that foregrounding and implicature function as ordered, interdependent stages rather than as parallel devices.

stylistics, pragmatics, foregrounding, conversational implicature, stand-up comedy, humour.

"Foregrounding and Conversational Implicature in British Stand-up Comedy: An Integrated Stylistic-Pragmatic Model.", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.13, Issue 10, page no.c837-c844, October-2026, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2610283.pdf

"Foregrounding and Conversational Implicature in British Stand-up Comedy: An Integrated Stylistic-Pragmatic Model.", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.13, Issue 10, page no. ppc837-c844, October-2026, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2610283.pdf