Wenn das Eis brüchig wird ... Der (gefährliche) Umgang mit festen Formen

Résumé En

Frozen forms, present as much in the system of language as in its use, surely assist expression. This article addresses two phenomena related to the “deviant” use of such forms: the play of double meaning of idioms (figuratively and literally), and ambiguities linked to the syntactic insertion of certain forms. This study draws on a specific corpus: the “Hohlspiegel” column of the weekly German magazine Der Spiegel, which includes the two types of deviances, playful and voluntary, or involuntary. The column exploits the image component of idioms or the ambiguity of syntactic structures. The “humorous aspect” comes from the interaction of ambiguity and incongruity, which are two salient features of the quoted utterances and ostensive stimuli used to catch the reader’s attention as well. Humor is a form of ostensive communication, based on the search of relevance, a basic feature of human cognition.