The article discusses specific features of the anecdote as a speech genre, analyzes communicative-pragmatic principles of creating a comic effect in anecdotes based on the wordplay. It is noted that the concept of «anecdote», despite the fact that it is widely used in modern literary criticism and linguistics, does not have a single interpretation and a precise theoretical definition, which is explained by its genre uniqueness and complexity of a cognitive-pragmatic nature. It is emphasized that the most important part of the work of this genre is its finale, originally known to the narrator. It is the last climax phrase that contains the unexpected and unpredictable final semantic resolution that constitutes the anecdote as such. Among the features inherent in the actual anecdotal texts are: small volume, lack of authorship, reproducibility, indefinite chronotope, stereotypicality of plot schemes, relatively constant set of characters, ambivalence of the meaning of language units, intertextuality, situational functioning, etc. The dominant category of the anecdote text is minimalism, manifested in the choice of details, the number of heroes, laconic form, the volume of compositional components. It is stated that formation of the types of anecdotes took place along two lines: folk and literary. A modern anecdote, in contrast to the literary jokes of previous years, as a rule, is a speech genre, not a literary one, which determines its specificity. It is noted that anecdotes are divided into situational (subject, referential), in which the comic nature of the described situation is not related to the linguistic design, and language (linguistic), which are based on the playing out of certain linguistic phenomena. The comic effect in the latter is based on purely linguistic mechanisms and depends on the choice of the used speech means. An integral part of creating a comic effect in linguistic anecdotes is violation of certain norms, or incongruence, in the implementation of which the leading role is played by the language game. The game potential of phonetic, lexical, word-building, morphological and syntactic means, as well as precedent phenomena involved in speech works of this type are described. Particular attention is paid to punning outplaying of polysemy and various types of homonymy as one of the most popular means of creating a language joke. It is concluded that peculiarity of the game means, used for creating a humorous effect, lies in their function: they have an additional evaluative connotation, express different degrees of negative loading and take part in creating comic ambiguity in the statement.