This paper examines, including humor, the ludic function of language, which is faced dialectically with the referential function. Both are given the same importance, even though the latter is cognitively prior (Calvo 1994), so that there is no theoretical discrimination between what is purely ludic and linguistic of the joke or other styles of humor, and what is literature and the creation of worlds and characters through it. The humorous work par excellence: The Quixote is taken as an example. It is assumed at the same time that everything is humor whenever the sender and receiver agree with this, and the context is suitable: «The landlord, who, as has been mentioned, was something of a wag, and had already some suspicion of his guest’s want of wits, was quite convinced of it on hearing talk of this kind from him, and to make sport for the night he determined to fall in with his humo...