Linguistic humor comprehension of normal and language-impaired adolescents

The purpose of this study was to compare the ability of normally achieving and language-impaired adolescents to comprehend linguistic humor in a decontextualized situation. A classification scheme was used to describe 10 elements of linguistic humor. Riddles, jokes, and puns used as stimulus materials were classified and placed into one of the 10 linguistic categories. The categories were arranged according to the lexical, phonological, morphological, or syntactic element on which each humor item could be based. The two groups of subjects were 12 normally achieving and 12 language-impaired high school students from Grades 9-12. As expected, the language-impaired group had significantly poorer comprehension of the humor elements than the normally achieving group. Especially poor were their ability to grasp the nature of multimeaning words and their ability to segment and redefine phonological strings. The use of this classification scheme for developing strategies for assessment and intervention activities that involve linguistic-based humor is discussed.