This paper examines cases in which Korean college students might misinterpret superiority, incongruity, and sarcastic English jokes. In parallel the writer tries to bring to light possible background reasons for their misinterpretation from the perspective of the Benign-Violation Theory’ concepts of norm violation, commitment, and psychological distance. Arguably Korean college students are likely to misinterpret English humor codes influenced by their ingrained belief system of strict moral standard as well as insufficient exposure to particular genres of English jokes.

The term euphemism is not polysemous. However it is frequently employed in a 2-way form; sometimes as a channel to convey Speaker's innocuous indirect message (euphemism) and in other times as a device to hide Speaker's malicious intention (doublespeak). The former is intended to promote politeness from Speaker to Hearer and the other is a manipulated form to secure Speaker‘s unduly profit at the cost of Hearer. This paper discusses what distinguishes benign euphemism from malicious doublespeak. This writer probes into the similarities and dissimilarities between euphemism and doublespeak by comparing Allen & Burridge (1991) and Lutz (1989) and proposes Leech's (1987) cost-benefit module as a possible criterion for telling benign euphemism from malicious doublespeak. Overall this research tries to shed light on how language can be manipulated to Speaker's purposes.