The article theoretically analyses the role of context and conversational implicature in interpreting English humorous texts. Drawing on Grice’s cooperative principle, script opposition theory and relevance theory, it proposes a stage model of humour comprehension. Types of context are classified and their function in generating implicature is shown.

humour, context, conversational implicature, cooperative principle, Gricean maxims, script opposition, relevance theory, English.

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