Following an overview of approaches to wit from the 17th to the late 20th centuries, I provide an account that focuses on the process by which witty effects are produced in the reader. I argue that witty effects arise as the result of a failure of interpretation, which forces the reader to pause momentarily and reprocess the utterance in an altered context, and recognize the interpretation intended by the writer. After reviewing three main causes of interpretive failure in relevance-theoretic terms, I contend that a crucial factor in the production of witty effects is the speed at which the reader goes through the process. I suggest applications of this model to considerations of structure and theme in literary texts.
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