While linguistic creativity is an essential feature of those who actively create instances of verbally expressed humor (VEH), awareness of context is equally indispensable. Humor is primarily cognitive, so it follows that language is the lowest common denominator between speaker/writer and receiver, in order for a joke, pun, quip, etc., to achieve its goal and, above all, to be recognized as being humorous in intent. However, over and above familiarity with the formal rules of a common language between interactants, successfully transmitted humor is also context dependent. Context involves both adherence to pragmatic rules and the recipient’s sociocultural encyclopedia. And if these two elements were not sufficient, humor also embroils the issue of sense of humor and the moral closeness/distance of our recipient to the object of our humor in order for it to be considered benign.

Chapter 6 focuses on meaning and the interpretation of language. It contrasts the meaning of words, which we have stored in our mental lexicon and which we refer to as lexical meaning, with grammatical meaning, such as tense and aspect, gender, and number. There is also pragmatic meaning which depends on our knowledge of the world and contextual information. The difference between denotation, connotation, and reference are explored and basic concepts such a synonymy, antonymy, homonymy, etc. are introduced. Prototype theory is analyzed with appropriate examples. The chapter links to syntax by examining subcategorization, including transitive and intransitive verbs, and also thematic roles and their relation to syntactic structure. It presents the difference between sentences, propositions, and utterances, explaining in depth the importance of truth conditions. The chapter presents important concepts of entailment, contradiction, presupposition, and implicature and concludes with a brief discussion on theoretical frameworks such as cognitive and formal approaches to semantics.

Pragmatics refers to the way we understand and use language in social situations. For example, language choices we make express social roles and distance, power status, age, gender, and identity. These language choices have an effect on our interlocutors as we communicate. They can also lead to pragmatic mishaps, which are actually responsible for the majority of L2/Lx miscommunication (Bardovi-Harlig & Dörnyei, 1998). In order to set the stage for an interculturally oriented curriculum that emphasizes pragmatics, this chapter reviews research on L2 pragmatics, what it is, and how to teach it in the L2/Lx classroom. Speech acts, conventional expressions, Gricean maxims, politeness and impoliteness, as well as humor are included in the discussion. The chapter concludes with practical suggestions for teaching L2/Lx pragmatics with an intercultural communication orientation and sample language teaching activities.