Hiding in Plain Sight * Figure-Ground Reversals in Humour

The abstract to Reuven Tsur's paper promises a wide-ranging analysis of figure-ground organization in language and art by way of the great historical exponents of the phenomenon, and for the most part, this is precisely what Tsur delivers. By drawing on a wealth of examples, from Bach to Beckett, Tsur reminds us how deeply ingrained is the distinction between figure and ground in everything from wallpaper to Shakespearean sonnets. But Tsur's paper is more than a catalogue of pyrotechnical examples or an excuse for historical name-dropping, since he also surveys the underlying cognitive mechanisms to which the figure-ground distinction can apply itself, such as the system of embodied conceptual metaphors that cognitive linguists claim is central to human thought. Along the way, Tsur additionally reminds us, via Ehrenzweig (1965), that to understand the figure-ground phenomenon in terms of psychological gestalts, one must also consider the role of "gestalt-free" elements that lend complex compositions their peculiar character. By evoking Ehrenzweig's notion of "thing-destruction", Tsur nicely captures the often wrenching effect of figure-ground reversal, in which one is forced to do psychological violence to a cognitive representation to achieve a creative effect. This disturbing effect is perhaps nowhere better experienced than in the comprehension of a good joke, since jokes often forego the subtlety of art in favor of an altogether more visceral and aggressive language-delivered blow.