‘At the threshold of death I’d like to write a great comedy’: frame-shifting and Verbal humor in Hanoch Levin’s dramatic sketches

Hanoch Levin is one of Israel’s most prominent playwrights. Although he received little recognition outside Israel during his lifetime, his plays have been translated into many languages and have garnered increasing interest worldwide since his death. This article adopts a cognitive-linguistic perspective to examine how Levin employs mechanisms of humour in his dramatic sketches. Specifically, the article focuses on three communicative goals – and corresponding modes of meaning construction – that Levin achieves through humorous means: eliciting comic pleasure, articulating socio-political critique of Israeli society, and exposing existential truths about time and death. The article’s central claim is that Levin relies on mechanisms of humour grounded in the activation and shifting of frames to manage audience interpretation, enabling movement between light, entertaining humour and darker forms of humour that confront the audience with existential insights and socio-political commentary on Israeli society.