Context and Humor: Understanding Amul advertisements of India

Contextual knowledge is the most important element in understanding language. By contextual knowledge we mean both general knowledge and discourse knowledge i.e. knowledge of the situational context, background knowledge and the co-textual context [10]. In this paper, we will discuss the importance of contextual knowledge in understanding the humor present in the cartoon based Amul advertisements in India.In the process, we will analyze these advertisements and also see if humor is an effective tool for advertising and thereby, for marketing.These bilingual advertisements also expect the audience to have the appropriate linguistic knowledge which includes knowledge of English and Hindi vocabulary, morphology and syntax. Different techniques like punning, portmanteaus and parodies of popular proverbs, expressions, acronyms, famous dialogues, songs etc are employed to convey the message in a humorous way. The present study will concentrate on these linguistic cues and the required context for understanding wit and humor.