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Research
Edited by
Victor Raskin
Mouton de Gruyter
The Primer of Humor Research
≥
Humor Research 8
Editors
Victor Raskin
Willibald Ruch
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
The Primer of Humor Research
edited by
Victor Raskin
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.
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of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
ISBN 978-3-11-018616-1 hb
ISBN 978-3-11-018685-7 pb
ISSN 1861-4116
” Copyright 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechan-
ical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, with-
out permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin.
Printed in Germany.
Contents
Introduction
This chapter is different than the others because it does not have a disciplinary
or topic-oriented focus: it is not the ____ology/ics of humor nor even humor
and _____. First, it addresses the goal and composition of the book. Second,
it briefly introduces the chapters. Third, it introduces a variety of thoughts on
the nature of humor and humor research that have not been addressed by the
contributors – or addressed very differently.
This book was originally designed and collected as a first-line defense against,
and a helpful tool for, the first-timers in humor research, those who venture
into humor from their disciplinary perch in total innocence and/or oblivion of
the often sizable and growing body of knowledge on the subject and adjacent
areas. In 1987, the author was invited to address a rare linguistic session of
the Modern Language Association, and its focus was humor research. That
was the session where two colleagues were presenting their work based on
Raskin (1985), and when the eponymous author presented his own paper
criticizing the theory, one of those colleagues exclaimed that the fact of being
a namesake does not secure him, the author, the privilege of criticizing “the
dead classic.” Entertaining as it was, the most humiliated presenter was a very
solid, well-known sociolinguist who addressed humor without any know-
ledge of preceding work. A decade or so later, Peter L. Berger, a prominent
enough scholar of religion to know better, committed the same sin in a major
book. A reasonably well-known professor of philosophy – well, esthetics ac-
tually – from The University of Chicago decided to tell a few jokes in print
disguising it as a research book – in total ignorance of humor research as
well. Conferences, including the Annual Meetings of the International Soci-
ety of Humor Studies, also billed as the International Conferences on Humor
2 Victor Raskin
(Research), saw such first-timers as well: the author witnessed the massive
embarrassment of a prior-research-ignorant Canadian psychologist, who had
brought an entire adoring entourage to the 2000 conference in Osaka.
It was there and then that this author conceived the idea of the Primer as
the one-stop place for a not so quick and dirty introduction to the multidis-
ciplinary area of humor research. He had just resigned, after 12 years, as the
founding editor of Humor: International Journal of Humor Research a year
earlier and apparently wanted to continue to dominate the field from a differ-
ent venue. His idea (does everybody understand that his is my?) was to select
the major, leading author in each major discipline contributing to humor re-
search and suggest a more or less rigid template for a 30–50-pp. essay on the
approach. Their task was not to propose original research nor to push forth
their own particular school of thought too much; rather, their mandate was
something like this, “You are awakened in the middle of the night and asked
to deliver a two-hour lecture on the subject to a reasonably educated audience
without any specific knowledge on humor or your area. You deliver it. Now
write it up. This is what I need.”
Not everybody was happy with the task: some felt lazy, others just resisted
the tyranny – and then there was Elliott. But most authors answered the call
and did it valiantly – at various speeds. Other projects intervened, including
the editor’s major involvement in further research in ontological semantics
and applying it to information security and meaning-based Internet search.
A significant effort was spent on developing a particularly brilliant and highly
select group of young scholars, one of them a difficult and reluctant part-time
genius, already planning her escape from this author’s clutches. And pro-
crastination took its toll, the editor’s as well as, obligingly, some contribu-
tors’. In the meantime, new developments in humor research have emerged,
and the editor was out of live classics, and as the dead ones, including the
ever grouchy Sig, refused to cooperate, he went for the young firebrands, the
future classics, most of them recognized by ISHS as emerging scholars and
awarded the eponymous prize at its meetings (two of those were members of
that select group of the editor’s advisees). So a bit of nepotism kicked in also,
and the project thus matured.
Primer structure
alphabet nor the seniority of the authors sounded more promising. An inter-
esting idea to arrange the chapters by the street numbers of the authors’ resi-
dences faced the difficult choice of the ascending or descending order as well
the philosophical challenge of using the address at the time of submission
or publication, and several contributors have moved once or twice since. So
the contributions are introduced here more or less disciplinarily but they are
arranged in the volume in a complicated multi-factor way that may strike an
occasional reader as chaotic.
There are no full-time humor researchers in the world. A few years ago,
there was a rumor that there was one in France but it has never been independ-
ently confirmed, and the oddity of French academic affiliations and titles,
before the EU attempts to homogenize them into some sort of an American-
like system, has made it even harder. It is a definite fact, however, that all the
major humor researchers have always been “part-timers,” as are indeed all the
Primer contributors. Everybody was educated and established in an adjacent
widely recognized basic field. The older ones had to satisfy the mainstream
requirements of their discipline to get promoted and recognized, and only
then, protected by tenure or equivalent, they migrated to some sort of ap-
plication of the discipline to humor research. Their right to do so was made
easier, in the USA, by the late 1980s–early 1990s, thanks to the prestige of
the principals and the success of Humor, founded in 1987 and recognized
by all the major abstracting services within the next several years. It was
also a backlash to the shameful denial of tenure by Northwestern University
to somebody who has become a major force in his field as well as in humor
research within less than a decade on the grounds that he had been writ-
ing “joke books.” An advocate, who physically produced the candidate’s two
excellent books on the nature of humor at the highest university committee
meeting and ventured a statement that there was nothing funny in the books,
had no effect; nor did a dozen or so of first-rate refereed no-humor articles
published in the most prestigious journals of the time. This ignorant prejudice
about interdisciplinary areas: in Film Studies, they watch movies; in Humor
Research, they tell jokes; in sexology, they . . . – can still be encountered in
remote areas of the globe like some rare and basically eradicated infection.
In the current scientific/scholarly/academic rigorous study of humor, psy-
chology has the longest history. It is represented here by Willibald Ruch,
a dominant force in the psychology of humor, whose seminal work on humor
and personality and on the sense of humor measurement, has influenced
a generation of researchers. Rod Martin presents a psychological perspective
on the non-scholarly humor and health advocacy, whose claims he was one
4 Victor Raskin
on the first to challenge on serious scientific grounds back in the late 1990s.
Linguistics made a grossly overrated entry into humor research (in this
author’s work) in the late 1970s–early 1980s and has since developed into
a major contributor. It is represented by Salvatore Attardo and complement-
ed, in its computational aspect, by Christian Hempelmann. Its imperialist am-
bitions are curtailed by Katrina Triezenberg, who takes it on herself to defend
the literary studies’ right of way in studying literary humor.
Triezenberg also complements somewhat Don and Alleen Nilsen’s take
on that right of way. Literary humor has indeed been studied for a long time,
but it seems important to differentiate between literary analyses of the use
of humor, on the one hand, and much rarer studies of the nature of literary
humor: in the former case, the field of inquiry is literary studies per se, and the
goals of research come from there, for example, the establishment of influ-
ence or the attribution to a certain style. In the latter case, it is indeed humor
research, and the authors had been urged to stay within those constraints.
Sociology has lagged behind those two disciplines in spite of Henri Berg-
son’s (1899) early entry. Christie Davies, the most prominent sociologist of
humor and a supreme authority on ethnic humor, considered this author’s re-
quest for a chapter on the sociology of humor but decided it was too boring.
So instead, he contributed an insightful chapter on comparative humor, and
the volume is all the better for it. The task to write the basic chapter eventu-
ally fell on Giselinde Kuipers.
John Morreall, the major philosopher of humor, kindly contributed two
chapters, one on the philosophy of humor per se and the other on an inter-
esting application of humor research to morale-boosting corporate seminars
and workshops. Fully versed in the field, he is one of the very few seminar-
givers who do not oversell humor as a product, so he is impervious to Rod
Martin’s well-justified criticism of those who do aggressively pitch humor as
a panacea for maintaining and improving good health, both for individuals
and corporations.
Elliott Oring presents a major perspective on humor and anthropology,
with a healthy dose of folklore studies. Adjacently even though very discipli-
narily differently, Larry Mintz, one of the pioneers of humor research revival
in the mid-1970s, deals with humor in popular culture, an area he has co-
founded and maintained for several decades.
The younger cohort addresses a number of less well-established subdisci-
plines in humor research. Amy Carrell provides a solid historical overview.
Dineh Davis looks at humor from the perspective of communication studies.
Tarez Graban pioneers the rhetorical take on humor. Hempelmann, already
Editor’s notes and thoughts 5
It is perfectly possible that things left unsaid should have remained so but
this is not in the nature of this author. Over the years, largely unsuccessfully
in the larger humor research community, in spite of sufficient recognition
and influence, and somewhat more successfully among the captive audience
of his former Ph.D. advisees, he has pursued a number of difficult topics in
humor research. His hope is that this chapter and book will promote his ad-
vanced agenda.
Theory
(1)
say-v1 ;
syn-struc
1 root say ; as in Spencer said a word
cat v
subj root $var1
cat n
obj root $var2
cat n
2 root say ; as in Spencer said that it
cat v ; rained
subj root $var1
cat n
comp root $var2
sem-struc
1 2 inform ; both syntactic structures have
agent ^$var1 ; the same semantic structure,
theme ^$var2 ; agent ^$var1, where ‘^’ is read
; as ‘the meaning of,’ and theme
; ^$var2 – the variables provide
; mappings between syntactic
; and semantic structures
Using first the preprocessor taking care of special characters, removing the
markups, stemming the morphology, and performing the minimal syntactic
parsing driven by the syn-struc zones of each lexical entry, the semantic
processor called the OntoParser transforms the sentence (3) into the simpli-
fied text-meaning representation (TMR), also – believe it or not – somewhat
simplified, in (4)
(3) Dresser Industries said it expects that major capital expenditure for
expansion of U.S. manufacturing capacity will reduce imports from
Japan.
(4)
author-event-1
agent value unknown
theme value inform-1
time
time-begin > inform-1.time-end
time-end unknown
inform-1
agent value Dresser Industries
theme value decrease-1
time
time-begin unknown
time-end (< decrease-1.time-begin) (< import-1.time-begin)
(< reduce-1.time-begin)
(< expend-1 .time-begin) (< increase-1.time-begin)
decrease-1
agent value unknown
theme value import-1
instrument value expend-1
time
time-begin (>inform-1.time-end ) (> expend-1.time-begin)
(> import-1.time-begin)
time-end < import-1.begin-time
import-1
agent value unknown
theme value unknown
10 Victor Raskin
expend-1
agent value unknown
theme value money-1
amount value > 0.7
purpose value increase-1
time
time-begin > inform.time-end
time-end < increase-1.begin-time
increase-1
agent value unknown
theme value manufacture-1.theme
time
time-begin (> inform.time-end ) (< manufacture-1.begin-time)
time-end unknown
manufacture-1
agent value unknown
theme value unknown
location value USA
time
time-begin > inform.time-end
time-end unknown
modality-1
type potential ; this is the meaning of expects in (1)
value 1 ; this is the maximum value of potential
scope decrease-1
modality-2
type potential ; this is the meaning of capacity in (1)
value 1
Editor’s notes and thoughts 11
scope manufacture-1
co-reference-1
increase-1.agent manufacture-1.agent
co-reference-2
import-1.theme manufacture-1.theme
Essentially, the TMR is a set of embedded events, with the properties for each
event filled with the appropriate case role fillers. Lower events fill a case role
for a higher event. Notably, events and objects do not correspond at all to the
verbs and nouns in the sentence. The modalities, aspects, co-references and
other “parametric” elements make the meaning of the sentence even more
explicit that it is for the native speaker. Thus, for instance, speakers are not
aware of the top authoring event, even if they know that somebody did write
the sentence.
One of the main bragging rights in ontological semantics has been its
disambiguation ability. Ambiguity is indeed one of the two or three major
problem in formulating and explicating the rules of language, as internal-
ized in the native speakers’ minds, and the said native speakers are protected
from fully realizing the nature of the ambiguity disaster in natural language
by a naïve but amazingly successful natural disambiguation mechanism: it
just highlights, as it were, one of the meanings of the word as appropriate,
the speaker “runs” with it, and most of the time succeeds. When it does not
work out, the speaker actually reveals his or her subconscious awareness of
the ambiguity by backtracking, i. e., going back to the source of the incorrect
interpretation, and tries to pull the trick with an alternative one. Thus, if a na-
tive speaker hears the sentence It’s a lovely table, he or especially she may
think furniture. But the continuation, I love the sixth row data sends them
back to the alternative, chart meaning of table.
To be useful for ontological semantics, the disambiguation mechanism of
ontological semantics, besides trying to model as faithfully as possible the
native speaker’s natural mechanism, must also take into consideration that
humor, unlike the ordinary language usage where disambiguation is a must,
is often deliberately ambiguous. So, in the ontological semantics of humor,
an ongoing search for intended ambiguity must take place. One advantage
over the scripts that ontological semantics has is a built-in opposedness of the
handful of properties, such as normal/abnormal, real/unreal, good/bad, etc.,
on which most jokes are based (cf. Raskin 1987).
12 Victor Raskin
Sophistication in humor
ticated food while eggs are not – and how about Beluga served on halves of
hard-boiled eggs?
I have a strong intuition about sophistication in jokes, however, and my
listeners at conferences as well as my students in humor seminars seem to
agree with my crude ranking from 1 to 10 of the jokes below:
My strongest guess for supporting the rankings is that I am thinking about the
complexity of the inferences. Thus in (5), which probably ranks somewhere
in the range of the elided examples in (3) above, the inferences are probably
following the path of (10):
(5) When I was young I helped a good fairy in distress, so she offered
me a choice, an excellent memory or a big penis. I do not recall what
I chose.
(6) Inference: Cannot recall → bad memory → did not choose memory
→ chose penis → → has large penis → ha-ha!
References
Introduction
vocalization, pupil dilation, or heart rate was undertaken (Boeke 1899; Feleky
1916; Hecker 1873; Heitler 1904; Raulin 1900; Schirmer 1903) as well as
the first observations of pathological and drug-induced laughter and possible
neurophysiological correlates were made (Brown 1915; James 1882; Meu-
nier 1909; von Bechterew 1894).
The influence of philosophy was most visible and lasting through its sub-
field of aesthetics, which addressed not only qualia like beauty, harmony
tragedy, but also the “comic”. The first empirical studies of the “comic” by
psychologists, like Hall and Allin (1897), Heymans (1896), Hollingworth
(1911), Kraepelin (1885), Lipps (1898), and Martin (1905) continued in this
tradition albeit aimed at providing experimental evidence for early theories
and notions. Experimental aesthetics (see Berlyne 1974; Ruch and Hehl 2007)
would indeed be one natural home for the psychological study of humor if we
had not merged into an interdisciplinary field. Readers of other disciplines,
however, should note that as a science, psychology endeavors to answer ques-
tions through the systematic collection and logical analysis of objectively
observable data. An empirical study typically utilizes a sophisticated meth-
odology, e.g., carefully thought out experimental designs, psychometrically
sound assessment tools, and statistical treatment of the data collected. Those
and related features separate scientific articles from pop psychology books
and essays.
Psychology has always been one of the disciplines contributing most to
the knowledge on humor. However, research in humor and laughter, like in
other positive phenomena, surprisingly, has been peripheral in psychology
during the 20th century. Not only were relatively few studies dedicated to
humor (compared to anger, anxiety or depression), but also interest in psy-
chology came in waves, each of which had a different focus. For example,
while the rediscovery of humor as a research topic in the 1970 had a strong
experimental, developmental, and cognitive focus, the research starting in
the mid 80-ies was directed more towards personality, and applied issues like
health and therapy. However, we can’t say that the basic issues addressed in
the 1970s are solved by now and we are on safe grounds when having pro-
gressed to the application of humor. Luckily, a recent textbook summarized
most of the pertinent literature including the more historical ones (Martin
2007a). Nevertheless, readers are advised to study the anthologies and jour-
nal articles of those times, as not all knowledge from that time is preserved in
recent books. Books like the ones by Goldstein and McGhee (1972), McGhee
(1979), Chapman and Foot (1976, 1977), McGhee and Goldstein (1983a,
1983b) can be considered to be classics and up to date in some respect. Also,
Psychology of humor 19
Literature review
The following review will group the literature around some basic issues relat-
ing to the structure and dynamics of humor. As psychology is concerned with
people, the view onto humor will be made from the individual’s perspective;
e.g., the phenomena associated with responding to or creating humor and
not a description of humor itself. It is not aimed to give a full account of the
psychological literature, which is not possible given the space constrictions.
Rather sources will be mentioned where further information can be looked up
20 Willibald Ruch
if needed. For a fuller account of the literature the reader is referred to other
sources (e.g., Martin 2007a; Roeckelein 2002).
hilarious, or droll. Humor also seems to have different “flavors”, such as bit-
ter, salty or dark. Depending on how narrow or broad we define the realm of
humor (see below) we also do have phenomena like irony, satire, sarcasm, or
mock/ridicule. While those may well be perceived as funny, it is questionable
that the sole rating of degree of funniness fully represents the experiential
world of the receiver. In other words, do ratings of ironic and sarcastic covary
with judgments of funny in irony and sarcasm, respectively? A factor analy-
sis of 23 qualities (e.g., funny, droll, bizarre, macabre, absurd, subtle) used
to judge 60 jokes and cartoons yielded a two-dimensional space (Samson
and Ruch 2005). One dimension was more cognitive (subtle, ingenious vs.
odd, bizarre) and referred to more structural features of jokes and the other
referred more to motivational qualities (stinging, macabre vs. droll, touch-
ing) presumable reflecting the impact of the content of jokes and cartoons.
Nevertheless, all 23 terms assumed unique places in that space suggesting
that they all measured different aspects. The perception of “funniness” was
located exactly in the diagonal (subtle high, droll high) suggesting that both
dimensions contributed equally to this perception.
Smiling
(Ekman 2005; Frank and Ekman 1993; Ruch 1990). Smiles not following
those definitions are unlikely to reflect genuine enjoyment of humor.
This does not exhaust the number of types of smiles as there may be smil-
ing involved in blends of emotions (e.g., when enjoying a disgusting or fright-
ening film), smiles masking negative emotions (e.g., pretending enjoyment
when actually sadness or anger is felt), miserable, flirting, sadistic, embar-
rassment, compliance, coordination, contempt, and phony etc. smiles (see
Ekman 1985; Bänninger-Huber 1996). In humor experiments unilateral con-
tractions of the buccinator muscle (i.e., the smile of contempt) often goes
along with finding the jokes distasteful (Ruch 1990, 1997; Ruch and Rath
1993).
While the expression of smiling is innate we have learned when and to
who show or not show enjoyment, and with what intensity. Also in experi-
ments the social situations may activate those display rules, which might alter
our facial actions. Scholars of humor should therefore look at facial signs of
the attempt to dampen, control, or suppress smiling, as those are of signifi-
cance (e.g., Ekman and Rosenberg 2005; Keltner 2005). When the experi-
menter or a companion is present, phony smiles may occur. Phony smiles try
to convince somebody that one enjoys humor when actually nothing much is
felt. These are deliberate (voluntary, contrived) contractions of the zygomatic
major muscles (that might be unilateral, outside the time limits given above,
and most likely also not having a smooth ballistic movement). Most impor-
tantly, the eye region is not involved in this type of smiling. Deliberate facial
actions probably have their origin in the motor strip of the neocortex, while
spontaneous emotional movements originate in the subcortical motor centers
(Wild, Rodden, Rapp, Erb, Grodd, and Ruch 2006).
Smiling (and the facial component of laughter) is best assessed with the
help of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; Ekman and Friesen 1978;
Ekman, Friesen, and Hager 2002). FACS is a comprehensive, anatomically
based system for measuring all visually discernible facial movement. It de-
scribes all visually distinguishable facial activity on the basis of 44 unique
action units (AUs), as well as several categories of head and eye positions
and movements. FACS coding procedures allow for coding of the intensity
of each facial action on a 5-point intensity scale, for the timing of facial ac-
tions, and for the coding of facial expressions in terms of events. An event
is the AU-based description of each facial expression, which may consist
of a single AU or many AUs contracted as a single expression. FACS there-
fore allows for a comprehensive assessment of all facial events related to
humor. Learning FACS takes approximately 100 hours or one week of inten-
Psychology of humor 23
sive training. Also applying FACS is time consuming, and less sophisticated
systems, such as the MAX (Izard 1983) and the AFFEX (Izard, Dougherty,
and Hembree 1983) exist, which require less time to score. Applications of
FACS to humor and the measurement of smiling can be found in Ekman and
Rosenberg (2005).
Laughter
Laughter is often seen as synonymous with humor. Our field was occasion-
ally referred to as the realm of the ridicula, the laughable (objects), and titles
of books or talks might be, e.g., “laughter in the medieval ages”, although
then not actually laughter is studied but occasions for laughter. In psychology
the two concepts are more carefully distinguished, as there is laughter with-
out humor (e.g., social, embarrassed, or nervous laughter) and enjoyment of
humor not always involves laughter (McGhee 1979), especially in experi-
ments, when research participants are tested in solitude (Ruch 1990). Still
the psychological study of humor includes the study of smiling and laughter
for a myriad of reasons. Not only are they a good indicator of the intensity
of the emotional response to humor (Ruch 1995), they also might mediate
some of the effects of humor on health or other outcomes (Martin 2001; Rot-
ton 2004).
Laughter is also not unambiguously defined in research articles and
encyclopedias. Sometimes researchers refer only to the respiratory or vocal
component of the expressive pattern (neglecting the face), sometimes they
refer to the whole act or behavioral episode. In studies of primates laughter
the face gets most attention (“relaxed open-mouth display”) and in everyday
life a smiling face is often referred to as “laughter” although the vocal parts
are missing. As a consequence of the lack of a comprehensive view on laugh-
ter, estimation of such basic parameters as duration yielded quite discrepant
results. While studies of the face suggest a mean duration of laugher of about
4.5 seconds (Ruch 1990), acoustic studies of laughter yield a mean duration
of 1.2 seconds. This is not surprising as the latter includes only the parts dur-
ing which respiratory changes occur and they cover only a smaller portion
of the entire response. Also, while a morphology-based taxonomy exists for
smiling (Ekman 1985), nothing comparable has been achieved for the more
complex behavior of laughter. While dictionaries distinguish between, for ex-
ample, hearty and derisive laughter, or between a guffaw, chuckle or chor-
tle, the separation is not done at an objective (e.g., physiological, muscular,
24 Willibald Ruch
acoustic) basis so far. Huber, Drack and Ruch (in press) report of a pilot study
with actors posing 23 putative categories of laughter. Decoder studies will
show whether actors agree in their interpretation of the laughs, whether some
types of laughs will yield different FACS-codes and whether naïve listeners
will be able to identify the nature of the laughs. Acoustic analyses of laughter
occasionally distinguish among types of laughs, such as laughter induced by
tickling, mocking laughter, or hearty laughter (Habermann 1955; Szameitat
2007).
Already Darwin (1872) gave a comprehensive and in many ways remarka-
bly accurate description of laughter in terms of respiration, vocalization, facial
action and gesture and posture, which was updated, elaborated, or corrected
in contemporary writings (Bachorowski, Smoski, and Owren 2001; Nwokah,
Davies, Islam, Hsu, and Fogel 1993; Ruch 1993; Ruch and Ekman 2001; Sza-
meitat 2007). He addressed the important issues. Thus, he noted that “... [t]he
sound of laughter is produced by a deep inspiration followed by short, inter-
rupted, spasmodic contraction of the chest, and especially of the diaphragm”
(Darwin 1997 [1872]: 199). “A man smiles - and smiling, as we shall see,
graduates into laughter.” (Charles Darwin 1997 [1872]: 195). “A graduated
series can be followed from violent to moderate laughter, to a broad smile, to
a gentle smile, and to the expression of mere cheerfulness” (p. 206). “Between
a gentle laugh and a broad smile there is hardly any difference except that in
smiling no reiterated sound is uttered, though a single rather strong expiration,
or slight noise - a rudiment of a laugh - may often be heard at the commence
ment of a smile” (p. 208). “During excessive laughter the whole body is often
thrown backward and shakes, or is almost convulsed.” (Darwin 1997 [1872]:
206–207).
Cognitive processes
a joke or cartoon. For example, making the punch line more incongruous may
simultaneously mean to change its content or other properties. One way out
is, for example, to leave the jokes intact, but undertake a differential priming
of the two meanings of a key word in a joke (Wilson 1979), or a priming of
the structure (Derks and Arora 1993) of the jokes to follow. Another possibil-
ity is the use of artificial humor stimuli. This may take, for example, the form
of sequences of words deviating from proper grammatical sequences (Eh-
renstein and Ertel 1978), adjective-noun pairs varying in semantic distance
(Godkewitsch 1974), a domains-interaction approach (Hillson and Martin
1994), computer-drawn caricatures with various degrees of exaggeration
(Rhodes, Brennan and Carey 1987), or the weight-judging paradigm (WJP;
Deckers 1993; Ruch 2001; Ruch, Köhler, Beermann, and Deckers 2008).
Such studies typically demonstrate the importance of an intermediate degree
of incongruity.
So far little research was devoted to the temporal characteristics of the
perception of humor. For example, wit is quick, in jokes there is still a sud-
den manifestation of the incongruous, while in humorous stories there might
be a gradual realization of the incongruous. Thus, also the perception of fun-
niness differs in intensity, duration and form over time. Finally, humor may
involve different modes; for example, it can be verbal (e.g., jokes), graphical
(cartoons, caricatures), acoustical (funny music), or behavioral (e.g., panto-
mime), again making matters very complex. So far, the scope of most theories
is limited to the analysis of jokes and cartoons (but see Attardo 2001).
Motivational processes
One can argue that the cognitive-structural aspects in jokes are peripheral, as
we might respond more to the connotative elements involved. For example,
in the joke above some might experience a rapid succession of one’s sym-
pathy for a patient in pain and one’s feelings towards adultery. Or, we just
love the sexual element in there or are repulsed by it. Indeed, sexual themes
apparently are one of the most prominent contents in humor (Grumet 1989).
Also, other topics like scatological ones (bathroom humor), violence and
aggression, sick, black, ethnic, blondes and Scots etc. come into mind when
one does an intuitive classification and those are all content-related. Indeed,
several theories tried to explain the favorite topics and targets.
Generally, two principal models can serve as a theoretical framework for
deriving hypotheses for research on appreciation of tendentious content in
Psychology of humor 29
weakness and ugliness. Thomas Hobbes (1651) stated that the passion of
laughter is nothing else but some sudden glory arising from some sudden
conception of some eminence in ourselves, by comparison with the infir-
mity of others, or with our own formerly. Laughter is thought to result from
a sense of superiority derived from the disparagement of another person or of
one’s own past blunders or foolishness. Currently Gruner (1978) is one of the
most outspoken champions of this approach as for him ridicule is the basic
component of all humorous material, and if one wants to understand a piece
of humorous material it is necessary only to find out who is ridiculed, how,
and why. So for Gruner a combination of a loser, a victim of derision or ridi-
cule, with suddenness of loss is necessary and sufficient to cause laughter.
Disparagement theory was most often tested with pre-existing groups, or
in an individual differences approach, but there is also experimental support
(Zillmann 1983). In an experiment half of the research participants were first
negatively predisposed to a female experimenter (who behaved inappropri-
ately to them). Then, in one experimental condition, a mishap occurred to
the experimenter (she spilled a cup of tea on herself). Only this combination
(angered subjects see experimenter spilling tea on herself) led to higher facial
enjoyment. Spilling the tea alone did not do it when subjects were not nega-
tively predisposed to experimenter or when the angered subjects saw her just
spilling the tea (but not on her).
Research utilizing pre-existing groups (e.g., males vs. females, US-Amer-
icans vs. Canadians, professors vs. students, employers vs. employees) typ-
ically uses two sets of jokes or cartoons. One in which a member of the first
group disparages a member of the other group, and another where the agent
– victim – roles are reversed. Then the degree to which members of par-
ticular groups are amused by humor that disparages members of their own
versus other groups is examined. For example, McGhee and Lloyd (1981)
and McGhee and Duffey (1983) found that preschoolers found it funnier
when an adult/parent is victimized in humor than when a child is victim-
ized. Also, Zillmann and Cantor (1976) found evidence in support of this
theory in a study in which a group of college students and a group of middle
aged business and professional people were presented jokes involving peo
ple in superior–subordinate relationships (father–son, employer–employee,
etc.). As predicted, students gave higher ratings of funniness to the jokes in
which the subordinate disparaged his superior than to those in which the su-
perior disparaged his subordinate, whereas the ratings of the professionals
revealed the opposite relationship. These theories have been quite success-
ful in predicting appreciation of racial, ethnic, political, and gender forms of
Psychology of humor 31
disparagement humor (see Zillmann 1983). However, it seems that the model
works well in predicting the preferences of groups, which are traditionally
superior (e.g. males appreciated jokes in which females were disparaged but
showed less appreciation for jokes in which a female disparaged a male) but
not of the inferior groups (females showed no preference for ‘put down of
male’-jokes). On the contrary, sometimes the inferior groups laughed more
at jokes putting down a member of their own group.
Unfortunately studies of disparagement humor do not report the size of
the intercorrelation among funniness scores of the humor categories (e.g.,
anti-male, anti-female humor) studied, nor do they report correlations with
appreciation of non-disparagement humor. While the role of disparagement
is supported by studies we do not know exactly how much of the variance in
humor appreciation it actually accounts for. A simple but convincing dem-
onstration of the relevance of disparagement in differential humor appreci-
ation would be that, for example, there is a negative correlation between
rated funniness of “American puts down Canadian” humor and funniness of
“Canadian puts down American” when computed across a mixed sample of
Canadians and Americans. Furthermore, even for the separate groups the cor-
relations between parallel sets of disparagement humor (with the same target)
should be much higher than their correlation with funniness of disparagement
humor (with different targets) and even much higher with funniness of non-
disparaging humor of the same (most likely the incongruity-resolution) struc
ture. No such evidence yet exists.
In summary, the superiority/disparagement approach offers an explanation
for how negative or hostile attitudes are expressed through humor. However,
Suls (1977) has argued that the processing of disparagement jokes is the same
as for all other humor (i.e., other incongruity-resolution jokes). There are the
same two stages and the topic just affects how well the recipient masters those
two. Suls suggested that disparagement humor typically involves an incon-
gruity relating to some misfortune befalling a victim, and this incongruity can
only be recognized or resolved (and therefore found funny) if one has a nega-
tive or unsympathetic attitude toward the victim.
playful mood or frame of mind, etc. refer to such states of enhanced or low-
ered readiness to respond to humor or act humorously. We are all inclined to
appreciate, initiate, or laugh at humor more at given times and less at others.
Thus, we also need to consider and measure actual dispositions for humor;
internal states and moods that vary over time. Like traits, those are internal
dispositions. However, they are of a transient nature and may be affected by
environmental and social factors. A play signal (McGhee 1979) may shift
a serious frame of mind into a playful one, and alcohol might raise our level
of cheerful mood; both, in turn, might facilitate responding more favorably
to humor. A reciprocal relationship is likely too; laughing a lot will have an
impact on mood level and frame of mind. Thus, there will be a feedback loop
between actual states and moods and humor behavior.
For a more complete understanding of humor (and for successful experi-
menting) we do seem to have to distinguish among the components of trait,
state/mood, and behavior/acts. Traits are relatively stable over time and con-
sistent across situations. They may predict the emergence of humor-related
mood and of humor behavior; e.g., individuals high in sense of humor may
get into a cheerful mood more quickly when joining a merry group and they
also might smile more often in response to attempts at jocularity. States are of
shorter duration, fluctuate in intensity, and may vary in response to eliciting
conditions. In cases of homologous states and traits, the trait may be seen as
the average state; e.g., trait cheerfulness will correlate highly with measures
of state cheerfulness aggregated across a longer time period. States may also
be seen as dispositions for behavior. When we are in a silly mood we more
readily engage in clowning behavior, and in an elated mood we will more
likely laugh at a joke rather than merely smile.
Humor research has acknowledged the effects of mood/states on humor
(see review by Deckers 2007). McGhee (1979) emphasized the importance
of a playful (as opposed to serious) frame of mind for the successful process-
ing of a humorous message. Apter and Smith (1977) distinguish between
telic and para-telic states with the latter being conducive to humor. In their
reversal theory (see Apter 1982) seriousmindedness is one defining elem-
ent in the telic or goal-oriented metamotivational state, while playfulness
marks its obverse, the paratelic or non goal-oriented state. Svebak and Apter
(1987) report that a funny videotape changed participants’ state to paratel-
ic. Relatedly, Raskin (1985) distinguishes between the bona-fide (serious,
truth-committed) mode of communication and the non-bona-fide (humorous)
mode of joke telling and argues that the non-humorous, serious person wants
to function exclusively in the bona fide mode of communication. While no
Psychology of humor 33
explicit reference to frame of mind is made, one can see that this volitional
aspect refers to a preferred state or frame of mind. Thus, whatever name they
used, the theorists stated that the actual level of seriousness vs. playfulness
is essential. Finally, several theoretical accounts of the humor process more
or less indirectly refer to changing states of seriousness vs. playfulness. For
example, Frijda (1986) considers laughter to be preceded by a sudden annul-
ment of seriousness; for Sroufe and Waters (1976) and Wilson (1979) if fol-
lows the buildup of strain or tension and its abrupt relief, and Rothbart (1976)
highlights the necessity that the setting in which the incongruity is processed
is “safe” (i.e., non-dangerous, non-serious).
While theoretical accounts clearly suggest that humor research needs
a concept of state seriousness (vs. playfulness or humorousness) to account
for the fact that the individuals’ tendency, preparedness, and readiness to en-
gage in humorous interactions differs over time, the empirical research con-
ducted did not frequently involve this dimension of frame of mind (Deckers
2007). One reason might be that scales assessing current mood states do not
include frame of mind but more affect-based mood states like elation, sad-
ness or excitement. Thus, the few studies of mood and humor appreciation
had to rely on whatever mood state was included in the multidimensional
scale used. In such studies scales of elation, vigor and surgency did predict
subsequent subjective and/or facial enjoyment of humor (Ruch 1990; Wicker,
Thorelli, Barron, and Willis 1981). Those scales are not really tailored to the
needs of humor research.
Analyses at the level of individual items showed that in two studies mood
states relating to cheerfulness predicted facial enjoyment better than the glo-
bal category of elation (Ruch 1990, 1995). This effect and the fact that nega-
tive mood states were not predictive of appreciation of humor anyway, gave
rise to the idea to tailor the mood states more specifically to humor research
and look for actual dispositions that might facilitate but also impair the induc-
tion of humor. Based on research of several sources (e.g., literature review,
lexicon) a state-trait model of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood was
put forward, and scales for their assessment were created (Ruch, Köhler, and
van Thriel 1996, 1997). The inspection of the factor loadings of the posi-
tive mood terms allowed distinguishing between the components of cheerful
mood and hilarity (see Table 1). The former is more calm and composed and
the latter is more aroused and contains the items relating to action tendencies
(e.g., I feel the urge to laugh). State cheerfulness is expected to represent
a state of heightened readiness to respond to a humor stimulus with enjoy-
ment. It turned out that most interventions to increase appreciation of humor
34 Willibald Ruch
only worked for those being in a cheerful state (Ruch 1990, 1995, 1997; Ruch
and Köhler 2007).
The model foresees two different states of humorlessness. While both seri-
ous individuals and those in a bad mood may be perceived as humorless,
the reasons are different. In the latter case, the generation of positive affect
is impaired by the presence of a predominant negative affective state; in the
former, there is lowered interest in engaging in humorous interaction or in
switching to a more playful frame of mind; i.e., a stronger aspect of volition
is involved. There may be differences among bad mood facets as well. While
an ill-humored person, like the serious one, may not want to be involved in
humor, the person in a sad mood may not be able to do so even if he or she
would like to. Also, while the sad person is not antagonistic to a cheerful
group, the ill-humored one may be. Individuals high in trait bad mood might
be predisposed to be “out of humor” easily; i.e. losing humor. Bad mood
might also be a disposition facilitating certain forms of humor, such as mock-
ery, irony, cynicism, and sarcasm (see Dworkin and Efran 1967; Ruch and
Köhler 2007). The state part of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI-
S, Ruch et al. 1997) allows for scoring the seven facets as well as the three
scales and thus the hypotheses relating to different states of humorlessness
can be empirically examined.
Nevertheless, we need more research on the structure of mood states that
have an impact on humor or are outcomes of humor. Furthermore, we need
to investigate the dynamics of mood relating to humor. Deckers (2007) out-
Psychology of humor 35
lines the various effects linking humor and mood, such as mood and cognitive
processing, mood regulation, effect of mood on activity preferences.
Personality
The trait approach to personality assumes that there are personality charac-
teristics stable over time and consistent across situations. A trait or person-
ality characteristic is a descriptive hypothetical construct, an invention, not
an “existing” entity. It is a disposition for behavior, not the behavior itself. It
cannot be observed directly but inferred via indicators, such as tests, ques-
tionnaires, behavior observation, etc. A certain conceptualization of sense of
humor may be useful or not useful, but not true or false. Its usefulness has to
be demonstrated empirically. There are different types of personality traits; at
least we distinguish between ability (maximal performance) and style (typ-
ical behavior). However, the non-cognitive traits may be further divided into
temperament, interests, attitudes, motivation, character strength, virtues, etc.
Likewise, different forms of abilities may be distinguished, such as memory,
convergent and divergent ability (or creativity). Those distinctions are not
trivial, as they influence, for example, the type of questions to be asked, but
also the type of measurement approach.
Everyday observation tells that there are enduring interindividual differ-
ences in humor behavior and experience. Some people tend habitually to
appreciate, initiate, or laugh at humor more often, or more intensively, than
others do. In everyday language this enduring disposition typically is as-
cribed to the possession of a “sense of humor.” Dictionaries typically contain
various type nouns (e.g., cynic, wit, wag), trait-describing adjectives (e.g.,
humorous, witty, cynical), and verbs (to tease, to joke, to humor or wind
up someone) that describe individuals characterized by one form of humor
or the other. When members of a culture validly observe, distinguish and
communicate among types of humorous and humorless people, when poets,
play writers, and philosophers describe humorous characters, then there is
plenty to base a psychological analysis on. Surprisingly, this has not been
done to a great extent. Neither the pre-scientific accounts of the sense of
humor have been modernized, nor is there a published attempt at systematiz-
ing the language of humor traits. Rather, psychologists worked on designing
instruments, and some also worked on the concept. Craik and Ware (2007)
is a good source for new directions in personality research on humor. A re-
view of the historical and current accounts as well as a survey of instruments
36 Willibald Ruch
can be found in a recent edited volume on the sense of humor (Ruch 2007a).
Some representative approaches are discussed next. It should be mentioned
beforehand that there is a variety of expressions in use often meaning the
same thing (e.g., sense of humor, styles of humor, humorous temperament,
creation of humor, wit etc.) and often the same expression is used for totally
unrelated aspects of humor (Ruch 2007b).
The dynamic part of the model is not yet substantiated. There is no empir-
ical study yet aimed at examining whether a shift in seriousness vs. playful-
ness indeed enhances the sense of humor; i.e., that playfulness (and low seri-
ousness) are “motors” for the other components of the sense of humor. While
there is evidence that the training changes several components of the sense
of humor (Sassenrath 2001), the intervention program that comes with the
scale does involve a training of the skills measured by this scale. Therefore,
strictly speaking, a positive evaluation of the effectiveness of the program
cannot count as evidence. A convincing test of the hypothesis would involve
a training of general playfulness (without any humor-related content) and yet
the study provides evidence that the humor skills develop.
McGhee’s positive vs. negative mood (or good vs. bad humor) scale refers
to a very old understanding of humor. After being a medical term (referring
to the four basic body fluids blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile as-
sociated with the so-called humor theory of temperament and humoral-pa-
thology) since the ancient Greeks the term humor survived in anthropology.
At that time one assumed that the predominance of humors or body fluids
was responsible for labile behavior or mood in general. So in the middle of
the 16th century humour referred to a more or less predominant mood qual-
ity, which could be either positive (good humour) or negative (bad humour).
Good humoured and bad humoured eventually became dispositions. By the
turn of the 16th century the dictionary definition of good humour was “the
condition of being in a cheerful and amiable mood; also, the disposition or
habit of amiable cheerfulness.” Such an affect-based state-trait approach to
humor is the core of the next model.
Ruch and colleagues (Ruch and Köhler 1999, 2007; Ruch et al. 1996,
1997; Sommer and Ruch in press) start from an entirely different perspec-
tive than McGhee but yield a rather similar outcome. Their temperament ap-
proach to humor is based on the premise that the affective and mental founda-
tions of humor are likely to be universal, even if the expression of humor may
vary across cultures and time. Therefore they bypass the concept of “sense
of humor” and also specific humor behaviors that may be culture specific but
focus on the “underlying” temperamental factors. Considering that humor is
not unidimensional, not unipolar and covers both affective and cognitive fac-
tors they postulate that cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood are the traits
forming the temperamental basis of humor.
Based on the study of several sources for each trait a facet model consist-
ing of five to six facets was generated and tested in several (German, Ameri-
can, English) samples. For example, trait cheerfulness (i.e., the disposition
38 Willibald Ruch
example, the self-enhancing humor scale correlates highly with the Coping
Humor Scale (CHS); the author’s (Martin and Lefcourt 1983) prior measure
of the degree to which subjects report to use humor in coping with stress. The
HSQ also aims to replace the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire
(SHRQ; Martin and Lefcourt 1984). This instrument defines the sense of
humor as the “frequency with which a person smiles, laughs, and otherwise
displays mirth in a variety of life situations”, and was used rather success-
fully in research on stress and coping (see review by Martin 1996: 253–254).
While the self-enhancing and affiliative humor scales correlate significantly
and fairly strongly with the SHRQ and CHS, the aggressive and self-defeat-
ing scales seem to assess dimensions that are not tapped by these measures.
Adaptation of the concept underlying the HSQ to other cultures yielded that
the four dimensions by and large can be recovered from the translated items
(Chen and Martin 2007; Kazarian and Martin 2006; Saroglou and Scariot
2002; Tümkaya 2007).
Martin and colleagues used a top-down approach. They grouped theories
and derived representative statements for them. These were then empirical-
ly purified with the aim to derive homogeneous scales. A contrary approach
would be to disregard homogeneity but underscore the representativeness and
exhaustiveness of the humor behaviors, attitudes, feelings, habits or whatever
is being sampled. Indeed, research shows that the list of humor-related acts is
not endless. For a comprehensive approach to humor one could collect state-
ments that can be made to describe individuals’ everyday humor behavior.
Furthermore, it is difficult to justify that some behaviors are more important
or central than others, as it is implicitly done when scales are built around
a cluster of items (perhaps at the expense of items that are less redundant).
The approach by Craik and collaborators (Craik, Lampert, and Nelson
1993, 1996; Craik and Ware 2007) bears in mind such considerations. They
also pursue a theory-guided approach to humor and highlight the importance
of a community-oriented analysis of personality and humor. During their
lives people obtain a reputation in the social network they live in and other
members of the community can provide a comprehensive portrait of the tar-
get person’s style of humor when aided by an appropriate assessment tool,
such as the Humorous Behavior Q-sort Deck (HBQD; Craik et al. 1996).
Three features characterize the measurement approach underlying the HBQD,
namely the attempt to cover the whole behavioral domain of everyday humor-
ous conduct as comprehensively as possible (rather than formulating partly
redundant items for the assessment of a few selected traits or components of
humor), the focus on humor-related behaviors or behavior tendencies and,
Psychology of humor 41
Table 2. The 10 styles of humorous conduct sensu Craik et al. (1996)
I+. Socially warm humorous style I–. Socially cold humorous style
Maintains group morale through humor. Smiles grudgingly.
Has a good sense of humor. Responds with a quick, but short-lived
smile.
Uses good-natured jests to put others at Is a ready audience but infrequent
ease. contributor of humorous anecdotes.
Relative to other traits, displays Has a bland, deadpan sense of humor.
a noteworthy sense of humor.
II+. Reflective humorous style II–. Boorish humorous style
Is more responsive to spontaneous Imitates the humorous style of
humor than to jokes. professional comedians.
Uses humor to express the contradictory Recounts familiar, stale jokes.
aspects of everyday events.
Takes pleasure in bemused reflections on Tells funny stories to impress people.
self and others.
Appreciates the humorous potential of Is competitively humorous, attempts to
persons and situations. top others.
III+. Competent humorous style III–. Inept humorous style
Displays a quick wit and ready repartee. Reacts in an exaggerated way to mildly
humorous comments.
Manifests humor in the form of clever Laughs at the slightest provocation.
retorts to others’ remarks.
Enhances humorous impact with a deft Spoils jokes by laughing before finishing
sense of timing. them.
Has the ability to tell long, complex Laughs without discriminating between
anecdotes successfully. more and less clever remarks.
IV+. Earthy humorous style IV–. Repressed humorous style
Has a reputation for indulging in coarse Does not respond to a range of humor
or vulgar humor. due to moralistic constraints.
Delights in parodies which others might Is squeamish about “sick jokes.”
find blasphemous or obscene.
42 Willibald Ruch
Table 2. (cont.)
study is based on the quotidian term (i.e., the current understanding of sense
of humor by laypeople), not the concept stemming from a theory, or the
philosophical literature. Craik and Ware (2007) demonstrate the usefulness
of the tool for the analysis of the humor style of comedians, such as Woody
Allen, Whoopi Goldberg, and Lucille Ball.
This approach did yield the most differentiated structural model so far.
Also, it seems to be most comprehensive in terms of the behavioral indica-
tors. Several studies made use of this approach (e.g., Kirsh and Kuiper 2003;
Saroglou 2004). Unfortunately, most studies only apply the scale, or variants
of it, but the pool of statements was rarely used to investigate the model or to
develop it further (Esser 2001). The model also seems ideally suited to test
method variance in humor assessment as some of its dimensions can be as-
sessed by different measurements approaches as well. For example, earthy
humor could be compared with the typical joke test of funniness of sick, sex-
ual or bathroom humor, and competent humor might be related to perform-
ance tests of being witty.
Humor as an ability
The etymology of the term wit involves knowledge, mind and reasoning cap-
acity and even today the term wit (like esprit) is the humor term showing the
strongest semantic link to superior intelligence (Schmidt-Hidding 1963). In
the past humor and wit sometimes meant the same thing, but often they were
seen as opposed to each other. As Schmidt-Hidding (1963) pointed out, the
term wit, like humor, did not enter the field of the comic before the late 16th
century. At this time a humour meant an odd, uncommon, and eccentric char-
acter whose peculiarities emerged from an imbalance of body fluids and who
therefore was laughed at. This involuntary funny, odd and quaint object of
laughter later became known as the humourist, and the man of humour took
pleasure in exposing and imitating the peculiarities of the humourist. During
this period humor and wit became seen as talents relating to the ability to
make others laugh. Before that humor was merely understood as a predomin-
ant mood. The idea that humor involves a component of ability prevails until
today, although this concept is less well understood and a variety of names
(e.g., wit, humor creation, humor production) are being used.
Today, wit may be defined as the ability to make clever remarks in an
amusing way. It is a talent referring to using unexpected associations be-
tween contrasting or disparate words or ideas to create a clever humorous
44 Willibald Ruch
ferent types, e.g., repartee, humorous fiction, cartoons etc.) to see how their
convergent validity and dimensionality is.
Components have been separated at a rational basis. Feingold and Maz-
zella (1991, 1993) developed a multidimensional model of “wittiness.”
They defined wittiness as the ability to perceive in an ingeniously humorous
manner the relationship between seemingly incongruous things. Accord-
ing to them wittiness is composed of the three dimensions of humor mo-
tivation, humor cognition, and humor communication. This model of wit-
tiness is not a pure ability model as it covers not only the person’s ability
to create humor, but also the degree to which the person is motivated to be
funny and is able to communicate the humor effectively. Humor cognition
is an intellectual variable related to intelligence and creativity, whereas mo-
tivation and communication humor are related to social and temperamen-
tal variables. The authors developed measures of each facet of the model,
which were generally found to correlate with each other. Feingold and Maz-
zella (1991) distinguished between two types of “verbal humor ability”,
namely memory for humor (akin to Cattell’s crystallized intelligence) and
humor cognition (comparable to fluid intelligence). The former is measured
by tests of humor information and joke knowledge, and the latter measured
with tests of humor reasoning and joke comprehension. Research with those
measures revealed significant correlations between traditional measures of
verbal intelligence and the tests of humor cognition, whereas memory for
humor was not strongly related to intelligence. Humor reasoning was also
correlated with creative thinking.
Finally, some multidimensional models of humor do contain elements
that seem to refer to ability in general, and humor creation ability in specif-
ic (e.g., Craik and Ware 2007; Svebak 1974; Ziv 1984), although they rely
on questionnaire approach. Svebak (1974) suggested that individual differ-
ences in sense of humor involve variations in the three dimensions of me-
ta-message sensitivity, personal liking of the humorous role; and emotional
permissiveness. The first of these dimensions involves a cognitive ability
(i.e., the ability to take an irrational, mirthful perspective on situations, see-
ing the social world as it might be rather than as it is) related to intelligence
or creativity, the second has to do with attitudes and defensiveness, and the
third involves emotional temperament. Similarly, Ziv (1979) distinguishes
between humor creation and humor appreciation, and in the model by Craik
et al. (1996) one of the five factors relates to a Competent Humorous Style
suggests an active wit and capacity to convey humorous anecdotes effec-
tively (compared to the Inept Humorous Style, referring to a lack of skill
46 Willibald Ruch
and confidence in dealing with humor at the negative pole). Those scales
have been shown to have low correlations with ability measures of humor
creativity (e.g., Köhler and Ruch 1996).
factor usually is orthogonal to the two structure factors, the sexual humor
category correlates with nonsense and incongruity-resolution humor due to
the structure overlap. Hempelmann and Ruch (2005) undertook a GTVH-
analysis of the 60 jokes and cartoons of the 3 WD. The distinguishing features
are listed in Table 3.
Table 3 shows that the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH; Attardo
and Raskin 1991) can contribute to the analysis of the 3 WD. However, it is
more the parameters derived from the GTVH that seem to distinguish among
the humor types rather than the original parameters (e.g., script opposition,
logical mechanism, narrative strategy, target).
These three humor factors consistently explain approximately 40% of
the total variance. They are considered to provide an exhaustive taxonomy
of jokes and cartoons at a very general level. Even when the recipients typ-
Psychology of humor 51
ically are asked how funny they find the joke at the moment and not in gen-
eral, the response is quite trait-like. Factor analytic studies show that there
is only about 5% state variance in the funniness scores. Also, manipulation
of internal state or external conditions (Derks et al. 2007) does not yield
strong effects and retest correlations are sufficiently high (Ruch 1992).
These factors were first extracted in studies of Austrian samples and later
replicated in Western countries like Belgium, England, France, Germany,
Israel, Italy, and Turkey (Ruch and Hehl 2007). While most of these studies
were in collaboration with researchers from the respective countries, they
cannot be regarded as independent replications of the factor structure. Such
studies would perhaps use markers of the factors but else use representa-
tive samples of humor from the respective country. Carretero-Dios, Perez,
and Buela-Casal (in press) were able to separate factors of incongruity-res-
olution and nonsense in Spain; however, they did not use the 3 WD to con-
firm the convergent validity. Recently, Ruch and Hehl (2007) argued that
other structural models need to be tested that might be more appropriate and
maybe would allow for the identification of further, perhaps more specific
content categories. More studies need to be done on substantiating the inter-
pretation of the factors.
Factor analysis was also used to uncover the dimensions of appreciation.
Results show that the response mode in humor appreciation is defined by
two nearly orthogonal components of positive and negative responses best
represented by ratings of funniness and aversiveness (Ruch 1992). Maxi-
mal appreciation of jokes and cartoons consists of high funniness and low
aversiveness; while minimal appreciation occurs if the joke is not consid-
ered funny but is found aversive. However, a joke can also be considered
not funny but be far from being aversive; or it can make one laugh although
there are certain annoying aspects (e.g., one can consider the punch line ori-
ginal or clever but dislike the content of the joke).
Subsequent work, however, suggested that the component of positive
responses might actually be a broad dimension transcending by far what
has been called the “humor response” (i.e., the perception that a stimulus
is funny). Factor analytic studies (Ruch and Rath 1993) of responses to
humor yielded a strong factor of positive evaluation fusing the perception of
the stimulus properties (e.g., funny, witty, original) and the induced feeling
state (being amused, hilarity). Furthermore, studies of facial responses (e.g.,
Ruch 1995) show that rated funniness or experienced amusement correlates
very highly with smiling and laughter. It has therefore been suggested that
the responses to humor are explicitly conceptualized as an emotion covering
52 Willibald Ruch
the experiential level, behavior, and physiology (Ruch 1993). Factor analy-
sis also suggested that negative ratings might be further split into two sep-
arate but correlated clusters, representing milder, and more cognitive (e.g.,
plain, feel bored) and stronger affective (e.g., tasteless, feel angered) forms
of aversive reactions (Ruch and Rath 1993).
Joke and cartoon based tests of humor appreciation were the dominant
approach to the measurement of the sense of humor. When Lefcourt and
Martin (1986) started their stress-moderation studies they did not find such
tests useful for their purposes. While their judgment was probably right, they
were misinterpreted often as if they had said that tests of humor appreciation
were not of use at all, and subsequently the interest in such tests declined for
a while. Questionnaire measures became more fashionable and showed their
utility. However, humor questionnaires don’t predict actual creation of humor
and appreciation of jokes and cartoons well. Meanwhile the interest in humor
appreciation measures got stronger again (e.g., Carretero-Dios, Perez, and
Buela-Casal in press).
The different approaches discussed above can be scrutinized how they treat
“absence of humor” and whether or not they see forms of humor as disre-
spectable or even pathological. Being in a “paratelic state” or serious frame
of mind will prevent individuals engaging in humorous interactions or non
bona fide mode of communication.
In terms of appreciation of jokes and cartoons, being prone to respond
with negative affect (i.e., find humor easily aversive) might count as humor-
less, but it might also show a superior moral attitude. Furthermore, some
would probably suggest that joking about certain topics is “bad taste,” “sick,”
and showing a bad vicious character (Kuipers 2006). Again, this might be the
blind spot of the recipient of humor rather than telling something about the
person acting.
Humor as a strength clearly involves a unipolar dimension running from
low to high humor, assuming that humor has no clear “opposite.” The term
“humorless” is indicating the lack of humor, not an opposite trait. The ques-
tion is what is below this zero point? When we look for antonyms, dictionaries
point to serious-mindedness. Indeed, serious-mindedness is seen as a crucial
factor in several temperamental models (McGhee 1996; Raskin 2007; Ruch
and Köhler 2007). So is bad (or negative) mood; a trait needed to predict how
Psychology of humor 53
easily people are “out of humor” (McGhee 1996; Ruch and Köhler 2007).
The aggressive and self-defeating humor styles might represent bad taste or
unhealthy forms of humor but they do not explicitly represent humorlessness.
The other style approach to humor (Craik et al. (2007) involves styles that
tap into the region below zero and might be seen as humorless (e.g., inept,
socially cold), and earthy might be seen to represent bad taste.
The ability approaches to humor contribute to humor impairment in a var-
iety of ways. One can see the habitual inability to get a joke as a form of lack-
ing humor. Likewise, people might have low skills in performing humorously
and not be able to make up funny things on the spot. These might probably
best be described as phenomena located at the lower end of an else unipolar
scale.
The question arises whether there are more severe “pathologies.” Clearly,
there are pathologies of laughter, such as laughter as part of an epileptic fit,
as an effect of poisoning, or unmotivated laughs due to pseudobulbar palsy
(Wild, Rodden, Grodd, and Ruch 2003). Furthermore, various brain dam-
ages go along with impairments either to detect incongruity (or “surprise”) or
resolve it (or “coherence”) (Bihrle, Brownell, Powelson, and Gardner 1986;
Forabosco 2007). In the clinical field, Salameh (2006) described “humorpho-
bia” and “sado-maso” humor, and Titze (1996) postulated the existence of
a pathological fear of being laughed at: Gelotophobia.
Derived from Gelos, the Greek word for laughter, and phobia, meaning
fear, drawing from both literature and clinical observations, Titze (1996, in
press) applied a phenomenon called the Pinocchio Complex (wooden physic-
al appearance in psychosomatic patients) to gelotophobes – those with a fear
of being laughed at. Gelotophobes have the distinct conviction that there is
something wrong with them and that they are ridiculous to others, who enjoy
laughing at them. Ruch and Titze (1998) designed a pilot instrument for the
assessment of Gelotophobia, the Geloph <46>, from descriptions given by
clinical Gelotophobic patients. Ruch and Proyer (2008a) studied these items
in healthy adults and various clinical groups (non shame-based neurotics,
shame-based neurotics, gelotophobes) and found that this list of statements
describing the experiential world of gelotophobes was basically unidimen-
sional. Most importantly, the group of gelotophobes (identified via a clinical
interview) scored highest on this dimension. Ruch and Proyer (2008b) pro-
posed a scoring key for a final scale containing 15 items, which should enable
more in-depth explorations of the concept of the fear of being laughed at.
Based on the insights from the clinical case studies provided by Titze
(1996) a model of the putative causes and consequences of Gelotophobia was
54 Willibald Ruch
produced (Ruch 2004), which guided the empirical studies of the concept.
It should be noted that while Titze sees Gelotophobia as a clinical category,
Ruch and Proyer (2008b) outlined and studied the fear of being laughed at as
a non-pathological dimension, to be studied among healthy adults. Neverthe-
less, cut-off points for diagnosing slight, marked and extreme manifestation
of the fear of being laughed at were developed.
The concept was originally developed in Germany. Hence a cross-cultural
study (Proyer, Birden, Platt, Altfreder, Glauser, and Ruch 2005) was started
to verify that Gelotophobia does exist in other countries as well. Indeed, the
14 countries (with altogether 3526 participants) studied yielded a noticeable
number of gelotophobes. Later this study was expanded to include more than
70 nations. Furthermore, the fear of being laughed at was studied in answers
given to ambiguous social situations; i.e., in a semi-projective test (Altfreder
2000). Studies showed that gelotophobes misperceive auditorily presented
laughter of a positive quality, and consider it to be negatively motivated.
Likewise, Platt (2008) illustrated that gelotophobes have difficulty in dis-
criminating good-natured teasing from ridicule. Individuals with pronounced
Gelotophobia respond to prototypical ridicule scenarios with shame and fear;
but they also report experiencing these emotions in response to good-natured
teasing as well. Ruch, Beermann, and Proyer (in press) show that gelotophobes
score lower in most components of humor, but not generally so. While gelo-
tophobes consider their humor abilities to be inept, this cannot be verified by
a performance test of wit. Other studies show that gelotophobes indeed have
experienced shame in a higher intensity than others and happiness in a lower
intensity. Furthermore, their personality may be described by neurotic intro-
version with a tendency towards psychoticism (Ruch 2004). Other studies
investigated the prevalence of the fear of being laughed at among psychiatric
groups, the actual frequency of being laughed at for a variety of reasons, the
body image, and the satisfaction with life (see the special issue by Ruch in
press). In sum, one can state that gelotophobia represents one form of humor
pathology.
all others redundant. In the domain of self-reports, the model underlying the
HBQD is the most complex one as it involves five bipolar dimensions with
10 styles. So it might be the best candidate for a single all encompassing
measure. However, as discussed above, it is not clear whether it predicts
appreciation of jokes and cartoons, and it does not predict humor creation
behavior well. So right now, there is no universal measure for all aspects
of humor. It is also questionable whether we should aim at such a measure.
Nevertheless, it is very important to see how these measures overlap and
how many dimensions we need to distinguish to describe a person’s sense
of humor.
This leads to questions like where do the current approaches overlap?
How much redundancy is there? Do we arrive at a better or more compre-
hensive model when we jointly look at all conceptual approaches simultan-
eously? One could apply the most widely used scales to the same sample
and then perform factor analysis at the level of individual items or at the
scale level. Exactly this has been done in a few studies (Köhler and Ruch
1996; Korotkov and Hannah 1994; Ruch 1994; Ruch and Carrell 1998).
The two studies with the highest number of scales used (Köhler and Ruch
1996; Ruch and Carrell 1998) involved 24 subscales of humor inventories.
Joint factor analyses confirmed that all sense of humor scales available at
that time and all facets of cheerfulness always merged in a potent first factor.
In study one this comprised elements such as a prevalent cheerful mood, the
tendency to smile or laugh and to be merry, coping humor and cheerful com-
posedness, initiating humor/liking to entertaining others, liking of humor
stimuli, and a positive attitude about things being related to cheerfulness
and playfulness. In the second study McGhee’s (1999) sense of humor com-
ponents (i.e., enjoyment of humor, laughter, verbal humor, finding humor in
everyday life, laughing at yourself, and humor under stress) marked this fac-
tor equally well as the facets of cheerfulness did. Thus, the affect-based tem-
perament and the major factor underlying the sense of humor instruments
used seem to be indistinguishable. Of the inventories published meanwhile
most likely the affiliative and self-enhancing humor style of the HSQ (Mar-
tin et al. 2003) and the socially warm vs. socially cold humorous style (of
the HBQD) would load on this factor too.
While the sense of humor scales in the first study all shared a common
loading on the cheerfulness (or affect-based sense of humor components) fac-
tor, they differed with respect to whether they were also loaded negatively by
seriousness, the second factor, and how marked this loading was. While the
more affect-related humor scales were close to the axis, the sense of humor
56 Willibald Ruch
effort was spent on comparing the approaches and working on a more general
model transcending the different domains.
Humor instruments
d ecisions) if the alpha-coefficient is below .70 and that it should be above .90
for decision about an individual. Reliability is a precondition for the validity
of a test.
The validity describes in how far a test measures what it is intended to
measure. There are different forms of validity. For example, face validity (the
assumption that the items from a test “look good”, i.e. seem to measure what
is intended), content validity (the items of a test are representative for a spe-
cial domain) or predictive validity (the degree to which a test predicts a spe-
cific criterion; e.g., behavior). Additionally, the construct validity is of special
interest. It is aimed at showing the relation between the test score and the
psychological construct it is intended to measure. Usually this is shown by its
convergent (correlation to a well-established test for the same construct; same
trait) and divergent validity (correlation to measures of unrelated constructs;
different trait).
Campbell and Fiske (1959) suggested that convergent and divergent va-
lidity are best tested in a so-called multitrait-multimethod matrix (MTMM).
Their approach of testing the validity of a test includes tests of the same and
different traits and additionally, they demand that the relations should even
be stable if the methods used for the data collection are different. While ob-
jectivity, reliability, and validity are the most important quality criteria of
psychological tests there are many other criteria to be considered as well. For
example, the fairness of a measure (i.e. equal opportunities for members of
different groups that take the test) or the use of appropriate norm values for
the respective research questions. Further information can be retrieved from
Cronbach (1984) or Cooper (2002).
Measuring humor has sometimes been considered to be an impossible
task due to the elusive nature of the concept. Nevertheless, throughout the
20th century there were numerous attempts to develop measures of the sense
of humor and related states and traits. Ruch (2007b) surveyed the existing
humor measurement tools and found more than 60 instruments. Mostly those
were self-report questionnaires or joke/cartoon tests, but occasionally also
methods, like humor diaries, informant questionnaires/peer-reports, behavio-
ral observations, experimental tasks or interviews and informal surveys were
used.
In self-report trait measures of humor the testee reacts to statements or an-
swers to questions how he or she typically behaves. The testees either indicate
how strongly they endorse a statement or disagree with it, or give the quan-
tity/frequency of a certain behavior. As humor is a desirable trait a few indi-
viduals might overestimate their humor. Using a Q-sort technique, in which
Psychology of humor 59
the frequency for each step of the answer scale is set, may prevent such ten-
dencies. A peer-report version of a trait measure of humor typically uses the
identical questions. Then two or three good acquaintances of the target person
fill in the questionnaire (questions are reformulated in a “he/she”-format) and
inform how the target person typically behaves, thinks, or acts. The use of
friends, spouse, siblings, parents or colleagues at work typically adds com-
plementary non-redundant information about the humor of the target person,
as the target and acquaintances do have access to different information. Typ-
ically, the aggregate of two peer-ratings personality traits and the self-report
yields coefficients of .40. This is also a coefficient that should be expected
for humor instruments. Such questionnaires may be unidimensional (e.g.,
the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire-SHRQ; Martin and Lefcourt
1984) or multidimensional; i.e., measuring several dimensions (e.g., Multidi-
mensional Sense of Humor Scale–MSHS; Thorson and Powell 1993).
In state measures of humor the testee indicates how he or she feels or is
mentally set in the moment, the last hour, or the last day or week. Obviously,
state measures should be as homogenous as trait measures, but the temporal
stability cannot be expected to be high, but in a .20–.40 range. In perform-
ance (joke/cartoons) tests of humor the individual does not reflect on how he
or she typically behaves in daily life but this behavior is elicited and recorded
under controlled conditions. More precisely, in humor appreciation tests the
individual is confronted with a test booklet containing the set of humorous
stimuli and an answer sheet with rating scales where the testee records his or
her subjective experience (e.g., the IPAT humor test of personality by Cat-
tell and Tollefson 1966; the Antioch sense of humor test by Mindess, Turek,
Bender, and Corbin 1985; EUHA by Carretero-Dios, Perez, and Buela-Casal
in press). Sometimes the material is grouped into piles (“like,” “dislike” or
“indifference”), or nonverbal indicators of enjoyment are recorded (e.g., the
Mirth Response Test by Redlich, Levine, and Sohler 1951). Performance
tests of wit or humor creation can be quite diverse, but most often the indi-
vidual is confronted with an incomplete joke or cartoon, and is asked to write
as many funny captions as possible. Or they are asked to comment something
in a funny way etc (Lefcourt and Martin 1986). The frequency and quality of
the captions, also contents may be later evaluated. For example, e.g., 5 to 10
raters judge the degree of funniness of the material produced or the persons
humor creation ability and wit (Köhler and Ruch 1996). Once a great range of
answers is assembled and evaluated for funniness (e.g., 6–10 raters), anchors
for different quality might be derived and used as an aid for scoring individual
answers by a fewer numbers of people doing the coding.
60 Willibald Ruch
a 1–5 scale. The internal reliability of the SHRQ ranges from .70 to .85 and
the test-rest reliability is .70. Martin (1996) gives a review of validity stud-
ies of the SHRQ. For example, the SHRQ correlates with the frequency and
duration of spontaneous laughter during unstructured interviews and with
peer ratings of participants’ frequency of laughter and tendency to use humor
in coping with stress (r’s ranging from .30 to .50). Furthermore, scores cor-
related with rated funniness of monologues created by participants in the
laboratory. Finally, the SHRQ has been shown to moderate the effects of life
stress on mood disturbance (for reviews see Martin 1996, 2007).
The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al. 2003) is a self-re-
port questionnaire composed of 32 items in a seven point-answer format
measuring four styles of humor, namely self-enhancing, aggressive, affilia-
tive, and self-defeating humor. Internal reliability (alpha coefficients) ranges
from .77 to .81, and the (one week) test-retest reliability from .80 to .85.
Initial evidence for construct validity is provided in terms of multiple corre-
lations with other humor scales (they range from .47 to .75) and correlations
between questionnaire and one peer report (one item per scale; coefficients
range from .22 to .33). Evidence for criterion validity is provided by correlat-
ing the HSQ with a variety of indicators of psychological health, well-being,
mood, and personality. The scales of social and self-enhancing humor corre-
late moderately positively with self-esteem, well-being, and social intimacy,
and negatively with depression and anxiety. The aggressive and self-defeating
humor scale correlates positively with aggression and hostility, and self-de-
feating relates negatively with depression, anxiety, well-being, self-esteem,
and social support. The scale has been used to study regional differences in
the USA (Romero, Alsua, Hinrichs, and Pearson 2007). Furthermore, inter-
national versions are available for use with participants from countries such
as, China, Belgium, Germany, Lebanon and Turkey (Chen and Martin 2007;
Kazarian and Martin 2006; Saroglou and Scariot 2002; Tümkaya 2007).
The Humorous Behavior Q-sort Deck (Craik et al. 1996) is a Q-sort tech-
nique consisting of one hundred descriptive statements describing specific
forms of everyday humorous conduct. The respondent (or an observer) sorts
those statements into piles from one to nine, with one being the least, five
being neutral, and nine being most characteristic of the person being assessed
with the following specified distribution: 5, 8, 12, 16, 18, 16, 12, 8, 5. Craik
and Ware (2007) recommend the HBQD for studying the everyday humor-
ous conduct of persons in three levels: (1) at the individual level of descrip-
tive statements, by analyzing its 100 items separately; (2) at the overall pat-
tern level, by incorrelating individual or composited HBQD descriptions; and
62 Willibald Ruch
(3) at the stylistic level, by calculating factor scores for individual HBQD
descriptions. The latter level allows to interpret the five style of humor found
by (Craik et al. 1996), namely the socially warm versus cold, reflective versus
boorish, competent versus inept, earthy versus repressed, and benign versus
mean-spirited humorous styles.
The internal reliability (alpha coefficients) ranges from .61 to .71, ex-
cept for style 2 (which is .43). Information regarding construct validity is
provided by several studies (Craik et al. 1996; Craik and Ware 2007). The
HBQD discriminates among comedians in a plausible way, and there are cor-
relations with a sense of humor index. In a sample of 60 Irish students the
correspondence between self and peer report was very high for socially warm
(.52), earthy (.63), benign (.55) and competent (.37) humor styles and low
for the reflective (.17) humor style. A study with 91 German adults yielded
high coefficients for the earthy (.56), competent (.44) socially warm (.32),
and benign (.23) humor styles, and again a low and not significant one for the
reflective (.16) humor style (Esser 2001). This suggests that, rater and rated
person disagree primarily on one of the styles. Clearly, they have different
access to the information necessary for that judgment. Furthermore, the cor-
relations with several personality scales were studied, among them the Cali-
fornia Psychological Inventory (CPI), Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI),
and the Big Five Inventory (BFI) (Craik et al. 1993, Esser 2001). The scale,
or variants of it were used in several studies (e.g., Kirsh and Kuiper 2003;
Kuiper, Grimshaw, Leite, and Kirsh 2004; Priest and Thein 2003; Ruch, Beer-
mann, and Proyer in press; Saroglou 2004).
The State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI; Ruch et al. 1996, 1997) is
a self-report questionnaire for the assessment of cheerfulness, seriousness,
and bad mood both as states (STCI-S) and traits (STCI‑T). There are 20 and
10 items per scale for the trait and state versions, respectively, which respond-
ents rate in terms of endorsement on 1–4 point scales (strongly disagree to
strongly agree). The internal reliability (alpha coefficients) of the trait scale
for adults ranges from 88. to .94, and the test-retest reliability from .77 to .86
(4 weeks). The state part has high internal consistency too (.85 to .93), and
the stability over a month is low (.33 to .36), as expected. The self-reports
of the traits correlate .53 to .66 with peer reports (average of three good
friends). The self-reports of the traits correlate with the homologous states,
with the size of correlations higher for the aggregated states and the longer
lasting states than for a single measurement of one state. Recently, Sommer
and Hösli (2006) introduced a version for use with children and youth. There
are self- and peer-rating forms for both the child and adult versions.
Psychology of humor 63
Internal reliability (alpha coefficients) of the six regular scales rage from
.81 to .91, and the retest reliability (4 weeks) ranges from .60 to .74. The con-
struction of parallel versions allowed the estimation of the reliability based
on equivalence of tests, which yielded high coefficients too (.82 to .93). Con-
struct validity was assessed by correlations with other humor instruments.
The 3 WD scales are uncorrelated from affect-based sense of humor meas-
ures, but correlate with humor performance measures, (low) seriousness, and
type nouns related to humor and humorlessness. They correlate with various
measures of preference for different types of art (especially with the simplic-
ity-complexity dimension) underscoring the similarity between appreciation
of humor and of aesthetics. Finally, a myriad of studies examined correlations
with various dimensions of personality, attitudes and values, and so on (see
reviews in Ruch 1992, 2002; Ruch and Hehl 2007).
90
INC-RESf
28
26
24 NON-f
Total scores
22
20
18 NONa
16
INC-RESa
14
15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
Age (in years)
Figure 1. Development of humor appreciation across the life span (INC-RESf =
funniness of incongruity-resolution humor, NONf= funniness of nonsense humor;
NONa = aversiveness of nonsense humor; INC-RESa = aversiveness of incongruity-
resolution humor) (Drawn from data presented in Ruch et al. 1990).
humor too. Therefore, we do need longitudinal studies albeit short time ones
with different age cohorts.
We also lack in developmental studies of other forms of humor. Test con-
structors typically give information about the correlation of the new humor
scale with age (e.g., Martin et al. 2003). However, correlations do only indicate
the linear trend in age related differences. The samples typically are too small
to give a more fine-grained analysis of means for different age groups. Once
larger samples are accumulated, reviews of the validity of the scale should
involve the study of age differences. This will give a first hint of what differ-
ences might be expected in subsequent short-term longitudinal s tudies.
Intervention programs
Hirsch 2001; Lowis and Nieuwoudt 1994). Lowis and Nieuwoudt (1994)
published results from a workshop aimed at increasing humor usage as
a coping aid. Twenty-two participants met for five sessions and the only sig-
nificant change found was an increase in the Coping Humor Scale.
The most elaborate published evaluation study first designed a systematic
program for the improvement of the sense of humor and then tested its effec-
tiveness in a sample of 101 female high-school teachers (Nevo et al. 2007).
The program consisted of 14 well-documented units, and the interventions
were designed to specifically activate the proposed motivational, cognitive,
emotional, and social components of sense of humor. One group received the
full program, while another groups received only part of the program, and
two others formed a control group or were only tested before and after. Re-
sults provide only partial support for the effectiveness of the program. While
participants in the humor improvement program received higher peer-ratings
of humor appreciation and humor production after the program (as in com-
pared to rating before the program and compared to the control group), there
were no differences in a variety of questionnaires or the humor production
tests used.
McGhee (1999) developed a program that is both most explicit and theo-
retically founded. The program is based on the assumption that playfulness
forms the basis for the sense of humor, and the rediscovery of a playful at-
titude or outlook on life (that got lost during education, school years and
work) is a key element for change. The set of skills to be taught during group
meetings and ”home play” is distributed across eight steps ordered in dif-
ficulty from simple (e.g., enjoying humor in everyday life) to difficult (e.g.,
laughing at yourself) to acquire. Earlier steps need to be successfully mas-
tered to finally be able to have access to humor skills in the midst of stress.
To assess progress in the skills to be acquired the sense of humor scale (SHS;
see Ruch and Carrell 1998, for a psychometric evaluation of the scale) is
provided consisting of subscales that partly match these steps. Simone Sas-
senrath (2001) applied McGhee’s program over a span of two month to four
groups. She reports that the group of 20 adults that underwent the theoretical
and practical part of the program (but not the three other groups) yielded in-
creases in self-reports of humor, with some of those increases still prevailing
one month after the end of the intervention. Changes involved increases in the
six scales measuring the skills comprising the sense of humor, in playfulness,
positive mood (subscales of the SHS), and the CHS, and also reductions in
the seriousness and bad mood scales of the STCI. While both studies (Nevo
et al. 2007; Sassenrath 2001) had a placebo control, the circumstances of the
Psychology of humor 71
studies did not allow for a random assignment of participants to groups. Heidi
Stolz and Sandra Rusch (2008) were testing the eight-step-program in a sam-
ple of Swiss adults and yielded, among others, an increase in satisfaction
with life in the experimental groups. While the participants were randomly
assigned to the four groups, these were still differing in baseline levels and
group dynamics.
While there is some preliminary evidence for effect of the intervention
programs many issues remain unresolved. For example, the optimal length of
such programs is not known. Also, what are the requirements on the leaders
conducting the program (does anyone qualify?), who will likely profit from
the course (everyone or specific groups?), what is expected to be improving
(e.g., selective skills or the global sense of humor?). Do changes in the sense
of humor occur, as McGhee would predict, when merely playfulness is nur-
tured but no humor skills are trained? Does a program for the training of the
more humorless individuals need to be different from the one for the average
person and the one with superior wit? Or is there no need to tailor it to the
humor skills level of that group? Finally, one needs to consider broadening
the goals of such programs. Humor may be used in destructive ways (as in
put down witticisms). But when guided by benevolence, wisdom or tran-
scendence, it may be used in virtuous ways to foster relationships, strengthen
group morale, act as a social lubricant, promote intimacy, provide insight and
facilitate the ‘good life’ generally. Therefore, programs might also want to
incorporate the unlearning or refraining from destructive uses of humor, and
we need studies examining whether the virtuous use of the humor skills can
be learned as well.
Already for a long time, people characterize their own group and their neigh-
bors in terms of how much or what type of humor they supposedly possess.
This took the form of regional differences (i.e., within countries) but also
national differences (i.e., across countries). Usually more flattering forms of
humor were attributed to themselves than to others (Eysenck 1944–1945; Ni-
cholson 1946; Schmidt-Hidding 1963). Rarely, a country disliked by some-
one will be praised with much good humor. Having or not having a sense of
humor is part of the national stereotype and may or may not go along with
average scores of representative samples of citizens. In Europe, for example,
chances are that Germans and English will turn out on opponent poles of
72 Willibald Ruch
such scales, and many people in both countries seem to believe in those stere-
otypes (i.e., the postulated national character).
Irrespective of attributions of humor to certain countries, there may also be
differences in humor existing in terms of mean levels of certain humor traits.
Note again, that a psychological approach would not necessarily compare the
humor material produced in two countries (i.e., studying the best 10 comic
writings, Sit-coms, or joke collections) but the actual behavior of people. Dif-
ferences in the type and quality of humor material produced in the countries
may exist (especially as often the work of a limited number of writers comes
to mind which may or may not be representative for the other citizens of that
country) but it may well be that humor produced in one country is more high-
ly appreciated in the other. Regional, cross-national or cross-cultural studies
must take a different venue then, namely to study the humor of fairly repre-
sentative (or at least comparable) samples from the entities to be compared.
Such research has been done with other personality traits using translations of
scales, and mean levels of representative groups from different cultures were
compared quantitatively (e.g., McCrae and Allik 2002). Also, the factor struc-
ture of the scales is compared to see whether the scale is indeed applicable to
the other country. This approach, however, has drawn extensive criticism, be-
cause raw scores obtained in different cultures, often from instruments in dif-
ferent languages, may not be directly comparable. Critics (e.g., Van de Vijver
and Leung 1997) have pointed to a number of potential problems: Transla-
tions may not be equivalent, response styles may confound results, samples
may not be representative of the culture as a whole etc.
Such research needs to be aware of the emic–etic distinction. Emic con-
structs are accounts, descriptions, and analyses expressed in terms of the con-
ceptual schemes and categories that are regarded as meaningful and appropri-
ate by the members of the culture under study. Am emic construct is correctly
termed “emic” if and only if it is in accord with the perceptions and under-
standings deemed appropriate by the insider’s culture. There is a vast amount
of information on humor members of a society can share. The validation of
emic knowledge thus becomes a matter of consensus – namely, the consensus
of native informants, who must agree that the construct matches the shared
perceptions that are characteristic of their culture.
Etic constructs are accounts, descriptions, and analyses expressed in terms
of the conceptual schemes and categories that are regarded as meaningful and
appropriate by the community of scientific observers. An etic construct is
correctly termed “etic” if and only if it is in accord with the epistemological
principles deemed appropriate by science (i.e., etic constructs must be pre-
Psychology of humor 73
Heritability
Are humor and laughter innate or learned? Can anybody develop a sparkling
wit or are some of us doomed to be and stay humorless? Is money and ef-
fort on “develop your sense of humor”-programs wasted or may everybody
be trained to use humor in stressful situations? What is the etiology of the
different forms of humor? Behavior genetics asks the extent to which differ-
ences in genetic differences among individuals contribute to the differences
we observe in their behavior. This is the issue of nature and nurture and this
question needs to be addressed by humor research as well.
Smiling and laughter are universal expressions (Darwin 1872) and there
is evidence that man is not the only animal that laughs (Panksepp 2007;
Preuschoft 1992; van Hoof 1972). While in ontogenetic development laugh-
ter emerges around the fourth month, the rare cases of gelastic epilepsy (from
Greek; gelos = laughter) among neonates demonstrate that all structures are
there and functional on date of birth (Wild et al. 2003). Further evidence for
the innateness of laughter comes from early twin studies (Gedda and Neroni
1955) as well as from the fact that laughter was observed among deaf-blind
children (even among deaf-blind thalidomide children, who could not ”learn”
laughter by touching people’s faces) (see Ruch and Ekman 2001).
Little is known about the heritability of the various components of humor.
Two twin studies of appreciation of cartoon humor show no genetic influ-
ence for appreciation of nonsense, satirical, aggressive, and sexual cartoons
(Cherkas, Hochberg, MacGregor, Snieder, and Spector 2000; Wilson, Rust,
and Kasriel 1977). In both studies monozygotic twins were not more similar
to each other than dizygotic twins. The high correlation among the twins (all
reared together) shows that the shared environmental influence seems to be
most relevant, followed by the non-shared (i.e., unique) environment. Thus,
76 Willibald Ruch
If we find that the affect-based and behavioral forms (e.g., laughter, cheer-
fulness, social humor) are more strongly genetically determined than humor
appreciation or a humorous attitude or humor as a virtue, we will have to
examine whether the genetic factors involved are the same that are involved
in positive affect or extraversion. Studies of the effects of family and peers
will have to take a variety of factors into accounts (e.g., learning, models,
imitation, life events). So far there is only anecdotal evidence that life events
transform a person’s humor as part of a general rearranging of priorities in life
(e.g., through the insight that nothing earthly is infinite, typically following
a painful loss). Too few intervention studies were conducted and the existing
ones do not yield clear results. Therefore, nothing much can be said about the
relative contributions of genes and environment on the different components
of humor at this stage. Also, we need more studied on humor and assortative
mating (Murstein and Brust 1985; Priest and Thein 2003).
Evolutionary psychology asks the question of how traits have evolved over
species. Psychologists and ethologists asked the question of what is the re-
productive significance of humor? Knowing the origins of humor and laugh-
ter would help understanding their present status; i.e., facilitate deriving hy-
potheses about people’s current behavior and make predictions in current
studies more successful. However, vice versa, speculation about evolution-
ary origins would be facilitated if we knew more about the current functions
of humor and laughter, what their antecedents and consequences are, what
changes there are from pre to post when humor and laughter occur. We most-
ly lack this knowledge. Also, we have not yet established a complete net of
the humor-related variables, which would help determining what later forms
build upon which earlier ones.
While smiling and laughter are recognized as universal and innate ex-
pressions, the status of the emotion of amusement (or mirth, hilarity) is less
clear. Van Hoof (1972) demonstrated that smiling and laughter have a differ-
ent phylogenetic development. However, Darwin proposed that laughter pre-
ceded smiling. While it seems likely that all humans are capable of the per-
ception that something is funny, the pertinent research is still missing. If one
takes appreciation of jokes and cartoons as an index of humor appreciation
the situation is somewhat mixed. Research with the 3 WD humor test shows
some evidence for cross-cultural stability of factors of incongruity-resolution
78 Willibald Ruch
Notes
Thanks to the editor for his patience as moving from Germany, to UK to Switzerland
hindered progress on this chapter.
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100 Willibald Ruch
Introduction
This paper seeks to introduce the field of the linguistics of humor for the non-
specialist. It assumes a certain degree of familiarity with linguistic termin-
ology, but should be readable by the general educated public. Conversely, it
assumes no prior familiarity with humor research, besides what can be gath-
ered by the chapters of this primer.
The historical survey was kept deliberately short since a general treatment
of the subject is available in Attardo (1994) and bibliographic references and
secondary literature are available in that source. However, sources that were
not listed in 1994, either because they did not exist then or had been over-
looked, have been added in the text.
The reader should be aware of the fact that the historical survey is focused
entirely on linguistic analyses and therefore would appear partial to a non lin-
guistically-oriented observer. I am unapologetic about this; the other surveys
in this book will provide the balance of an impartial review.
The rest of the essay will be dedicated to an overview of the field as it is
currently. Emphasis is given to width of coverage, rather than depth, espe-
cially where in-depth coverage of some areas is available in other sources,
which are then referenced in the text. Technical terms such as isotopy are used
without special definition, but most of them are discussed in Attardo (1994).
Literature review
The linguistics of humor begins (much like any other scientific field) with
the Greeks. Obviously, at the time, linguistics was not a distinct science; we
have to wait for Saussure for that, since even the great (mostly) German his-
torical linguists saw themselves as working in the historical sciences. None-
theless, philosophers and literary theorists deal with humor and in doing so
deal with its linguistic aspects. For example, Aristotle, in the Rhetorics, an-
ticipates the incongruity theories in a discussion of metaphors and puns (At-
tardo 1994: 20). The historical importance of Platonic and Aristotelic thought
in the theory of humor cannot be overstated: for example, it establishes the
opposition comedy–tragedy which will determine theoretical thought on
humor for well over 20 centuries (note that in linguistics, the opposition is
rather that between serious and humorous discourse).
The Latin authors deal with humor within the more practical context of
the education of the orator but rely heavily on Greek sources (some lost).
Their taxonomies are at times still valid, as is Cicero’s distinction between de
re (referential) and de dicto (verbal) humor, which has been rediscovered by
countless authors (Attardo 1994: 27). By the time we reach Quintilian’s ex-
tensive treatment of humor, we can say that there is a coherent body of think-
ing about humor, mostly centered around the theme of its appropriateness,
but with serious forays in its linguistic aspects (thus ambiguity and irony are
singled out as linguistic mechanisms associated with humor). On the classical
theories of humor, see the relevant passages of Bremmer and Roodenburg
(1997) and Minois (2000). On Ancient humor, see Trédé and Hoffman (eds.)
(1998), Desclos (2000) and Olson (2007); on Roman comedy, a 1994 reprint
of Duckworth (1952) which includes a bibliographical essay that updates the
bibliography, is worth signaling, especially chapter 11, which surveys both
ancient and modern theories of humor.
The middle ages were not cheerful times and, in keeping with this, noth-
ing original about humor theory comes up. However, recent research is doing
much to nuance the image of the period, cf. Le Goff (1989; translated in
Bremmer and Roodenburg 1997), Bouché and Charpentier (1990), Horo
witz and Menache (1994) and Verdon (2001). We will have to wait until the
Renaissance, in Italy around the beginning of the 16th century, before some
new ideas will come up. For example, Madius (Vincenzo Maggi) in 1550
publishes an essay on humor, along with a commentary on Aristotle’s poet-
ics. In this essay he emphasizes the surprise aspect of humor, somewhat ne-
glected by the classics, but also introduces a novel interest in the physiology
of humor, which will culminate a few years later in Joubert’s Traité du Ris
(1579), Descartes’s treatment of humor in his Traité des passions de l’âme
A primer for the linguistics of humor 103
The incongruity theories claim that humor arises from the perception of
an incongruity between a set of expectations and what is actually perceived.
This idea, as we saw, goes back to Aristotle, but has been rediscovered several
times. The most famous restatements of its basic concept are Kant’s, Shopen-
hauer’s, Koestler’s (bisociation), Paulos’s mathematical catastrophe theory,
and recent cognitive blending theories (e.g., Hofstadter and Gabora 1989;
Coulson 1996, 2001, 2005; and see below). Its standard modern statement
is Suls (1972). Hostility theories go back to Plato, but have had their best
known proponent in Hobbes and current champions in Gruner (1978, 1997)
and Billig (2005). Essentially, they claim that one finds humorous a feeling
of superiority over something, of overcoming something, or aggressing a tar-
get. Release theories claim that humor “releases” some form of psychic en-
ergy and/or frees the individual from some constraints. The best known such
theory is Freud’s (1905), which claims that humor allows an economy of
“psychic energy” although the psychodynamic model he bases it on has been
104 Salvatore Attardo
Taxonomies of puns
Puns have long been presumed to be the sole legitimate field of analysis for
the linguistics of humor (cf. Pepicello and Weisberg 1983). The analyses of
puns are primarily taxonomic. In Attardo (1994), four types of taxonomies
were classified (thus yielding a meta-taxonomy – and without any claim that
those are the only possible taxonomies):
–– Taxonomies based on linguistic phenomena (e.g., homophony, homogra-
phy, paronymy, etc.)
–– Systematic taxonomies based on linguistic categories (e.g., syntagmatic,
paradigmatic, etc.)
–– Taxonomies based on surface structure (e.g., the phonetic distance between
the two phonetic strings punned upon)
–– Eclectic (i.e., taxonomies that mix criteria)
The positive sides of these taxonomies are many: primarily that they collect
and systematize a wealth of data vastly more detailed than any other area
of the linguistics of humor, for example, it seems that punning may well be
a universal since it is attested in many non-Indo-european languages (Guidi
Forth). The downside of taxonomic approaches to puns is that taxonomies
cannot substitute theory building and, worse, taxonomies always presuppose
a theory, but do so implicitly, with all the attendant risks that this poses.
A few general points about puns bear stating:
–– Puns invoke significantly the surface structure (the signifier) of lan-
guage, but this claim can be generalized to non-verbal linguistic forms
(e.g., signed languages) and in general to semiotic systems (e.g., graphic
signs)
–– Puns are non-casual speech forms; in casual speech the speaker is uncon-
cerned by the surface structure of the forms he/she is uttering.
–– Puns involve the presence of (minimally) two senses, but need not in-
volve two “words,” the two senses can come about via the interpretation
of any string and can come about as a result of syntactic, as well as mor-
phological, ambiguity (lexical ambiguity falls in this last category).
–– Furthermore, alliterative puns involve the repetition of a given (group of)
phonemes and may be scattered along (parts of) the relevant text, as op-
posed to the punctual location of the punning material in morphological
and syntactic puns.
–– Not any ambiguous string is a pun. Ambiguity is generally eliminated
by semantic and pragmatic disambiguation. Puns preserve (at least) two
106 Salvatore Attardo
Structuralist analyses
Aside from the work on puns, structuralist research, primarily in France, but
also in Italy and Germany, developed a model of humor that blends an incon-
gruity-based theory of humor with the research in semantic and narratology
that flourished in Europe in the 1960s. The central concepts around which the
model I have called “isotopy-disjunction” (Attardo 1994) were built are:
–– isotopy (associated with Greimas’s semantics), and
A primer for the linguistics of humor 107
theory. The SSTH does in fact incorporate a very significant pragmatic com-
ponent, which sees humor as a violation of Grice’s cooperative principle (see
Attardo 1994, chapter 9 for discussion).
Raskin’s theory of humor boils down to two separate claims:
–– that each joke text is interpretable according to (at least) two distinct scripts
(i.e., the scripts overlap over the joke), and
–– two that the scripts are opposed (i.e., they are local antonyms; on this issue
see Attardo 1997).
I have claimed, controversially and against Raskin’s views (1985, and p.c.),
that the SSTH can be reduced to an incongruity/resolution model (the lead-
ing psychological model of humor). Under this view (Attardo 1997), the op-
position requirement is essentially a case of incongruity, but with better for-
malization than the concept of incongruity in psychology. The alert reader
will have noticed that the SSTH makes claims only about jokes, the simplest
and least complicated type of humorous text. This methodological restriction
made perfect sense for the linguist, who wanted to analyze simple cases first,
but was a problem pretty much anywhere else.
(1) What do you get when you cross a mafioso with a postmodern theo-
rist? Someone who will make you an offer you cannot understand.
A SSTH analysis of this joke would identify the scripts for mafioso and for
postmodern theorist (script names are in small caps), see that they over-
lap in the second line: “Someone who will make you an offer you cannot…”
can be attributed equally well to the mafioso (the quote from the Godfather
movie is obvious) but as the punch line “understand” reveals, was actually
also applicable to the postmodern theorist (we assume that script is complete
enough to have information about the fact that PoMo theorists are notori-
ously hard to understand). Needless to say, the scripts for mafioso and for
postmodern theorist are opposed, at least for the purposes of this text.
The GTVH would further identify in the quoted stereotypical sentence with
a changed word a pun-like mechanism as the LM, a strange “crossing” situ-
ation, an obvious target (the PoMo theorists), an equally obvious NS (the
“crossing” jokes), and finally the language of the text, would be described as
the words, syntactic constructions, etc.
The GTVH broadened the SSTH to include all linguistic levels, including
an interest for social and narratological issues absent in the SSTH. How-
ever, the GTVH retained the same almost exclusive focus on the joke. Not
all approaches to the SSTH/GTVH shared the same focus, however. Several
researchers, and most notably Chlopicki (1987), had turned to longer texts.
Their efforts are summarized and critiqued in Attardo (1994). Further re-
search in the humor of “longer texts” (as non-joke-related humor research
became known) resulted in a number of seminars (see Chlopicki 1997, for
example) and eventually in Attardo (2001a, 2002b) in which I present what
I take to be the first full scale application of a much expanded GTVH to the
analysis of long humorous texts, such as novels, short stories, TV sitcoms,
movies, plays, etc.
110 Salvatore Attardo
The text is physically linear and directed (i.e., it can be traveled only in one
direction, or in other words, it is a vector). Along the text occur one or more
instances of humor. These are labeled and analyzed, as per the GTVH. So,
for each instance of humor, an account is given of what the SO, LM, etc. of
that particular case are. This immediately leads to the first major difference
between this version of the GTVH and previous ones: we introduce a new
concept and a neologism to go with it, the jab line. Just like the punch line
indicates in humor theory the occurrence of a humorous instance at the end
of the text (see Attardo et al. 1994, for evidence), the jab line indicates the
occurrence of a humorous instance anywhere else. Jab and punch lines are se-
mantically indistinguishable (and when there is no need to do so the generic
term line is used), but they differ at a narratological level. Whereas punch
lines are disruptive of the narrative they close, jab lines are not, and in fact
often contribute to the development of the text (see Tsakona 2003, for an
interesting development of the distinction). Consider the following two ex-
amples, in which the lines are bolded:
–– at the end of the picture-gallery stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsruhe,
a heavy Tartar-looking lady, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emer-
alds, talking bad French at the top of her voice… (Lord Arthur Savile’s
Crime)
–– Do you believe in clubs for young men?
Only when kindness fails.
A primer for the linguistics of humor 111
It is clear that while in (3) the punch line makes the interpretation of the text
up to that point as relating to social organizations completely implausible, in
(2) no such reconfiguration of the text takes place, and we are witnessing the
description of a lady all along, except, of course, that the description is far
from flattering. Incidentally, the example occurs at the beginning of the text,
which continues for thousands of words.
The cataloging of all the lines of the text along the GTVH parameters af-
fords two kinds of novel insights:
–– the identification of connections among the lines, and
–– the identification of patterns of occurrence of the lines, in relation to one
another and globally in the text.
distribution of the lines is not random (Corduas et al, forth). Corduas et al.,
using statistical tools, determine not only that the distribution of humor in
the Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime text is not random, but that another text (The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams) differs significantly
from Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime. This result is extremely significant, in that
it shows that texts have an individual distribution of humor. It remains to be
explained what causes the different distributions.
Finally, the GTVH is augmented also with a component concerned with
the nature of humorous plots. Significantly, their very existence had been de-
nied (Palmer 1987). According to Palmer, all humorous stories are essentially
serious plots, with humor attached to it. This is indeed the case in many in-
stances, such as Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which is a fairly grim
novel, but includes a humorous strand of anachronistic names and quotations
(e.g., Guglielmo di Baskerville, Jorge de Burgos). We label these cases “Se-
rious Plot, with jab lines” There are however, cases of genuinely humorous
plots. These include:
These are texts that are structurally similar to a joke. They consist of a (more
or less long) setup phase, followed by a final punch line that leads to a reinter-
pretation of the story. Examples are Katherine Mansfield’s Feuille D’Album
(analyzed in Attardo 2001a) and Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr. Tarr
and Dr. Fethers (see Attardo 1994).
This is a text that contains one or more disruptions of the narrative conven-
tions of its genre and these disruptions have a humorous nature (mere disrup-
tion is not necessarily humorous, as Pirandello’s plays show). Examples of
this kind of humorous texts are Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs (Attardo 2001a),
and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, probably the greatest example of the genre.
On humorous self-reference in movies, see Withalm (1997).
A case study
In what follows, I will analyze a fragment of text, to show how the expanded
version of the GTVH would handle it. A complete analysis of the story can
be found in Attardo (2001a).
Passage from Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime
The story relates the trials of a young man (Lord Arthur Savile) who is told by
a palm reader (Podgers) that he will commit a murder. Lord Savile is upset by
the news and wanders all night in the streets of London, in despair and horror.
He then returns home and determines that he cannot marry his fiancée until
he has committed the crime he is predestined to. He attempts unsuccessfully
to murder two of his relatives and finally as he is about to give up, runs into
Podgers and murders him by throwing him in the Thames. He then marries
his fiancée and they live happily thereafter.
After Lord Arthur Savile has been told that he will kill someone, he is
shocked and he wanders the streets of London. After a good sleep, a bath, and
breakfast, he comes the following “moral” decision:
he recognised none the less clearly where his duty lay, and was fully con-
scious of the fact that he had no right to marry until he had committed the
murder. (Attardo 2001a: 177)
114 Salvatore Attardo
Methodologically, the SSTH was a big step forward: it established both the
semantic/pragmatic foundation of humor and the idea of studying the humor
competence of speakers (i.e., the necessary and sufficient conditions for a text
to be funny). This should not be construed as meaning that the study of humor
A primer for the linguistics of humor 115
semantic competence is the sole legitimate object of study for the SSTH/
GTVH. In fact, the opposite is true: first, the SSTH incorporates at the very
core of its theoretical apparatus a whole battery of pragmatic devices and con-
cerns, in a way unheard of at the time (and in fact still largely unmatched);
second, as we saw, the SSTH included a pragmatic component, which went
beyond prior suggestions that humor violated the cooperative principle (see
Attardo 1994 for discussion); third, from within its fold there have been calls
of a theory of the audience in humor (Carrell 1997). We turn now briefly to the
pragmatics of humor, before addressing squarely the performance /audience
side of humor.
Pragmatics of humor
attempts at humor” (Provine 2000: 42) but his objections, based on an exclu-
sive focus on involuntary laughter, seem to have been refuted (e.g., O’Connor
and Kowal 2005; O’Connell and Kowal 2006).
Moreover, and needless to say, laughter may be caused by all sorts of non-
humorous stimuli (tickling, laughing gas, embarrassment, etc.) and can be
triggered by imitation (e.g., by observing other people laugh). This is hardly
news to humor research. Giles and Oxford (1970) list seven causes of laugh-
ter: humorous, social, ignorance, anxiety, derision, apologetic, and laughter
as a reaction to tickling. Aubouin (1948) and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1974) had
already pointed out that one could not use reliably laughter as a one-to-one
marker of humor because “laughter largely exceeds humor” (Olbrechts-Tyteca
1974: 14; see Attardo 1994: 10–13 for more extensive discussion).
In general, discourse analysis has focused on the functions of humor (e.g.,
building in group rapport, controlling the conversation, etc.). Excellent sum-
maries of the functions documented by the research can be found in the sur-
veys mentioned above. The field seems to be particularly active. To the papers
reviewed in those surveys, we may add Glenn (1989, 1991/1992, 1995, 2003),
Fillmore (1994), Eggins and Slade (1997: 155–167), Priego Valverde (1998,
2003), Downe (1999), Nardini (2000), Buttny (2001), Viana (2001), Schegloff
(2001), Branner (2003), and Rogerson-Revell (2007). With significant excep-
tions (e.g., Priego-Valverde’s “enunciative” theory influenced by the work of
Ducrot and Baktine), all these studies suffer from an anecdotal approach since
they merely document the existence of one or several functions of humor in
conversation; in itself, this is a useful task, but of limited theoretical value,
since none of these studies goes beyond the four general primary functions
of humor listed in Attardo (1994: 323): social management, decommittment,
mediation and defunctionalization. A particularly interesting study, based on
spontaneous humor in Greek telephone conversations, is Antonopoulou and
Sifianou (2004) which is informed by recent theoretical work in humor re-
search, including the GTVH. Archakis and Tsakona (2005) applies the GTVH
to conversational data and the issue of identity, thus demonstrating practically
the applicability of the GTVH to conversational data, as postulated by Atta-
rdo (2001). Recently, attention has shifted towards an attention to numerical
data collected from larger corpora and towards the reactions of the audience.
A strong proponent of this approach is Hay (2000, 2001) who has investigated
“humor support” i.e., conversational strategies used to acknowledge and sup-
port humorous utterances, among which figures prominently the production
of more humor and/or laughter. The work of Holmes and her associates (see
below) is relevant, and see also below, the section of corpus-based studies.
118 Salvatore Attardo
Sociolinguistics of humor
1981b; see also Beeman 2000). However, things are beginning to change,
witness Gasquet-Cyrus’s own work, Crawford’s work on gender (1989, 1995,
2003) and a recent crop of researchers (e.g., Georgakopulou 2000; Rutter
2000; Liao 2001; Everts 2003, etc.) whose work is beginning to appear. Of
particular significance is a body of work by New Zealand scholars focusing
on conversational data, enriched by quantitative methods and with significant
theoretical forays, cf. Holmes (1998, 2000), Holmes and Hay (1997), Holmes
and Marra (2002), Holmes et al. (2001), Hay (1994, 1996, 2000, 2001)
On gender, see Downe (1999), Everts (2003), Crawford (2003), the 2006
special issue of Journal of Pragmatics (38:1) edited by Kotthoff, and the re-
sults by Günther (2003). The results of Günther (2003) and Holmes et al.
(2001) seriously question the common assumption that women produce less
humor.
Other sociolinguistic factors, such as race/ethnicity are seldom investi-
gated from a (socio)linguistic perspective. An exception is Rahman (2007)
on African-American standup humor. There is little work on the linguistics of
African American humor, although the genres of the “dozens” or “signifying”
which have some humorous aspects, have been investigated, see Abrahams
(1962; 1976), Kochman (1983), Labov (1972) Mitchell-Kernan (1972), and
Morgan (1998). Watkins (2002) is an anthology of African-American humor,
while Watkins (1994) is a historical essay. Williams (2007) deals with more
contemporary material. Other factors, such as class have not been researched
extensively: Keim and Schwitalla 1989, Schwitalla (1995), Streeck (1988),
Nardini (2000) Porcu (2005) and Günther (2003) show that lower class and
older speakers are freer to address taboo topics. Günther also found that very
young speakers (less than 25 years old) produced significantly more jokes.
Children famously produce more verbal humor.
Laughter
It has been a well known and established fact that laughter and humor are
not coextensive. This line of argument has received recent support by corpus
studies (Günther 2003: 203).
Recent work (e.g., Provine 2000, Glenn 2003) has appeared that seeks
to analyze laughter per se, using for example the concept of “laughable”
to describe any laughter situation. This is problematic (Günther 2003: 116;
A primer for the linguistics of humor 121
ttardo 2005). Thus, Provine professes surprise in finding that speakers laugh
A
also in the absence of humor. This is however entirely predictable from the
literature reviewed above: there is spontaneous laughter and there is inten-
tional laughter, just as there is laughter that occurs in the absence of humor
and laughter that occurs as a reaction to humor. Vettin and Todt (2004) reach
similar conclusions. On the acoustics and prosody of laughter, Chafe (2007)
is a synthesis. Trouvain and Cambell (eds.) (2007) are the proceedings of
a conference on laughter. See also Trouvain (2001; 2003) and Trouvain and
Schroeder (2004). See also Ellis (2002) on French.
Longer texts
While Chlopicki’s work (1987, 1995, 1997, 2001), and that of several other
scholars (see Csàbi and Zerkowitz 2003), including my own, have made
a valiant attempt at dealing with longer and more complex humorous texts
than jokes (see above), it is clear that many issues remain to be dealt with.
For example, further analyses of longer texts comparable to those in Attardo
(2001a) and Corduas et al. (Forth.) would clarify if the results found for those
texts are unique or can be generalized to a class of texts (and of course, to
which class). Recent work by Attardo has focused on the nature and role of
the resolution of the incongruity in humorous texts (Attardo Forth. a).
The role and significance of such traditional narratological concerns such
as characters, point of view, narrator, etc. in humor is almost entirely to be
determined and assessed. A discussion can be found in Chlopicki’s work,
mentioned above, as well as in Semino (1997), Simpson (2000), Fricke and
Müller (2000), Attardo (2001a), Culpeper (2001), Müller (2002, 2003c) and
Galiñanes (2000, 2005). Galiñanes (2005) is particularly interesting because
it blends script-theory, the expanded GTVH and relevance theory accounts
of literature in an interesting way, suggesting that a text creates a preponder-
ant “script” which forces the interpretation of the text along the lines of how
a stereotypical script forces the interpretation of a joke.
Conversely, a distressing number of works often comes tantalizingly close
to linguistics (either because they quote some of the classics of the field, such
as Raskin (1985), or because they use some of the terminology of linguis-
tics, a fact easy to explain in the age of the “linguistic turn” in philosophy)
but eventually fails to engage its contribution to the interdisciplinary field.
Examples are Nelson (1990), Purdie (1993), and, possibly the worst such of-
fender, Ross (1998), which however is targeted at high school students.
122 Salvatore Attardo
Irony
ity” (Colston and O’Brien 2000). Gibbs (1994: 397) speaks of “incongruity”
and in (2000: 13) quotes “contrast between expectation and reality.” My own
proposal of “inappropriateness” (Attardo 2000) can probably also be reduced
to this broad concept, but has the advantage of being formulated in much
more formal(izable) terms (i.e., in terms of mismatch of presuppositions).
The issue of whether incongruity and inappropriateness are interchangeable
is in need of discussion, which should also relate to Giora’s proposal of irony
as “negation” (especially in light of my analysis of script opposition as a form
of negation, Attardo 1997). On the role of contrast in irony, see also (Colston
2000, 2002, and Utsumi 2000). In general, an area in dire need of research
is that of the connections and differences between irony and humor. A recent
development, possibly related, is the finding that there is no specific ironic
tone of voice (for reviews of the literature trying to identify a specific iron-
ical tone, see Attardo et al. 2003 and Bryant and Fox Tree 2005). Contrast
between the ironical turn and those surrounding it is the prosodic marker of
irony (Attardo et al. 2003), Bryant and Fox Tree (2005), although prosodic
contrast is not unique to irony.
An aspect of irony which has traditionally been a source of much debate,
namely whether irony is necessarily (or even primarily) negative, should have
been put to rest, first by several theoretical discussions (reviewed in Attardo
2000a, 2000b) and then by empirical data (Nelms 2001: 119–120) which
show that 15% of occurrences in a naturally observed corpus are instances
of positive irony. Situational irony (i.e., irony of events, rather than words)
has also begun to be tackled (Littman and Mey 1991, Lucariello 1994, Shel-
ley 2001), however, a theory incorporating situational and verbal irony has
not yet been proposed. Other aspects of irony are discussed in various recent
publications, such as the functions of irony, which have been investigated by
discourse analysts and psycholinguists. Similarly, the issue of the reactions to
irony have been the subject of recent work in discourse analysis and of much
ongoing work (see Attardo 2001b, for references). Goddard (2006) deals with
cultural differences (ethnopragmatics) of Australian irony.
Furthermore, these are merely the first steps in the field. Research is ongoing:
see Harpo by Donaldson et Shelley (1997), Tijus et Moulin (1997) who use
a semantic network and the papers in Hulstijn and Nijholt (1996). Binsted
and Takizawa (1998), Yokogawa (2001, 2002, on generating Japanese puns),
Stock and Strapparava (2003, on Hahacronym, a system that generates hu-
morous acronyms), Taylor and Mazlack, (2004a, 2004b, 2005), Taylor et al.
2007, Mihalcea and Strapparava (2005, 2006), Binsted et al. (2006), Mihal-
A primer for the linguistics of humor 125
cea (2007), Mihalcea and Pulman (2007), Buscaldi and Rosso (2007), Tinholt
and Nijholt (2007, featuring an application of the GTVH), Sjöberg (2006),
Sjöbergh and Araki (2007). A different approach, utilizing “collaborative fil-
tering” to determine subjects’ tastes in humor gathered a large following and
media coverage (Gupta et al. 1999, Goldberg et al. 2001). Some researchers
have investigated humor in human-computer interaction Lemeunier (1996),
Morkes et al. (1999) and computer-mediated communication (Baym 1995;
Holcomb 1997).
Corpus approaches
Neurolinguistics of humor
Translation of humor
The translation of humor has long been a topic of interest given its difficult
and at times borderline impossible nature. It is widely seen as a challenge for
the translator. Yet, it is performed on a daily basis, for example in the dubbing
of films and sitcoms. Overall, the research in this domain has highlighted
numerous strategies for dealing with the special challenges of the translation
of humor. These range from pragmatic translation (i.e., respecting the perlo-
A primer for the linguistics of humor 127
cutionary goal of humor, but abandoning the sense of the original text), to
simply ignoring the humor and perhaps replacing it with another joke, even
elsewhere in the text. Since Laurian and Nilsen (1989), several collections of
essays have appeared: Delabastita (1996, 1997), Laurian and Szende (2001),
Vandaele (2002; see also Vandaele 1999) and a special issue of HUMOR
edited by Delia Chiaro in 2005. I will not address in any detail the topic of
the translation of humor, since it is dealt with in Chiaro (this volume). To her
bibliographic review we can also add a little undiscovered gem, Jaskanen
(1999) which does an excellent job of analyzing two Finnish translations of
an American movie and has much to say about the theory of humor transla-
tion (see also Jaskanen 2001). Attardo (2002c) presents an application of the
GTVH to the theory of translation of jokes. Antonopoulou (2002; 2004) ap-
plies this approach to the translation of Raymond Chandler and so does Ko-
ponen (2004), which focuses on comics. Dore (2002) is focused on dubbing.
The topics of dubbing and subtitling are very prominent in European humor
research, see Bucaria (2007) and references therein.
In some cases, new ideas from areas in linguistics that have not traditionally
contributed to humor research have appeared. For example, in Attardo (1997)
I survey two psycholinguistic approaches that focus on saliency and novelty
of information. Giora’s work has been focused more on the psycholinguistics
of irony (see above), but she has also considered the working of humor. Giora
(1991) presents an analysis of jokes as texts that violate the “graded inform-
ativeness” requirement (i.e., the fact that texts will introduce less informa-
tive material first and increasingly more informative material later, a concept
related to the theme/rheme approach of the Prague school). Thus jokes are
texts that far from introducing gradually more informative elements, end with
a markedly informative element. The positive aspect of this approach is that it
captures the surprise element of humor. Giora (2003) addresses these issues,
as well as the processing of irony. Weiner and De Palma, in a number of pa-
pers (e.g., Weiner 1997), have presented a similar approach, in part based on
the SSTH and enriched with cognitive linguistics ideas such as prototypical-
ity and salience. In this model, the switch to the second script involves also
a switch from a salient, prototypical script, to a less salient script, in the given
context.
humor. An interesting issue, which has yet to be explored, is how close blends
and the kind of mappings used in Attardo et al. (2002) are. Hamrick (2007)
presents an interesting analysis which argues convincingly that blends are nei-
ther necessary nor sufficient for humor, but that they can, along with other
kinds of construals often mentioned in cognitive linguistic accounts of humor,
be treated as a kind of logical mechanism.
Significant pieces in the CL accounts of humor are the special issue of
HUMOR edited in 2006 by Brône, Feyaerts and Veale and Brône’s disserta-
tion (2007). Some of the potential of cognitive linguistic approaches seems
to have been wasted on polemical attacks to previous theories (chiefly the
GTVH). For a reaction, Attardo (2006a). The connection between cognitive
approaches and stylistics has been explored in Antonopoulou (2004), Attardo
(2002b), Antonopoulou and Nikiforidou (Forth), and Triezenberg (2004).
Veale (2004) is an attack against the notion of incongruity. Other approach-
es are more conciliatory and compare cognitive approaches and the GTVH
(Howell 2007; Hamrick 2007). Attardo has pointedly claimed that the GTVH
is a cognitive theory of humor (2002b). Krikmann (2004), which may well
be the first monograph on the GTVH, has a discussion of some of the issues
(a partial English summary of the original Estonian text is available). Recent
work by Attardo on humorous metaphors (forthc. b) is a blend of CL, GTVH,
and neo-Gricean pragmatic methodologies. A forthcoming volume (Brône et
al. forth.) will likely be a significant contribution.
Relevance Theory (RT, Sperber and Wilson 1986) has produced some interest-
ing work on humor. RT does not seem prima facie to lend itself to an analysis
of humor, since the principle of relevance is inviolable (Sperber and Wilson
1986: 162). While Sperber and Wilson do not address directly humor, they
treat metaphors (which Gricean pragmatics treats as flouts of the CP) without
assuming a violation of the principle of relevance, in accordance to the invio-
lability principle. Since most analyses of humor see it as a violation of coop-
eration, this presents a prima facie difficulty in treating humor in RT terms.
Early relevance theoretic works were replete with hasty generalizations
and factual errors (see a review in Attardo 1996). Recent work by Curcò
(1995, 1996a, 1996b, 1998, 2000) is much more carefully hedged and calls
attention to the fact that in its present state it is not meant to account for all
humorous utterances. Curcò develops a two-stage (incongruity-resolution)
130 Salvatore Attardo
Perspectives
In the final short chapter of Attardo (1994), I foolishly enough made some
predictions about the directions in which I saw humor research in linguistics
orienting itself. Given the success rate of that little guessing game, one would
think that I would refrain from making a greater fool of myself. But, none-
theless, here goes.
Recently, several publications have begun exploring new and shockingly un-
der-examined domains. It seems desirable, if not necessarily likely, that this
A primer for the linguistics of humor 131
trend continue. Among these diverse sources we can quote Gajda and Brzo-
zowska (eds.) (2000) which presents a vast collection primarily on Slavic
humor, the special issue of Stylistika on style and humor, edited by Gajda in
2001, and Brzozowska (2000; 2001) which presents a cross-cultural com-
parison of Polish and English jokes. Equally important, and on an equally
neglected area, is Davis (ed.) (2006), on Japanese humor. A few articles in
HUMOR have addressed cross-cultural and comparative aspects of humor
(e.g., Al-Khatib 1999) see also issue 20: 3 (2007) of HUMOR.
We can expect culture- or language-specific research to continue, see for
example Defays and Rosier (1999) and Madini (2002) for French, where
a society for the study of humor (CORHUM) holds conferences and pub-
lishes a journal, Humoresques, or Gulotta et al. (2001) and Banfi (ed.) (1995),
for Italian, Karasik and Sliskin (2003) for Russian, the just mentoned Gajda
(2001) and Gajda and Brzozowska (2002) for Slavic scholarship, Galiñanes
and Figuerroa (2002) for Spanish, or the German research reviewed in Müller
(2003a, 2003b, 2003c). What is missing is a serious effort to review system-
atically the research in each tradition, let alone an attempt to integrate it.
It seems possible that the computational and formal approaches to humor
will yield some solid results, if the trend of the most recent publication con-
tinues. Similarly, it is fairly easy to predict that that “longer texts” issue will
not rest. I expect that the work I have done with Corduas on the distribu-
tion of humor will have some impact. The publication of Chlopicki’s new
book (his doctoral dissertation at the Jagiellonian university) will inevitably
mean a significant step forward (see also Chlopicki 1995). The same holds
for Ermida (2002). The proceedings of the Poetics and Linguistics Associ-
ation conference held in Budapest in 2001 (Csàbi and Zerkowitz , eds. 2003)
also contain a number of short articles by several European scholars that are
pertinent: besides my own summary of the GTVH, we find contributions
by Andor (2003), Chlopicki (2003), Chornovol-Tkachenko (2003), Muller
(2003c) and Skowron (2003). A steady number of theses and dissertations
utilize the GTVH. Among the many, Gruchala (2005) merits mention, for
particularly insightful discussion.
The discourse analysis of humor is likely to continue being a very active
field. It remains to be seen if the field will evolve in what I see as a positive
direction, i.e., attempt a linkage with theoretically-based work and on quan-
titative grounds, or if it will follow dead-end avenues such as the “laughable”
approach.
Another area in which progress seems inevitable is irony and its connec-
tion with humor. Several important papers have appeared recently, as we saw,
132 Salvatore Attardo
and there is a large (by humor research standards) group of researchers who
are actively publishing in this area. It is also likely that the neurolinguistics
of humor will continue to receive some attention, but probably predominant-
ly from outside of the humor research domain, per se. Perhaps some of the
recent work on puns will revitalize that field.
The sociolinguistics of humor is getting some interest. Issues such as gen-
der and humor are being investigated, especially significantly from within
quantitative models (corpus-based work). Other issues such as the connection
between class and humor have received much less attention.
Perhaps a good note to close on is why it is so hard to make predictions:
twenty years ago the field was much smaller and less active. It is wonderful
to have to deal with an embarrassment of riches.
Note
The author would like to thank Victor Raskin, Jen Hay, and Francisco Yus who pro-
vided him with extensive feedback on a version of this paper. Many other colleagues
helped by sending me their papers, clarifying issues, and being generally supportive.
I cannot thank them all by name, but my gratitude for their help and support is undi-
minished. Needless to say, the opinions expressed in the article are only mine.
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Undertaking the comparative study of humor
Christie Davies
told in the same society at different points in its history. One of the difficul-
ties is that we only have access to past jokes that were written down ( and
in some cases published) and these may not be typical of the jokes in oral
circulation at the time. Censorship, self censorship and publishers’ fear of
controversy and criticism limit the kinds of jokes that get printed. Thus in the
late twentieth century many excellent racial and ethnic jokes were in oral cir-
culation in Canada but they did not get into print. We only know about them
today because the tellers are still alive and can remember them and because
researchers recorded them at the time and indeed are still doing so.
The same problem exists in relation to the vast numbers of sexual and
scatological jokes that circulated in the Victorian era in Britain and America.
They could not be recorded and disseminated other than in small privately
published editions or else were written down in diaries or sexual samizdat.
Even those who wrote about jokes as part of their scholarly work were con-
strained in what they could publish. It is striking that even the jokes about
sexuality in Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (Freud
1960 (1905)) are exceedingly restrained relative to the general run of jokes
that must have circulated in male social gatherings in Vienna at the time.
Freud, who was so obsessed with sexuality that he even arbitrarily invented
sexual fantasies and motives for his patients, was unable to publish the more
outrageous jokes of his contemporaries. It was not socially permissible for
him to do what his erratic successor Gershon Legman (Legman 1982) was
able to do in more permissive times. Likewise Alan Dundes [1984] would
have been quite unable to publish his brilliant treatise about the Germans and
their excremental humor, including filthy Mozart, if he had been writing in
the nineteenth century.
The problem I have described is even worse for those studying the jokes
of yet earlier times, for which the sources are even more limited. We may
suspect from descriptions that have been given of the irreverent carnivals and
deliberate humorous inversions of behavior of the medieval and early modern
world that blasphemous jokes and comic tales might have circulated widely
but we can not decide this question with any degree of certainty. This cre-
ates a particular problem for those using the comparative method that I have
elsewhere called ‘The Dog that did not Bark in the Night’ (Davies 1998a) that
involves the study of jokes that could exist in that society or context but do
not. When I say could, I am assuming that a roughly similar cycle of jokes
does exist in a society to which the joke tellers have access ie the jokes have
failed to cross a cultural boundary. It is a tricky assumption to make since
jokes may be concealed rather than absent but at least in the contemporary
Undertaking the comparative study of humor 159
world it is often possible to get round these problems. Dealing with the past
is much more difficult.
Officially, jokes making fun of the regime did not exist in the former so-
cialist regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe, yet there
were enormous numbers of these jokes (Adams 2005; Banc and Dundes1986;
Krikmann 2004, 2006; Skrobocki 1992; Viikberg 1997) and it was easy to
collect them simply by talking to trusted citizens of these countries where
you could not be overheard (Brunvald 1973; Cochrane 1989). The ubiquity
of this kind of joke telling in the countries where they were forbidden (Dav-
ies 2007; Oring 2004; Yurchak 1997) confirmed what could be inferred from
collections of these jokes published in a number of countries in the free world
by émigrés (Beckmann 1969, 1980; Kolasky 1972). Collecting such jokes
directly showed that the externally published joke books were not merely
a representation of the perverse sense of humor of disgruntled dissidents in
exile who were unrepresentative of the population at large. It is not possible
to consult the joke-tellers of the distant past in this way because of the dif-
ficulties of communicating with the dead. The messages conveyed to us from
the ‘other side’ through spiritualist mediums and their nun, shaman and Red
Indian spirit guides do not, so far as I know, contain jokes, nor do reincar-
nated Hindus or memory regressed Westerners going back to a pre-life recall
the jokes of their previous existence. When I hear a series of new and funny
jokes from such sources, I will begin to take their claims seriously.
We are now in a position to review the sources of the jokes that will pro-
vide the basic data for the comparative study of humor. The most obvious
source of jokes is to get other people to tell you their jokes. It is easy enough
for an observer with a high degree of social adaptability to do this simply by
merging with the joke-tellers and letting them get on with it. A notebook or
a tape-recorder are optional extras which provide textual accuracy but at the
potential cost of interfering with what is being observed. In a society with
whose language the observer is unacquainted or whose culture is very dif-
ferent it is usually necessary to work with and to a large extent through an
interpreter and intermediary. Such a process is fraught with dangers as we
can see from the grossly and disgracefully incompetent work done by Mar-
garet Mead in Samoa (Mead 1928) which gulled entire generations of wishful
thinkers in the English speaking world (Freeman 1983). Mead did not speak
Samoan and in large measure became a victim of the Samoan sense of humor
– what fun it must have been for lively young Samoans to deceive this tiny,
pink, foolish American woman who was asking them silly questions. There is
less risk of being deceived in this way when what is being conveyed is itself
160 Christie Davies
ideas and hypotheses and would complete a large section of a second project.
He then used the knowledge he had gained from the second project to com-
plete a proposal for a new research grant to carry out the second project, ap-
parently from scratch but with a pseudo-logical design and guaranteed results.
In this way a productive dialectical process was set up and could be main-
tained indefinitely, unconstrained by the paper walls (Wells 1928) of the iron
cage of bureaucracy (Weber 1930). It is not for me to comment on whether it
is wise and expedient for young researchers to follow this strange path. I cite
my cynical and much granted and promoted colleague, merely to expose the
falseness of the language of research design and of the way in which its under-
lying rationale is merely an artifact of bureaucratic pressures. The main point
to remember is that comparative research requires the researcher to fish in the
morning, hunt in the afternoon and compose in the evening. That is what com-
parative research into humor involves. That is how it is done.
The comparative researcher can use his or her data in many ways to ad-
vance our understanding not only of humor but of other related phenomena in
both constructive and destructive ways i.e. either to create new patterns and
theories that can be reasonably claimed to being closer to the truth than their
predecessors or to falsify and topple an existing thesis.
Let us consider some examples of the constructive uses of the comparative
method. The first example I want to consider is the comparative study of jokes
about stupid groups. A few American and Canadian examples will illustrate
the kinds of jokes that are being studied.
Did you hear about the Polish space scientists who plan to land a man on
the sun? When asked if the sun’s heat would burn him up, they replied
Undertaking the comparative study of humor 163
that they had thought of that and that they were going to land him at night
(Dundes 1987 (1971): 134).
“Je suis allé dans un magasin ‘Newfie’ et j’ai demandé une robe de cham-
bre... le ‘Newfie’ m’a demandé: ‘Quelle grandeur la chambre?’ (Allard
1976). Untranslateable play on words.
The factual information about similarity and asymmetry given above ex-
ists independently of the perceptions of particular joke tellers, though it can
be demonstrated that many of the joke tellers do make the connection between
these social facts and the existence of the jokes. The widespread existence of
such a perception is not necessary to the argument being advanced, though it
would be unusual if it did not exist at all. What is being suggested here is the
less demanding proposition that the joke tellers can and often do perceive the
butts of their jokes about stupidity as a comically stupid version of themselves,
as themselves seen as if in a distorting mirror at a fairground.
The comparative approach to the stupidity jokes taken above also enables
us to refute the idea that these jokes are a product of conflict, hostility and ag-
gression, as is often suggested by those who have studied a single example of
one group telling stupidity jokes about another. What is striking about the var-
ious pairs of joke tellers and butts of jokes listed is how very varied this aspect
of the relationship between them is. In some cases there is overt hostility and
even violent conflict or a history of this in the recent past, in others an amica-
ble recognition of cousinship sometimes accompanied by rivalry and in others
an exchange of paternalism for nostalgia. There is no consistent relationship to
be found here and those who wish to continue to maintain the validity of the
hostility thesis are forced to put forward a bizarre combination of ad hoc argu-
ments claiming that the jokes are sometimes an adjunct to real hostility and
sometimes an expression of a hostility so well repressed that there is no other
evidence that it exists. It is an argument of the ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ kind
that can not be falsified.
We may also reject on similar grounds another widely touted theory of
jokes, the functionalist theory which argues that jokes are called into existence
to boost morale and solidarity under adverse circumstances (Obrdlik 1942 but
also see Bryant 2006). Humor can certainly be used for this purpose within
small groups but it is absurd to use it as an explanation for why a particular
genre of jokes exists at all. In any case the tellers of ethnic jokes about a stupid
neighbor rarely have any reason seriously to fear that the butts of their stupid-
ity jokes could destroy their social order in the way that other and more pow-
erful opponents could. Yet they do not tell stupidity jokes about the latter. The
functionalist theory like the hostility, conflict, aggression thesis is refuted by
comparative analysis. It is quite possible of course that particular individuals
will use jokes under particular circumstances to produce particular effects but
this is irrelevant, not just because most tellings of jokes do not have purposes
but are simply performances but also because such a use is not something that
can be inferred from the text itself. Tendenz is not a property of a text. The way
Undertaking the comparative study of humor 167
jokes are used and the feelings conveyed by the telling of a joke are a product
of tone and context, which are extremely varied and are not part of the joke
itself.
What should now be clear is that the use of the comparative method does
enable us to produce superior and more elegant explanations of why some
kinds of jokes exist and others do not than an analysis based on single case
studies, particularly if it is one permeated by a tendentious ideological theory.
The other strength of the theory derived by comparison is that it allows us to
make predictions about the likely existence of further stupidity jokes involving
pairs of groups, examples not known at the time when the theory was formu-
lated. After completing the work on which Table 1 is based, I discovered that
in Romania the stupidity jokes are told about the people of Altena and in the
Faeroes about the people of Klaksvig. Both are geographically and economi-
cally peripheral. In 1996, when the late Professor W. M. S. Russell, the dis-
tinguished former President of the Folklore Society in London told me that he
had learned that Peruvians told ethnic stupidity jokes about the Arequipeños,
the people of the province of Arequipa in Peru, I predicted on the basis of the
center-periphery thesis that they would live on the geographic and economic
periphery of the country, speak Spanish in a distinctive way and be conserva-
tive and Catholic. Professor Russell checked with his Peruvian informant and
reported back that all these predictions were correct.
Should there be countries (such as Japan) where these kinds of stupidity
jokes (ones pinned on a group) do not exist (Davies 1998; Davies and Abe
2003) this does not create problems for the theory. The theory of peripheral
cousins does not predict that such jokes must exist. It merely says that they are
likely to exist and that when they do they will be located within the particu-
lar social pattern that has been described.. This pattern is a necessary but not a
sufficient reason for these kinds of jokes to be generated. What would falsify
the theory would be the discovery of substantial numbers of stupidity jokes
being told about a group that enjoys a generally recognized leading economic
or cultural position relative to the joke-tellers. The theory clearly predicts that
such jokes do not exist. The only difficult case is where stupidity jokes are ex-
changed between two related countries such as Norway and Sweden, Austria
and Switzerland or Estonia and Finland. In each of these cases it is impossible
to judge who could be seen as dominant and both partners are peripheral to
a third party. Culturally and geographically Scandinavia is peripheral to Eu-
rope, Austria and Switzerland to Germany and Estonia and Finland both to
Scandinavia and to Russia. You can imagine the former being absorbed into
the latter but not the other way round.
168 Christie Davies
the example set by the media, which may be exuberant as in present day Brit-
ain and America or exercise restraint as they did in the past is irrelevant where
the generation of waves of popular political jokes are concerned.1
It is the constraints on serious political speech that are relevant. In the
socialist countries there was no freedom of speech and even in conversation
critical comments might be reported by an informer (Andrew and Mitrokhin
2000 and 2005; Davies 1997; Oring 2004). Joking was thus playing with for-
bidden modes of speech, a sly evasion of the rules. The jokes were even en-
joyed by those who held power or were beneficiaries of the regime – they too
enjoyed time off from official constraints (Deriabin and Gibney 1960). The
validity of this view can again be upheld by means of comparison, for other
forms of forbidden speech also produce jokes – jokes about sex or excretion
or jokes defying politically correctness, such as jokes about mass media re-
ported major disasters like the Challenger explosion or the sudden death of
Princess Diana in a drunken car crash, the deaths of other celebrities, famines
and accidents or jokes about high levels of violence and illegitimacy among
African-Americans. Even a free society has its unmentionables and freedom
of discussion, though far greater than in the former socialist world, is cir-
cumscribed by politically correct holders of power who enjoy a high degree
of cultural hegemony through their dominance of crucial institutions such as
the media, education and supervisory agencies. Laughter is a product of the
deliberate evasion of the ways in which we are expected to use words accord-
ing to the conventions of a particular society. Even absurdity sneaks round
the socially entrenched rules of rational or at least bona fide communication
(Raskin 1985: 99–104). However, there is no need to invoke the unconscious
or the pressure of guilt as an explanation. People tell jokes knowing that jok-
ing evades externally imposed restraints on speech. Those who listen and
laugh know what to expect, even though each joke comes as a surprise. Pad-
ded brassières are more common that Freudian slips. In regard to the latter it
should be added that we only remember mistakes when they break some kind
of rule, when by chance they switch scripts from an anticipated script to a rule
breaking script, whether the latter be political, sexual, aggressive, blasphe-
mous, scatological or just plain absurd. It is this that constitutes appropriate
incongruity (Oring 1992, 2003), Left out of account are the probably far more
common cases where a meaningless error produces an unfunny incongruity
and no one laughs but rather feels sympathy or puzzlement. Likewise similar
mistakes are made in writing or in type-setting or with computers and are not
noticed but carelessly allowed to proceed to publication. Most of the time the
errors are not funny. Most spelling mistakes only become really funny if the
Undertaking the comparative study of humor 171
author of them is high and pompous about such things as in the case of the
English newspaper widely referred to as The Grauniad because allegedly it
has failed to print even its own title, ‘The Guardian’ correctly. If it had been
the Dogpatch Bugle or the Podunk Herald the mistake would not have been as
funny. The spelling mistakes that go down in history are those that are multi-
ply disastrous. The editors of a Soviet newspaper were arrested and possibly
executed because they published Stalin’s name as Sralin (in Cyrillic) meaning
shit. Was this a Freudian slip or an accident? After all shit happens. Indeed
the more we strive to avoid an embarrassing mistake the more we are likely
to make it.An urban legend tells of a radio interview with Diana Fluck, the
real name of the attractive actress Diana Dors. The interviewer tried so hard
not to get it wrong …and then introduced her as Diana Clunt.
The nature of the clear inverse link between democracy and political jok-
ing can be further illuminated by looking carefully at the few exceptions that
seem not to fit this generalization. Such exceptions if numerous (i.e. not just
the inevitable almost accidental transfer of a couple of jokes across a social
boundary) often can and should overturn a theory completely. However, our
first step must say whether the exceptions themselves have a structure and one
which is congruent with and allows us to dissect the original explanation.
Mass joking about the stupidity of politicians in general or about the of-
ficials running state organizations does not exist in Western democracies.
However, there have been jokes, though not as widespread as in the anciens
regimes of the old socialist countries, about particular individual politicians
such as Sir Alec Douglas-Home (British Prime Minister 1963–4), President
Gerald Ford, Vice-President Dan Quayle and President George “Dubya”
Bush, none of whom were outstandingly stupid and some of whom were very
insightful. What they had in common was that they were not elected in the
usual way and lost legitimacy in consequence. It is difficult to make stupid-
ity jokes about a democratic leader with a popular mandate because it would
imply that the people rather than the system were stupid since they put him
there. However, Sir Alec was a hereditary peer, an unelected Lord sitting in
the House of Lords before he became Prime Minister, Gerald Ford had never
run for the Presidency but got in because President Nixon and Vice President
Agnew had resigned, Dan Quayle was an unknown riding on George Bush
I’s coat-tails and George Bush II was put in office by the Supreme Court
on a technicality to do with chads and not by an unambiguous massing of
votes. The penalty for holding political office without having properly and
clearly won a competition for it is to become to some extent at least the butt
of stupidity jokes, though on nothing like the scale found under socialism.
172 Christie Davies
The jokes were available to the British but were never taken up and added to
their standard jokes about Irish stupidity, even though many of the other Brit-
ish stupidity jokes about the Irish were of American origin and had originally
been jokes about Poles.
Likewise Irish jokes about the stupidity of the Kerrymen and French jokes
about stupid Belgians do not make these peoples out to be dirty, whereas
Canadian jokes about Newfoundlanders (in both English and French), Quebec
jokes about Italians and Swiss jokes about the people of Fribourg/Freiburg do
just that.
How are we to explain this contrast? Obviously we have to relate the exist-
ence of the jokes to some facet of the social world external to them. It might
be for example that those called dirty as well as stupid in the jokes really
are dirtier than those who are merely called stupid. It is perfectly possible,
though somewhat unlikely, that the Poles, Italians, Newfies and Fribourgers
really are filthier than the Irish, Kerrymen or Belgians. I am using the word
filthy here in a literal sense and to include modern dirt such as garbage or
grease as distinct from a symbolic or metaphorical sense where it refers to.
breakers of rules concerning ritual or sexual purity or propriety and/or the
proper maintenance of body boundaries.. The hypothesis that the Irish, Ker-
rymen and Belgians are in this unemotive sense cleaner than the Poles, Ital-
ians, Newfies and Fribourgers is a reasonable and testable, though problem-
atic, proposition. There is no evidence to indicate that the proposition is true
but it is valid to advance it as one possible explanation. It would be utterly
wrong not to investigate it merely because it might offend someone’s sensi-
tivies even to suggest it. There can be no bigoted presumption of equality.
Table 2.
Are the butts Filthy as well
Tellers of Stupidity Jokes Butts of Stupidity Jokes as Stupid in the jokes
Section A
Americans Poles, Italians Yes
Anglophone Canadians Newfoundlanders Yes
Québecois Newfoundlanders, Italians Yes
Swiss People of Fribourg/ Yes
Freiburg
Section B
British Irish No
Irish Kerrymen No
French Belgians No
174 Christie Davies
At this point let us consider what the members of the conflict and hos-
tility school of humor analysts are forced by their theory to predict about
these jokes. Given that they see stupidity jokes as an indication of hostility
and conflict, then, if dirtiness is added to the jokes, it ought to mean that the
jokes became the conveyors of even more hostility and indicators of even
fiercer conflict than is the case where stupidity alone is comically suggested.
Yet, as an inspection of Table Two comparing the relations between nations
and groups in Section A as against Section B shows, no such systematic dif-
ference exists. No clear relationship of this kind in any direction can be dis-
cerned from Table 2.
Now that we have shown by judicious comparisons that the addition of
dirtiness to stupidity jokes in some countries but not others is not a prod-
uct of differences in the nature of the relationship between pairs of jokers
and their butts, it is clear that there must have been differences in the late
twentieth century cultures of America, Canada and Switzerland on the one
hand and Britain, France and Ireland on the other that led to the production
of different patterns of joking. What is suggested here is that in the former
countries cleanliness is seen as an aspect of rationality whereas in the latter
it is not. It is easiest to see this in the case of America versus Britain, France
and Ireland. On the basis of market research data and of empirical studies of
the American way of death it may be infered that at the time when the jokes
were being invented, Americans thought that lasting physical perfection and
purity of appearance undiminished by age, decay and even death were at-
tainable through rational cleanliness, cosmetic surgery, deodorants, diet and
eventually embalming whereas by contrast the British, the French and the
Irish were content to live and die with imperfection (Davies 1990). They felt
it was wiser to live in a realistic “can’t do “ world. What is needed to test this
suggestion further is more extensive comparative data about the Swiss who
also told North American style jokes and who are obsessed with cleanliness
but within a different cultural framework and about the nature of the patterns
of joking found in other ultra clean and comfortably unperfectable countries
respectively. Only in this way can a more comprehensive explanation of these
important differences in patterns of joking be produced.
The destructive as well as constructive uses of the comparative method can
be further illustrated in relation to the analysis of Jewish jokes and humor, a
popular field of study because Jewish jokes and Jewish humor scholars ex-
ceed those of any other group in both quantity and quality. It is widely held
(Ben-Amos 1973; Novak and Waldoks 1981, see Oring 1992) that the jokes
are preponderantly self mocking jokes targeting the Jews themselves and that
Undertaking the comparative study of humor 175
this is a uniquely Jewish phenomenon (Freud 1905), and also that this form
of joking among the Ashkenazi Jews reveals a kind of masochistic aggression
directed by the group’s members against the group’s own ‘self’, which in turn
is a product of the undisputed and uniquely vicious persecution that has been
directed against them (Grotjahn 1970).
It is possible by the comparative method to demonstrate that none of these
propositions is true. Indeed it does more than that – it shows that the very pro-
cedures that led to these propositions were in error and that the theories lying
behind them are false. We can demonstrate this by looking at jokes about the
Scots invented by the Scots and published in Scotland in the latter half of
the nineteenth century and the earlier years of the twentieth century, which
were extremely numerous and formed the basis of today’s ubiquitous jokes
about canny Scotsmen. The jokes are self mocking and make the Scots out
to be covetous, argumentative and obsessed with keeping the Sabbath. The
original jokebooks were often edited by Scottish intellectuals and ministers
of religion and accompanied by commentaries on what the jokes might tell
us about Scottish life and character (Davies 2002). The Scots became ‘the
people of the joke’ at about the same time as or slightly earlier than the Jews.
As jokers the Scots may only have been runners up to the Jews both at that
time and subsequently but the very existence of another ‘people of the joke’
undermines the thesis of a unique Jewish tradition of self mockery through
jokes. It should also lead us strongly to doubt whether it ever makes sense to
analyze the humorous tradition of a people by reference only to that people’s
very own particular culture and traditions. On the contrary understanding can
only be attained through comparison. What do they know of Jewish jokes
who only Jewish jokes know?
The Scots have never suffered the kind or degree of persecution, hostility
and exclusion experienced by the Jews. Everyday life in nineteenth and twen-
tieth century Scotland and for Scots living in England was free of fear. Yet
this immediately demolishes the thesis that Jewish pre-eminence in joking in
general and self mockery in particular is rooted in the hostility of and perse-
cution by others. If this had been the case then we would expect the runners
up as people of the joke to be not the Scots but another persecuted minority
distinguished by commercial and professional skills living outside its own
territory and lacking political power and defined as alien by a hostile ideology
such as the Christian Armenians in the Islamic Ottoman Empire (Mardiga-
nian 1918) the Asians of East Africa (Davies 1972) or the overseas Chinese
in South East Asia. The latter groups have encountered racist and religious
hostility of an anti-semitic kind and in some cases it has led to mass murder
176 Christie Davies
but they are not noted for the production of jokes about their own group. By
contrast the Scots who have their own secure territory and institutions, a share
in British identity and ideology and a disproportionate share of British polit-
ical and military power were and are great jokers.
Comparative analysis forces us rather to ask first ‘what factors or historic-
al experiences do the Scots and the Jews have in common?’ and second and
more important ‘what do they share that other peoples lack?’ In answer to the
first question we can say that (in rather different circumstances) members of
both groups have a sense of simultaneously belonging to two groups that have
rather differing identities and expectations, in a way that is not true of, say, the
Swedes, the French or the Japanese, none of whom have invented a plethora
of jokes about their own group. However, other minorities or junior partners
in a federation such as the Welsh or the Québecois, also have this sense of
double identity but have not produced an efflorescence of jokes depending
on it. As a further response to the first question we may also note that other
groups have enjoyed commercial success and become the butt of canny jokes
such as the Dutch, the Regiomontanos, the Paisas or the Catalans (and no
doubt they enjoy and invent jokes about themselves ) but they have not pro-
duced a proliferation of self conscious jokes exploring their own peculiari-
ties. Only the Jews and the Scots have done that. Why? We must now turn to
the second and narrower comparative question about what other people lack,
though it should be noted that we have learned a good deal that is relevant to
finding an answer to it by asking the broader question in advance..
What may be seen from the distinctive style and content of the jokes that
Scots and Jews tell about their own group and which can be and is confirmed
by other quite independent evidence (this is absolutely vital) is that both
groups see their religious tradition as one that prizes learning and literacy
and as one that had evolved in the direction of argumentative democracy. In
either case analytical disputation was pursued almost for its own sake. From
this arose the Jewish and Scottish pre-eminence in physics, philosophy and
economics and in jokes that no other small nation can match.
We can now finally ditch the tangled thesis that Jewish self mockery is
rooted in an expression of masochism or selbsthass; it was anyway in trouble
for other reasons. We may do so with confidence, since a larger proportion
of self consciously Scottish jokes seem to be about self mockery than is the
case with Jewish jokes. There is no Scottish equivalent of the Jewish jokes
that comprehensively trounce outsiders of all kinds. Perhaps, when other fac-
tors such as intellectual and commercial acumen, self awareness and disputa-
ciousness are held constant, it is this outwardly directed aggression in Jewish
Undertaking the comparative study of humor 177
jokes that is the product of past persecution, which is the opposite of what the
Jewish masochism thesis suggests (Davies 2002).
There are no clear links between real and observable conflicts, hostility
and aggression on the one hand and the playing with aggression that underlies
a large proportion of jokes or come to that sports or consensual sexual inter-
action on the other. The differences between the two sets of activities are far
more important than the things they have in common. The comparative study
of jokes not only enables us to see this more clearly but also undermines
widely accepted theories of jokes that employ crude theories of aggression.
The followers of Freud and the otherwise psycho-analytically tinged have
long since been pushed out of the proper treatment of mental illness by ad-
vances in pharmaceuticals and in cognitive and behavioral psychology. The
world has said to them – ‘your ideas do not work, your theories are false, get
out’. The comparative analysis of jokes enables us to say exactly the same to
them in regard to the study of humor.
Such uses of the comparative method are not peculiar to the study of
humor. Freudian theory had already suffered a fatal rebuff from Malinowski
over Freud’s absurd explanation of the tensions between fathers and sons by
claiming that the ties between the male child and its mother lead to a sur-
pressed wish on the son’s part to kill his father and obtain undivided and sex-
ual possession of the mother. Malinowski [1927] studied a matrilineal socie-
ty, the Trobriand islanders, in which property descends not from father to son
but from the mother’s brother to her son. The mother’s brother not the father
has authority over her male offspring. In such a society there are no tensions
between father and son who enjoy an easy-going indulgent relationship but
there is conflict between maternal uncle and nephew even though there are no
sexual relations between the mother and her brother. Malinowski [1927] used
the comparative method to undermine the idea of the Oedipus complex and
to show that family tensions arise over quite different questions of authority
and autonomy and, where it exists, property. The methodological principle
employed here is very similar to that employed by Malinowski and is a de-
scendent of the principles set out by John Stuart Mill [1843]. In this respect
the study of jokes is no different from the study of any other social phenom-
enon. What makes the study of jokes more difficult to carry out is the elusive
and ambiguous quality of humorous as opposed to bona fide discourse and the
necessity always to avoid the temptation of reducing the former to the latter.
Jokes must never be treated as if they were serious statements. Jokes dwell in
a special world of their own with its own rules and it is by uncovering these
rules that aggregate patterns of joking can be explained and accounted for.
178 Christie Davies
The comparative methods for doing this do not in essence differ from those
used for other purposes. The constructive comparative method used to study
ethnic and political stupidity jokes is similar to that used by Emil Durkheim
(Durkheim 1897; Pickering and Walford 2000) in his study of suicide or by
David Martin [1978] when he produced a general theory of secularization by
looking at the history of religion in a large number of Christian countries. As
indicated earlier, an example of the use of the comparative method to con-
tradict and overturn a theory based on a narrow analysis of the mores of a
single society may be found in Malinowski’s anthropological study Sex and
Repression in Savage Society [1927].The method of seeking out the exception
in order to understand what are the preconditions of the general case is char-
acteristic of the best early work of S. M. Lipset and his colleagues, includ-
ing Union Democracy discussed earlier and also Agrarian Socialism [1950].
Reading these classics is the best way to understand the comparative method,
far better than getting tangled up in Boolean algebra. In the distant future it
may well be possible to use these Boolean methods in the comparative study
of humor but their failure so far to produce any significant or interesting re-
sults in other similar fields of study shows that it is not appropriate to use
them now. The premature use of such methods has the further disadvantage
that it creates a false impression of sophistication and enables their user to
hide problems and assumptions behind algebraic symbols. You can not easily
turn words into numbers. Those who try to do so usually do not understand
either.
The comparative study of humor is only one approach to understanding
humor. I have outlined how it works in more detail in my book The Mirth of
Nations (Davies 2002). It is essential to supplement the comparative approach
with a wide reading of the leading contemporary studies of humor from the
1980s through to the twenty first century listed below notably Attardo, Dav-
ies, Dundes, Oring, Raskin, and Ruch. The making of systematic comparisons
is a powerful way of answering questions but a knowledge of modern humor
scholarship is necessary if one is to know which questions to ask.
Notes
1. Sex is different because the media can withhold the information necessary
for sex jokes to be pinned on a politician. The public were not told about
Roosevelt or Kennedy’s wild sex lives, so there were no jokes, whereas
Profumo’s pecadilloes and Jefferson Clinton’s pecker dildos were public
Undertaking the comparative study of humor 179
knowledge and hence a subject of jokes. The rules of the game are anyway
different for sex jokes and political jokes. There are very few good sex
jokes about East European political leaders under socialism despite, say,
Lavrenti P. Beria’s exploitation of his position to have sex with under age
girls.It is partly that these girls’ experiences never got the coverage of a
Monica Wilensky or a Christine Keeler and partly that the East European
jokes were about politics and stupidity not sex. The sex jokes about politi-
cians in the Free World were equivalent to those told about Father Hickey
or the Christian Brothers or Michael Jackson or anyone else involved in a
sex scandal. The joke “ They have found the growth in President Reagen’s
colon. It was Rock Hudson’s wrist watch” is not a political joke. It makes
fun of a moral majoritarian having to respond to the death of an old friend
forced out of the closet by imminently fatal AIDS but it could have been
any two prominent people. It is a sick disaster joke with a sexual twist.
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Humor in anthropology and folklore
Elliott Oring
Introduction
Issues
Joking relationships
hostilities arising from the divergence of interests while the acceptance of the
assaults as playful reflected their mutual interests.
One example of a joking relationship is that between cross-cousins of the
opposite sex. Cross-cousins (the children of siblings of the opposite sex) have
often been observed to joke – often about sexual matters – with one another.
In the same societies, parallel cousins (the children of siblings of the same sex)
were forbidden to do so. Cross cousins tend to be members of different uni-
lineal descent groups but are eligible and expected to marry one another. The
disjunction resides in the different interests of the two descent groups and the
conjunction in the marriage alliances that are formed between them.
Radcliffe-Brown’s theoretical orientation was based upon the view that the
social arrangements found in different societies served to enhance the stability
and well being of that society. Joking relationships could help to corral conflict
when divergent interests threatened to destroy the management of a coopera-
tive relationship (Radcliffe-Brown 1941: 137). His was a functional theory and
functional theories have been shown to be limited in their explanatory powers
(Jarvie 1965; Cancian 1968).
Anthropologists have extended the study of patterned joking behaviors to
industrial settings in contemporary Western societies. Unlike what was ob-
served among cross-cousins in traditional societies, it was observed in a Glas-
gow print works, that it was the sexually impossible relationships – those be-
tween old men and very young women or old women and much younger men
– that were governed by licensed obscene joking. The sexually possible rela-
tionships between men and women of the same age group were marked by
modesty and restraint (Sykes 1966). Clearly, in traditional and modern soci-
eties, joking transmits an important statement about social relationships, al-
though there is no formula that states what joking will communicate about the
nature of the relationships in question. Between cross-cousins, sexual joking
reaffirms sexual possibilities and alliance between different descent groups;
between old and young in a Glasgow industrial setting, sexual joking affirms no
possibilities at all. Perhaps modern societies are more disposed towards ironic
modes of communication (Oring 2003[1994]: 71–84), but in fact, in traditional
societies, abusive joking behavior often takes place between categories of kin
whose relations are warm and supportive (Freedman 1977).
It has been suggested that what have been called joking relationships
occur between very different kinds of groups in societies of different levels
of complexity. Consequently, they cannot be comprehended within the frame
of a single theory (ibid.: 154–155). Nevertheless, Mary Douglas (1968) at-
tempted to generalize the relation of joking to social structure. She saw jok-
Humor in anthropology and folklore 187
summer camps (Bronner 1990; Scott 1974; Posen 1974). They have been re-
garded as a means of social control (Posen 1974), resistance (Narváez 2003),
or an aspect of folk aesthetics (Harlow 2003).
“Dyadic tradition” was the term employed (Oring 1992 [1984]: 135–144)
to characterize behavioral and linguistics routines generated and maintained
by dyads: couples, siblings, or close friends. Dyadic traditions were largely
humorous and much of that humor involved insult, abuse, or references to
or re-creations of shared, unpleasant experiences. These traditions were em-
ployed to register mood, symbolize intimacy, and activate a shared sense of
the past and the history of the dyad (Bendix 1987; Tavarelli 1987–88). The
abusive nature of many of these expressions could connote intimacy because
the sense of the relationship trumped the abusive expression and framed it as
a joke. It did not communicate hostility or create antagonism (also Freedman
1977: 162).
Ritual humor
Ritual humor – the appearance of humor in the context of sacred rituals and
texts – posed another problem to anthropologists. As joking relationships
seemed a challenge to notions of solidary kinship relations, sexual reference
and display, scatology, transvestism, burlesque, and other forms of coarse and
unseemly expression seemed an affront to sacred belief and practice. Some-
times these outlandish behaviors were the actions of the multitude, some-
times the province of a designated specialist – a ceremonial clown or buf-
foon. These clowns were sometimes identified with mythological figures, and
they undertook healing, disciplinary, fertility-enhancing, and priestly func-
tions during major ceremonies. The breaking of taboos that was realized in
their inverse and perverse antics was, in fact, the source of their powers.
As with joking relationships, ritual humor has been viewed as a means of
releasing energy and reducing tension: tensions created in the ritual context
itself (Gluckman 1963) or those generated more generally in society (Charles
1945). Others have seen ritual humor as a critical practice concerned with
controlling behaviors that violate community norms or directing aggression
against dominant social classes (Bricker 1973). The taboo breaking of clowns
has also been viewed as reinforcing the mores of the society. By framing the
violations within a ritual context, they can be safely viewed, contemplated,
ridiculed, and rejected as modes of behaviors appropriate to the everyday
world (Makarius 1970: 68).
Humor in anthropology and folklore 189
Humor in the context of ritual behaviors has also been regarded as polit-
ical, an act of resistance. With French colonialism, the Hauka spirit move-
ment emerged among the Songhay people of Niger. In the course of spirit
dances, new spirits began to appear: generals and governors of distant lands,
doctors and lawyers, judges and secretaries. They represented a panorama of
social and political statuses that had been established and occupied by Eu-
ropeans and their appointees. The dances were both terrifying and comic, as
super strong and belligerent spirit dancers engaged in burlesques of colonial
authority and manner. Even after French rule ended, the Hauka spirit dances
continued because the way of life that the colonial regime had established
continued to shape Songhay life (Stoller 1984).
In addition to the safety valve, social corrective, and resistance theories,
clowning was regarded as embodying abstract statements about the ideologic-
al bases of society and the cosmos. The clown is the violator of the nomos of
the social group. That nomos, which protects the social group, also violates
individual freedom. The laughter inspired by the clown is the laughter of an
infinite God at the presumption of a finite society that regards its prescriptions
as absolute (Zucker 1969). Ritual joking highlights the arbitrary nature of the
categories of thought (Douglas 1968).
Those who bring to ritual the notion of the carnivalesque that Mikhail
Bakhtin (1984) brought to the analysis of the novel do not regard ritual humor
as a contradiction. Play is not the opposite of seriousness. Neither the novel
nor ritual has a fixed meaning – not even a highly abstract one. Instead, there
is an overlapping of signification systems with a multiplicity of meanings.
Rituals have no unambiguous meanings. In rituals, the comic and the seri-
ous, the chaotic and the orderly, create meta-commentaries on themselves.
The comic in ritual is not comic relief; it is another system of signification
that speaks to, against, and with the serious one (Babcock-Abrahams 1974;
Mitchell 1992).
In Andalusia, for example, alongside the scurrilous coplas sung during
carnival, are “scholarly” songs – serious, sentimental, elegiac verses – in
praise of traditional, Christian values. These songs celebrate chivalry, com-
passion, and the brotherhood of humanity. The carnival does not merely turn
the world upside-down in reaction to the prevailing social order. It contains
within itself a denial of the denial, and expresses contradictions not only be-
tween classes but within them as well (Gilmore 1995).
Similarly, the Gede spirits, relatives of the grim Bawon Samdi, live in the
cemetery and run riot in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Carnival. The Gedes are
colorful, erotic, and obscene figures in the celebration of death and the dead.
190 Elliott Oring
Uproarious, macabre, and indecent, their antics not only serve as local polit-
ical critique, but in the context of the festival they offer a kaleidoscopic com-
mentary on human mortality in general and the miseries of Haiti in particular
(Cosentino 2003).
Folklorists and anthropologists, even when they do not study the carni-
valesque, study carnivals. Daniel Crowley, studied carnivals in the United
States, New Orleans, Brazil, the Cape Verde Islands, Guinea-Bisseau, the
Canary Islands, and the Caribbean. And while Crowley felt Bakhtin’s idea of
carnival might serve as heuristic for the analysis of literary texts, he also felt
that Bakhtin and many of those who employed his carnival metaphor had little
knowledge of what carnivals were really like (Crowley 1999). Carnivals can
be affairs of great seriousness requiring enormous discipline, expenditure,
and even pain. The preparation for Carnival goes on throughout the year, and
these preparations are not something apart from the festive celebration itself.
In some ways they seem to be as, if not more, important (Lohman 1999).
Folklorists have also paid attention to the role of humor as a commen-
tary on beliefs and practices in religious settings. Larry Danielson (1986)
described how a certain casual, humorous remark in a Lutheran congregation
actually communicated a serious message about the style of worship and the
ideology of the congregation. When Danielson served as worship deacon in
his church, he accidentally extinguished the sanctuary lamp in his attempt to
light the frankincense for an Epiphany service. A woman also serving in the
altar area said to him in a stage whisper, “We know what happens to people
who put out the eternal light.” The comment was ironic, indicating that she
believed nothing at all happened to such people, but the comment also al-
luded to the increasing penetration of Catholic practices – such as the use of
frankincense – into what she perceived to be plain Lutheran styles of wor-
ship. The comment meant to suggest that there were people in the congrega-
tion who were truly punctilious about how the objects in the altar area were
handled and who supported the type of excessive ritual display in which the
two participants were then engaged. The admirers of these new, high church
practices were humorously referred to as “chancel prancers” by those critical
of the shift from simpler and more traditional forms of worship.
Serious messages were also extracted from a series of comic songs that
playfully combined descriptions of religious belief and practice among Or-
thodox Jews with profane references and tunes from American popular cul-
ture. The songs – for example, a song that combined a discourse on studying
the Talmud with the tune and metaphor of “Home on the Range” – were ana-
lyzed to reveal a crisis in identity in the modern orthodox community. They
Humor in anthropology and folklore 191
Folk genre
words,” which are like riddles but are tailored to specific situations of behav-
ioral deviation (157–160). All of the above are translations of Tzotzil terms.
In Chamula, what is called humor in the West is distributed in numerous gen-
res of speaking, and that world of speech is ultimately connected to Chamula
religion and cosmology (165).
Chizbat was the term used by the Palmach to name their jokes and an-
ecdotes in the 1940s. The Palmach was a Jewish military group originally
trained by the British to oppose an expected invasion of Palestine by the
Wehrmacht during World War II. When the threat of invasion passed and the
British began to worry about those it had trained, the members moved under-
ground. Since chizbat were told in Hebrew, why was the name derived from
Arabic? Why was the available Hebrew term bedikhot (jokes) not used? How
did this humor differ from those jokes and anecdotes that were not regarded
as chizbat? The answers to these questions depend upon discerning the con-
tours and significance of this folk genre. These answers also suggest why it
would be inappropriate to simply categorize the chizbat as “Jewish humor”
even though the chizbat was humorous and the tellers and audiences were all
Jewish (Oring 1981).
The concern with “ethnic” or “folk” classifications attempts to compre-
hend culture-specific conceptualizations and categorizations of the natural,
social, and cultural environment. The study of folk genres can illustrate the
difficulties of applying the genre terminology of one culture to the verbal ex-
pressions of another. It can also lead to critical reflections on the categories
and terminologies that scholars themselves employ.
to their analysis or interpretation. But since the early 1960s, folklorists have
been documenting, analyzing, and interpreting the jokes and joke cycles that
have come to dominate oral expression in contemporary society.
Perhaps one of the best known of these joke interpreters is Alan Dundes.
It was Dundes who insisted that jokes had to be interpreted and not merely
recorded. His view of the sick humor of the dead-baby joke cycle (e.g., Q:
What is red and sits in the corner? A: A baby chewing on razor blades) was
that it expressed hostility and resentment against babies. The recourse to con-
traception and eventually abortion from the 1960s through the 1980s – when
the joke cycle ended – made people anxious and guilty about their complic-
ity in preventing or destroying babies. The telling of dead baby jokes which
dehumanized babies relieved their tellers and listeners of some of this guilt
(Dundes 1987 [1979]: 3–14). Dundes’s theory of joking is a cathartic one:
through jokes people express repressed sexual or aggressive wishes and re-
lieve themselves of their anxieties. This follows Sigmund Freud’s theory that
jokes “make possible the expression of an instinct (whether lustful or hos-
tile) in the face of an obstacle that stands in its way” (Freud 1960 [1900]:
101). This cathartic theory characterizes Dundes’s view of Auschwitz jokes
(1987 [1983]: 19–38) and quadriplegic jokes as well (Dundes 1987 [1985]:
15–18).
In some joke cycles that Dundes studied, the targets of the jokes were not
clearly identifiable. Consequently, he had to engage in symbolic interpretation
to determine against whom the aggression of the joke was directed. Dundes
(1987 [1969]: 41–54) argued that the elephant in elephant jokes – a cycle
which circulated in the early 1960s – was a symbol of the American black.
The internal evidence for this equation was that some of the jokes concerned
the color of the elephant, his prodigious sexuality, and his feminization –
even his castration. The external evidence was their similarity to other riddle
jokes circulating at the same time that explicitly referred to blacks. These
jokes were popular during the heyday of the Civil Right movement. The ele-
phant jokes, according to Dundes, reflected the anxiety of whites about black
power, and expressed their unconscious aggression. He made essentially the
same argument about the joke of the “wide-mouthed frog” (Dundes 1987
[1977]: 55–61).
In dealing with Polish jokes, Dundes was in somewhat of a quandary. Un-
like some other theorists (e.g., Welsch 1967), Dundes did not see the jokes as
aggressions against American Poles because he had no sense that such hostil-
ity existed. He suggested instead that Polish jokes took the heat off blacks.
The jokes were directed against the lower class, giving the middle class an
194 Elliott Oring
outlet for aggression and the means for feeling superior (Dundes 1987[1971]:
115–138) – presumably because explicit anti-black jokes were no longer ac-
ceptable at that time.
This aggressive/cathartic view of jokes was challenged on several fronts.
One re-analysis of elephant jokes showed that they violated very specific rules
of traditional riddling. The elephant jokes appeared at a time when traditional
knowledge and traditional authority were being challenged on college cam-
puses throughout America. The Civil Rights Movement was just one part of
a larger counter-cultural movement in the United States that sought to over-
throw traditional ideas and institutions. There was no basis for identifying the
elephant as a symbol of any specific person or group. The image of something
large and wild abroad in the land captured the sense of the counterculture and
its overturning of traditional attitudes and behaviors quite well. Furthermore,
it was argued that jokes could not be reduced to outlets for aggression. Jokes
were forms of play and they could play with aggression without themselves
being aggressive (Oring 1992[1975]: 16–28). Gregory Bateson had made the
same point about animal play: the playful nip denotes the bite but not what
would be denoted by the bite itself (1972: 180).
Others also challenged assumptions about the aggressiveness of ethnic
joking. In a broad comparative study of those ethnic jokes that ascribed stu-
pidity to one or another ethnic group, Christie Davies (1990) showed that
such jokes were not told about groups that were adversaries but about groups
that were peripheral to the mainstream: geographically peripheral provin-
cials, culturally peripheral ethnics, or economically peripheral proletarians.
The Polish jokes, therefore, did not express hostility against an ethnic group
that was challenging the white middle-class socially or economically. Ra-
ther, Poles were perceived to hold to blue-collar occupations and to remain
rooted in ethnic neighborhoods. The jokes were about a group that seemed
to reject the intellectual, cultural, and social advancement that the American
marketplace opened to individuals of all backgrounds. The jokes were about
these progressive values, and the Poles were simply the signifier of those
who chose not to pursue them (see “Undertaking the comparative study of
humor”, in this volume).
A similar argument was made about the blonde joke cycle that circu-
lated in the early 1990s in the United States. Most journalists, feminists, and
scholars immediately read them as yet another exercise in misogyny. But the
question of the jokes’ motives and meanings depended upon how to read the
blonde signifier: was it a sign for all women, a sign for certain women, or
was it a sign for something else? Among the data suggesting that the blonde
Humor in anthropology and folklore 195
did not stand for all women was: (1) blonde women themselves often relished
telling and hearing the jokes; (2) the jokes included explicit references to
blondes and brunettes and the brunette was often portrayed as the opposite
of the blonde; (3) the blonde in the jokes was represented as having only two
faults: extreme stupidity and promiscuity. The interpretation that was offered
of these jokes was that they, like the Polish jokes, were about certain values
for which the blonde was a signifier. The workaday world into which women
were moving and succeeding, was held to be a world of rationality, calcula-
tion, organization, and efficiency. Ideally, intelligence and ability were the
coin of this realm and the key to success in it. In the jokes, the blonde is a
crystallization of wanton sex and helpless ineptitude. The blonde in the jokes
is rejected not because she is a woman, but because she represents values and
strategies that are anti-modern and opposed to expectations of conduct in the
contemporary workplace (Oring 2003: 58–70).
These semiotic perspectives also lead to a reconsideration of some of the
sick-joke and disaster cycles that emerged in relatively recent times. The jokes
that followed shortly after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in
January 1986 brought about a series of sick jokes concerning the failure of the
National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), the explosion of the
shuttle, the dismemberment of the astronauts, and Christa McAuliffe, “the
teacher in space” who was on board the shuttle to promote science education
in the schools. Journalists again condemned these jokes as an indication of
the depravity of the national psyche. Psychologists and scholars – including
Alan Dundes – were more forgiving. They regarded the jokes as a mechanism
for coping with the tragedy and distancing oneself from disaster.
But these interpretations were formulated without any consideration of the
context in which the public encountered the disaster. The disaster was a media
event. The public became aware of the disaster only through the media – pri-
marily television – and it was shown images of the Challenger explosion in
a seemingly endless series of repetitions. But if images of the explosion miles
above the earth were endlessly viewable, the trauma to and mutilation of the
bodies of the astronauts themselves was never discussed. In a sense, the tel-
evision footage was a lie. Furthermore, the media attempted to define for the
public the meaning of the event and how it should respond to it. Some anchor-
men on network news programs, for example, actually recited poetry. The fact
that the media create the spectatorship for disaster, its unwillingness to speak
about certain topics connected with disaster, and its attempt to define response
and control sentiment was probably what inspired the cycle of Challenger
jokes. Because the jokes were so outrageous, they could not be reported in
196 Elliott Oring
the media. In that way, the resistance of a public to the media-defined situ-
ation could not be co-opted. This hypothesis would go a long way to explain-
ing some of the other sick humor cycles that arise from time to time (Oring
1992[1987]: 29–40; Kuipers 2005). Disaster humor comes into being with
the omnipresence of television, and the interpretation of the Challenger jokes
was expanded into a more general theory of disaster humor (Davies 2003).
Bill Ellis (1991) noted that the Challenger jokes did not appear all at once,
but in stages. Two weeks following the explosion of the shuttle on 28 January
1986, jokes appeared on three different college campuses that focused on the
acronym NASA (e.g., Need Another Seven Astronauts); on Bud Light (e.g.,
they found the flight recorder and all that was on it was, “no, Bud Light,” par-
odying a series of beer commercials that produced incendiaries when all that
was wanted was a light beer); and on Christa McAuliffe’s last words (“What’s
this button for?). This wave lasted approximately a week when it was joined
and then replaced by more gruesome jokes that traded on graphic images of
death and dismemberment. These jokes lasted about a month before declin-
ing. Ellis stated that he did not regard the jokes as part of a grieving process.
They were a way to declare that the tellers themselves were not grieving. The
jokes signaled a move towards closure; meaning a willingness to bring the
tragedy back to private discourse, to a realm of discourse not controlled by
media or other public definitions of the event. This approach is not at odds
with the previous interpretation, although at times it seems to drift towards
the notion of grieving that it disclaims. Nevertheless, Ellis’s particular con-
tribution to the study of these jokes was his method of collecting them. He
formulated a questionnaire that was used to survey his college classes over a
three-week period in February and March following the explosion. He was
also able to correlate his surveys with collections made by colleagues at other
universities. When the jokes concerning the World Trade Center began after
the attack on 11 September 2001, he used the Google.com Groups metase-
arch to locate disaster jokes in archived messages on Usenet message boards.
He was able to sort messages by date and trace the history of the items and
note their peaks of popularity. He was also able to see the jokes in the context
of a message and conversational exchange (Ellis 2003).
Humor contexts
There are four contexts that anthropologists and folklorists take into account
in the effort to interpret humor: cultural context, social context, individ-
Humor in anthropology and folklore 197
ual context and comparative context. Cultural context refers to the cultural
knowledge, concepts, values, and attitudes necessary to understand a humor-
ous expression. The following Israeli joke is from the early 1950s:
After the conquest of Eilat, Ben-Gurion arrived in the Aravah and sur-
veyed the area. In every fortification they honored him with a parade, and
he spoke to the soldiers. In one of the encampments, a platoon mustered
for him, and Ben-Gurion, who stood on a small rise, began to prophesy:
Do you see this wilderness? Here will be a forest!”
One of the guys added, “And bears will walk in it.”
Eilat is the southernmost town in Israel. It stands on the coast of the Red
Sea not far from the Jordanian port of Aqaba. On March 10, 1949, in the final
weeks of the War of Independence, it was conquered by Israeli forces. The
Aravah – actually the southern Aravah – is the desert in the Rift Valley south
of the Dead Sea that provides the major route to Eilat. David Ben-Gurion
was the first prime minister and defense minister of the State of Israel. Ben-
Gurion was known as a visionary with highly optimistic views of the future.
He felt that the agricultural development of the southern desert was crucial
for the country, and he later retired to a kibbutz in the desert. Ben-Gurion
was also short. In the joke, Ben-Gurion comes to the military encampment
and ascends a small rise, in order to speak to and be seen by the soldiers. He
conveys his fantastic vision of a forest eventually springing up in the middle
of a desperately arid landscape. “And bears will walk in it,” is an inversion of
the Hebrew phrase “No bears and no forest” which connotes something that
is a figment of the imagination. So when Ben-Gurion conjures up the image
of a forest, the soldier populates it with bears, thus communicating that it is
something that will never come to be – just another cock-and-bull story. The
joke, therefore, emerges as a playful criticism of visionaries in general and
of David Ben-Gurion’s fertile imagination in particular (Oring 1981: 71). The
above constitutes the minimum of cultural contextual information necessary
to comprehend and interpret the joke.
The following, however, described by its tellers as one of the “funniest
Navajo jokes,” remained cryptic to the folklorist to whom it was told, even
though he had spent some forty years studying Navajo folklore:
Despite the observations that Navajo do not usually talk about their dreams,
that discrepancies in nature (such as a human hatching birds) often portend
physical or mental illness, that the man seems to be a cuckold in that he is
caring for offspring that are not his (although Navajo informants assured him
that is not what is funny about it), that a male seems to be playing the role of
a woman, that Navajo men should not be concerned with paternity because
children are the property of women and their families, and the distortion of
nature by a man sitting on eggs is not an actual distortion because the man
dreamed that he was a bird which properly does sit on eggs, non-Navajos are
likely to remain very much in the dark about what makes this exchange funny
(Toelken 2003: 150–152).
Even when a joke seems fully comprehensible, the sociocultural context
necessary to grasp its import may be lacking. In his book Jokes and Their Re-
lation to the Unconscious, Sigmund Freud included a good number of Jewish
jokes among his examples. Among these jokes were several about the figure
of the schadchen or Jewish marriage broker.
A Schadchen had brought an assistant with him to the discussion about the
proposed bride, to bear out what he had to say. “She’s as straight as a pine-
tree,” said the Schadchen. – “As a pine tree,” repeated the echo. – “And
she has eyes that ought to be seen!” – “What eyes she has!” confirmed the
echo. “And she is better educated than anyone!” – “What an education!”
“It’s true there’s one thing,” admitted the broker, “she has a small hump.” –
“And what a hump!” the echo confirmed once more. (Freud 1960: 64)
While there probably is nothing in this joke that needs explanation for it to
be easily understood (the assistant is so conditioned to echo the prospective
bride’s virtues that he also mechanically exaggerates her flaw), cultural con-
text is necessary to recognize the significance of the image of the deformed
bride in the period that Freud employed it.
In 1905, when Freud published his book on jokes, Jews in Central Europe
were widely regarded as a spiritually and morally corrupt people. This cor-
Humor in anthropology and folklore 199
ruption was supposed to manifest itself in Jewish speech and in signs on the
Jewish body. The physical signs of this corruption were held to be evident
in their feet, gait, skin, eyes, nose, and in a variety of physical and mental
diseases. Their speech – their loquacity, duplicity, materialism, and penchant
for wit and irony – was also reckoned to reveal their moral deficiencies. Fur-
thermore, endogamous Jewish marriage was held responsible for the creation
and perpetuation of these defects in Jewish body and soul. Given these anti-
Semitic attitudes that pervaded fin-de-siècle Vienna, a joke about a schadchen
who promotes marriage with a physically flawed woman and who uses all
his rhetoric skills to achieve his purpose was hardly a benign joke for dispas-
sionate scientific analysis (Oring 2003: 116–128). Only the awareness of the
jokes’ cultural context would suggest that it probably resonated quite differ-
ently for people a century ago than it does for people today.
Social context refers to the situation and circumstances in which humor is
performed. Time, setting, personnel, the relationships among the participants,
the nature of their conversation and interaction are relevant to the description
of social context. For when, where, how, and to whom a joke is told bears
significantly on how the joke functions and what the joke means.
Alf Walle (1976) studied a diner in upstate New York and focused on the
dynamics of joking during the period of 12:45 to 2:00 A.M. Many bars in the
immediate area of the diner closed at 1:00 A.M. and waitresses who began
work the previous evening got off at 1:30 A.M. So this period, known locally
as “the bar rush,” was the period in which men from the bars went to try and
pick up waitresses who were getting off of work.
What Walle discovered was that jokes were used in a calculated manner
to ascertain the availability of a waitress for a liaison. Each type of joke sig-
naled a different degree of intimacy in the interaction between customer and
waitress. Thus “general humor” like elephant and Polish jokes were relatively
impersonal and were used to establish friendly relations between customer
and waitress. They indicated no more than a general friendliness. Were such
jokes refused by the waitress, however, the possibility for greater intimacy
was unlikely. The jokes were a risk-free way to assess the openness of the
waitress to greater intimacy. If the general humor was well received, the cus-
tomer could move on to “topical jokes” on social issues – notably politics
and race. For this type of joke to be successful, an alignment of attitudes and
views between customer and waitress would be required. These jokes in-
dexed a relationship between the waitress and customer as persons, whereas
general humor merely indexed a relationship between customer and waitress
in their assigned roles. The success of topical jokes in interaction with the
200 Elliott Oring
waitress could lead to the use of explicitly sexual humor. The waitresses were
free to reject these attempts at humor, laugh at them, or respond with their
own examples. The jokes provided a way for customers to test the availability
of waitresses without risking a personal rejection. Similarly, waitresses could
encourage someone they were interested in or discourage others without hav-
ing to entertain or reject explicit sexual overtures. Thus joking in the social
context of the bar rush was a coded communication about intimacy and sex-
ual availability.
The close study of folklore in particular social contexts, gave rise to a
focus on performance. Speakers of folklore frame their utterances to suggest
that they are a special mode of communication. The frame signals that com-
munications are not to be taken simply for their referential content, and that
speakers are to be evaluated not merely for the substance of their communi-
cations but for their skill and effectiveness as well. Performance is a way of
speaking indicating that communication is to be examined and appraised for
its form and style – that is, as art. In choosing to perform, a performer, there-
fore, assumes responsibility for a communication and is held accountable for
it by an audience (Bauman 1977: 7–14).
“Keying” is the framing of words and actions as performance. Perform-
ance may be keyed by special codes and formulas, paralinguistic features, ap-
peals to tradition, and even disclaimers of performance (Bauman 1977: 16).
Jokes, for example, may be keyed by stereotypic actors and locales (“Guy
goes into a bar”); a pervasive present tense (“Asks the bartender for a mar-
tini”); formulaic introductions (“Have you heard the one about…”); appeals
to tradition (“Here’s an old chestnut”); and disclaimers (“My husband is the
joke teller in the family, but…”). On occasion, breakthrough into joke per-
formance can prove an arduous social accomplishment (Sacks 1974). The
keying of joke performance through disclaimer has been discussed by Ed-
wards (1984).
The analysis of performance was meant to direct attention away from an
emphasis on text to a consideration of the production of text as only one
element in a larger event. Some of these events are institutionalized. Parties
and roasts, for example, are standard situations for the production of verbal
and behavioral comedy. Jokes and witty remarks may also emerge sponta-
neously in the course of conversation and other social activities. In these
latter instances, performance is said to be emergent; i.e., highly contingent
behavior dependent upon a complex interplay of situational factors. In both
formal and informal situations, analytic attention is directed to social roles,
social structures, interactional rules, and institutional regimes that govern the
Humor in anthropology and folklore 201
a rtistic production of humor and to the way that production feeds back into
the structure and character of the event (Bauman 1986).
Individual context refers to those aspects of individual experience and
disposition that are likely to inform the understanding of humor produced or
consumed by an individual. Questions as to why certain jokes are adopted
into the repertoires of particular individuals; why they change in content,
shape, and style (see, for example, Bronner 1984); why certain jokes become
favorites; and why certain performers tend to tell jokes that focus on a few
particular themes may be addressed by attention to individual context.
Thomas and Inger Burns (Burns with Burns 1976; Burns 1984) identified
eleven informants, male and female, who regularly performed the same joke.
The researchers’ intention was to explore whether the joke proved significant
to these tellers in the same way. The basic form of the joke was:
The authors then contacted these tellers who agreed to participate in extensive
interviewing about their lives and their joke telling. Psychosexual histories of
the subjects were taken, and they were given a Thematic Apperception Test
that was independently evaluated by a psychologist. Subjects also permitted
the researchers to interview one of their close friends. The joke repertoire of
each informant was collected in order to ascertain whether particular themes
were salient in their joke telling. Informants were also asked to comment on
actions in the joke, viz., the use of a euphemism for sex, the husband’s re-
quest for sex, the wife’s refusal, the wife’s subsequent acquiescence, and the
husband’s recourse to masturbation. The point of the study was to explore the
ways that these individual tellers related to the various aspects of the joke and
to ascertain the joke’s psychological and social functions.
For example, one informant was extremely critical of masturbatory activ-
ity and claimed that he never engaged in it. His former girlfriend, however,
maintained that he was often unable to achieve climax when they had inter-
course, and he would go on to masturbate until he did. The informant was also
obsessed with cleanliness. Everything in his house was neat and orderly, and
he could get agitated if things were not in their proper places. The inform-
ant showered and changed his towels and underwear several times a day. He
202 Elliott Oring
always showered after sexual intercourse. This informant, when asked about
the joke, found it funny that the husband in the joke had to turn to masturba-
tion. Since the couple was married, he said, he should have been able to have
sex anytime he wanted (Burns with Burns 1976: 128–148).
These were the kinds of data that the researchers brought to the discussion
of the “Doing the Wash” joke and its significance for their eleven informants.
The range and detail of psycho-biographical information obtained from both
the informants and their friends, the data obtained from the projective test,
and their exploration of the joke repertoires and performances of each of their
informants make this work one of the most thorough clinical investigations
of the relationship between humor and personality. (For something compar-
able by psychologists looking at stand-up comedians, see Fisher and Fisher
[1981]).
The jokes of Sigmund Freud also became a subject for scrutiny. Freud
was an inveterate joke teller and his psychoanalytic disciples regularly re-
ported his fondness for telling Jewish jokes and anecdotes. In his letters,
Freud sometimes identified with certain joke characters, and at the time of the
self-analysis that led to his initial formulation of psychoanalytic theory, he
made a collection of what he described as “deeply significant Jewish jokes.”
Although this collection was destroyed, Freud’s favorite Jewish jokes found
their way into his book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious or were
recalled by his psychoanalytic disciples in their memoirs. All of these Jewish
jokes were examined in relation to Freud’s character and life circumstances,
and they offered new perspectives on Freud’s attitudes toward his wife, eco-
nomic status, career, ethnicity, and religious beliefs (Oring 1984).
Unlike the other contexts, comparative context does not itself bear on the
real-time situation of humor. Rather it refers to those traditions of humor that
are equivalent, analogous, or otherwise interconnected to those under inves-
tigation. Thus Christie Davies (pp. 162–163, this volume) compared Polish
jokes with jokes about stupid populations in Britain, France, the Netherlands,
Turkey, Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Nigeria. Determining who got called stupid
and by whom in these various countries proved critical in the formulation of
his theory for these kinds of jokes. Similarly, evidence for the interpretation
of blonde jokes (above, p. 196) depended, in part, on a comparison with
other joke cycles in which women were assigned stupidity and promiscuity
scripts – notably sorority girls jokes, B.Y.U. (Brigham Young University)
coed jokes, and Essex girl jokes in England (Oring 2003: 67–70).
Alan Dundes took a slightly different tack in his analysis of the Jewish-
American Princess (J.A.P.) jokes that were told in the United States in the
Humor in anthropology and folklore 203
late 1970s and early 1980s. Rather than search for analogous jokes in other
cultural traditions, he compared the stereotype elaborated in these jokes with
the stereotype underlying jokes about the Jewish-American Mother. Where
the J.A.P is portrayed as spoiled, self-centered, materialistic, excessively con-
cerned about her appearance, and indifferent to sex and the needs of her
family, the jokes about the J.A.M., the Jewish-American Mother, were much
the reverse. The Jewish mother is over-solicitous of her children, she is ever
concerned with their feeding and health, she suffers for them and enjoys her
martyr role, and she looks forward to nothing so much as the attention and
appreciation of her children. The polarity in the representations of the Jewish
daughter and Jewish mother is likely to have some bearing on the significance
of both cycles of jokes (Dundes 1987 [1985]: 62–81), but it requires a com-
parative perspective to note and delineate the polarity.
Humor as art
The collection of peasant songs in the eighteenth century assumed not only
that such songs were art – but that they were an art that might invigorate
the creativity of the nation as a whole. The performance approach that de-
veloped in folklore studies and anthropology in the late twentieth century
recalled attention to the artistic qualities of folkloric communication. Most
notably, methods were developed to render a range of features in writing, so
that the aesthetics of the performance – including many paralinguistic fea-
tures – were incorporated in the documentation of that performance. Dennis
Tedlock (1971) and Dell Hymes (1975, 1981) pioneered these techniques
(but also see Fine 1984), and Peter Seitel (1980) used them to good effect in
rendering humorous tales of the Haya people of northwestern Tanzania, as
did Charles Briggs (1988) in his study of Hispanic communities of northern
New Mexico. Nevertheless, performance analysis is often more concerned
with social action than art. The question of how the performance of humor
creates, transforms, and challenges social identities, behaviors, and ideolo-
gies usually takes precedence over the analysis of aesthetics in its own terms
and for its own sake (e.g., Limón 1983; Bell 1983; Bauman 1986).
Although philosophers have long regarded humor as a problem in aesthet-
ics (see Freud 1960: 9–11, 95–96), they have never attended to its perform-
ance. Their attention was and is directed to the general structure of humor
and the pleasurable effects it engenders; not to the style of individual comic
exchanges or routines (e.g., Carroll 1991: 294). However, the investigation of
204 Elliott Oring
Conclusion
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Philosophy and religion
John Morreall
Introduction
The first people to write about the nature of laughter and humor, and their
place in human life were philosophers and religious thinkers. Before the 18th
century, the word “humor” did not mean funniness, and so what philoso-
phers and religious thinkers wrote about was usually laughter, with occa-
sional references to comedy. Lacking the concept of humor, it is not surpris-
ing that early writers did not distinguish between laughter at something funny
and other kinds, such as laughing on winning a contest or laughing on being
tickled.
Until the middle of the 18th century, the only developed theory of laughter
in Western thought was the Superiority Theory. According to it, laughter is an
expression of feelings of superiority over other people. That idea, as we will
see, raised moral objections to laughter and comedy.
In the 18th century, two other theories arose – the Relief Theory and the
Incongruity Theory. In the Relief Theory laughter is the release of pent-up
nervous energy, and in the Incongruity Theory laughter is a response to some-
thing unusual or out of place. These new theories liberated at least some
laughter and humor from the charge of being antisocial, and they also opened
the way for investigations of the connections between humor and positive
phenomena such as play and creativity. In the last century, particularly in the
last forty years, some philosophers and religious thinkers have joined col-
leagues in the behavioral and social sciences to study the valuable aspects of
humor.
Literature review
The first Western writings about laughter are found in the Hebrew and
Christian Bibles and in the writings of Greek philosophers.
When laughter is mentioned in the Bible, it is associated with one of three
things. In descending order, they are hostility, foolishness, and joy.
In the Bible when someone laughs, it is usually an expression of hostility,
contempt, or scorn. Laughter is at a person, and that person’s reputation and
social standing are diminished by the laughter. This laughter is the only kind
attributed to God in the Bible. The Second Psalm is representative:
In Psalm 37: 10–13, a future is imagined when “the wicked will be no more
. . . the Lord shall laugh at them, for he sees their time is coming.” Psalm 59
implores God to “punish all the nations. Have no mercy on villains and trai-
tors . . . But you, O Lord, laugh at them, and deride all the nations” (4–8).
Similarly, when God’s prophets laugh, it is only out of hostility. In the
First Book of Kings the prophet Elijah ridiculed the prophets of Baal, and
after getting everyone to laugh at them, he “took them down to the Kishon
and slaughtered them there” (18: 27–40). Not only is the laughter of God and
his prophets associated with killing those at whom they laugh, but if people
laugh at God or his prophets, they deserve to die for it. In the Second Book
of Kings, when a group of boys laughed at the prophet Elisha for being bald,
“he cursed them in the name of the Lord: and two she-bears came out of the
woods and mauled forty-two of the boys” (2: 23–24).
The second most common kind of laughter in the Bible is the irresponsi-
ble and irrational laugh of the foolish person. In Genesis 17: 17, when God
tells Abraham at age 99 that he and his aged wife Sarah will have a son, Ab-
raham, out of foolish disbelief, “fell on his face and laughed.” Hearing the
news, Sarah also laughed in disbelief, and when God confronted her, she
compounded her foolishness by denying that she had laughed (Genesis 18:
12–15). Abraham and Sarah’s laughter did not express superiority or scorn
towards God, but it did show two serious shortcomings: the intellectual in-
ability to imagine the maker of heaven and earth performing a simple miracle,
and a lack of trust in God.
In the Bible, the opposite of the laughing fool is the sad wise person. The
Book of Ecclesiastes has this advice:
Philosophy and religion 213
Many early Christians took this advice to heart and cultivated sadness to
counteract foolishness and give their life sober wisdom. The Letter of James
encourages Christians to “Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter
be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection” (4: 9). John Climacus,
a seventh-century Christian leader, has similar advice: “In your heart, be like
an emperor . . . commanding laughter: ‘Go,’ and it goes; and sweet weeping:
‘Come,’ and it comes.” The Church Father John Chrysostom contrasted fool-
ish laughter with wise tears by having his readers imagine laughers in hell:
Therefore, when you see people laughing, reflect that those teeth, that grin
now, will one day have to sustain that most dreadful wailing and gnashing,
and they will remember this same laugh on that day when they are grind-
ing and gnashing. Then you too shall remember this laugh!
Although the Bible generally treats laughter as foolish and even dangerous,
the occasional verse associates it with joy or other positive feelings. Psalm
126: 2 says, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those
who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongues with
shouts of joy.” Similarly, in the New Testament, Jesus says, “Blessed are you
who weep now, for you shall laugh.” (Luke 6: 21).
In both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, then, laughter was treated mostly
negatively. God laughs only in scorn at his enemies, and most humans who
laugh are irreligious or foolish for doing so. When we turn from ancient re-
ligion to ancient philosophy, the assessment of humor remains mostly nega-
tive, especially in Plato and his followers.
Plato conflated what we now call humor with laughter, and treated the
laugh of ridicule as the only kind. For him laughter was itself an emotion or
it expressed an emotion, and so it fell under his general objection to emotions
– that they override rationality and self-control. He was especially concerned
about the representation of Greek heroes and the gods as overcome with
laughter in the Iliad and Odyssey and in stage comedies. “If anyone repre-
214 John Morreall
Comedy . . . is an imitation of people who are worse than the average. Their
badness, however, is not of every kind. The ridiculous, rather, is a species of
the ugly; it may be defined as a mistake or unseemliness that is not painful or
destructive. The comic mask, for example, is unseemly and distorted but does
not cause pain. (1941: 1459)
Philosophy and religion 215
Those who carry humor to excess are thought to be vulgar buffoons, striving
after humor at all costs, and aiming more at raising a laugh than at saying what
is becoming and at avoiding pain to the object of their fun; while those who
can neither make a joke themselves nor put up with those who do are thought
to be boorish and unpolished. (1941: 1000)
The virtue of engaging in humor to the right degree, and at the right time and
place, Aristotle called eutrapelia, ready-wittedness.
Those who joke in a tasteful way are called ready-witted, which implies a sort
of readiness to turn this way and that; for such sallies are thought to be move-
ments of the character, and as bodies are discriminated by their movements,
so too are characters. (1941: 1000)
Although Aristotle accepted the Superiority Theory, then, he did not consider
all humor objectionable. And in a brief passage in his Rhetoric, he suggested
the germ of another way of thinking about humor, which would later be called
the Incongruity Theory. A good way to get a laugh in a speech, he wrote, is
to set up an expectation in the audience and then jolt them with something
they did not expect. His example is from a comedy which is now lost: “And
as he walked, beneath his feet were – chilblains [sores].” Unfortunately, Aris-
totle and those who came after him did not see here a way to analyze humor
in general, and so the Incongruity Theory would not be worked out for two
thousand years.
We have little on humor and comedy from Greek philosophers after Plato
and Aristotle. Plato’s objection that laughter involves a loss of self-control
showed up in other ethical systems, especially in the Stoics, who emphasized
the value of ataraxia, a state of low emotional arousal. The Stoic Epictetus
advised, “Let not your laughter be loud, frequent, or unrestrained.” [Enchiri
dion, 33]
Laughter and humor did not arise as a topic in Roman philosophy, but
it was discussed in a few works on rhetoric. In his Institutes of the Orator,
Quintilian complained that no one had yet given a satisfactory account of the
216 John Morreall
nature of humor, though many had tried. In On the Orator Cicero examined
the use of humor in public speaking, discussing such techniques as exaggera-
tion, sarcasm, and punning. Extending Aristotle’s comment about the unex-
pected making an audience laugh, Cicero wrote in ch. 63: “The most common
kind of joke is that in which we expect one thing and another is said: here
our disappointed expectation makes us laugh. But if something ambiguous is
thrown in too, the effect of the joke is heightened.”
Cicero also added a new distinction, between humor in situations and
humor in language. In ch. 59 he wrote, “There are two kinds of jokes, one of
which is based on things, the other on words.” And in the following chapter,
“Whatever is wittily expressed consists sometimes in an idea, sometimes
only in the language used. But people are most delighted with a joke when
the laugh is raised by the idea and the language together.”
The basis of laughter, according to Cicero, “lies in a kind of offensiveness
and deformity, for the sayings that are laughed at the most are those which
refer to something offensive in an inoffensive manner.” Cicero advised speak-
ers to be careful in their use of humor. “For neither great vice, such as that
of crime, nor great misery is a subject of ridicule and laughter. People want
criminals attacked with more forceful weapons than ridicule, and do not like
the miserable to be derided.” (Morreall 1987: 17). A speaker must also be
considerate of people’s feelings. “Do not speak rashly against those who are
personally beloved,” he advised (ibid.).
As Christianity grew and came to dominate the declining Roman Empire
in the fourth century, Christian thinkers added the negative attitudes of Pla-
tonism and Stoicism to the Bible’s negative attitudes toward laughter. In their
sermons against laughter, the Church Fathers Ambrose, Jerome, Basil, and
John Chrysostom hearkened back to the Greek philosophers’ emphasis on
self-control. Basil wrote that “raucous laughter and uncontrollable shaking of
the body are not indications of a well-regulated soul, or of personal, dignity,
or of self-mastery.” Early Christian leaders also came up with new objections
to laughter and humor. One was that they fostered sexual licentiousness. This
idea has been found in many cultures East and West, in part because women’s
laughter is thought to be sexually attractive. In East Asian countries even
today, a woman who laughs with her mouth open is judged sexually loose. St.
Jerome had this advise for one woman, “When you are present, buffoonery
and loose talk must find no place.” In the seventh century John Climacus said
that “Impurity is touching the body, laughing, and talking without restraint.”
People without temperance, he said, “have a shameless gaze and laugh im-
moderately.”
Philosophy and religion 217
Laughter is the beginning of the destruction of the soul . . . when you notice
something of that, know that you have arrived at the depth of the evil. Then do
not cease to pray God, that he might rescue you from this death.
The rules written by St. Benedict in 529 later became the standard rules for
all of Western monasticism. Benedict proposed a “Ladder of Humility” on
which Step Ten was a restraint against laughter, and Step Eleven a warning
against joking. “Prefer moderation in speech and speak no foolish chatter,” he
wrote, “nothing just to provoke laughter; do not love immoderate or boister-
ous laughter.” The monastery of Columban in Ireland assigned the following
punishments: “He who smiles in the service . . . six strokes; if he breaks out
in the noise of laughter, a special fast unless it has happened pardonably.”
Christian condemnations of laughter based on the loss of self-control were
also found outside monasticism, most notably in the Puritans, who wrote
tracts against comedy and closed the theaters in England when they came to
power under Cromwell in the mid-17th century. One of these tracts, by Wil-
liam Prynne, condemned laughter as incompatible with the sobriety of good
Christians, who should not be “immoderately tickled with mere lascivious
vanities, or . . . lash out in excessive cachinnations in the public view of dis-
solute graceless persons.”
If we consider all that was written about laughter and humor before the
18th century, the consensus is negative. The first dissenter was Aristotle, but
his writings on laughter and humor were lost in Europe until the 12th cen-
tury. Shortly after they were recovered, fortunately, there was someone to
adopt his ideas about the benefits of laughter and play into Christian thought
– Thomas Aquinas.
Aquinas was familiar with the traditional religious and philosophical ob-
jections against humor. He quoted Ambrose, John Chrysostom, and Luke 6:
21 – “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall weep.” But he argued that
such objections do not justify a blanket rejection of humor. In his Summa
Theologiae (Handbook of Theology), Question 168, Aquinas assessed humor,
and play in general, in three articles: “Whether there can be virtue in actions
done in play,” “The sin of playing too much,” and “The sin of playing too lit-
218 John Morreall
tle.” His view mirrored Aristotle’s: humans are creatures who need to rest
from serious activity occasionally, and humor and other forms of play pro-
vide that rest.
For the moral virtue associated with play and humor, Aquinas used Aristotle’s
term eutrapelia, “and the person who has it is called a eutrapelos, a pleasant
person with a happy cast of mind who gives his words and deeds a cheerful
turn.” Aquinas also agreed with Aristotle that humorlessness is a vice.
Anything conflicting with reason in human action is vicious. It is against rea-
son for a man to be burdensome to others, by never showing himself agreeable
to others or being a kill-joy or wet blanket on their enjoyment. And so Seneca
says, “Bear yourself with wit, lest you be regarded as sour or despised as dull.”
Now those who lack playfulness are sinful, those who never say anything to
make you smile, or are grumpy with those who do. Aristotle speaks of them
as rough and boorish.
In making his case for a virtue of humor, Aquinas admitted that humor is
sometimes associated with the morally objectionable activities cited by the
traditional critiques. In fact, in the middle of his argument, he included three
warnings:
First and foremost, that the pleasure should not be sought in anything indecent
or harmful. So Cicero speaks of some kinds of joke being “discourteous, im-
pudent, shameful, or obscene.” The next is that we should take care not to lose
Philosophy and religion 219
our poise. Ambrose says that “we should beware when we relax lest we dis-
solve the harmony made up by good works in concert.” And Cicero, that “just
as we do not give children complete liberty to play, but only that which is not
inconsistent with good manners, so the light of a sound mind should be cast
on our very fun.” Finally we should be careful, as in all other human actions,
to suit the person, place, and time, and to be duly adapted to circumstances.1
Aquinas reinforced these warnings in his next article, on the sin of playing
too much. Play can be sinful, he says, in two ways. First, the action may not
be according to reason, as in jokes which are obscene or intended to harm
others. “Second, playing may be excessive because of defect of due circum-
stances, for instance when giving oneself over to play is mistimed or mis-
placed or unsuitable to the business in hand or to the company.”
Aquinas’s assessment of humor, then, marked an advance in religious and
philosophical thought about laughter and humor by showing that while they
can be associated with obscenity, hostility, or irresponsibility, they not have
to be.
The next significant writers on laughter and humor were in the 17th cen-
tury: Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Thomas Hobbes. Descartes’s com-
ments are found in his book The Passions of the Soul. He offered a physio-
logical explanation of laughter as the repeated rapid expulsion of air from the
lungs caused by a sudden flow of blood into the lungs from the heart, with
the accompanying movements of the diaphragm and muscles of the chest
and face. For Descartes there were six basic emotions – wonder, love, hatred,
desire, joy, and sadness. He did not say anything about amusement or what
we now call humor. Instead he explained how three of the basic emotions –
wonder, (mild) hatred, and (moderate) joy – cause laughter. Like most of his
predecessors, he concentrated on laughter in scorn and ridicule. Indeed, in his
explanation, even wonder and joy are part of scorn.
We do not laugh when we feel great joy, Descartes said, but only when
we feel moderate joy, and then only when the joy “has some wonder or hate
mingled with it.” He analyzed wonder as a surprised reaction to that which is
“rare and extraordinary.” Had he considered the relation of laughter to won-
der itself, apart from scorn, he might well have come up with something like
the Incongruity Theory. But throughout his analysis, he does not seem able
to get away from scornful laughter as the basic kind. The people who most
often laugh at others, he wrote, are “people with very obvious defects such
as those who are lame, blind of an eye, hunch-backed, or who have received
some public insult . . . for, desiring to see all others held in as low estimation
as themselves, they are truly rejoiced at the evils which befall them.”
220 John Morreall
without such feelings, as when we find puns and clever allusions funny. And
feelings of superiority do not always lead to laughter. A rich man riding in
his coach past ragged beggars, Hutcheson said, is more likely to feel pity for
them than to laugh at them.
In presenting his own account of humor in the second part of the book,
Hutcheson agreed with Joseph Addison that genius in serious literature con-
sists in the ability to evoke ideas of greatness, novelty, and beauty in the read-
er through the use of apt metaphors and similes. Genius in comic literature,
he said, is largely the ability to use somewhat inappropriate metaphors and
similes to trigger ideas that clash with each other. Herein lay the germ of the
Incongruity Theory of humor. In the last part of the book, Hutcheson explored
some of the benefits of humor, most notably the pleasure it brings, its role as
social lubricant, and its ability to promote mental flexibility.
Once thinkers realized that there was no essential connection between
laughter and feelings of superiority, they began to look at it in fresh ways. In
doing so, they distinguished between humorous and non-humorous laughter,
and they created two new theories, the Relief (or Release from Restraint) The-
ory and the Incongruity Theory. We can consider these one at a time.
Lord Shaftesbury’s 1711 essay “The Freedom of Wit and Humour” is the first
literary document to use the word “humor” with its current meaning of fun-
niness. It also gave a sketchy version of the Relief Theory.
The natural free spirits of ingenious men, if imprisoned or controlled, will find
out other ways of motion to relieve themselves in their constraint, and whether
it be in burlesque, mimicry, or buffoonery, they will be glad at any rate to vent
themselves, and be revenged on their constrainers.
In reading the first three lines, the Relief Theory would say, we experience
feelings of sympathy for this dutiful nephew whose aunt has died unexpect-
edly. But then in the last line, we discover that he is a cheapskate who does
not deserve our sympathy. The nervous energy of our sympathetic feelings is
suddenly superfluous and we release it in laughter.
The emotions we summon and then find unnecessary need not be sym-
pathetic. They could also be negative. Consider Oscar Wilde’s quip, “The
youth of today are quite monstrous; they have absolutely no respect for dyed
hair.” Until the second last word, we are led to feel indignation toward young
people, but then as we hear the word “dyed,” we are led to question the adult
generation as young people do, and so our indignation is superfluous.
Two classic versions of the Relief Theory are the relatively simple theory
of Herbert Spencer, and the more complicated theory of Sigmund Freud. In
his essay “On the Physiology of Laughter,” Spencer said that in our nervous
systems our emotions take the form of nervous energy, and nervous energy
drives our muscles. “Nervous energy always tends to beget muscular motion,
and when it rises to a certain intensity, always does beget it.” In fear, for in-
stance, we have a tendency to run away or fight, and if our fear gets strong
enough, we do run away or fight. In anger, we clench our fists and want to hit
something or someone, and if we get angry enough, that is what we do.
Now laughter is a special case of the muscular release of nervous energy,
for it is not a practical action like running away or fighting. Rather the muscu-
lar movements in laughter are just the release of nervous energy. That release
occurs, Spencer said, when feelings build up in us but then are seen to be in-
appropriate. The energy is released first through the muscles “which feeling
most habitually stimulates,” the muscles of speech in our throats. And if our
vocal organs are not enough to vent all the superfluous energy, the energy
spills over into the diaphragm and muscles of breathing. In the strongest kind
of laughter, nervous energy also drives the muscles of the arms, back, and the
rest of the body.
When Spencer explains the process of the summoning of emotions and
their then becoming superfluous, he talks about “incongruity,” which as we
shall see, is the basic concept in the third standard theory of humor. Some-
thing is incongruous, to put it simply, if it does not fit our ordinary mental
patterns. Spencer points out that not all incongruities elicit laughter. If we are
at a banquet and suddenly discover a corpse, that is incongruous but hard-
ly funny. “Laughter naturally results only when consciousness is unawares
transferred from great things to small – only when there is what we may call
a descending incongruity.” (p. 108) The change, that is, must be from high
224 John Morreall
came down far from his work site. At this point in the story, Freud says, we
have summoned concern and pity for the poor man. But the end of Twain’s
story is that his brother was docked half a day’s pay for the time he was in the
air “absent from his place of employment.” Listening to this twist, we realize
that concern and pity are not called for. And so the psychic energy we have
prepared for sympathetic emotions is discharged in laughter.
In his essay “Humor,” Freud extended his comments on humor used in his
special sense as a saving of emotional expenditure in feeling negative emo-
tions. He was especially interested in situations in which people respond to
adverse situations in their own lives with laughter rather than with fear, anger,
sadness, or other negative emotions.
Like wit and the comic, humor has in it a liberating element. But it also has
something fine and elevating, which is lacking in the other two ways of de-
riving pleasure from intellectual activity. Obviously, what is fine about it is
the triumph of narcissism, the ego’s victorious assertion of its own invulner-
ability. It refuses to be hurt by the arrows of reality or to be compelled to suf-
fer. (Morreall 1987: 113)
Humor, Freud adds, represents the triumph of the pleasure principle, “which
is strong enough to assert itself here in the face of the adverse real circum-
stances.” Freud also notes that “it is not everyone who is capable of the hu-
morous attitude: it is a rare and precious gift, and there are many people who
have not even the capacity for deriving pleasure from humor when it is pre-
sented to them by others.” (ibid. 116)
The second theory that arose in the 18th century to compete with the Supe-
riority Theory, now dominates humor research. It is the Incongruity Theory.
Put in its most general form, it says that humorous amusement is a reaction
to something incongruous, that is, something which does not fit our ordinary
mental patterns. Different versions of this theory will add various details to
this basic claim, as we will see.
In their writings on public speaking, Aristotle and Cicero had mentioned
that one way to get a laugh from an audience is to set up an expectation and
then violate it. According to the Incongruity Theory, this is not just a way to
create humor, but the basic way. Another precursor of the Incongruity Theory
226 John Morreall
was Francis Hutcheson, who in his critique of Hobbes had commented that
comic literature is based on the use of somewhat inappropriate metaphors and
similes to trigger ideas that clash with each other. In more detail, James Beat-
tie, in his “Essay on Laughter and Ludicrous Composition”, outlined ways in
which opposing images and ideas could be juxtaposed for comic effect.
The first widely known book in which the Incongruity Theory appeared in
relatively complete form is Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment published
in 1790:
For Kant, the pleasure of laughter was primarily the physical gratification of
feeling the movements of the internal organs and the spasms of the muscles
in the chest.
In the early 19th century Arthur Schopenhauer presented a version of the
Incongruity Theory in which the incongruity is between our abstract concepts
and our sensory experiences of the things which are supposed to fit under those
concepts. In organizing our sense perceptions under concepts and words, we
ignore many differences between things, as when we call both a 2-pound Chi-
huahua and a 200-pound St. Bernard “dogs.” Amusement arises when we are
suddenly struck by the discrepancy between a concept and a perception of the
same thing, and we enjoy the conceptual shock that discrepancy causes. What
we are enjoying when we laugh, according to Schopenhauer, is an
Another incongruity theorist of the 19th century was the essayist and critic
William Hazlitt. “The essence of the laughable,” he wrote, “is the incongruous,
the disconnecting one idea from another, or the jostling of one feeling against
another.” In his lecture “On Wit and Humor,” he developed an Incongruity
theory of humor that went significantly beyond Kant and Schopenhauer. Like
Philosophy and religion 227
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is
struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
We weep at what thwarts or exceeds our desires in serious matters: we laugh
at what only disappoints our expectations in trifles. We shed tears from sym-
pathy with real and necessary distress; as we burst into laughter from want
of sympathy with that which is unreasonable and unnecessary, the absurd-
ity of which provokes our spleen or mirth, rather than any serious reflection
on it. (Morreall 1987: 65)
As a literary critic, Hazlitt explored the many ways comic writers achieve
their effects. He distinguished, as Cicero had, between naturally occurring
incongruity which we appreciate as someone points it out, and incongruity
created in the way someone represents something in words. Hazlitt calls the
first “humor” and the second “wit.” “Humor is the describing of the ludicrous
as it is in inself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with
something else. Humor is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit
is the product of art and fancy.” (Morreall 1987: 74)
Soren Kierkegaard was a philosopher and religious thinker with an ap-
proach similar to Hazlitt’s. In his version of the Incongruity Theory, “the
comical” appears where we have been using “humor,” and “contradiction”
where we have been using “incongruity.” “Wherever there is contradiction,”
Kierkegaard wrote, “the comical is present.” (Morreall 1987: 83) In his Con-
cluding Unscientific Postscript he discussed the nature and value of the comi-
cal. Traditional philosophy and religion emphasized what is serious in life, he
noted, and so tended to dismiss comedy and valorize tragedy. But he opposed
the idea that the tragic or otherwise serious perspective is “a bliss-bringing
panacea, as if seriousness were a good in and of itself, something to be taken
without directions, so that all is well if one is merely serious at all times.” He
insisted that it is “quite as dubious, precisely quite as dubious, to be pathetic
and serious in the wrong place, as it is to laugh in the wrong place.” (Morreall
1987: 84) The difference between a tragic view of a situation and a comic
view of the same situation is that “the tragic apprehension sees the contra-
diction and despairs of a way out,” while the comic vision faces the same
contradiction but sees a “way out.” In many situations, Kierkegaard said, the
comic perspective can be more imaginative, more insightful, and wiser than
the tragic p erspective.
228 John Morreall
Kierkegaard was especially interested in humor and its close relative irony,
for their place in three philosophies of life: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the
religious. Those making the transition from the merely ethical to the religious
way of life, he says, see lots of humor in their situation. Religious people, es-
pecially Christians, need to have a sense of humor to live with the incongrui-
ties in such puzzling beliefs as the Incarnation and the Trinity. Kierkegaard
wrote in his journal that “the humorous is present throughout Christianity,”
indeed, that Christianity is the most humorous world view in history. It was
largely Kierkegaard’s appreciation of humor in opposition to the traditional
Christian prejudices against it that made way for Christian thinkers in the
20th century such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Harvey Cox to wrote positively
about humor in relation to religion.
While the Incongruity Theory has allowed philosophers and religious
thinkers to get beyond the narrowness of the Superiority Theory and the at-
tendant moral objections to humor, it has also given rise to new objections to
humor. The basic objection here can be called Irrationality Objection. As the
enjoyment of something which does not fit our ordinary conceptual patterns,
humor seems to involve a perverse kind of pleasure. Our conceptual patterns
are the ways we process our experiences, understand, and get along in the
world. Something that clashes with our conceptual patterns should not de-
light but puzzle us. The creator of humor, according to this objection, creates
experiences that undermine our rationality, and packages these experiences
as something to enjoy! So humor is conceptually anarchic. At the end of the
19th century George Santayana put this objection in a strong form, arguing
that we do not really enjoy incongruity,but only the stimulation it brings.
He wrote of an “undertone of disgust” that accompanies our amusement at
humor. “Man, being a rational animal, can like absurdity no better than he can
like hunger or cold.”
The Incongruity Theory has had great influence in humor research over the
last forty years. In psychology it has taken two major forms: theorists such
as Paul McGhee say that humor is a reaction to incongruity. Others like Jerry
Suls and Thomas Schultz say that what we enjoy in humor is not incongruity
itself, but the resolution of incongruity. They propose a two-stage mental pro-
cess in which we at first are struck by something odd, anomalous, puzzling,
but then in the second stage we resolve the incongruity by finding a mental
pattern under which the apparently anomalous item does fit.
Before leaving our discussion of the three classic theories of humor, how-
ever, we need to note that there are several hybrid theories, most notably that
of Henri Bergson, whose 1905 book Laughter is often cited in literary studies
Philosophy and religion 229
Issues
1. In the study of religion, perhaps the most basic issue is whether humor
is compatible with being a religious person. The evaluations of laughter and
humor in the Bible and in traditional Christianity, as we have seen, provide
many reasons for answering No. And today scholars of non-Western religions,
230 John Morreall
such as Lee Siegel, claim that the greater people’s sense of humor the less
religious they are, and the more religious they are the less sense of humor
they have.
One way to argue for the incompatibility of religiosity and humor is by
appealing to the notion of the sacred. All religions are based on certain be-
liefs, values, and rituals deemed worthy of absolute respect. Each religion
requires of its followers a commitment to these sacred beliefs, values, and
rituals which is incompatible with taking a humorous or playful attitude to-
ward them. And the more religious people are, the more their sacred beliefs,
values, and rituals will come up in their everyday life. Maximally religious
persons will devote most of their waking hours to thoughts and activities
centered around sacred beliefs, values, and rituals. Consider the life of the
Christian monk or nun, the devout Orthodox Jew, or the Muslim holy person.
Whenever something associated with anything sacred arises, they must think
and act in a way that shows respect for the sacred. For them to make a joke
about something sacred – such as to playfully attribute a base motive to a sa-
cred figure – would be sacrilegious.
In the history of humor, however, making fun of religious leaders, scrip-
tures, and even the gods is commonplace. Irreverence has been a central fea-
ture of comedy since Aristophanes. And so a pious person would not be able
to countenance much comedy. A recent example of this incompatibility of
humor and piety is the aftermath of the publication of Salman Rushdie’s
novel Satanic Verses, which gave unseemly characters names of members
of Muhammad’s family and gave derogatory names to the Prophet himself.
Several Muslim leaders condemned Rushdie as an apostate, and the standard
Islamic punishment for apostasy is death. So Rushdie has been under death
threats from pious Muslims ever since.
When we mentioned the Puritans’s opposition to comedy, we saw another
reason for thinking that religion and humor are incompatible. Comedy from
the days of Aristophanes has been full of drunkards, lechers, liars, adulterers,
and others with major vices, and these characters are the focus of our enjoy-
ment. According to the Puritans’s arguments, the proper response to such
vices is not to enjoy them in laughter but to reform them.
Still another way to argue for the incompatibility of humor and religion
in the Western monotheistic religions is to consider whether God has a sense
of humor. Considering what is said about God both in the Bible and in the
theology books, the answer seems a definite No. In the Bible, God laughs
only in scorn at his enemies, never in amusement, and each mention of God’s
laughter at his enemies is followed by his slaughtering them. Furthermore,
Philosophy and religion 231
there seems to be nothing funny associated with this laughter. The humans
who speak for God, the prophets, also laugh only in scorn, and in one case
a prophet responded to children’s laughter at him for being bald by cursing
them, whereupon God had two bears maul the children. Furthermore, mirth-
ful and joyous laughter are treated with suspicion in the Bible. The author of
Ecclesiastes describes such laughter as empty, calling it “madness.” Later he
counsels that “Sorrow is better than laughter” (7: 3). The Book of Proverbs
warns that “Even in laughter the heart is sad, and the end of joy is grief ”
(14: 13). In the New Testament, the letter of James advises us to “Let your
laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection” (4: 9), advise
followed in many of the Christian monastic traditions.
If we consider the theology which developed as Christians, Jews, and
Muslims applied Greek philosophical concepts to God, we also have reasons
for thinking that God could have no sense of humor. To be amused, accord-
ing to the Incongruity Theory, a person must enjoy experiencing something
which violates their mental patterns, something which seems impossible for
God. If, as the theology books tell us, God has a plan for how every creature
is supposed to live, then God could not be happy when creatures act in ways
that oppose his plan. For human beings to violate God’s plan is precisely
the nature of sin, and God cannot enjoy sin. A list of the standard objects of
laughter in comedy is a list of the major sins – lechery, avarice, drunkenness,
gluttony, lying, adultery, slander, etc. Even the comic human traits which
are not sinful, such as stupidity and ugliness, are not something which God
would enjoy. If as Hazlitt said, humor is based on enjoying the discrepancy
between the way things are supposed to be and the way things are, then, it
seems that God is incapable of humor.
Although the overwhelming majority of religious thinkers who have ad-
dressed the relation of humor with religion have had such negative attitudes
to it, there have been a few religious thinkers who have seen value in humor.
Thomas Aquinas, as we saw, thought of humor as a kind of play which re-
freshes us for more serious activity. Some religious thinkers have even seen
religious value in humor. Kierkegaard thought that Christianity, with its il-
logical mysteries, was the most humorous religion of all. The two best con-
temporary proponents of the compatibility of humor and religion are Conrad
Hyers and Harvey Cox. For both a mature religious sense should include
a good sense of humor.
Hyers has studied the relationship between humor and religion not only in
the Biblical religions but also in Zen Buddhism, which is not constrained by
all the monotheistic assumptions we have reviewed. One of the major goals
232 John Morreall
2. In philosophy, there are several issues about laughter and humor. The most
basic is whether humor has an essence or nature. Those who espouse the
standard theories of humor think that they have presented the essence of
humor. Several humor researchers in and outside philosophy, on the other
hand, have denied that all cases of humor have something in common. Since
Wittgenstein in the 1950s it has been popular to claim that with some words
and concepts there is no essence, but only an array of “family resemblances.”
The standard example is “game.” According to Wittgenstein, there is no es-
sential feature which all games have in common. Could “humor” be a word
and concept like Wittgenstein’s “game”?
One way to argue that humor does have an essence is to present some
feature that all cases of humor share which makes them all humor. The most
Philosophy and religion 233
plausible of the three traditional theories here is the Incongruity Theory. The
Superiority and Relief theories have too many counterexamples to be viable
candidates.
Feeling superior to other people occurs in some cases of humor, but there
are many other cases of humor which lack such feelings, and many cases
of feeling superior which are not instances of humor. Here Frances Hutch-
eson offered useful examples in his critique of Hobbes, to which we can add.
Laughing at the clever and acrobatic way Charlie Chaplin gets out of a tough
situation in a silent film, for example, need not involve feeling superior to
that character and probably involves feeling inferior to him. And simply feel-
ing superior to someone, as in winning a race, does not by itself involve any
humor at all.
The Relief Theory is implausible for other reasons, most importantly, its
hydraulic account of the build-up and release of energy in the nervous sys-
tem. Many funny experiences occur in a few seconds, which hardly seems
long enough for nervous energy to build up, be seen to be superfluous, and
then be vented. In the 1960s there was a funny sign which read “THIMK.” To
be amused by it did not seem to require the build-up of any emotion which
needed venting. Nor did it seem to require the venting of any psychic energy
of repression or of understanding. All that seemed required is an enjoyment
of the opposition between the advice the sign was trying to give and the way
it was spelled. The most widely discussed version of the Relief Theory is that
of Freud, but few scholars today would commit themselves to Freud’s com-
plicated account of how psychic energy is expended, saved in statu nascendi,
and all the rest. No one, indeed, even uses Freud’s distinction of jokes, the
comic, and humor.
The example of the THIMK sign was intended not only to argue against
the Relief Theory but to argue for the Incongruity Theory. That theory seems
comprehensive in a way that the other two are not. What seems both neces-
sary and sufficient for humorous amusement, that is, is an enjoyment of some
incongruity. I include the element of enjoyment here, as many Incongruity
theorists do not, because the mere perception of incongruity is not sufficient
for humor. In many cases of fear, anger, disgust, and sadness, we perceive
something which violates our mental patterns, but we do not enjoy the incon-
gruity. What sets humorous amusement from these negative emotions is that
in humor there is something about experiencing incongruity which we enjoy.
Among proponents of the Incongruity Theory, as we noted earlier, some
claim that amusement lies in the resolution of an incongruity. As evidence
these theorists appeal mostly to jokes. But while there is resolution of
234 John Morreall
incongruity in most jokes, there are many other kinds of humor in which the
incongruity is not resolved, and in which what seems to amuse us is the in-
congruity itself. If I see a cloud which looks like Richard Nixon’s profile and
laugh, I seem to be taking pleasure in the unexpectedness of a cloud looking
like Nixon, not in figuring out how this coincidence might have some explan-
ation. To be amused when I accidentally spill a scoop of ice cream from an
ice cream cone on my dog’s head, similarly, I do not have to figure out how
I made such a blunder; indeed, going into an explanatory mode would seem
to inhibit rather than foster amusement.
Even in verbal humor, there is not always resolution of incongruity. One
of the running gags on the Bob Newhart TV show of the 1990s was having
three disheveled young men come into the hotel. One introduced himself and
then turning to his brothers said, “This is my brother Darrell, and that is my
other brother Darrell.” No explanation was ever even suggested for why two
brothers would have the same name. What viewers enjoyed was the sheer
unresolved absurdity.
We might add a note here about the traditional connection drawn between
superiority and humor. If, as I have argued, feeling superior to someone is nei-
ther necessary nor sufficient for amusement, why was the Superiority Theory
the only theory of laughter and humor for two millennia? To answer this ques-
tion, we should note that most of the incongruities we laugh at, especially in
comedy, are human shortcomings – ignorance, stupidity, awkwardness, mis-
takes, misunderstandings, and moral vices. The Incongruity Theory would say
simply that it is the unexpectedness, the out-of-placeness of these shortcom-
ings that we enjoy. The Superiority Theory says that what we enjoy in humor
is feelings of superiority evoked by our awareness of other people’s shortcom-
ings. The trouble with the latter claim is that when we perceive a shortcoming
in another person, and even when we laugh at it, we need not feel superior
to that person. In kidding our friends about their foibles, we often admit that
we have the same shortcomings; what we are really laughing at is our shared
shortcomings. And even when we perceive some shortcoming in a person and
we do feel superior, our feelings of superiority by themselves do not con-
stitute humor, as the Superiority Theory would have us believe. If I beat my
neighbor at a game because she makes several mistakes, and so I feel superior
to her, I am not therein experiencing my win or her defeat as funny. For there
to be humor here, something must be perceived as incongruous. If, for ex-
ample, she had been so confident of winning that she bet me $100 on the game
at 4-to-1 odds, or if the mistakes she made were all things that she criticized
me for the last time we played, then I might find her defeat humorous.
Philosophy and religion 235
3. In addressing the last three philosophical issues about humor, I am going
to be using the Incongruity Theory. The first is the relationship between humor
and emotions. Virtually everyone writing about this topic before the 20th cen-
tury, and the vast majority writing after that, have thought of laughter as either
expressing some emotion(s) or in the Relief Theory releasing emotional en-
ergy. For Plato it was malice, for Hobbes it was “sudden glory,” for Spinoza
hatred. When laughter and humor were distinguished in the 18th century,
humor was thought to involve an emotion, often called “amusement.” Hazlitt
and Bergson did point out how humor blocks, and is blocked by such emo-
tions as fear, sympathy, and sadness, but even then, amusement was still clas-
sified as an emotion.
Recently, Robert Sharpe has gone beyond simply assuming that amuse-
ment is an emotion by giving seven similarities between it and standard emo-
tions such as fear and love (Morreall 1987: 208–211). Both amusement and
standard emotions, he says, have “intentional objects” – they are about some-
thing. Both admit of degrees. Both have behavioral manifestations which we
may suppress. Both allow for self-deception. Both are pleasurable or painful.
With both we can distinguish between the intentional object of the mental
state and the cause of the mental state. And with both we can cultivate taste.
I have challenged the standard view that amusement is an emotion, and
have argued that none of Sharpe’s parallels pick out essential features of emo-
tions or humor which unite them. Furthermore, using a standard account of
the nature of emotion, I have shown several dissimilarities between amuse-
ment and standard emotions.
According to a standard theory of emotion, an emotion is a state of physio-
logical upset, along with the sensations of that upset, caused by cognitive
events, which motivates practical action. The cognitive events are usually
described as beliefs and desires. If I am driving at night and suddenly see
a log in the road ahead, to use Jerome Shaffer’s example, I may experience
fear. That emotion is a set of physiological changes – my increased heartbeat
and blood pressure, muscle tension, sweating, etc. – along with my sensation
of these bodily changes. Those changes are caused by my belief that I am in
danger and my desire to escape the danger, and I am motivated to avoid hit-
ting the log by putting on the brakes or steering around the log.
This standard account of emotion does not fit amusement at all well. There
are physiological upsets in amusement – the spasms of the diaphragm, the
bursts of exhalation, etc., and we do have sensations of these changes. But the
changes in laughter need not be caused by beliefs and desires, and there is no
motivation to do anything practical. When I see the cloud as Richard Nixon
236 John Morreall
and am amused, for example, I do not believe that the cloud is Nixon, and
I do not have any particular desires about the cloud or about Nixon. Nor am
I motivated to do anything at all. The lack of motivation in humor, its idleness,
remember, is the basis for one of the traditional objections to it.
Even some of the similarities between humor and emotions which Sharpe
appeals to hide deeper dissimilarities. Amusement, like love, for example, is
pleasurable. But in love what we take pleasure in is the persons whom we
love. We are attracted to the persons themselves. In amusement, however, we
need not be attracted to what is making us laugh. If I am amused when I drive
past a house with dozens of tacky plastic statues on the front lawn, I am not
attracted to those statues and their arrangement. (If I were, I wouldn’t be
laughing.) What I am enjoying is the experience of seeing this attempt at dis-
playing good taste go awry.
Because amusement has no requirement of belief or desire, and does not
motivate practical action, the study of humor has not progressed in the ways
the study of emotion have progressed in the last half-century. While the
physiological changes in fear and anger are well understood through their
connections with actions like fleeing and fighting, the physiology of laughter
still seems anomalous.
4. The fourth issue, the relation of humor to rationality, is related to the third.
Most thinkers who have considered it have treated humor as making us ir-
rational. From Plato on, humor was classified as an emotion, and emotions
were usually thought to be irrational. Once the Incongruity Theory was es-
tablished, thinkers like Santayana were bothered by the apparent irrationality
of enjoying something incongruous. Indeed, Santayana claimed that human
beings, as rational animals, are incapable of enjoying absurdity.
If humor were utterly at odds with rationality, however, it would be diffi-
cult to see how it could have evolved in the human race. At least the emotions
have survival value in preparing us for fighting or fleeing, mating, etc. But
laughter and humor do not prepare us for appropriate action; intense laughter
is physically incapacitating. If humor were also mentally incapacitating, how
could it have become part of human nature?
I have argued that the enjoyment of incongruity did have survival value for
the species, and that its value lay in the way it enhanced rationality.
Rationality is our ability to think abstractly, that is, free of the limitations
of the place, time, and personal situation we are currently in. Lower animals
perceive their surroundings and respond with practical actions in order to get
food, find a mate, avoid predators, etc. They are aware of the place and time
Philosophy and religion 237
in which they find themselves and their current needs. Emotions evolved as
ways of equipping animals to take appropriate actions – to get out of danger,
fight successfully, reproduce, etc. But while this practical orientation allowed
animals to get along, it did not foster abstract thinking.
In the lower animals, incongruity is experienced as puzzling or threaten-
ing, not as amusing. A striking example is the panic with which chimpanzees
respond to a photograph of a chimpanzee with its head separated from its
body. Humans, too, often treat incongruity as puzzling or threatening. But
somewhere in human evolution, our ancestors developed a new way to re-
spond to situations which did not match their expectations. They enjoyed
the mental jolt they gave them, they found them funny. Now such a response
would not have been appropriate in life-threatening situations which called
for immediate action. But in situations with no immediate danger, being able
to suppress the “fight-or-flight” response and enjoy the surprising situation
could have had benefits. It could have led to curious exploration and to re-
flection on normal patterns of events. As the brain’s emotional limbic system
did not dominate, the more rational cerebral cortex could operate. Especially
important here would have been early humans’ developing the ability to laugh
at themselves, for that would have given them a more objective, less ego-
centered perspective, and that is the essence of rationality.
Many have described the value of humor as its giving us emotional dis-
tance from the problems in life. Indeed, some psychiatrists and other thera-
pists now use humor precisely to get people to step back from their problems
and see them “in the big picture.” The goal here is much the same as the an-
cient Stoics’s goal – to get people to be more rational and less bothered by
life’s problems. What is unfortunate is that the Stoics, in classifying laughter
as an emotion, completely missed its opposition to emotions and its ability to
enhance rationality.
5. The last philosophical and religious issue I want to comment on is the
ethics of humor. Earlier we saw some of the ethical critiques of laughter and
humor in traditional religion and philosophy. Today too, we see ethical objec-
tions to certain kinds of humor, especially in cases of racial and sexual dis-
crimination and sexual harrassment. Among the traditional charges against
laughter and humor, nine stand out:
Today we seldom hear most of these charges, largely because our culture is
long past Puritan objections to idleness and pleasure. American entertain-
ment media are at the heart of our national culture, and are the top U.S.
export around the world. But the first charge – that humor is hostile – does
arise frequently, usually in cases involving racial or sexual discrimination, or
sexual harassment. Ethnic humor, racist humor, and humor which “targets”
women, gay men, and lesbians is often held to be an expression of hostility
as offensive as physical violence.
If we look back through history, we find countless examples of groups
which had power over other groups making jokes (publishing cartoons, writ-
ing comic songs, staging comic plays, etc.) based on the supposed shortcom-
ings of the less powerful groups. Many have claimed that such humor re-
inforces the negative image of less powerful groups and thus helps the more
powerful groups maintain their dominance.
One position concerning the ethics of humor could be dubbed the Joke-
as-Libel position. It goes like this. Jokes and other humor which puts down
an individual or group works by representing the target as having some major
shortcoming – stupidity, laziness, sexual promiscuity, obsession with money,
etc. In such humor, the audience typically laughs at the moment when the
representative of the target group is revealed to have the shortcoming – usu-
ally to an extreme degree. Consider the joke about the Polish astronaut who
announced his plan to fly to the sun. When someone asked about the sun’s
intense heat, he answered, “No problem – I’m going to go at night.” That
revelation of his stupidity is what makes the audience laugh. The advocate of
the Joke-as-Libel position would say that tellers of this joke are making an
implicit assertion that Poles are stupid, and in doing so they are perpetuating
a morally objectionable stereotype.
One proponent of some of the basic ideas of the Joke-as-Libel position is
Ronald de Sousa (1987a, 1987b) In order to enjoy put-down humor, he says,
a person must not only understand that the target group is being represented
as having a shortcoming, but must believe that the group in fact has that short-
coming. De Sousa illustrates with a joke about Margaret Trudeau, the former
Philosophy and religion 239
wife of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who had a reputation for
promiscuity:
Margaret Trudeau goes to visit the hockey team. When she emerges she com-
plains that she has been gang-raped. Wishful thinking. (Morreall 1987: 239)
According to de Sousa, this joke has certain assumptions. One is that Mar-
garet Trudeau is promiscuous. Another is that all women secretly want to be
raped. To be amused by a joke like this with malicious content, de Sousa says,
it is not enough to understand these assumptions of the joke, or to hypotheti-
cally adopt them for the moment. We must endorse them. If we do not share
those assumptions with the joke teller, we will not find the joke funny. Sexist
and racist jokes are objectionable precisely because they amuse only people
who share their assumptions, and those assumptions are not merely false but
morally harmful inasmuch as they perpetuate false stereotypes and so unjust
treatment of the target group. People who think that all women secretly want
to be raped may well condone rape, and at least will treat women in a way
that denies them their autonomy and rights.
Robert C. Roberts and I have a different position on jokes with a tar-
get. In many cases, put-down jokes are told to perpetuate stereotyped beliefs
about a group being, and sometimes an objectionable malice is involved. But
malice is not a necessary feature of the telling or the appreciation of such
jokes. I once read a joke which put down Laplanders, for example. At the
time I had no distinctive beliefs about Laplanders other than that they live in
the far North of Europe. If someone had asked me about my attitude toward
Laplanders, I would have shrugged my shoulders. But the joke was clever,
and I found it funny. Now those who created this joke may well have had
malicious, morally objectionable attitudes toward Laplanders, and so some-
one might morally object to their telling it, much as someone might object
to the telling of jokes about blacks at Ku Klux Klan meetings. But I would
say that putdown jokes can be funny even for those who do not share their
assumptions.
Even jokes which can express hostility, then, do not require listeners to
share that hostility in order to enjoy them. The strongest reasonable position
about the ethics of joking here seems to be that such jokes should not gener-
ally be told because of the likelihood that they will reinforce people’s hostil-
ity toward other groups.
So far in exploring the ethics of humor I have focused only on the ways
in which humor could be ethically objectionable. But if my earlier comments
about the ability of humor to block negative emotions and foster rationality
240 John Morreall
are correct, then humor can also be ethically praiseworthy. Humor can be
used, for example, to calm angry people and get them to look more object-
ively at a situation. Several years ago California police officer Adelle Roberts
was called to a family fight. As she got out of her squad car and approached
the front door, she heard yelling and things being thrown against the wall
inside. Then a portable TV set came crashing through the front window. She
had to knock very loudly, and a voice bellowed, “Who is it?’ “TV Repair”
was her reply. The combatants came to the door, smiling, and began to resolve
their conflict.
Humor can also be used to reduce people’s fear and anxiety. About 100
hospitals in the U.S. now have either “comedy carts” or full-scale “humor
rooms,” precisely for that purpose. Another valuable use for humor is in get-
ting people to see their mistakes objectively rather than defensively. To contin-
ue the list of praiseworthy humor, all we need do is think of situations in which
negative emotions with bad consequences can be overridden by humor.
My favorite approach
I first got interested in researching humor for two reasons. First, I had always
been puzzled by its nature and how it might have evolved. Second, although
traditional attitudes toward humor in Western philosophy and religion have
been negative, I found humor to be valuable in a way nothing else is. As
Nietzsche said of music, without it, life would be a mistake.
So I have tried to do two things: articulate the nature of humor, especially
its relation to negative emotions like fear, anger, and sadness; and explore the
benefits it has for individuals and groups. To explain the nature of humor,
I have used a version of the Incongruity Theory. To explain the value of
humor, I have asked what possible benefits might accrue to a creature which
can enjoy something violating its concepts and expectations. Most recently,
I have applied both these approaches to examining the “comic vision of life,”
and contrasting it with the “tragic vision” of life. In Comedy, Tragedy, and
Religion, I develop twenty points of contrast between the comic and tragic
visions.
At the level of individual psychology, the comic and tragic visions rep-
resent: complex vs. simple conceptual schemes, high vs. low tolerance for
disorder and ambiguity, seeking out vs. avoiding the unfamiliar, divergent vs.
convergent thinking, critical vs. noncritical thinking, emotional disengage-
ment vs. engagement, willingness to change one’s mind vs. stubbornness,
Philosophy and religion 241
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Literature and humor
Alleen and Don Nilsen
Note: Because literary humor is such a broad field, we asked nine contempor-
ary scholars to help us by describing their work and making observations to
be worked into this chapter. Unless otherwise identified, quoted materials
come from what these scholars originally wrote for this primer. We grate-
fully acknowledge the help of Regina Barreca, Jessica Milner Davis, Steven
H. Gale, Paul H. Grawe, D. G. Kehl, Paul Lewis, Daniel Royot, Elaine Safer,
and David E. E. Sloane. Samples of their publications are listed in the “Crit-
ical Works Cited” at the end of this chapter where there are also brief state-
ments describing them and their work.
A matter of analysis
in my bed...eating my porridge…),” “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your
house down,” and “Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!”
Many people will argue that these old stories are indeed literature at least
partly because of these famous lines which rely on surprise, succinctness, and
repetition – three common features of humor.
Another characteristic of literary humor is that it is a more extended dis-
course than are individual jokes or witty comebacks. Literary discourses can
be short as with poems, essays, speeches, and short stories, but as shown by
the work of the nine scholars we consulted for this chapter most serious liter-
ary criticism is based on full length novels or plays or on an extended body of
work by a single author as in Elaine Safer’s 2006 Mocking the Age: The Later
Novels of Philip Roth and in Steven Gale’s 2003 Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter’s
Screenplays and the Artisitc Process.
Expectations are higher for literary humor than for stand-up comedy as
shown by letters to the editor published in a July 17, 1995 New York Maga-
zine. They were written as a follow-up to an article on today’s depressing state
of television comedy. One writer answered his own question of “Why were
the Bennys, the Aces, the Allens (Steve and Fred, both), Berles, Benchleys,
Parkers, Woollcotts intuitively brilliant and where are their kind now?” with
the observation that these earlier comedians “were the products of a literate
society, widely read or with extensive cultural experience, which gave them
backgrounds upon which to draw . . . . They knew how to think and were well
edited, either by erudite editors or by perceptive audiences.” Another reader
wrote that the place to look for delightful wit today is not in the comedy clubs
but “in written form, in comic novels and essays.”
Among the reasons that comic novels and essays can more easily qualify
as “literature” than can stand-up comedy is that the authors have space to
include smart allusions and to tie them together. Because of a lack of space,
jokes and cartoons are necessarily filled with stereotypes, while more sophis-
ticated literary pieces are lexically packed, meaning that several strands of
humor are being developed simultaneously. In addition to using such surface
structure techniques as puns and word play, authors of fuller pieces make use
of such deep structure tropes as metaphors, similes, irony, and synecdoche.
They have the space to develop truly humorous characters and to establish and
then break patterns. An example of this kind of variation on a theme are the
several allusions to Girl Scouts that Louis Sachar makes in his 1998 Holes,
a book for young readers that won both the Newbery and the National Book
awards. Stanley, the teen-aged protagonist, is unfairly sentenced to a “tough-
love” camp for juvenile delinquents. When he first arrives, the guard warns
246 Alleen and Don Nilsen
him “You’re not in the Girl Scouts any more.” Throughout the book, this same
guard repeats the idea sometimes by just reminding the boys they aren’t Girl
Scouts, while at other times asking such questions as “You Girl Scouts having
a good time?” Near the end when Stanley’s lawyer and the Texas State At-
torney General drive into the camp to investigate its unorthodox methods, the
Warden wonders who’s coming and the guard tells her, “It ain’t Girl Scouts
selling cookies.” This leads up to the ironic denouement in which the camp is
“bought by a national organization dedicated to the well-being of young girls.
In a few years, Camp Green Lake will become a Girl Scout camp.”
The study of literary humor is in some ways as broad as the whole field of
humor research, plus the whole field of literary criticism, because the litera-
ture of the world covers every aspect of life while also providing the fullest
accounts that we can get from other times and other places, both real and
imagined. This means that literary humor scholars have much in common
with critics of literature in general because of the extensive overlap between
what humor scholars describe as the most common features of humor and the
characteristics that literary critics look for in narratives including ambiguity,
exaggeration, hostility, irony, superiority, surprise, shock, word play, incon-
gruity and incongruity resolution.
Comedy is a term that literary scholars “owned” long before the popular
culture gave it today’s more generalized meaning of something that brings
smiles and laughter. In medieval times, the word comedy was applied to liter-
ary works that were not necessarily created for the purpose of arousing laugh-
ter, but at least had happier endings and less exalted styles than tragedies.
Dante was using this meaning in the 1300s when he named The Divine Com-
edy. Literary comedies typically begin with a disruption of life as it is expect-
ed to be or the breaking of some kind of “law.” The body of the play or story
consists mostly of futile but perhaps amusing attempts to restore a balance,
which is finally achieved as part of the happy ending. By the Middle Ages, the
concept of comedy had developed into different strands. High comedy (what
we now call smart comedy or literary comedy) relied for its humor on wit
and sophistication, while low comedy relied on burlesque, crude jokes, and
buffoonery. The breadth of what is included in comedy is shown in Maurice
Charney’s 2005 two-volume Comedy: A Geographic and Historical Guide,
which includes 38 chapters written by leading scholars. Some are historic-
al (“Middle English Comedy” by Andrew Welsh and “Commedia dell’ Arte”
by Frances K. Barasch), some are defined by their audience (“Children’s
Humor” by Kathryn Douglas and “Queer Comedy” by Ken Feil), some by
their medium (“Television Sitcoms” by Leo Charney and “American Polit-
Literature and humor 247
kind.” Later when Jack answers one of her questions by saying, he “doesn’t
know,” she again responds cheerfully, “I am pleased to hear it. I do not ap-
prove anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a deli-
cate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”
Humor and humorous as cover terms for things that make us laugh can be
traced to medieval physiology, in which the bodily fluids, or humours, were
described as yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood. These were thought
to be related to people being bilious, melancholy, phlegmatic, or sanguine,
respectively. If these bodily fluids were out of balance, a person would likely
become emotionally unbalanced. Ben Johnson in 1598 published Every Man
in His Humor and the following year Every Man Out of His Humor. These
two books established the idea that out-of-balance people, those who are ec-
centrics or who are so obsessed with a particular idea that they make normal
people laugh, are humorous characters. From this idea came the meaning of
humor that most people think of today, which is anything that makes them
laugh in enjoyment because of being surprised by something absurd, ludi-
crous, or exaggerated. People’s responses to humorous characters can range
from pleasant amusement to shock and disgust. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
are filled with humorous characters ranging from the energetic Wife of Bath
to the pretentious but little educated Nun and from the overly religious and
hypocritical Monk to the crude rascal of The Miller and the comically roman-
tic Knight. Humorous characters are also at the heart of the humor in William
Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew, Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and Kenneth Gra-
hame’s The Wind in the Willows.
Alazons and eirons are stock humorous characters going back to Greek
drama. Alazons are overly confident braggarts getting their way by blustering
and bullying. At the other extreme, are the eirons, who are sly rogues get-
ting their way through feigned ignorance or dumb luck. Their name comes
from the word irony, because they say one thing and mean something else.
Other archetypal characters who often cause readers to laugh are tricksters
and fools, along with those rulers and destroyers who fall prey to their own
vanity. Rustic, backwoods characters provide much of the humor in region-
al stories, while the slick, streetwise humor of city slickers is the basis for
humor set in urban areas.
Satirical literature is created by writers who have a clear notion of what
is right and what is wrong with the world. Their goal is to portray life in such
a way that readers will be shocked into a new way of thinking and will then
take steps to correct the current wrongs of the world. Writers of satires can
Literature and humor 249
be deadly serious, but they often entice readers or listeners to stay with them
through using sarcasm, and wit, along with humor that makes people feel
wiser than the characters they are reading about. Aesop did this in his Fables
and so did Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels.
Horatian satire is named after Horace, the Roman lyric poet who lived
in 65–68 bc and wrote two books of mild and playful satire. Such books as
C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, John Nichols’s The Milagro Beanfield War,
and George Orwell’s Animal Farm are generally considered to be Horatian
satire.
Juvenalian satire is named after the writer Decimus Junius Juvenalis, who
lived a century later and was brutally frank in his satirical criticism of the
vices of Roman leaders. Such books as Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, An-
thony Burgess’s Clockwork Orange, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and
George Orwell’s 1984 are generally considered to be Juvenalian satire.
Black humor, and its close relatives of absurdist humor and gallows humor,
grew out of satire, but black humorists are not preaching. They are more con-
cerned with tolerating, than with managing, life. A general consensus is that
the black humor of the 1960s was created by intellectuals in reaction to the
helplessness they felt against the atomic bomb and their frustrations over
a society that was becoming so diverse that it was losing its sense of direction.
However, they did not originate the genre out of whole cloth. They honed its
effects by bouncing readers back and forth between laughter and tears, but
certainly there were strands of black humor in some of Mark Twain’s later
writings and in folk humor about death. Books from the 1960s that are often
cited as examples of how black humor is a testament to the human spirit and
its ability to survive and to laugh in the midst of chaos and destruction include
Terry Southern’s The Magic Christian Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and Thomas
Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.
While the above kinds of literary humor revolve around plots and charac-
ters, readers also find themselves smiling and occasionally laughing over the
surprise that comes with clever word play. Some scholars point to word play
as proof that not all humor is a result of feelings of superiority and/or hostil-
ity, but believers in these theories argue that word play is pleasurable because
its creators feel themselves superior to the “rules” of language as used by
everyone else. Levels of sophistication in word play range from obvious puns
and insults found in children’s folklore to the sly wit found in the writings of
Woody Allen, P. G. Wodehouse, S. J. Perelman, and Dorothy Parker.
Fantasies are one of the places where writers feel free to create wordplay,
with prime examples being Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through
250 Alleen and Don Nilsen
the Looking Glass. The writers of fantasy also have the freedom to create
mad premises, grotesque creatures, absurd situations and purely imagined
landscapes. Douglas Adams did all this for his 1980 Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy, which amuses readers not just with its creativity but also with the
way Adams satirizes tax laws, religion, bad poets, critics, and Paul McCart-
ney’s wealth. Other examples of fantasies where the humor is tinged with sat-
ire include C. Collodi’s Pinocchio, Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy
Hollow,” Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and
James Thurber’s “Walter Mitty.”
Parodies are a form of satire in which a particular genre, author, or work
is imitated and mocked. Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead is a parody of both William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and of Samuel Beck-
ett’s Waiting for Godot. Like Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot,
Rosencrantz and Guildensterm are masters of the non-sequitur, philosophical
illogical reasoning, and surrealistic reactions. Stoppard makes Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern virtually indistinguishable; they even get their own names
confused.
The influence of Northrop Frye’s 1957 Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays and
Arthur Koestler’s 1964 The Act of Creation is strongly felt by humor schol-
ars even though Frye and Koestler were not focusing specifically on humor.
Influential books focusing on humor, although not necessarily restricted to
literary humor, include Charles Praeger’s 1978 20th Century Humor, Louis
D. Rubin, Jr.’s 1983 The Comic Imagination in American Literature, Neil
Schmitz’s 1983 Of Huck and Alice: Humorous Writing in American Litera-
ture, E. Galligan’s 1984 Comic Vision in Literature, Victor Raskin’s 1985
Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Lawrence E. Mintz’s 1988 Humor in Amer-
ica: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics, Lance Olsen’s 1990 Circus of
the Mind in Motion: Postmodernism and the Comic Vision, Alleen and Don
Nilsen’s 2000 Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor, and James
Wood’s 2004 The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel.
The most common writing activity of literary scholars is to judge and
make recommendations about particular pieces of humor. Reviewers take on
the task of helping readers choose where they can most profitably spend their
reading time. They tell enough about particular books or plays to let readers
know whether the topic will be of interest to them; they usually provide small
Literature and humor 251
samples of the humor found in such books, and finally make a judgment
about the likelihood of readers enjoying the piece. A common assumption is
that creative people who themselves are humorous will be the best ones to
offer such judgments, hence many publications invite successful authors to
serve as book reviewers.
Critics do more than recommend what people should read. They make
observations and lead readers to better understanding and appreciation. At
least this is the implication in the title of the 1990 Oxford Book of Humorous
Prose: From William Caxton to P. G. Wodehouse, a Conducted Tour by Frank
Muir. Because readers want to be guided by someone whose intellect they
admire, the people asked to put together humor anthologies and to write the
introductory material are often respected members of literary circles. Rus-
sell Baker in the introduction to his 1993 Russell Baker’s Book of American
Humor begins his “Introduction” by explaining why Mark Twain would have
been rejected by The New Yorker just as James Thurber would have been re-
jected by the National Lampoon. He then goes on to explain three different
cycles of humor that he observed while preparing his anthology and reading
“everything funny published in America since Captain John Smith said that
people who don’t work don’t deserve to eat.”
Other well received anthologies that include critical commentary by the
collectors include Stephen Leacock’s 1936 The Greatest Pages of American
Humor, Bennett Cerf’s 1954 An Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor,
Kenneth Lynn’s 1968 The Comic Tradition in America: An Anthology of
American Humor, Mordecai Richler’s 1983 The Best of Modern Humor,
Gene Shalit’s 1987 Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor,
Roy Blount’s 1994 Book of Southern Humor, and Regina Barreca’s 2002 The
Penguin Book of Italian American Writing.
Walter Blair, who taught English at the University of Chicago for 35 years,
deserves considerable credit for bringing academic respect to collecting and
studying humorous literature, especially from a historical perspective. He
was born in 1900 and when he died in 1992, obituary articles credited him
with having taught five Pulitzer Prize winners, including Philip Roth, plus
Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow. He wrote or edited more than 30 books, an-
thologies, and textbooks on various aspects of literary humor. With the noted
dialectologist, Raven I. McDavid Jr., he edited The Mirth of a Nation: Amer-
ica’s Great Dialect Humor (1983), while with Hamlin Hill, he put together
America’s Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury (1978). Others of his
books include Native American Humor 1800–1900 (1937), Horse Sense in
American Humor From Benjamin Franklin to Ogden Nash (1942), and Davy
252 Alleen and Don Nilsen
Crocket: Legendary Frontier Hero: His True Life Story and the Fabulous Tall
Tales Told About Him (1986).
Other examples of historical studies include C. L. Sonnichsen’s 1988 The
Laughing West: Humorous Western Fiction, Past and Present, Elizabeth Am-
mons and Annette White-Parks’s 1994 Tricksterism in Turn-of-the Century
American Literature, and Gregg Camfield’s 1997 Necessary Madness: The
Humor of Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Oxford
University Press, 1997). B. A. Botkin’s 1944 A Treasury of American Folk-
lore, Mody C. Boatright’s 1949 Folk Laughter on the American Frontier, and
Carl Withers’s 1948 A Rocket in My Pocket: The Rhymes and Chants of Young
Americans are all over fifty years old but still in active circulation.
Willard Espy, until his death in 1998, was the best-known collector and
commentator on word play. Among his books are An Almanac of Words at
Play (1975); The Life and Works of Mr. Anonymous (1977); O Thou Improp-
er, Thou Uncommon Noun (1978); Say It My Way (1980), Another Almanac
of Words at Play (1980), and Have a Word on Me (1981). He viewed words as
living organisms as shown by the advice he gave humor scholars when he vis-
ited Arizona State University in 1982, “If words frighten you, never let them
know it....if they respect you, they will like you; there is nothing they will
not do for you. For a few people, they will even walk on their hind legs. For
an even tinier number, for the Homers and the Miltons and the Shakespeares,
they soar up to Heaven and play angel, or even God.”
Other well respected books dealing with word play include Stuart Berg
Flexner’s 1976 I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated Treasury of American
Words and Phrases, John Holmes McDowell’s 1979 Children’s Riddling,
John S. Crosbie’s 1980 Dictionary of Riddles, Robert E. Drennan’s 1983 The
Algonquin Wits: A Crackling Collection of Bon Mots, Wisecracks, Epigrams,
and Gags, Walter Redfern’s 1984 Puns, Jonathan Culler’s 1988 On Puns:
The Foundation of Letters, and Don Hauptman’s Cruel and Unusual Puns,
1991. Peter Farb in his 1975 Word Play: What Happens When People Talk
uses an expanded meaning of play to include much more than humor. Richard
Carlson in his 1975 The Benign Humorists, also explores word play, but as
part of mild satire in books by such writers as Beatrix Potter, A. A. Milne, P.
G. Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Ian Fleming. He
describes their out-of-power characters as careening and bumping “delight-
fully off each other.”
Robert W. Corrigan’s 1981 Comedy: Meaning and Form is a good col-
lection of modern writing about the genre of comedy from such critics as
Christopher Fry, W. H. Auden, Susanne Langer, Northrop Frye, Benjamin
Literature and humor 253
Readers like picaresque characters even though they are just short of being
criminal. The line between being a criminal and a petty rascal is a hazy one,
but readers are reassured because the rogue or picaro manages to stay just
inside lines of legality. William J. Hynes and William G. Doty explore re-
lated kinds of characters in their 1993 Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours,
Contexts, and Criticisms.
Leonard Feinberg in his 1967 Introduction to Satire, says that people who
write satire have a clear vision of what they want society to be. The purpose
of their writing is to reform society by illustrating for readers the evils of par-
ticular ideas or actions. As science fiction writer Ray Bradbury has explained,
“I don’t write to predict the future; I write to prevent it.” Critic Northrup Frye
explains that satire requires at least a token fantasy, a content which the reader
recognizes as grotesque, and at least an implicit moral standard. In the course
254 Alleen and Don Nilsen
of developing their imagined utopias or dystopias, writers often use the same
kinds of humor that are now considered characteristics of black humor. These
include wit, sarcasm, irony, and cynicism. And although satires and black
humor are grounded in reality, they have a degree of distortion, most often ex-
aggeration. Feinberg says that what is exaggerated “is the bad, the foolish, the
hypocritical,” while “the good, the sensible, the honest” are minimized. An-
other good book on satire is Mary Ellen Snodgrass’s the Encyclopedia of Sa-
tirical Literature, published in 1996 as an ABC-CLIO Literary Companion.
She explains in the preface that her goals are to present a timeline of satire,
a listing of primary sources, a bibliography of commentary and other refer-
ences, and a comprehensive index of titles, authors, periods, literary styles
and devices, etc. Other good sources on satire include Arthur Pollard’s 1970
Satire, Frederick Kiley and J. M. Shuttleworth’s 1971 Satire: From Aesop to
Buchwald, John W. Tilton’s 1977 Cosmic Satire in the Contemporary Novel,
and M. D. Fletcher’s 1987 Contemporary Political Satire: Narrative Strat-
egies in the Post-Modern Context.
In 1965, Bruce J. Friedman edited a book entitled Black Humor, which
contained literary samples from his own writing as well as that of Thomas
Pynchon, Joseph Heller, J. P. Donleavy, Vladimir Nabokov, Edward Albee,
Terry Southern, and James Purdy. Friedman said that while the authors whose
works he included each has a private and unique vision, they all:
–– Continue the strong tradition of storytelling in America.
–– Play with the fading line between fantasy and reality.
–– Have a nervousness, an upbeat tempo, a near hysteria or frenzy.
He added that this same frenzy was also happening in music, talk, films,
and theater. Matthew Winston described black humor as a tone rather than
a genre, while Sanford Pinsker said that it provides an angle of vision for
some authors and a comic technique for others.
Related books include Charles B. Harris’s 1971 Contemporary Ameri-
can Novelists of the Absurd; Max F. Schulz’s 1973 Black Humor Fiction of
the Sixties; David Galloway’s 1981 The Absurd Hero in American Fiction:
Updike, Styron, Bellow, Salinger; Alan R. Pratt’s 1993 Black Humor: Critic-
al Essays; and Ronald Wallace’s No Harm in Smiling: Vladimir Nabokov’s
“Lolita,” and The Last Laugh: Form and Affirmation in the Contemporary
American Comic Novel, both published in 1979.
Scholarly work on parodies is often done in connection with anthologies
as in Robert Falk’s 1955 American Literature in Parody: A Collection of
Parody, Satire, and Literary Burlesque of American Writers Past and Present,
Literature and humor 255
America, Louis J. Budd and Edwin H. Cady’s 1987 On Mark Twain: The
Best from American Literature, Sarah Eleanora Toombs’s 1987 James
Thurber: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, Barbara Schaaf’s 1988
Mr. Dooley: Finley Peter Dunne, Steven H. Gale’s 1990 Critical Essays on
Harold Pinter, J. R. LeMaster and James D. Wilson’s 1993 The Mark Twain
Encyclopedia, and Gordon E. Ernst’s 1995 Robert Benchley: An Annotated
Bibliography. One such book, Frederick Kiley and Walter McDonald 1973
A Catch-22 Casebook focuses on a single book. But because relatively few
authors and even fewer books have had enough research done on them to fill
a book, such research guides more commonly focus on particular genres or
time periods.
The purpose of these books is to allow scholars to go to a single source
to find out how much scholarly work has been done and where they can go
to find the primary sources if they need more than the summaries or ex-
cerpts provided by the commentators. Good examples of such books include
M. Thomas Inge’s 1975 The Frontier Humorists: Critical Views, his 1988
Handbook of American Popular Literature, and his 1994 Perspectives on
American Culture: Essays on Humor, Literature, and the Popular Arts. One
of the most useful reference sources is American Humorists, 1800–1950,
edited by Stanley Trachtenberg. It is a two-volume set published in 1982 as
Volume 11 in Gale’s Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Each of the
nearly 100 entries is several pages in length and is usually illustrated by pho-
tos and/or drawings. Several of the authors who wrote the essays regular-
ly contribute articles to humor-related journals. Besides Trachtenberg, they
include St. George Tucker Arnold, Jr.; Pascal Covici, Jr.; Jane Curry; Zita
Dresner; Terry Heller; Mark A. Keller; James C. McNutt; Sanford Pinsker;
Richard Alan Schwartz; Clyde Wade, and many others.
One of the contributors was Steven H. Gale, who later served as Gen-
eral Editor of the Garland Studies in Humor series and went on to edit the
1988 Encyclopedia of American Humorists and Volumes 1 and 2 of the 1996
Encyclopedia of British Humor: Geoffrey Chaucer to John Cleese. Gale de-
scribed his task in the latter book as first deciding on which authors should
be included as subjects, then finding good scholar/writers to prepare the en-
tries, editing each essay for grammatical and factual details, and writing the
introductory material. The completed book is 1,307 pages long and includes
articles on 196 humorists written by 118 scholars from seven countries. He
– and his family – remember the month of headaches when he had over
3,000 3x5 index cards spread over the living room floor while he noted and
checked each page number. When Don Nilsen put together his 1992 research
Literature and humor 257
There is no end to the different kinds of humor that scholars decide to analyze
and to the approaches they devise. One of the most recent books is the 2008
Laughing Matters: Humor and American Politics in the Media Age edited
by Jody C. Baumgartner and Jonathan S. Morris. One section is devoted
to humor beyond television. In 2005, Walter Hogan came out with a book
Humor in Young Adult Literature: A Time to Laugh. Two years later, Don and
Alleen Nilsen published a related book on Names and Naming in Young Adult
Literature, which includes chapters showing how such authors as J. K. Rowl-
ing, Gary Paulsen, M. E. Kerr, and Daniel Handler (author of the Lemony
Snicket books) use naming as a technique to bring smiles to young readers.
Many literary scholars use humor as a zeitgeist, something to measure the
“spirit of the times” either by or about specific groups. Although these schol-
ars usually look at the whole spectrum of the popular culture, humorous lit-
erature is included, especially in historical studies, because literature is what
has been written down and is therefore what can be found for study. Con-
stance Rourke’s 1931 American Humor: A Study of the National Character
and William Keough’s 1966 Punchlines: The Violence of American Humor
are fairly early examples.
While collectors may publish the humor they find mostly for the fun of it,
they also add commentary as did Leo Rosten in his 1968 The Joys of Yiddish,
Henry D. Spaulding in his 1969 Encyclopedia of Jewish Humor: From Bibli-
cal Times to the Modern Age and his 1985 Joys of Jewish Humor, and Wil-
liam Novak and Moshe Waldoks in their 1981 The Big Book of Jewish Humor
and their 1990 The Big Book of New American Humor: The Best of the Past
25 Years. The emphasis in Sarah Blacher Cohen’s 1987 Jewish Wry: Essays
258 Alleen and Don Nilsen
on Jewish Humor and Avner Ziv’s 1986 edited collection, Jewish Humor is
on exploring and analyzeing the creation and uses of Jewish humor.
In his 1988 The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Lit-
erary Criticism, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. makes a contribution to the study
of humor by showing that when they were slaves African Americans were
denied the use of normal and private communication. This forced them to
develop double-entendre Trickster signifiers. Speakers would say something
that meant one thing to whites and another to blacks. The humor comes from
the realization that simultaneous messages are being communicated and that
the authority figures (usually whites) understand only one message while the
other participants comprehend both. Mel Watkins’s 1994 On the Real Side:
Laughing, Lying, and Signifying extends the concept to the popular culture,
including literature. Donna A. S. Harper looks from a new perspective at
some of the writings of Langston Hughes in her 1995 Not So Simple: The
“Simple” Stories by Langston Hughes.
As time goes on there will probably be increased attention given to His-
panic humor as shown by the formation in the late 1990s of an organization
devoted to the study of Hispanic humor. In 1999, Paul W. Seaver, Jr. ed-
ited Selected Proceedings of the First International Conference on Hispanic
Humor, which included seventeen lively articles, whose topics ranged from
subjects as old as Juan Luis Vives’s 1528 De Anima and Vita and as new as
the latest works of Isabel Allende.
Scholars have also been looking through new lenses at Native American
literature and culture. Vine Deloria, Jr. took the first part of his 1988 title
Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto from a bumper sticker de-
signed to tease missionaries on the Sioux reservation. One of Deloria’s obser-
vations that has been cited as a pan-Indian joke (many are meaningful only to
tribal or family members) is that when the first missionaries came they had
only the Bible while the Indians had all the land; now “they” have all the land
and Indians have only the Bible. Deloria campaigns against the stereotype of
the stoic Indian, a caricature that he says has made it difficult for whites to
understand how humor permeates virtually every area of Native American
life. Very little, he says, is accomplished in Indian national affairs without
humor.
Other books asking people to take a closer look at Native American humor
include Kenneth Lincoln’s 1993 Indi’n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native
America, Andrew Wiget’s 1994 Dictionary of Native American Literature,
Frank B. Linderman’s Indian Why Stories: Sparks from War Eagle’s Lodge-
Fire and Indian Old-Man Stories: More Sparks from War Eagle’s Lodge-Fire,
Literature and humor 259
acting on the talent “is got”; Word Play, in which words or groups of words
clash with each other’ and Incongruity, in which a word, idea, concept or
thing clashes with another idea, concept, or thing. To these three character-
istics, the Grawes added Sympathetic Pain, which consists of laughing with
someone’s pain rather than at the person. They are looking for correlations
between the kinds of literary humor that individuals respond to and such ar-
chetypal personalities as Crusader, Advocate, Bridge-builder, Consoler, Rec-
onciler, and Intellectual.
D. G. Kehl has analyzed the humor written by many different American
authors, but his most unusual study, “Varieties of Risible Experience: Grades
of Laughter and Their Function in Modern American Literature,” was in-
spired by a comment from James Thurber who noticed that in literature there
are a dozen different kinds of laughter “from the inner and inaudible to the
guffaw,” but that no one had done a careful and extensive analysis of all the
varieties. In starting his research, Kehl found a statement from writer James
Agee who in relation to the language of screen comedians concluded “four
of the main grades of laughter are the titter, the yowl, the belly laugh, and the
boffo.” Kehl found examples in modern American literature of eighteen dif-
ferent grades of laughter, which he organized into six categories ranging from
the incipient or “inner and inaudible” laugh (the simper and smirk) to the
loud and unrestrained howl, yowl, shriek, and Olympian laugh. He discussed
the origins of each example, drew distinctions, considered each in terms of
tenor and intensity, and illustrated their significance. His study demonstrates
an interesting crossover between literature and real-life because in a way it
is measuring the care and the skill with which authors observe and record
people’s actions. He was doing from a literary standpoint what Robert R.
Provine was doing with real people for his 2000 book Laugher: A Scientific
Investigation.
Daniel Royot, a French scholar of American literature, sums up what
he calls his “home-made” humor theory by explaining that comedians don
masks and borrow voices, and it is the interplay of such conflicting masks and
voices that results in open or subtle incongruities. With only masks, the effect
would be simply parodic, grotesque humor as is unfortunately too much of
Jerry Lewis’s stuff and that of other “phunny phellows.” On the other hand, if
they use just voices without the masks, the result is merely satirical. He says
that humorists relying on the innocent pose sometimes make little use of the
comic mask. For example, compare the minimal visual indications of Woody
Allen as opposed to Mel Brooks. Linguists have a similar interpretation with
the signifier and the signified. Since in terms of humor analysis, Royot is
Literature and humor 261
Practically any theory of humor can be tested and/or illustrated through lit-
erature. In this way the wealth of the world’s literature is a positive, but it is
also a complication because it works against the development of what humor
scholars wistfully refer to as “a unified theory.” D. G. Kehl uses a comment
by Peter De Vries’s Joe Sandwich character from The Vale of Laughter to ex-
plain the problem, “No single theory has yet managed to explain all varieties
of mirth. Nine tenths of what we laugh at answers to Bergson, another nine
tenths to Freud, still another to Kant or Plato, and so on, leaving always that
elusive tenth that makes each definition like a woman trying to pack more into
a girdle than it will legitimately hold.”
Another issue that humor scholars constantly face is the idea that tragedy
or “serious” things are harder to study, or, at the least, are more important than
is humor. This makes it hard to obtain funding for humor-related research and
also to have humor research taken seriously by academic colleagues. Wher-
ever humor scholars gather, there are jokes about everyone having tenure
because only tenured faculty members dare to study something as frivolous
as humor.
Humorous poetry especially suffers from elitist values as shown by those
who reserve the term poet for “serious” writers. Contradicting this attitude is
Ronald Wallace’s 1984 God Be With the Clown: Humor in American Poetry,
but even his title reflects a defense of the genre. The same kinds of critics
who think Shakespeare’s tragedies deserve more attention than his comedies,
refer to the works of such skilled poets as Ogden Nash and Richard Armour
as light verse and to the work of less talented poets as doggerel.
Both verse and doggerel can be written with either serious or humorous
intentions, and with doggerel what a writer intends as serious may be inter-
preted as humorous. Julia Moore’s “death” poetry of the mid-1800s is an
example. She wrote dedicatory poems to be read at funerals. In Huckleberry
Finn, Mark Twain modeled his “Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec’d” on
her work. According to Bradley Hayden, a Michigan scholar who has studied
Julia Moore and her poetry, Twain described her as having a rare “organic tal-
ent” for humor. She could make “an intentionally humorous episode pathetic
262 Alleen and Don Nilsen
Fiction, Morton Gurewitch’s 1994 The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagin-
ation, and Cohen’s 1992 Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary American
Literature. Gordon and Breach Publishers have a Studies in Humor and Gen-
der series edited by Regina Barreca and Nancy Walker, which includes books
on both literature and popular culture, for example, Barbara Levy’s 1997 La-
dies Laughing: Wit as Control in Contemporary American Women Writers.
University presses regularly publish humor-related titles. Many of the
books published as part of the Studies in Popular Culture series for the Uni-
versity of Mississippi Press relate to humor. Gregg Camfield’s 1994 Senti-
mental Twain, Samuel Clemens in the Maze of Moral Philosophy was pub-
lished by the University of Pennsylvania Press, while Steven Weisenberger’s
1995 Fables of Subversion/Satire and the American Novel 1930–1980 was
published by the University of Georgia Press, and Neil Grauer’s 1995 Re-
member Laughter, A Life of James Thurber was published by the University
of Nebraska Press.
In the study of humor there are obvious carryovers from controversies that
are in the public eye, including the matter of censorship. For example, schol-
ars who study scatological or pornographic writing, hate jokes, and to a lesser
extent, any ethnic or gender-based humor must constantly remind critics that
they are collecting and studying such humor rather than creating and dissemi-
nating it. While taxpayers grow nervous when they find professors talking
about controversial writings in class, David E. E. Sloane has shown how cen-
sorship also works to encourage serious scholarship. He teaches at the Uni-
versity of New Haven and in 1995 when the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
was banned from a New Haven classroom, he worked with the Mark Twain
House in nearby Hartford to mount a summer teacher institute on the theme
of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Race.” While the summer’s debate
centered around Huck Finn, questions of caricature, parody, ethnocentrism,
and reader-response all figured in the discussion of such writers as George
Ade and Langston Hughes, American cartoon art, minstrel traditions, and
stage caricatures. Discussions were not limited to race, but included study-
ing Jewish, Irish, and various other immigrant groups of the 1800 and 1900s.
Following the colloquium, Sloane compiled a set of classroom-oriented ma-
terials laying down a trail of Twain’s use of language and ideas related to his
intent. One result is a 2001 Student Companion to Mark Twain, plus a 2002
CD-ROM produced as part of the Buffalo and Erie Country Library Adven-
tures of Huckleberry Finn. It is Sloane’s opinion that genuine debate is likely
to continue as shown by Jocelyn Chadwick’s The Jim Dilemma and Jonathan
Arac’s Huck Finn as Idol and Target,” as well as Harry Wonham’s article
264 Alleen and Don Nilsen
in film there are often no words between which pauses can be used to elicit
laughter a la Jack Benny. Thus, I had to look at a combination of dialogue,
timing, sound, and especially the employment of visuals as illustrated by the
unexpected, climactic action of Cantinflas as Passepartout.” The best part is
when “He leans down from the hot air balloon and scoops a goblet-full of
snow from the mountain top that he and his master Phineas Fogg have barely
cleared.” Only through studying each shot individually, did Gale discover that
Passepartout calmly uses the snow to cool the champagne.
For Gale this crossing over into film criticism was a positive because it
led to new insights and new things to watch for in written work. But crossing
boundaries doesn’t always have such positive effects. Humor scholars are al-
most forced to have two fields because most have their own academic area to
which they add the study of humor. Then when they extend themselves further
to a third or fourth academic area they sometimes make naive assumptions,
which adds to suspicions their colleagues may already have about a lack of
rigor in humor studies. Among the questions that arise from these suspicions
include asking whether professors of literature should get as much credit for
presenting papers at meetings of the Popular Culture Association as at the
Modern Language Association. Another is whether the kind of pop culture
writings which Susan Sontag includes in her essay “Notes on Camp” should
be considered literature? Are comic books “literature”? How about television
sit coms? And how about the “little stories” that are told in commercials and
the “big stories” that are told in extended video games. A new interdisciplin-
ary book that Paul Grawe recommends is V. Ulea’s A Concept of Dramatic
Genre and the Comedy of A New Type: Chess, Literature and the Film.
As the study of literary humor continues, the most interesting results are
probably going to come from scholars who are crossing boundaries both in
the approaches they take and in the material they look at.
and Breach, 1988). More recent books include “Don’t Tell Mama!” The Pen-
guin Book of Italian American Writing (Penguin 2002) and A Sit Down with
the Sopranos: Watching Italian American Culture on TV’s Most Talked-about
Series (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Contact her through the English Depart-
ment at the University of Connecticut.
Jessica Milner Davis co-ordinates the Australasian Humour Scholars
Network from the University of Sydney as Honorary Associate in its Fac-
ulty of Arts. Her latest book, Understanding Humor in Japan, won the 2008
AATH book-prize for humor research. She has twice been President of the
International Society for Humor Studies (1996 and 2003) and is Associate
Book Review Editor for Humor: International Journal of Humor Research.
Contact her at jessica.davis@usyd.edu.au.
Steven H. Gale holds a University Endowed Chair in the Humanities at
Kentucky State University. Besides the books listed in the end-of-chapter
bibliography, he has published articles on humor in the writings of Francis
Beaumont, Miguel de Cervantes, John Gay, Simon Gray, Joel Chandler Har-
ris, Ronald Harwood, Henry Livings, David Marmet, H. L. Mencken, Ha-
rold Pinter, Stephen Potter, Harry Secombe, H. Allen Smith, Peter Simple,
and James Thurber. He has also worked with humor in film and in African
folk tales, and was interviewed about S. J. Perelman for the PBS Think Tank
program. He was the general editor of the Garland Studies in Humor series,
and his 2003 Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter’s Screenplays and the Artistic Pro-
cess was chosen as a 2003 Choice magazine “Outstanding Academic Title.”
Contact him at DrStevenHGale@aol.com
Paul H. Grawe is Professor emeritus of English at Winona State Univer-
sity in Minnesota. At Northwestern University, where he worked with Moody
Prior and Gerald Graff, he wrote a dissertation defining sombre comedy as
a specific sub-genre within comedy. In 1983, he published a general theory
of comedy, Comedy in Space, Time, and the Imagination. In a forthcoming
book with Robin Jaeckle Grawe, Paul and Robin draw on 17 years of empir-
ical research to explore the humor textures of American film comedy. Contact
him at pgrawe@hbci.com.
D. G. Kehl is Professor Emeritus of English at Arizona State University,
where he taught American Literature and worked with graduate students who
wrote theses and dissertations on various aspects of literary humor. In add-
ition to the articles listed in the chapter bibliography, he has written “Thalia
Meets Tithonus: Gerontological Wit and Humor in Literature” (The Geron-
tologist, Fall, 1985: 539–544), “All Gall Is Divided into Three Parts: Amer-
ican Literary Humor of Francophilophobia” (Thalia: Studies in American
268 Alleen and Don Nilsen
Humor, Summer, 2000: 67–79), and “Humor in the Novels of Gish Jen: From
Confliction to Connection,” MELUS: Journal of the Society of the Multi-
Ethnic Literature of the U.S. (forthcoming). Topics he is currently working
on include the ethics of humor, clerical humor in modern American novels,
academic humor in modern fiction, and the dry humor of his home state of
Arizona. Contact him at dgkehl@asu.edu.
Paul Lewis, professor of English at Boston College, is the author of two
books – Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Humor in Literature
(S.U.N.Y. Press, 1989) and Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Con-
flict (University of Chicago Press, 2006) – and of articles on gallows humor,
Woody Allen, gothic fiction and American literature and culture: 1790–1860.
A member of the editorial board of Humor: International Journal of Humor
Research and a columnist for Tikkun magazine, he has published op-ed and
humor essays in such places as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New
York Times, International Herald Tribune, Globe and Mail, and Crazy Maga-
zine. He is currently working on a third book, tentatively titled Laughing
Dangerously: Tact and Humor in America Today. Contact him at lewisp@
bc.edu.
Don and Alleen Nilsen are professors of English at Arizona State Univer-
sity where Don works with students in linguistics and Alleen works with high
school English teachers and librarians. They are founding members of the
International Society of Humor Studies, and from 1987 through 2004 Don
served as ISHS Executive Secretary. Their Encyclopedia of 20th-Century
American Humor was chosen by the American Library Association as one of
the twenty best academic books of 2000. Contact them at Don.Nilsen@asu.
edu and Alleen.Nilsen@asu.edu.
Daniel Royot is Professor Emeritus of American Literature and Civiliza-
tion at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. His co-authored book Histoire et Civi-
lization des Etats-Unis was published in six editions, while his Anthologie
de la Littérature Américaine is in its third edition. He has been president of
France’s American Humor Studies Association, and in addition to scholarly
books and articles, writes and speaks about American humor in the French
popular press where he makes use of Art Buchwald’s comment, “Why should
the French like Americans, they already hate each other.” An extensive article
on “Poe’s Humor,” was published in 2002 in The Cambridge Companion to
Edgar Allan Poe edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Contact him at danielroyot@wa-
nadoo.fr.
Elaine Safer is a professor of English at the University of Delaware. Her
recent book, Mocking the Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth, was published
Literature and humor 269
by SUNY Press 2006. She also is known for The Contemporary American
Comic Epic: The Novels of Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis and Kesey, Wayne State
University Press, 1988. She has published papers on such Jewish American
writers as Jonathan Safran Foer, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, and Saul
Bellow and on the comedic elements in the postmodern American works of
writers including John Hawkes, Joseph Heller, William H. Gass, William
Gaddis, and Thomas Pynchon. She is currently writing The Comic Imagin-
ation in Recent Jewish American Fiction. Contact her at safer@udel.edu.
David E. E. Sloane is professor of English and education at the Univer-
sity of New Haven, where he has taught since 1976. In 1987, Greenwood
Press published his American Humor Magazines and Comic Periodicals as
part of its Historical Guides to the World’s Periodicals and Newspapers. Sev-
eral more recent books are listed at the end of the chapter. He was the Execu-
tive Director of the American Humor Studies Association from 1989 to 2002.
Contact him at dsloane@newhaven.edu.
Bennett, Barbara
1998 Comic Visions, Female Voices: Contemporary Women Novelists and
Southern Humor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Bier, Jesse
1968 The Rise and Fall of American Humor. New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston.
Blair, Walter
1937 Native American Humor 1800–1900. New York: American Book
Company.
1942 Horse Sense in American Humor from Benjamin Franklin to Ogden
Nash. New York: Russell and Russell.
1986 Davy Crocket: Legendary Frontier Hero: His True Life Story and
the Fabulous Tall Tales Told About Him. Springfield, IL: Lincoln-
Herndon Press.
Blair, Walter, with Hamlin Hill
1978 America’s Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Blair, Walter, with Raven McDavid Jr.
1983 The Mirth of a Nation: America’s Great Dialect Humor. Minnea-
polis: University of Minnesota Press.
Blount, Roy (ed.)
1994 Roy Blount’s Book of Southern Humor. New York: W. W. Norton.
Boatright, Mody C.
1949 Folk Laughter on the American Frontier. New York: Macmillan.
Botkin, B. A.
1944 A Treasury of American Folklore. New York: Crown Publishers.
Budd, Louis J., and Edwin H. Cady (eds.)
1992 On Humor: The Best from American Literature. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Camfield, Gregg
1997 Necessary Madness: The Humor of Domesticity in Nineteenth-
century American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
1994 Sentimental Twain, Samuel Clemens in the Maze of Moral Philoso-
phy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Carlson, Richard S.
1975 The Benign Humorists. New York: Archon.
Cerf, Bennet (ed.)
1954 An Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday.
Chadwick-Joshua, Jocelyn
1998 The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn. Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi.
Literature and humor 271
Falk, Robert
1955 American Literature in Parody: A Collection of Parody, Satire, and
Literary Burlesque of American Writers Past and Present. New York:
Twayne.
Farb, Peter
1973 Word Play: What Happens When People Talk. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf.
Fedo, Michael
1987 The Man from Lake Wobegon. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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1967 Introduction to Satire. Ames: The Iowa State University Press. 2nd
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1964 The Satirist. Ames: The Iowa State University Press.
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1994 Look Who’s Laughing: Gender and Comedy. Langhorne, PA: Gor-
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Fisher, Seymour, and Rhoda L. Fisher
1981 Pretend the World Is Funny and Forever: A Psychological Analysis
of Comedians, Clowns, and Actors. Lawrence Erlbaum.
Flashner, Graham
1987 Fun with Woody: The Complete Woody Allen Quiz Book. New York:
Holt.
Fletcher, M. D.
1987 Contemporary Political Satire: Narrative Strategies in the Post-
Modern Context. New York: University Press of America.
Flexner, Stuart Berg
1976 I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated Treasure of American Words
and Phrases. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
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1986 Faulkner and Humor. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
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1965 Black Humor. New York: Bantam.
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1957 Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
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1990 Critical Essays on Harold Pinter. Boston: G. K. Hall.
1988 Encyclopedia of American Humorists. New York: Garland.
1994 Encyclopedia of British Humorists. New York: Garland.
1985 S. J. Perelman: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland.
1987 S. J. Perelman: A Critical Study. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
1992 S. J. Perelman: Critical Essays. New York: Garland.
Literature and humor 273
2003 Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter’s Screenplays and the Artistic Process.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Galligan, E.
1984 The Comic Vision in Literature. Athens: University of Georgia
Press.
Galloway, David.
1981 The Absurd Hero in American Fiction: Updike, Styron, Bellow,
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1988 The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Crit-
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1972 Ring Lardner and the Portrait of Folly. New York: Thomas Y. Crow-
ell.
Grauer, Neil A.
1995 Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press.
Grawe, Paul H.
1983 Comedy in Space, Time and the Imagination. Chicago, IL: Nelson-
Hall.
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1994 The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination. The Ironic Temper
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1984 Sniglets (Snig’lit) – Any Word That Doesn’t Appear in the Diction-
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1995 Not So Simple: The “Simple” Stories by Langston Hughes. Colum-
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1971 Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd. New Haven, CT:
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1991 Cruel and Unusual Puns. New York: Bantam, Doubleday, Dell.
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1983 In Memoriam humor: Julia Moore and the Western Michigan poets.
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2005 Humor in Young Adult Literature: A Time to Laugh. Lanham, MD:
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1992 A Handbook to Literature. 6th ed. New York: Macmillan.
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1985 A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-century Art Forms.
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1993 Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Inge, M. Thomas
1975 The Frontier Humorists: Critical Views. New York: Archon.
1988 Handbook of American Popular Literature. Westport, CT: Green-
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1994 Perspectives on American Culture: Essays on Humor, Literature,
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1994 The Narrative Secret of Flannery O’Connor: The Trickster as Inter-
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1983 Thalia pops her girdle: Humor in the novels of Peter De Vries. Stud-
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1989 Humor of the new Southwest in the fiction of Larry McMurtry.
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1947 George Ade: Warmhearted Satirist. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merri-
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1966 Punchlines: The Violence of American Humor. New York: Paragon
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1990 A Hand to Turn the Time: The Menippean Satires of Thomas Pyn-
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2006 Wrangling Women: Humor and Gender in the American West. Reno:
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1988 Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics. West-
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1990 Oxford Book of Humorous Prose: From William Caxton to P. G.
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1993 Humor Scholarship: A Research Bibliography. Westport, CT: Green-
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1981 The Big Book of Jewish Humor. New York: Harper and Row.
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1972 The graying of black humor. Studies in the 20th Century 9: 15–33.
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1970 Satire. London: Methuen.
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1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
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1984 Puns. New York: Blackwell.
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1983 The Best of Modern Humor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
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1968 The Joys of Yiddish. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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1931 American Humor: A Study of the National Character. Tallahassee:
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1973 Black Humor Fiction of the Sixties. Athens: Ohio University Press.
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1988 “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”: American Comic Vision. Boston,
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1983 The Literary Humor of the Urban Northeast, 1830–1890. Baton
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1979 Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
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1988 The Laughing West: Humorous Western Fiction, Past and Present.
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Humor and popular culture
Lawrence E. Mintz
any useful sense of the term. The range of entertainment product considered
“low” or popular culture is so broad, so varied as to shred any generalizations
about its motives, functions, and cultural significance. “Middlebrow” seems
to work to define the Broadway musical comedy, and “The Nutcracker.” Other
than that, the category is largely worthless. Clearly we should abandon the
entire distinction between popular and any other kind of culture, and sim-
ply discuss culture – the learned pattern of belief and/or behavior shared by
a group, or more narrowly defined the arts and entertainments available in
a given society.
But alas we cannot do this. For one thing, the distinction is widely accept-
ed in its basic outline, if not its specifics, and the designation of “good” versus
less respectable cultural product and experience is so solidly entrenched that
no call for abandoning it would have the desired effect. For another, the aca-
demic disciplines that govern the serious study of culture leave us no choice
but to look at “popular culture” as separate from the tip of the iceberg they
deem worthy of attention. So if we want to look at popular novels and short
fiction, for instance, we will not get much help from “English” departments
and scholars who study “literature.” There may be the odd course in feature
writing in a school of journalism, but the very important genre of the humor
column in newspapers and the humorous short pieces in magazines are simply
not studied except as popular culture. Similarly there are now “performance
studies” programs, and serious studies of film, or “cinema,” and even televi-
sion studies can sometimes sneak into a communications department’s cur-
riculum. But if you want to study standup comedy, movie farces and romps,
television situation comedy and talk show humor, you really do need to retain
the category and the concept of popular culture.
There isn’t much of a literature that addresses humor and popular culture
per se. There is no book length study of the topic, and the only essay that
focuses specifically on it is my own “Humor and Popular Culture” in the
Handbook of Humor Research, Volume II, edited by Paul McGhee and Jef-
frey Goldstein in 1983. The histories of American humor such as Jesse Bier’s
The Rise and Fall of American Humor (1968) and Walter Blair and Hamlin
Hill’s America’s Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury (1978) cover
a lot of the territory, and thought they emphasize literary examples, they are
indispensable. Collections of critical essays such as Arthur Dudden’s Ameri-
can Humor (1987), Nancy Walker’s What’s So Funny?: Humor in American
Culture (1998), and Joe Boskin’s The Humor Prism in 20th Century Amer-
ica (1997) are invaluable, addressing comics, standup comedy, film and tele
vision humor as well as the more frequently visited territory.
284 Lawrence E. Mintz
of popular culture humor exist. But for the most part, we are ignorant of the
roles of the publishers of books, editors of magazines, newspaper feature sec-
tions, cartoon and comic strip pages, producers and managers of performance
opportunities, and the powers-that-be for film and television humor. Who de-
cides what humor will be available? How is it promoted? What input besides
that of the identified author affects content? What is the role of the critic in
engineering its reception? The commercial factors alone are enormously im-
portant, and whether Robin Williams performs at the Met in New York or
a small club in Peoria may be as significant as the content of his comedy. Re-
cently I directed a Ph.D. dissertation, by David Zurawik, that studied the ap-
pearance of Jewish characters in prime-time television from its earliest years
to the present. What made Zurawik’s dissertation virtually unique as well
as tremendously valuable is that, as television critic for the Baltimore Sun
newspaper, he had access to decision makers in the industry who were will-
ing and able to give him insights that could never be gleaned from examining
the texts themselves, no matter how diligently it was performed. For instance
Zurawik was able to track down a claim that CBS had research that indicated
that audiences did not want to see Jews (and people with moustaches, and
divorced characters) in shows, “research” that turned out to be non-existent
and alleged as part of a conspiracy that could be traced to the predilections of
one particularly powerful television mogul. Unless we train more research-
ers to employ the techniques of social science research and oral history, the
crucial elements of the story of who is responsible for what themes encoded
in the texts and what texts are made available to the public will continue to
be ignored.
Similarly, there is very little study of audience reception. Communica-
tions studies and sociology do some survey work, and some raw data exists
that helps us form a sketchy picture of who is laughing at what. Looking at
the text by itself does not tell us if the audience is male or female, young or
old, rich or poor, black or white, rural or urban, educated or not, and so forth.
Moreover we have no idea how something is received much less why it is
received as it is. There are almost no accounts, even for live performance,
that explore how audiences related to a text, what they laugh at, of what they
approve or disapprove, and what it means to them, ultimately. Ethnographic
research promises to address this need, but there is precious little to show for
it thus far, applied to humor in popular culture, even as a model for new re-
search. The majority of us study the texts themselves, and thus are limited to
our own reading, decoding, and assessment. We make what are often rather
flimsy guesses as to what appeals to whom, why, but the bottom line is that
286 Lawrence E. Mintz
we do not know and are entirely ill equipped to find out. Humor, as readers
of this essay surely know, is illusive and complicated. Trying to discuss its
social and cultural significance from isolated textual reading is like trying to
analyze the phenomenon of baseball from trading cards.
It is neither possible nor useful to attempt a definitive survey of humor in
popular culture. Even a basic listing of significant sources in the genres that
make up the core of our arts and entertainments would be exhausting, and it
would not be particularly interesting or insightful. Rather, the remainder of
this essay will single out a few sources for mention to help describe the gen-
res and topics, and one or two for discussion as an example of where examin-
ing popular culture humor texts might go. The selections are of some things
that interest me; they are no more prominent or significant than many others
one might choose.
The earliest example of popular culture using humor for an important,
interesting purpose is the exploration, for the most part in journalism, of “na-
tive” American character or identity and through it, the viability of democracy
itself. Almanacs, newspapers, and early magazines were loaded with brief an-
ecdotes, humorous proverbs and sayings, character sketches, and witticisms
comprising a sort of pseudo-folklore introducing the common man as citi-
zen. Humor directed at the common man as rude, barbaric, ill-mannered, and
foolish came from English and European observers, but it was also not rare
from the pens of concerned educated, more sophisticated, snobbish, or polit-
ically conservative Americans. Yankee Doodle was originally intended to be
derisive, directing ridicule at the silly and ignorant American. But the portrait
soon became much more ambiguous, ambivalent, and even positive. Brother
Jonathan was an important comic character whose name, from a character in
Royall Tyler’s 1789 play, “The Contrast,” became virtually generic. Jonathan
could be painted in negative term, laughed at for his ignorance, bumbling
ways, lack of sophisticated manners and understanding. But perhaps influ-
enced by a very old, perhaps even universal cultural tradition of the Wise
Fool, he was at least as often the naïf, still ignorant and in a sense unintel-
ligent as well, but innocent, good hearted, and following in the tradition, an
accidental purveyor of truth and wisdom. Taken a step further, he could be the
common sense philosopher – Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard Saunders for
instance – dispensing sound, solid, down to earth advice from the perspective
of experiential rather than academic or intellectual knowledge.
There are many fine examples of this brand of popular humor. One good
one is Seba Smith’s character, Jack Downing. Smith originally intended using
the character to mock the ignorant Jacksonian supporter, and to be sure, when
Humor and popular culture 287
Jack wanders into the state legislature (“Jack Goes to Portland”) his misun-
derstanding of the proceedings (he wonders why there is a fight over who
deserves a seat in the legislature when clearly there are enough chairs to go
around. He thinks the members of the body should follow their leaders as
militia members would their captain. However many of his innocent observa-
tions expose the politicians as much as they do the voter. When he concludes
that he has little use for people who let a crop of hay spoil in the field while
arguing politics, the common sense redeems him.
James Russell Lowell was perhaps the most educated American at mid-
19th century. He was a Dean at Harvard, spoke several languages, and was as
socially and politically sophisticated as anyone around. When he wanted to
write against the Mexican War, and later against slavery and southern defec-
tion from the union, he knew better than to write in his own voice. He created
a wise fool character, Hosea Biglow, whose observations such as “what’s the
use of meetin’ goin’/every Sabbath wet or dry/if its right to go a-mowin’/
fellow men like oats and rye” put the anti-war sentiment in terms that could
be associated with popular attitudes rather than direction from above. Lowell
created another character, Birdofreedum Sawin, a more humorous invention,
to represent popular thought gone awry, but even Birdofreedum returns from
service in the Mexican War with important lessons learned from his wounds
and inadequate reward or compensation (“at any rate, I’m so used up I can’t
do no more fightin’/The only chance thet’s left to me is politics or writin’.”)
Other characters like Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s Sam Slick employed
the Yankee as con man to expose the vulnerabilities of the middle class and
the dangers of “putting on airs,” and wise fools of every stripe became a sta-
ple of our national popular humor. On the western frontier, wise fools, con
men, and tricksters like Johnson J. Hooper’s Simon Suggs and George Wash-
ington Harris’s Sut Lovingood were employed to portray the rough and unso-
phisticated American as an ironic hero. Suggs was lazy and dishonest, but he
knew it was “good to be shifty in a new country,” and his victims were more
often the targets of the humor than the wise-guy that preyed upon them. Sut
Lovingood expressed a rude racism and sexism, but his “pints” on the mean-
ing of life that emphasized drinking, sex, roughhousing, and a deep mistrust
of preachers, widows, and other guardians of civilization were exemplary of
a freedom, joy of life, and cynicism that popular culture supported at least as
a necessary counter-culture or brake on the relentless demands of the growing
respectability.
The device of the wise fool was used to deal with topical concerns, par-
ticularly the issues surrounding the civil war, and they fed the popular theater,
288 Lawrence E. Mintz
comic lecture circuit, and even graphic arts as well as journalism. The motif
was taken to its height, of course, by the genius of Mark Twain. Twain’s per-
sona was the common sense philosopher and good old boy personified. He
used the tall tale for the same humorous effects achieved by his peers (see
Thorpe’s “Big Bear of Arkansas” for perhaps the best example), but he also
took the genre a step further. In a story such as “Baker’s Blue Jay Yarn,” for
instance, we are amused by the comic futility of the bird trying to store acorns
by dropping them down a chimney, but Twain sets us up to make the allegori-
cal connection between the bird’s dogged but misguided labor and capital-
ism, the work ethic, and perhaps the ultimate futility of life itself. In this way
his light, amusing, popular humor anticipates some of the deepest, darkest,
and most powerful humor of post WWII literature.
Another interesting example of humor in popular culture is the newspa-
per comic strip. Histories of the genre usually begin with a “pre-history”
that traces the comic strip back to cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphics,
the Bayeux Tapestry, and various graphic arts including illustrations and car-
toons. For our purposes, the newspaper comic strip begins in the late 1890s
when Sunday color comics supplements were used to help sell cheap, mass
market oriented papers. The early strips such as “The Yellow Kid” for instance
were curious combinations of down-to-earth slapstick, topical joking, and ra-
ther abstract referencing. In the hands of a Windsor McCay (“Little Nemo in
Slumberland,” “The Adventures of the Rare-bit Fiend,”) they were creative
indeed, and could border on the surreal and handle social satire at the same
time. The genre was clearly aimed at a popular audience, but it also flirted
with serious art and expression. Soon the dictates of pop culture won out,
however, and while some strips, e.g. George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat”, could
hold up the experimental art end, most settled for a domestic humor involving
marital conflict and bratty kids.
The themes fit in perfectly with the era known as “the golden age of humor”
(sometimes rendered as the 1920s but more properly roughly from the end
of WWI to the early 30s). The “little man” Casper Milquetoast, Andy Gump,
Jiggs, A. Mutt, et al. battled various mild threats to their serenity, and more
significantly their sense of importance and power, in the face of stronger,
more focused women and “naughty” youngsters (e.g. “The Katzenjammer
Kids”). A later example, “Blondie,” was transformed from a satire on “the
roaring twenties” into a consummate ‘little man strip’ in which the vulnerable
Dagwood loses battles to the illogic of his wife, Blondie, his kids, the dog,
his boss, and the neighborhood bridge club (intruding on his bath). His de-
fense is napping as often as he can, eating everything in sight, knocking down
Humor and popular culture 289
the mailman as he rushes off to work in the morning, and in his refusal to be
thrown by his failures and the disasters that constantly befall him. This sort
of fare dominated the strips until the mid-1930s when it was overshadowed,
but not replaced entirely, by adventure and soap opera strips. Its significance
is not in its artistic merit. In fact it represents a failure of sorts, a backsliding
from an art form that had much more promise in its earlier manifestations.
But its cultural significance is large. Along with silent film, it helped establish
the humorous answer to more inflated, ambitious portraits of the American
citizen and his world. It was a comic counter-balance to American arrogance,
self-confidence, and unrealistic self-understanding.
Humorous strips were revived after the Second World War. Earlier comics
strips, particularly Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” and Al Capp’s “Little Abner” proved
that the popular culture audience could receive comic strip art that was both
accessible and containing a second, deeper level of communicative signifi-
cance. Kelly’s swamp fables were allegorical “swamps” themselves, loaded
with social and political commentary lurking behind the antics and interac-
tions of the familiar cast of animal characters. He experimented with creative
artistic technique such as using typescripts to suggest tone of voice, and more
significantly perhaps, he produced a rich text of various meanings. Capp, too,
hid a lot of communication in a relatively simple fable. His “hillbillies” were
interesting and amusing by themselves, but readers who cared to think about
the strips for more than a few seconds had access to Capp’s views on topical
events, government, and American values.
Perhaps the most important breakthrough in the humorous comic strip
was Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts.” This strip gained enormous worldwide pop-
ularity by using kids to reflect adult neuroses. Every character has his or her
angst or method of coping with harsh reality. Lucy uses her meanness to
compensate for the unrequited love she has for Schroeder (who keeps trying
to play Beethoven on a toy piano with painted on black keys), Linus has his
blanket to comfort him when his childhood fears and fantasy gets in the way
of his intellect, and the dog, Snoopy, deals with the limitations of his “dog-
ness” by pretending to be the Red Baron, or a lawyer, writer, hockey player,
detective and resident of a deluxe doghouse complete with a pool table and
rare paintings. His fantasies allow him to escape his dependency on his owner
for the meals that are really his only interest, and the boredom of being a dog.
Charlie Brown, the consummate loser, little man character, reflects all the
fears, weaknesses, and failures of modern man. He is constantly bemoaning
his fate and circumstance. Yet he never gives up. He knows that Lucy will
pull the football away from him when he tries to kick it, yet every year he
290 Lawrence E. Mintz
tries again, kind of like Sisyphus rolling the stone up to the top of the hill
again and again, because it is, after all, his (and our) destiny to do so. This
strip is simple, yet profound. It has provoked as much analytic commentary
as much serious literature, but unlike belles lettress, it doesn’t seem to require
it. Readers usually understand and appreciate the strip without the aid of the
critics.
A look at the contemporary comic section of a major newspaper such
as The Washington Post (exception being The New York Times where all the
news is printed to fit) shows how incredibly healthy the genre is today. There
are dozens of humorous comic strips ranging from simple domestic humor
such as “The Family Circus” to the sophisticated social and political satire
of Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” and Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks.”
Strips like “Cathy” take on the problems of single professional women, “Tank
McNamara” goes after big time sports in America, and strips like “BC,” “The
Wizard of Id,” “Broom Hilda,” “Zippy” and many more offer the combination
of simple amusement and allegorical meaning that the genre has allowed for
more than a century now.
Stand up comedy performance can also be traced to a “pre-history” that
establishes its universality and importance. Surely clowns, fools and jesters,
and various social shamans are the progenitors of today’s professional com-
ics. In American popular culture, the genre should be connected with roots in
the medicine shows, tent shows, and the early popular theater such as minstrel
shows, vaudeville, burlesque and the Broadway variety show. These enter-
tainments featured stand up comedy mixed with skits, magic acts, juggling,
and other performance, and helped shape acts that were more complex than
mere joke telling or comic antics. The more modern history of stand up begins
with performers in resorts in the Catskill Mountain region of New York State.
This so-called “Borscht Belt” is notable for providing venues for numerous
Jewish comedians and entertainers who went on to form a sort of core for the
popular entertainment community of the twentieth century, influencing mov-
ies, radio, theater and television, particularly in comedy. These comedians
became polished professional joke-tellers in nightclubs, other resorts, and at
the top of their game, in concert performances all around the U.S. Most of
them employed gag writers. Comedians like Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Henny
Youngman, and Alan King exemplify a pure form of stand up comedy. while
others lean more toward the theatrical traditions using costumes, props, and
stage personas.
In the late 1950s, a brand of stand up comedy, sometimes called “new
wave” stand up comedy, emerged. This comedy is called ‘new’ because it
Humor and popular culture 291
dians and directors was married to the romantic plots and themes, “screwball
comedy” was able to satisfy just about everyone. The formula developed in
the 1930s was strong enough to become the staple of film comedy through the
1950s (with an influence on films continuing to the present), and other strains
of comedy such as those provided by the Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Mae
West, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, and Bob Hope ensured that there would
be plenty of comedy in the popular culture during the years of the Great De-
pression and Second World War.
Since the mid-1960s, “serious” social comedies have competed with farces
loaded with sight gags and sure-fire laughs. Comedies like “Dr. Strangelove,”
“Catch-22,” “ M*A*S*H,” Robert Altman films such as “Nashville” and
Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” provide social and political satire. Wildly funny
movies such as “Airplane,” “Police Academy,” “National Lampoon’s Animal
House,” the Pink Panther films, and the offerings of Mel Brooks are there
to entertain. Together, comedies comprise one third of the Hollywood films
produced in an average year. Successful directors like John Hughes, crea-
tor of teen comedies like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Pretty in Pink,”
Spike Lee (“She’s gotta have It,” “School Daze”), John Waters (“Hairspray,”
“Polyester”), Barry Levinson (“Tin Man,” “Diner”), Susan Seidelman (“Des-
perately Seeking Susan,” and of course the above mentioned Mel Brooks and
Woody Allen develop formulas that carry their unmistakable stamps. Comic
stars, often veterans of television or standup comedy, also build a corps of
significant film humor around their personae. Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy,
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and John Belushi are just some of the alumni
of Saturday Night Live who scored numerous successes. Robin Williams,
to single out another important comedy star, has moved from standup and
television success to a very considerable canon of more than a dozen films
including “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and “Patch Adams”
among them.
Of course the farces are not without social and cultural commentary, and
the more ambitious films are often very funny. Parodies and farces go for
the big laughs, but often the gags reference significant social issues. To cite
just one case, sight gags in “Airplane” and “Police Academy” offer humor-
ous takes on oral sex, defying a public taboo on mentioning that controver-
sial and divisive topic. Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” is an important look at
modern relationships. It turns the romance comedy formula upside down,
tracing the devolution of a relationship from “love at first sight” to unten-
able rather than the course of a troubled pairing to a somehow inevitable
happy ending. Is “Annie Hall” then a comedy? It can be argued that the film
294 Lawrence E. Mintz
ends happily, despite the breakup of Annie and Alvy Singer, since both are
where they want and need to be – she in LA to pursue her career and he in
New York where he can protect his neuroses. The comedic message is that
sometimes a “happy ending” or comic resolution can require the breakup of
a romance rather than the expected, often forced uniting of a couple. It is an
important statement for contemporary male–female relationships in modern
society. “Annie Hall” is also a very funny film with good sight gags and ver-
bal humor. Interestingly, another film was produced at about the same time,
“The Goodbye Girl,” in which the conventional romance formula holds up
just fine. Boy meets girl, their relationship is instantly troubled and conten-
tious, growing worse as misunderstanding is added to their obvious differ-
ences. But in the end, they commit to marriage and family, and their bicoast-
al separation at the end is promised to be merely temporary. These films, and
still more recent comedies, affirm that the basic formulas for film comedy
have held up into the 21st century.
Radio, and then television, provided a repository for just about all humor
in popular culture that went before it. Broadcast programming has become
the most powerful and significant base for American humor. In contempor-
ary television, humor rules from the banter of the anchors and news, weather
reporters on the early morning shows to the late night talk shows. In addition
to shows more definitively labeled as humor or comedy, humor can be found
on news and talk shows and other “reality” programming, in advertising,
sports coverage, game and quiz shows, televised movies, and just about eve-
rywhere else.
In the early years of radio and television, variety show formats borrowed
from vaudeville and the popular theater, mixing standup comedy with skits
and other types of humorous performance. Stars like Fred Allen, Milton
Berle, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton, and Jerry Lewis were cru-
cial in establishing broadcasting as the dominant form of popular culture.
The variety show lasted well into the twentieth century, with later performers
such as Carol Burnett, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, and the Smothers Broth-
ers proving that the format was resilient long after the theater comedy that
established it was forgotten. The variety show also strongly influenced made-
for-TV comedy such as provided by Ernie Kovacs, originally, and later by
shows like “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” “That was the Week that Was,”
and “Saturday Night Live,” among others.
However the core of television comedy has always been the situation com-
edy. Sit-com started in radio, but it starred on television as early as the late-
1940s and early 1950s adapting the ethnic comedy of Molly Goldberg and
Humor and popular culture 295
“Amos and Andy.” Sit com uses comedy and humor in many ways to gener-
ate laughter and entertainment, and to carry social and cultural messages. Its
basic format is important. Shows begin with a situation of “normality,” i.e.
a familiar cast of characters in their expected setting. From week to week,
with only gradual changes that are usually necessitated by cast turnover or
other challenges, the basic unit faces new challenges and opportunities. Re-
gardless of the nature of these challenges and opportunities, at the end of the
episode, everything and everyone is back in its “normal” and proper place,
with no significant change having resulted. The comic ending, resolution of
the problem or dissolution of the opportunity for change, suggests that true
happiness is in stability, continuity, and contentment with the status quo. It is
an interesting counter to the other American Dream of growth, change, suc-
cess, achievement, and mobility. This version of the Dream, closer to Jeffer-
son’s vision of “forty acres and a mule” for every citizen, pitches acceptance
of middle class values and status and the omni-powerful appeal of “family.”
Family may defined in many creative ways that are alternative to the nuclear,
biological unit (single parent families often including an employee of one
sort or another, groups of friends and neighbors who function like family
members, and even work-place communities with family-like ties), but the
message is always that everything is ok as long as the stability of the group is
not threatened.
Within the over-arching family structure, many premises can be accom-
modated. In addition to shows that are essentially about family activities and
situations, there are military sitcoms, school based shows, comedies that
feature aliens from abroad as far as Mars and Ork, to ethnic shows, urban
and rural settings, and work-place comedies. All the familiar character types
of American humor from the wise fools of the colonial and early national lit-
erature to the “little men” of comic strips, silent film, and journalism, to con
men and tricksters are featured in sitcom. These premises allow for some
variety within the basic format, but they cluster around familiar motifs, al-
ways respect the basic structure, and rarely if ever seek uniqueness. In add-
ition to the premises, the plots of particular episodes can also carry messag-
es and meanings. For instance, an episode of “Mork and Mindy” involved
Mork aging himself considerably to teach Mindy’s grandmother the lesson
that growing old is not necessarily a bad thing as long as one thinks young
and remains cheerful and lively. An episode of “Different Strokes,” hard-
ly a cutting edge vehicle for social teaching, involved a teen-aged girl who
thought she might be pregnant. After plot twists that hinted at the possibility
of abortion, the show settled into promoting its main theme, the necessity
296 Lawrence E. Mintz
for teens to involve their parents in their crises and the necessity for parents
to be understanding, gentle, and sympathetic to guarantee that they will be
kept informed of what is going on in their kids’ lives. The young lady turns
out not to be pregnant after all, thanks to the intervention of the writers, and
the overt message masks some covert ones including the lack of criticism
of the sexual activity that led to the possibility of the crisis in the first place,
and a more interesting double entendre possibly directed at a then current
government policy initiative aimed at restricting abortion for teenagers (as
her friend suggests to the troubled teen considering abortion, “you’d better
do it while you still can.”
In the 1970s, a number of shows made more overt efforts at social com-
mentary. Norman Lear’s “All in the Family” led the way, and his other shows,
mostly spin-offs, shows like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “MASH,”
and many others dealt with race, ethnic conflict, infidelity, drug use, sex-
ism, and just about every other social and cultural concern. Humor was in-
jected through the antics of the characters, physical and verbal gags, and
other devices, but in some cases, “The Bill Cosby Show” for one, comedy
was often decidedly secondary to the moral message delivery. Later shows
like “Friends,” “Frazier,” “Cheers,” and of course the celebrated show about
“nothing,” “Seinfeld,” in a way reverse this process. Deceptively mundane,
they focus on well-written comic scenarios and shtick, but their view of the
contemporary reality is often a humorous interpretation of significant ten-
dencies in our common culture.
It is impossible, in an overview chapter such as this one, to cover all
of televised comedy, even as a survey. Shows like “The Daily Show” and
“South Park,” developed for the Comedy Central network or Fox’s popular
hit “The Simpsons” have had important impact on the genre. Late night talk
show hosts, particularly Jay Leno and David Letterman, are considered by
some critics to be the bellwethers of the state of comedy in the country, so
that after the events of September 11, 2001 they were watched closely to
see when and if it was safe to laugh again and whether the tragic events and
the circumstances surrounding them such as the war against terrorism and
anthrax attacks might be the subject of comedy. There can be disagreement
over the state of television comedy, its quality and centrality, but there can
be no dispute that it is very much an omnipresent, omnipotent part of the
popular culture and a major source of our humor.
There are a few more areas of humor in the popular culture that remain
to be mentioned and discussed briefly, if not really explored. As I suggested
at the beginning of this essay, some definitions of popular culture are nar-
Humor and popular culture 297
row, limiting it to the arts and entertainment media. Others are broader and
include what might be designated as folk or material culture. This essay will
not consider jokes in public discourse to be a part of popular culture. Jokes
are rightfully left to the study of folklore. Of course they are collected into
popular, best-selling paperback books and transmitted to internet subscrib-
ers, and that is surely a spillover. Nevertheless, we will leave them for an-
other chapter. Bumper stickers, tee shirts with humorous messages, comi-
cal posters and stickers, funny products, toys and games like pet rocks and
Garfield tails to stick in car doors are also at a cross-roads of popular, com-
mercial culture, material culture, and folk life. The bumper sticker debates
– “my kid is an honor student” vs. “my kid beat up your honor student” or
“Jesus saves” vs. “Moses Invests,” or the fish with legs and the legend “Dar-
win” in response to the religious fish icon – are part of the popular culture
for certain, but the turf battles of academic study allow me to leave them for
another investigator.
The broad field of the internet as popular culture also demands at least
a comment. As an interactive endeavor, a lot of the humorous activity on
the web can be considered to be folklore. But there are also many humorous
web sites, not a few of them commercially oriented that must be consid-
ered to be a major source of popular humor today. As a judge for the annual
Webby awards given by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sci-
ences (that I am a member is a humorous reality that can only be appreciated
by those who know of my internet illiteracy), I view dozens of humorous
sites every year. Some like The Onion, which has won the award for the
past three years in a row (www.theonion.com) or the National Lampoon site
(www.nationallampoon.com) among others are spin-offs from humor maga-
zines. Others like FuckedCompany.com are devoted to a particular topic, in
this case referentially to dot.coms that have crashed. Still others are main-
tained by individuals with a particular humorous axe to grind, for instance
www.landoverbaptist.com, an hilarious attack on organized religion.
Humor in advertising might also be a part of popular culture, but it is sim-
ply too broad a topic to be handled adequately in an essay of this scope. In the
broader definition described above, popular culture is just about everything in
our daily lives. Humor is everywhere in our daily lives from the morning talk
show banter to the newspaper columns and comic strips we read on the way
to work to the funny web site our colleagues at work e-mail us to check out,
to the magazine we read on the way home, the sitcom we watch in the evening
and Leno’s monologue at 11:35 pm. It is available to us in the theater and
nightclubs, at the movies, on the radio, in CDs, and everywhere we look or
298 Lawrence E. Mintz
listen. It mediates our thinking about and discourse concerning every aspect
of our lives in profoundly important ways. Isn’t it funny that both humor and
popular culture are often considered to be trivial, light, or insignificant?
The study of humor and comedy is at least as old as Plato and Aristotle. Mod-
ern scholarship includes the perspectives of the social sciences – anthropol-
ogy, sociology, communications, and psychology – as well as those of the
humanities – history, literary and artistic criticism, rhetoric and linguistics.
The literature includes theoretical discussion of what humor is and how it
functions, historical and cultural analysis of what is funny for whom, when
and where, and aesthetic appreciation of the art of comic communication.
In recent years there have been professional associations, national and inter-
national conferences, journals and newsletters, and numerous publications,
both books and scholarly articles, devoted to humor studies. These sugges-
tions for further study are by no means advertised as definitive. Rather they
are starting points, bibliographies, basic studies which frame various genres,
topics, and approaches, and works which contain good summary of scholar-
ship to-date and current thinking.
Modern scholarship grows so geometrically that printed bibliographies
are almost obsolete, at least as definitive accounts of the literature, as soon
as they are printed. Indeed even the traditional index sources for periodi-
cal literature strain at serving their intended, original function. Computer
databases for humor studies are attempting to address this problem by pro-
viding on-going collection of pertinent sources (so far with limited success,
since even keeping up the data base is a slow and imperfect process). The
International Society for Humor Studies, Humor: International Journal for
Humor Research, and the Art Gliner Center for Humor Studies maintain web
sites with bibliographic and other information helpful to the student. They
can be accessed through links from: amst.umd.edu/humorcenter.
Don Nilsen has also published a bibliography, Humor Scholarship: A Re-
search Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. There are two
journals of humor research, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research
(associated with the International Society for Humor Studies) and Studies
in American Humor (associated with the American Humor Studies Associ-
ation), and two newsletters, one published in Humor and the other, edited by
Cameron Nickels, separately published and available with a subscription to
Humor and popular culture 299
Throughout history, from the ancient philosophers and the Bible, from the
earliest scribes to contemporary writers, from folk medicine to modern medi-
cine, humor and laughter have elicited discussion. Viewed alternatively and
sometimes simultaneously as healthy and devilish, humor and its physical
manifestation laughter have long been the subject of discourse and debate,
of business and pleasure, of entertainment and scorn. Recently, however,
humor and laughter have become a focus of the health fields, both physical
and psychological. This chapter traces the conceptualizations of humor and
laughter from their early references in antiquity through the present day, high-
lighting and underscoring the importance of the social facets and functions of
humor and laughter. So let us look first at the social nature of humor and then
at some of the approaches to humor, from its earliest mentions to the present
time, including an examination of some of the major theories of humor and
inquiry into the universal human phenomenon we know as humor.
acknowledgement by both the joke teller and the audience of the common
ground between them (the “special kinship or other types of social bonds”)
that the joke teller and his or her audience build their joking relationship.
Apte’s discussion both illustrates and demonstrates the social nature of jok-
ing relationships from pre-literate to industrialized societies.
Sigmund Freud describes the social nature of humor by enumerating six
aspects that contribute to and accompany the humor event:
(a) The most favorable condition of the production of comic pleasure is a
generally cheerful mood in which one is “inclined to laugh.” ...
(b) A similarly favorable effect is produced by an expectation of the comic,
by being attuned to comic pleasure.
(c) Unfavorable conditions for the comic arise from the kind of mental ac-
tivity with which a particular person is occupied at the moment.
(d) The opportunity for the release of comic pleasure disappears, too, if the
attention is focused precisely on the comparison from which the comic
may emerge. ...
(e) The comic is greatly interfered with if the situation from which it ought
to develop gives rise at the same time to a release of strong affect. ...
(f) ... the generating of comic pleasure can be encouraged by any other
accompanying circumstance. (1976 [1905], 282–285)
In essence, Freud has, with his first five conditions, provided a checklist,
a sort of laundry list, for the humor event. The last of Freud’s conditions is
virtually a wastebasket or catch-all category intended to account for every-
and anything for which his preceding conditions do not or cannot account.
John Y. T. Greig observes, “Nothing is laughable in itself: the laughable
borrows its special quality from some persons or group of persons who hap-
pen to laugh at it” (1923: 71) and notes that the joke teller must “know a good
deal about this person or group” (71) in order to make them laugh. Clearly,
Greig’s contention about the social aspect of humor comes very close to my
own theory, that a joke text is not inherently funny, that a joke text is not suc-
cessful unless and until an audience finds it amusing. It is in this way that
Greig underscores the integral nature of the role of the audience to the humor
event, to humor itself.
Like Greig, David Viktoroff acknowledges the importance of membership
in social groups to the existence of humor. Viktoroff avers, “One never laughs
alone – laughter is always the laughter of a particular social group” (1953:
14). For Viktoroff, then, one must be a member of a social group in order to
laugh, to laugh within that group, or to elicit laughter from within that group.
Historical views of humor 305
Here Fry has provided a brief summary of some of the early research into
the social nature of humor. In the first part, Fry echoes Bergson’s assertion
that humor is based on aggression or malice. Fry then presents the anthropo-
logical view on joking relationships developed later by, among others, Apte.
While these theorists do acknowledge, in one way or another, that humor is
a social activity, they do not delve deep enough to show how or why.
The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some
sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the
infirmity of others, or with our own formerly: for men laugh at the follies
Historical views of humor 307
Also recall Fry’s observation that some claim that humor “embodies an
attack by one individual on another” (1963: 31). When play mimics or takes
on an aggressive or hostile nature, for instance, it is easily viewed as an evo-
lution of that which had been described by the Ancients.
Not everyone throughout history viewed humor and laughter so nega-
tively. Some took a different approach to the subject of humor and laughter.
In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant called wit “the play of thought”
(1790: 176, emphasis in original). He asserted that laughter follows from
something absurd and “is an affection arising from sudden transformation of
a strained expectation into nothing” (1790: 177, emphasis in original). Kant
continued, “the jest must contain something that is capable of deceiving for
a moment” (1790: 179). In short, Kant located humor and laughter in incon-
gruity. The key to Kant’s definition of laughter and wit, and therefore humor,
is the word sudden. Were the transformation not sudden, but rather slowly
built, and deceptive, there would be far less – and perhaps no – incongruity
as the incongruity would have been resolved during the construction of the
joke text or jest. After all, a joke “gotten,” that is, one which has “fired” for
the audience, is generally far more enjoyable to an audience than a joke ex-
plained, though it is possible for an audience to judge humorous a joke that
has been explained.
A typical manifestation of Kant’s “sudden transformation” is the punch
line of a joke text. According to Fry, the punch line is “a highly specialized
article ... [which] presents a seemingly irrelevant idea, or it may seem incon-
gruous with respect to the main body of the joke. Or it may seem to open up
an entirely new trend of thought. Or the punch line may be an unexpectedly
rational statement” (1963: 33–34). James C. Humes draws an analogy be-
tween joke texts and their punch lines and balloons: “you pump [a joke text]
up with details and then puncture it with a punch line” (1975: 5). For Elliott
Oring, the punch line “... triggers the perception of an appropriate incongru-
ity ... [and] must bring about an abrupt cognitive reorganization in the lis-
tener” (1989: 351). And for Attardo and Raskin, the punch line is the pivot on
which the joke text turns as it signals the shift between the scripts necessary
to interpret the joke text (1991: 308).
For Arthur Schopenhauer, the cause of laughter and, therefore, humor
is “simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and
the real objects which have been thought through in some relation,” and
the ensuing laughter is consequently “the expression of this incongruity”
(1957 [1819], 76). James Beattie, writing more than two hundred years ago,
observed,
Historical views of humor 309
laughter [or humor] arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuit-
able, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in complex
object or assemblage, or as acquiring a sort of mutual relation from the pecu-
liar manner in which the mind takes notice of them. (1776: 602)
nying what he calls “mirthful laughter” are “increases in arterial blood pres-
sure” which are then “followed by pressure decreases below resting pressure
levels” (Fry and Savin 1988: 49). Hence, Fry and Savin suggest “that this
phenomenon contributes to physiologic survival by its enhancement of cir-
culatory efficiency” (1988: 49).
1989; Ramani and Varma 1989; Kushner 1990; Morreall 1991; Franzini
and Haggerty 1994; Gibson 1994; Ehrenberg 1995; Unger 1996), children’s
humor and children’s uses of humor (see, for example, McGhee 1974,
1976a, 1976b; McGhee and Chapman 1980; Masten 1986, 1989; Sherman
1988; McGhee and Panoutsopoulou 1990; Mowrer and D’Zamko 1990;
Mowrer 1994; Holt and Willard-Holt 1995; Alves 1997), the therapeutic and
healthful/healing powers of humor (see, for instance, Cousins 1979; Fry and
Salameh 1987; Fry and Savin 1988; Haig 1988; Klein 1989; White and Ca-
marena 1989; Lefcourt, Davidson-Katz, and Kueneman 1990; McGhee 1991;
Martin et al., 1993; Gelkopf and Sigal 1995; Derks, et al., 1997; Ryan 1997),
ethnic humor (see, for example, Bermant 1986; Ziv 1986, 1988, 1991; Bier
1988; Schutz 1989; Spencer 1989; Davies 1990a, 1990b, 1997; Epskamp
1993; Mbangwana 1993; Draitser 1994; Kazanevsky 1995; Fry 1997),
cross-national and bilingual humor (see, for instance, Ruch 1991; Ruch, et
al., 1991; Leeds 1992; Ruch and Forabosco 1996), and women’s humor (see,
for example, Barreca 1988, 1991; Walker 1988; Walker and Dresner 1988;
Kaufman 1991; Warren 1991; Radday 1995; Thorson and Powell 1996).
Incongruity theories
Disparagement theories
A second class of humor theories, whose roots lie in classical Greek and
Roman rhetorical theory, includes those theories of humor based on malice,
hostility, derision, aggression, disparagement, and/or superiority. Included
in this group are ethnic, racial, and “dumb” jokes. Scholars, theorists, and
researchers who espouse theories of humor based on hostility or malice fre-
quently cite the similarities in bodily positions between aggressive behavior,
such as fighting, and laughter to substantiate their claims (Kallen 1911; Crile
1916; Ludovici 1932; Rapp 1947, 1949, 1951).
Jerry M. Suls defines this group of humor theories as “based on the ob-
servation that we laugh at other people’s infirmities, particularly those of our
enemies” (1977: 41) and easily include the views of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,
Hobbes, Hegel, Bain, and Bergson cited above.
Disparagement-, malice-, hostility-, derision-, aggression-, or superior-
ity-based theories characterize the attitudes between the joke teller (or the
joke’s persona) and the target of the joke text, which may or may not be the
audience. But, cautions Keith-Spiegel, “[n]ot all theorists who include the
element of superiority as part of humor believe that laughter is always con-
temptuous or scornful. Sympathy, congeniality, empathy, and geniality may
be combined with the laughter of superiority” (1972: 7; also see Hunt 1846;
Bain 1859; Carpenter 1922; McDougall 1922; Rapp 1949). In this way, those
scholars, theorists, and researchers who espouse theories of humor based on
superiority, aggression, or malice, for instance, may view or employ humor
and laughter as the means by which to temper the aggression and aggressive
behavior they examine. But the superiority, aggression, and malice neverthe-
less remain.
Release/relief theories
What is integral is the effect the joke text has on the audience. In this way,
a non-firing joke is a failure on the part of the audience to interpret or perceive
successfully or correctly the humor inherent in the text of a joke and, hence,
to reap the benefit of successful joke interpretation, which is the release and/
or the relief.
the text of a joke is always fully or in part compatible with two distinct scripts
and that the two scripts are opposed to each other in a special way. ... The
punchline triggers the switch from the one script to the other by making the
hearer backtrack and realize that a different interpretation [of the joke] was
possible from the very beginning. (Attardo and Raskin, 1991: 308)
to fire for another. Humor does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, it has four nec-
essary constituents which make up the humor event: the joke teller, the joke
text, and the audience all existing within a particular situation which contrib-
utes to each of the other three constituents in the humor event. It is important
to note that the joke teller and audience can, in fact, be the same person or, in
the case of two – or more – people, can alternate roles. No single constituent
of the humor event is any more or less necessary – or important – than any
other, and each is related to and dependent on the other three constituents.
Because of the pervasive nature of the situation, however, and the significance
of its contribution to each of the other constituents of the humor event, it is
impossible to discuss situation as a discrete component of the humor event. In
other words, the situation encompasses everything that occurs in, or is a part
of, the humor event – including the individuals involved – by establishing the
context for joking or, at least, for attempts at joking.
In Israel, Ofra Nevo and her colleagues have examined the relationship be-
tween humor and pain tolerance and found a positive relationship “between
tolerance of pain and sense of humor, especially with the capacity to produce
humor” (1993: 71). They also posit, based on the results of their study, that
those subjects who perceived the film presented by the researchers as humor-
ous tolerated more pain induced by the cold pressor test administered by the
researchers, which suggests to the authors “that humor helps [in tolerating
pain] only when perceived as such” (71). In Canada, Rod A. Martin and
his colleagues have investigated the relationship between, as their title sug-
gests, “humor, self-concept, coping with stress, and positive affect” (1993:
89). Their findings indicate that humor “may also play an important role in
enhancing the enjoyment of positive life experiences” (89). Essentially, Mar-
tin and his colleagues confirm their hypothesis that humor does help to re-
duce stress and that humor has a positive effect on an individual’s outlook
and health (see also Fry and Savin 1988; Cousins 1979; Lefcourt and Martin
1986; Martin 1989; Martin and Dobbin 1988; Martin and Lefcourt 1983;
Kuiper and Martin 1993).
In the lead article of the first issue of the only academic journal devoted en-
tirely to humor scholarship, HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Re-
search), Apte observes, “[n]ot only does humor occur in all human cultures,
it also pervades all aspects of human behavior, thinking, and sociocultural
reality; it occurs in an infinite variety of forms and uses varied modalities”
(1988: 7). It is because of this “infinite variety of forms and ... varied mo-
dalities” that the study of humor must be and is a multidisciplinary, interdis-
ciplinary, and cross-disciplinary field of inquiry. Its boundaries are indistinct
and blurred by the many researchers and scholars who investigate and have
investigated humor from a variety of different perspectives, many looking for
and at very different aspects of the same subject.
Most, if not all, humor scholars, theorists, and researchers come to and
at the subject from different backgrounds, angles, and perspectives. Some
seek to explicate the humor in particular works of literature (for instance,
Ross 1989; Risden 1990; Greenfeld 1993; Takahashi 1994; Hopkins 1997)
or the humor of a particular author or artist (for example, Meyerhofer 1988;
Scott 1989; Tanner 1989; Barrett 1991; Batts 1992; Hallett 1992; Holcomb
Historical views of humor 317
1992; Gehring 1993; Fisher 1995; Olson 1996). Others investigate humor by
attempting to explain what is meant by a sense of humor and/or how to meas-
ure it (for instance, Mindess, et al., 1985; Raskin 1992; Ruch and Rath 1993;
Ruch 1994; Craik, Lampert, and Nelson 1996; Köhler and Ruch 1996; Martin
1996; Ruch 1996; Ruch, Köhler, and van Thriel 1996; Svebak 1996), and still
others look more broadly at the psychology of humor (see below). There are,
of course, other areas of inquiry into humor research, some of which will be
discussed and/or referenced below. The important point here, however, is that
research into humor provides an enormous, fertile field of inquiry for schol-
ars, theorists, and researchers.
In the article cited above, Apte calls for the establishment of humorology
as a discrete and distinct academic discipline and then looks at and suggests
possible disciplinary boundaries in an effort to streamline and codify the field
he calls humorology. Apte (1988) also examines the schizophrenic nature of
research into humor and defines humorology, a term he claims to have coined
in 1984, as “the study of the causes, nature – that is, form and substance – and
functions of the phenomenon labeled humor” (1988: 9). It is no wonder, then,
that this phenomenon – and attempts to define, classify, and explain it – has
fascinated scholars since ancient times.
In the past few decades, research into humor has become recognized as
a valid area of inquiry, though the preponderance of humorologists, to use
Apte’s term, have come to the field of humor research both through and from
other disciplines. (Apte himself, for instance, is a linguist-turned-anthropol-
ogist-turned-humorologist.) In other words, humor research, as an organized
field of inquiry, is still in its infancy. To date, but one degree has been granted
in humor in the United States, and that at the undergraduate level. A decade
ago, however, the University of Reading (England) instituted a Master of Arts
degree under the direction of sociologist and humorologist Christie Davies
(Nilsen 1990: 463–465).
One early attempt to bring together humor scholars, theorists, and re-
searchers as well as their work, which predates Apte’s (1988) article, was
the commencement of the International Conferences on Humor, the first of
which was held in Cardiff, Wales, in 1976 and was hosted by Antony Chap-
man and Hugh Foot. Three years later, Mindess hosted the Second Inter-
national Conference on Humor in Los Angeles, and in 1982, Rufus Browning
hosted the Third International Conference on Humor in Washington, D.C.; the
Workshop Library World Humor (WLWH) and the American Humor Studies
Association cohosted the Third Conference. Other International Conferenc-
es on Humor were held in Tel Aviv, Israel (1984, Avner Ziv), Cork, Ireland
318 Amy Carrell
(1985, Des MacHale), and Tempe, Arizona (1987, Don L. F. Nilsen). (The
International Conferences on Humor have since merged with the conferences
of the International Society for Humor Studies.)
In 1982, Don L. F. Nilsen organized a humor conference at Arizona State
University as part of the Western Humor and Irony Movement (WHIM), an
organization founded by Nilsen as an affiliate of the WLWH. Nilsen and his
wife, Alleen Pace Nilsen, hosted annual WHIM conferences at Arizona State
University from 1982 until 1987. The following year, in 1988, WHIM VII, the
last of the WHIM conferences, was held at Purdue University and was hosted
by Victor Raskin (Mintz 1988: 91–92).
At the Seventh International Conference on Humor in Laie, Hawaii, in
1989, an organization called the International Society for Humor Studies
(ISHS) was formed as an evolution, or perhaps mutation, of WHIM and has
joined forces with the International Conferences on Humor. Since the incep-
tion of the organization, annual ISHS conferences have been held in Shef-
field, England (1990), St. Catharines, Ontario (1991), Paris (1992, in con-
junction with CORHUM, l’Association francais pour le developpement des
researches sur le Comique, le Rire et l’Humour), Luxembourg (1993), Ithaca,
New York (1994), Birmingham, England (1995), Sydney, Australia (1996),
Edmond, Oklahoma (1997), Bergen, Norway (1998), Oakland, California
(1999), and Osaka, Japan (2000). The 2001 conference will be held at the
University of Maryland.
Humor has also become big business. As the theoretical interest in humor
has grown, so, too, has interest in the practical value of humor (Morreall
1991). Morreall has examined the veritable explosion of research into humor
and the applications of that research to the workplace. He cites the fact that
“[t]here are...dozens of humor consultants working with corporations, gov-
ernment agencies, hospitals, and schools” (1991: 359). Morreall also cites
the successes of Joel Goodman and John Cleese (of Monty Python and Fawlty
Towers fame); the former has presented programs on the importance of humor
in the workplace to more than a quarter million people, and the latter has pro-
duced ninety training films (359). Most important, observes Morreall, is the
fact that “[a]ll this interest in the value of humor in the workplace represents
an important swing away from the traditional assessment of humor as frivo-
lous and unproductive” (359). According to Morreall, humor belongs in the
workplace because it promotes “health, mental flexibility, and smooth social
relations” (359). Apparently, corporate executives and administrators agree.
Clearly, the field of humor research is taking on a shape of its own. Mem-
bership in the ISHS is growing, and its conferences are well attended by
Historical views of humor 319
humor scholars and researchers as well as humor practitioners and other “just
interested” individuals. Submissions to HUMOR, distributed to every ISHS
member as a benefit of membership in the organization, are growing, humor
specialists are being sought out and hired by major corporations, hospitals,
and schools all over the world, and Apte’s call for disciplinary boundaries is,
at long last, being heard and heeded.
Summary
Since Apte’s (1988) call for legitimizing the field of humor research, for-
ays into the area have expanded and multiplied. Humor research is being
conducted all over the world, from the United States and Canada to Europe
(for instance, Attardo and Chabanne 1992, and references there; Ruch 1990,
1991, 1993a, 1993b; Ruch, Ott, Accoce, and Bariaud 1991) to the Common-
wealth of Independent States (for example, Zelvys 1990) to Israel (for in-
stance, Rosenheim, Tecucianu, and Dimitrovsky 1989; Ziv 1986, 1988, 1991,
and references there; Ziv and Gadish 1990; Tsur 1989; Elitzur 1990a, 1990b;
Zajdman 1991; Nevo, Keinan, and Teshimovsky-Arditi 1993) to Australia
(for example, Deren 1989) to Turkey (for instance, Karabas 1990) to Japan
to Poland. Students of and researchers into humor are writing not only art-
icles and books but dissertations (for instance, Attardo 1991; Carrell 1993)
on various aspects of humor. Moreover, in addition to the ISHS, the Modern
Language Association and the Speech Communication Association are de-
voting colloquia, symposia, and workshops to the phenomenon of humor,
and new organizations are being formed, including, for instance, the Japan
Society for Laughter and Humor Studies and the American Association for
Therapeutic Humor.
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332 Amy Carrell
Introduction
Apple knew why they invested in this feature based on speech recognition,
a classic NLP field: First and foremost, it gave their system a human touch,
because when humans interact, they use humor for a variety of important
functions. Second, humor is a more narrowly and easily circumscribable
function than human language use at large, thus providing a more tractable
engineering task: Teach the computer to create humor and it will be a step
towards teaching it language use in general, and a step towards full language-
based human-computer interaction. Finally, an additional benefit of study-
ing computational humor can be reaped for those interested in humor, as it
requires formalization of humor’s key components in order to make them
334 Christian F. Hempelmann
p alatable to the dumb machine: Teach the computer to create humor and it
will be a step towards our understanding of humor.
Computational linguistics
ordplay as the most frequent type of humor used in humor generation. Fi-
w
nally, I will briefly propose an improved system based on ontological seman-
tics and integrated into a full natural language generation system.
The rationale for and usefulness of the introduction of humor into NLP in
general and into human–computer interface (HCI) design in particular has
been argued for by Binsted (1995), Mulder and Nijholt (2002: 15–16), Nij
holt (2002: 102), Raskin (1996: 12–14), Raskin (2002: 33–34), Raskin and
Attardo (1994), and Stock and Strapparava (2002).
Binsted claims that humor can help “make clarification queries [...] less
repetitive, statements of ignorance more acceptable, and error messages less
patronising” (Binsted 1995: n.p.), and, overall, make a computational agent
seem more human. General ‘humanization’ of NL interfaces through adding
humor capabilities to the computer side have been identified as the main field
of application for computational humor. Morkes et al. show that users consid-
er computer systems with humor “more likable and competent” (1999: 215),
which leads to an enhancement of customer acceptance for such systems,
for example in information assurance and security systems (Raskin 2002:
33–34).
At a more general theoretical level, emotive – or affective – computing
integrates theories of emotion into models of embodied computational agents
(ECAs; Cassell et al. 2000, Luck et al. 2004) that interact with humans (Nij-
holt 2002, Nijholt et al. 2003, Nijholt 2005). Humor not only covers specific
stimulus properties that are discussed in the majority of this chapter on the
basis of linguistic theory (see also chapter 3). It also covers a range of emo-
tional responses to such stimuli, as well as states and traits usually described
with the concept of “sense of humor” (cf. chapter 2, Ruch 1998) that fall
into the purview of psychological theories. Several research groups provide
their HCI programs with such emotive components, aimed at both detecting
emotions in human users and expressing emotions in a theory-based fashion
in their computational interfaces. These interfaces started purely text-based
in the good old ELIZA4 fashion, added spoken output and/or input, gave the
agent a face, and, finally, full embodiment. Again the general rationale is to
help computers interact with humans in a fashion resembling that of humans
interacting with humans, namely through these anthropomorphic agents that
are now given humorous capabilities.
Computational humor: Beyond the pun? 337
(3) Q: What do you get when you cross breakfast food with a murderer?
A: A cereal killer.
scientists with little expertise or interest in either NLP or humor research, was
a totally unexpected and unintended effect.
Specific purposes for humor in HCI have been addressed by McDonough’s
(2001) system for easier memorization of random passwords by associating
them with a funny jingle. The main problem with passwords is that users
want passwords that are easy to remember, and passwords that are easy to
remember are easy to guess by people other than their owners, also known as
‘the bad guys.’ Passwords that are existing words or names in any language
can easily be remembered, but also be cracked by simply trying all words
from a machine-readable dictionary or by going through a list of names.
McDonough argues that in order for users to accept the safer passwords, like
WDhpuD53, these should be made easier to remember. His method for that
hinges on the assumption that humor facilitates memory and transforms pass-
words by assigning to each letter and number words that form a syntactical-
ly well-formed and funny jingle. For example, the password “WDhpuD53”
might result in the mnemonic sentence, “Walesa Desired heston’s pole, while
ulster Doubted FISCHER’s TEST.”7 Humor is attempted to be in the system
based on contrasting, potentially incongruous, verb classes, one being posi-
tive and one negative, and the use of politicians’ names.
Another system loosely based on the SSTH and designed towards an im-
plementation is the HAHAcronym generator (Stock and Strapparava 2002).
Using WordNet8 Domains, like Medicine or Linguistics, antonymy relations
between the Domains, like Religion vs. Technology, as well as some several
other supporting resources, they create funny interpretations for acronyms:
MIT becomes “Mythical Institute of Theology.” Typically, WordNet is aug-
mented for this project to the degree that its own contribution to the system
becomes marginal, while the domain and antonymy relations created for HA-
HAcronym are the crucial components.
Exploring largely the phonological component of a pun generation sys-
tem, Hempelmann (2003) presents a formalized model for the complex phe-
nomenon of punning, and heterophonic punning, at all levels of linguistic
and humor-theoretical relevance. It started from the assumption of Optimal-
ity Theory (OT), but discards it largely in the process of setting up its own
system, capturing the phonological component with a classic edit-distance
model. The phonological analysis of possible puns for a given target – in most
circumstances, “dime” can pun on the target “damn,” but not on the target
“dune” – is automatized and refined as part of a generator. This method to
evaluate and select phonologically possible and better imperfect puns can thus
be integrated into larger natural language processing projects as a module to
340 Christian F. Hempelmann
were violent.” Were the cops or the demonstrators violent? The problem they
focus on is the distinction between humorous and non-humorous instances
of anaphoric ambiguity. They based this distinction on the SSTH and find
possible antecedents that are in a relation of opposition using the Concept-
Net database. Here “demonstrators” are linked to the concept “rowdy” which
is marked as an antonym to “orderly,” which in turn is a property of “cop.”
While this is a theory-based scalable system, it suffers from low performance
because it uses low-performing external components for anaphora resolution
and concept analysis.
Finally, while it is not computational humor in the sense discussed here,
JESTER (Gupta and Goldberg. 1999), the application of the collaborative fil-
tering system, EIGENTASTE (Goldberg et al. 2001), to humor should briefly
be mentioned. Here, humor serves as a field of application for an algorithm
that establishes preferences of users on the basis of their ratings of jokes from
a large database and the ratings of previous users (see http://shadow.ieor.
berkeley.edu/humor/). For real results relevant to humor researchers, the ac-
cumulated data of the project should provide a gold mine, both for work on
stimulus properties and on responses in relation to humor as trait dimensions.
In almost all these applications introduced so far, humor was realized through
verbal play, in particular punning. In verbal play, a text surface element car-
ries the humor-relevant elements (not a logical, implied, etc., element). Puns
are assumed to represent jokes and humor prototypically and provide a field
of application for all subdisciplines of linguistics and are apparently a con-
veniently simple type to provide a paradigm analysis for humorous texts. But
for puns as well, meaningful research is only possible with a sophisticated
model, such as the one of the GTVH (see chapter 3), not least because puns
are a very condensed type of textual humor. That is, while they have all neces-
sary elements for a text to be funny – after all they’re considered humorous –
these elements are carried by few textual units. So the seeming advantage can
easily become a disadvantage, because many essential elements and mechan-
isms overlap in punning and are prone to be confused.
Let’s highlight the relevant issues right away: The parts of the model most
crucial for the present discussion are the two knowledge resources highest in
the hierarchy of the GTVH, namely script opposition (SO) and logical mech-
anism (LM), maybe more appropriately called pseudo-logical mechanisms,
342 Christian F. Hempelmann
since it is often not logical at all. In the following discussion, punning will
be explained mainly in terms of these two parameters, which, in turn, will
receive a more exact definition.
One central and controversial assumption of the GTVH is that the LM
can be conceptualized as a function of SO. I intend to show how this is in-
deed fruitful for puns, and very possibly for humorous texts in general. For
this purpose it needs to be emphasized that the main hypothesis of the SSTH
about SO encompasses both script overlap (SOv) and script oppositeness
(SOp) as the necessary and sufficient requirement for a text to be a joke (cf.
Raskin 1985: 99). But when the theory is quoted, exclusive attention is usu-
ally paid to script opposition, while overlap is, at the most, quietly under-
stood to be involved. This dangerously shifted focus away from SOp, to the
degree that it can easily be overlooked. According to the SSTH, the text itself
must contain overlap, as part of it is compatible with both scripts, that is,
they “coexist.” And in the GTHV, the LM is the (optional) function that play-
fully motivates this overlap, in the words of Attardo and Raskin (1991: 309):
“SSTH would view them [LMs] essentially as a mere implementation of the
script opposition,” or, more pointedly, “we can treat LM as the tool for SO”
(1991: 324).
In puns, SOv includes the punning word that triggers the LM, the dynamic
cognitive process (cf. Attardo 1997: 409), which, in turn, playfully resolves
the SOp. This, I claim here, is the sense in which the LM is the tool of the SO
in puns, verbal humor in general, and possibly other humorous text.
On the basis of this brief outline, let us now turn to the analysis of pun-
ning, where the crucial part of SOv is realized in an easily identifiable elem-
ent of the text and for which the LM will be outlined and found to be less
straightforward than usually assumed. The particular focus is on imperfect
puns, where the relevant issues are more apparent than in perfect puns.
Imperfect puns
(6) A target and its pun cannot be arbitrarily different in sound because
their similarity has two functions, namely
a. the phonological support for recovering the target from the pun,
and
b. representing a crucial part of the overlap (SOv) that also plays
a role in the LM of cratylistic logic (see (9) below).
(8) For puns to be humorous texts, puns must have script opposition
(SOp), such that the pun is compatible with one script that is in an
opposition relation to the other compatible with – and often triggered
by – the target.
On the basis of the discussion in the previous sections, we are now in a pos-
ition to reconsider the feebleness – and often plain non-humorousness – of
what is called a “bad pun” in general non-technical use. This application will
serve to illustrate and clarify the relation of SO and LM, in particular SOv and
LM (see also Attardo et al. 2002), as well as the difference between verbal
and referential humor.
Raskin claims that the script overlap of these bad jokes is triggered by the
quasi-ambiguity based “on purely phonetical and not semantical relations
between words” (1985: 116). I agree that in bad puns – in German called Ka-
lauer, and in French calembour – the incongruity (SOp) is achieved through
the phonological overlap in the text (SOv). Yet, crucially, this sound simi-
larity alone cannot create the LM required by non-absurd, non-nonsensical
humor, so that a text lacking the playful resolution of the SOp created by
the LM will be mere wordplay rather than humor. In short, the phonologic-
al overlap in punning (part of the SOv) can initiate the cratylistic reasoning
(LM), but without the appropriate constellation (SOp), no scripts that may be
overlapping can be identified, so that the text remains too weak to constitute
a joke, as in the following example:
The only SOp that this text could be conceived of carrying is that of a meta-
joke (cf. Attardo 2001), not local antonymy of cantaloupe and the inability
to elope can be found.
In sum, if a pun in a text is too different in sound from the target to fulfill
function (6a), the punning joke fails completely, no humor is created, the
text is not a joke, and, if the attempt to joke has been detected, the teller will
probably be prompted to supply additional explanations to make the target
recoverable. But if the pun and target are sufficiently similar in sound for the
latter to be recovered, the text may be perceived as a joke. But more crucially,
two scripts triggered by the pun-target pair (SOv) may still lack opposition,
so that the SOp requirement (8) is not fulfilled, and the cratylistic analogy
will not function.
Accordingly, in humorous punning, in addition to the overlap in sound
of the pun-target segment, there needs to be semantic opposition, if of the
feeblest kind imaginable, to support the cratylistic LM. Otherwise the pun-
ning text will not be a joke. For those who fail to see the overlap, it indeed
isn’t a joke, but merely wordplay.12 And given that humans are desperately
good disambiguators with vast semantic networks available to them, as well
as excellent pragmatic interpreters, we seek any kind of semantic overlap to
be able to handle the phonological (quasi-)ambiguity as humor, even if mere
wordplay was intended. What adds to the confusion is that non-humorous
wordplay, like rhyming, can be enjoyed aesthetically, and this enjoyment can
be confused with the enjoyment derived from humor.
In sum, punning includes “word play,” but play with words cannot work
at the sound level alone as mere “Klangspiel” (play with sounds), if it strives
to be humor as well. But it must be accompanied by “Sinnspiel” (play with
meaning; cf. Hausmann 1974: 20) in order for the pun’s weak cratylistic LM
to support the opposite overlapping script constellation that would make it
a joke. The near failure of this latter requirement, that is, the belief on the part
of a joker that he or she can get away with pure “Klangspiel” is what earns
bad puns a pariah status in the family of jokes.
Summary
This section has presented a formal model for the complex phenomenon of
punning, in particular imperfect punning, on all levels of linguistic and humor-
theoretical relevance for the discussion of script opposition, script overlap,
logical mechanism, and, on that basis, the distinction of verbal and referen-
Computational humor: Beyond the pun? 347
tial humor. I hope to have been able to show that the punning LM, employed
for its seeming simplicity in most approaches to computational humor, is not
as simple as is often assumed. This holds, in particular, for its relation to the
crucial requirements of the script overlap and opposition. While my task was
relatively straightforward for puns, I hope it can be a start for extrapolation
of the results for other types of verbal humor, which will thus become usable
in computational humor, because we have formalized our understanding of
them on a theoretical basis.
Ontological semantics
In this last section, I will outline a semantic approach to NLP, already in-
tegrated into humor research in its first large application, fully taking the
use of punning in computational humor to the next level, that of meaning.
Meaning has a sad history of having scared researchers in NLP into declar-
ing it an impossibly difficult problem. A major problem, first pointed out
by Bar-Hillel (1960) in his assessment of the first generation of machine-
translation systems, is that humans use their massive knowledge of how the
world works, when they make sense of language, and machines don’t have
such knowledge. The two clauses in example (11) make no sense, unless we
know at least the following: that for humans to go bowling means that they
have to rent shoes and shoes are what humans wear on their feet and feet is
also where fungal diseases can take a foothold and such pedal fungal diseases
can be transmitted through shared footwear.
Humans also use their knowledge of the specific circumstances under which
language is used, who is talking to whom, what knowledge they share, what
has been talked about just before, etc. But the main resource that a machine
lacks for understanding natural language is a model of the world. Such
a model is called an ontology, and to formalize all that knowledge as it is
used in language is indeed a daring task.
Ontological semantics, the continuation of script-based semantics, the
theory Raskin illustrated by applying it to humor in the SSTH (1985), has
accepted that challenge. Developed from the early 1980s as a school of
348 Christian F. Hempelmann
direction. The rationale is still “that only the most complex linguistic struc-
tures can serve any formal and/or computational treatment of humor well”
(Raskin 1996: 17). Toy systems don’t produce useful output.
(12) request-info-1
agent value human-1
gender value male
has-social-role value patient
beneficiary value human-2
gender value female
age value <.5
attraction-attribute value >.5
marital-status value married
beneficiary value human-3
theme value location-of
theme value human-3
gender value male
Figure 1. Joke sample and main hypothesis (cf. Raskin 1985)
350 Christian F. Hempelmann
deny-1
agent value human-2
beneficiary value human-1
theme value location-of
theme value human-3
time-begin > request-info-1.time-end
time-end < invite-1.time-begin
invite-1
agent value human-2
beneficiary value human-1
location value dwelling-1
owned-by value set-1
time-begin > deny-1.time-end
time-end unknown
set-1
element-type human
elements (human-2, human-3)
(13) examine
agent doctor
beneficiary patient
Thus, the first half of the joke, the setup, puts forward a doctor script, speci-
fying the typical events and objects involved in the training and career of
a medical professional, while the second part, the punchline, disconfirms it.
Computational humor: Beyond the pun? 351
This will alert the system to the need to search for an alternative script that
will, like the first script, embrace part of the text and will have some compati-
bility with the other part. The second script will be adultery given in (14):
(14) adultery
is-a value sex-event
agent value set-1
has-parts value sex-event
agent value human-1
marital-status value married
beneficiary not human-2
human-2
marital-status value unmarried
married
beneficiary not human-1
set-1
element-type value human
elements value (human-1, human-2)
which includes the subscript sex, and a sex/no-sex opposition will be re-
corded.
This opposition is recognized as part of the set of oppositions with humor-
ous potential, first proposed by Raskin as the “few binary categories which
are essential to human life” (1985: 113f, see (15)) and included into the ontol-
ogy as relations under the property grouping:
As we have shown above, the two central elements of a joke are the script
opposition (SO) and the related logical mechanism (LM), masking the tenu-
ousness of the necessary script overlap’s false logic (Hempelmann 2004b,
Hempelmann and Attardo, forthcoming). To generate a text with these neces-
sary and sufficient qualities for it to be a joke, we have to describe how those
two elements are arrived at by the computational humor system in the way
described above.
The script-switch trigger in our example of an imperfect pun is “friar”
and the similar sounding target “fire.” Beyond the sound similarity of these
two, the recovery of the target is, of course, aided by the proverb “out of the
frying pan, into the fire.” The identification of this similarity will be the task
of a phonological component (“Ynperfect Pun Selector,” YPS) described in
(Hempelmann 2004a). The SO of this text is that between one script monas-
tery involving the concept monk that is selected as a in a high-stature – low
stature (religion – no religion) relation to the other script food-preparation,
including the concept fire.
If we assume the system has detected the target word “fire” in an input text
produced by a human, it is able to produce the output in example (16). Fol-
lowing the outlined mechanism it will have to work as shown in Figure 2.
First, the target “fire” will be identified as the lexical entry fire that is
mapped onto the concept labeled fire. Among other scripts, fire will be
found to be part of the script food-preparation, or, more specifically, one
of its possible instruments. From its set of humorous oppositeness rela-
tions, the system will choose, inter alia, high/low stature for which it finds
that food-preparation is in this relation to monastery, a relation that both
concepts have inherited from parent nodes. For the latter the system will se-
lect all its slot-filler concepts, including pray, monk, preach.
As the final task for the ontological semantic component of the system,
all words in the lexicon of the target language are mapped onto all the con-
cepts of all scripts that have to be marked to be in one of the relations de-
scribed in the previous section. This is the candidate set P that is passed on to
the phonological module. This will now evaluate the sound similarity of the
Computational humor: Beyond the pun? 353
Figure 2. Flow chart for pun generation based on ontological semantics
Summary
This section showed how ontological semantics computes TMRs, full and
close to human understanding. This understanding is directly usable in humor
comprehension. Independently of computational humor, ontological seman-
tics has moved to keeping tab of effects and goals as well as to the use of
complex events, or scripts. Detecting a script opposition is also necessary for
various other current implementations, including semantic forensics (Raskin
et al. 2004). So, just as the SSTH predicted back in 1985, the only uniquely
humor-related extension of ontological semantics is the addition of a tiny new
resource – the list of standard script oppositions. Further improvements of
generative and analytical power will be achieved by integrating the current
research on the more complex issue of LMs besides the straightforward cra-
tylistic analogy of punning described here.
354 Christian F. Hempelmann
Conclusion
fered from this when it was approached with these methods. But as a young
field, computational humor is not yet dominated by this parochial approach to
NLP. It is thus at liberty to become a rich field for the application of theories
from all disciplines that contribute to humor research, including meaning-
based NLP. After all, humor is very meaningful.
Notes
1. Part of this chapter is based on earlier work by the author as well as joint work
with Katrina E. Triezenberg and Victor Raskin.
2. “Scalability” is an important issue in software design: Solutions need to be de-
signed in such a way that they do apply to an instance of the problem at hand, but
also to other types of that issue, as well as to the general issue of which the prob-
lem may be an instance. To ensure this, the larger issue must be understood and
the solution designed on the basis of a theory that accounts for that larger issue.
For example, if I need to design and build a retrofitted exhaust control system
for a Ford Galaxie 500, it would make economic sense to make it work on other
vintage cars as well. And to do that I need a theory of car engines in general, and
one of vintage car exhaust systems embedded into that larger theory.
3. This distinction between competence and performance is central in linguistic
theories and should not be confused with non-technical use of the terms or the
use of the terms in other disciplines (see ch. 3). This focus on a specific type
of application of theories makes this chapter strongly connected to many of the
other fields contributing to humor research and brought together in this book, but
in particular those on the linguistics (ch. 3) and the psychology of humor (ch. 2).
References to these chapters will be given where appropriate.
4. ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966) is a simple program that imitates dialogue behav-
ior through analysis of user input and reaction to that input based on templates,
as well as part of the input where possible. Written in 1966 by Weizenbaum to
emulate a psychoanalyst, a typical dialogue looks like this:
Eliza: Let’s talk. My name’s Eliza. Tell me about yourself.
Guest: I’m a computational linguist.
Eliza: Do you believe it’s OK to be a computational linguist?
Guest: No, my work will accelerate the destruction of the human race.
Eliza: Why not?
Guest: I just told you.
Eliza: Are you sure I?
Guest: Very much so.
Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?
Guest: Have you seen the movie “Terminator”?
Eliza: Let’s talk about me some other time. I’d rather hear about you.
356 Christian F. Hempelmann
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358 Christian F. Hempelmann
1. Introduction
Superiority theory, relief theory, and incongruity are usually described as the
three “classical” approaches to humor and laughter. These approaches pre-
date academic disciplinary specialization, so most of the classical formula-
tions are subsumed today under the heading of philosophy (Morreall 1983;
1987). The earliest sociologist who discussed humor was the British philoso-
pher/sociologist/political theorist Herbert Spencer. His discussion of laugh-
ter can be placed in the tradition of relief theory: laughter, to Spencer, is “the
discharge of arrested feelings into the muscular system . . . in the absence of
other adequate channels.” (Spencer 1861/1987: 108–109) However, Spencer
connected this energy release with the experience of incongruity: “laughter
naturally results only when consciousness is unawares transferred from great
things to small – only when there is what we may call a descending incon-
gruity.” (ibid. 110, italics in original) The discharge of tension is still one of
the main functions humor is believed to fulfill, and as such the relief theory
has had great influence on modern humor scholarship, mostly via the work of
Sigmund Freud (1905/1976). However, “pure” relief theorists, explaining all
humor and laughter as release of tension or “safety valve”, cannot be found
anymore in humor scholarship these days.
Of the three “classical” approaches, superiority theory is the most obvi-
ously connected with social relations. This tradition can be traced back to
The sociology of humor 363
Plato and Aristotle, and has most famously been formulated by Thomas Hob-
bes: “Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden
conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity
of others, or with our own formerly.” (Hobbes 1650/1987: 20) Superiority
theorists state that humor and laughter are expressions of superiority, which
of course reflects a social relationship. However, on close consideration the
classical theorists describe superiority as an individual experience: the com-
municative or relational aspect of the joking and laughing is generally not
examined in these theories. In other words: while addressing a social event,
superiority theories of humor are not very sociological. As will become clear
in this article, the relation between humor and superiority – although referred
to in other terms, such as power, conflict, or hierarchy – is still central to so-
cial scientific studies of humor.
Incongruity theory – the theory that states that all humor is based on the
perception or recognition of incongruity – is not as obviously related to socio-
logical questions, since it is mainly concerned with the nature of humorous
texts or other stimuli, or with the mental operations involved in processing
these texts. However, as incongruity theory, in several varieties (Attardo and
Raskin 1991; Oring 1992; 2003; Raskin 1985; Ruch 1998), became the dom-
inant perspective in humor scholarship, it has been incorporated in socio-
logical thought in various waysì
The first full-fledged theory of humor was developed by Sigmund Freud.
In his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905) he integrated
elements of relief and incongruity theory, and combined them with his psy-
choanalytic theory. While Freud’s theories on humor (and other topics) are
much disputed, he was the first to systematically address what I have called
here sociological questions about humor, and his influence on the sociology
of humor has been immense. Without attempting to explain Freud’s entire
humor theory (see Martin 2006: 33–42; Palmer 1994: 79–92), let me note
two important themes. First, Freud discussed the importance of social rela-
tionships between the teller of the joke, his audience, and (when applicable)
the butt of the joke. In other words: he introduced the social relationship into
the analysis of humor. Second, Freud paid attention to the relationship be-
tween humor and – socially constructed – taboos. Jokes, according to Freud,
were a way to avoid the “censor”, or the internalized social restrictions, thus
enabling the expression (and enjoyment) of drives otherwise inhibited by
society. To Freud, these forbidden drives were mostly sex and aggression.
Freud’s theory has been strongly criticized, especially for the claim that all
humor in the end is based on sex and aggression, although, in all fairness,
364 Giselinde Kuipers
Freud is more nuanced about this in his discussion of actual jokes than in
the general statement of his theory. Another main point of criticism is the
unfalsifiability of Freud’s theory: the references to underlying drives are, by
necessity, “veiled” and therefore hard to disprove. However, the notion of
jokes as related to, and attempting to circumvent, social taboos has become
very central to humor scholarship.1
The other early theorist of humor with sociological insight was Henri
Bergson. Like Freud’s theory, Bergson’s Laughter (1900/1999) contains
a number of rather untenable and untestable generalizations (for instance,
that all laughter is a response to “something mechanical encrusted on the
living”), alongside insightful contributions. For sociologists, his most rele-
vant observations have to do with the social character of laughter. Bergson
described humor and laughter as essentially social and shared. Laughing at
someone, on the other hand, functions as a means of exclusion, and hence as
a social corrective and form of social control.
After Freud and Bergson, the various disciplines of humor studies branched
out, and in the course of the twentieth century, a number of approaches
emerged that are more or less specific to the social sciences: the functional-
ist approach; the conflict approach; the symbolic interactionist approach; the
phenomenological approach; and the comparative-historical approach.
to the social order: social cohesion. In the more egalitarian and less formally
structured life of the ward’s patients, humor served to create solidarity, share
experiences, and build an identity within the group. This cohesive function
may seem at odds with the hierarchy-maintaining function. However, hier-
archical groups need cohesion too. Joking apparently manages, more than
most other forms of communication, to combine the seemingly contradic-
tory functions of hierarchy-building and bringing about solidarity (e.g. at
work, in the military, cf. Koller 1988: 233–260). Moreover, Coser describes
the use of humor in two very different contexts: a formally structured situ-
ation among people who know each other versus a more disorganized and
egalitarian situation, which is likely to affect the functions humor can, and
needs to, fulfill.
In her article on the cohesive functions of laughter, Coser wrote that
“to laugh, or to occasion laughter through humor and wit, is to invite those
present to come closer. Laughter and humor are indeed like an invitation,
be it an invitation for dinner, or an invitation to start a conversation: it aims
at decreasing social distance.” (Coser 1959: 172) One of the reasons for hu-
mor’s cohesive function is that a joke is “an invitation” the acceptance of
which is immediately apparent: a laugh or a smile. There are very few forms
of interaction that are connected as closely with social acceptance and ap-
proval as laughter (Provine 2000). Also, collective joking takes people out-
side of everyday life into a more playful “non-serious” atmosphere, creating
what the anthropologist Victor Turner called communitas (Fine 1983).
Hence, humor not only is a sign of closeness among friends, it is also an
effective way of forging social bonds, even in situations not very conducive
to closeness: it “breaks the ice” between strangers, unites people in different
hierarchical positions, and creates a sense of shared “conspiracy” in the con-
text of illicit activities like gossiping or joking about superiors. The flip side
of this inclusive function of humor is exclusion. Those who do not join in the
laughter, because they do not get the joke, or even worse, because the joke
targets them, will feel left out, shamed, or ridiculed. The excluding function
of humor is often mentioned as the basis for the corrective function described
above (Powell 1988; Billig 2005)
What these three functions – relief, control, cohesion – have in common is
their focus on humor and joking as contribution to the maintenance of social
order. The insistence that all social phenomena maintain the social structure
has become the focus of much criticism leveled at the (structural-) function-
alism of the 1950s and 1960s: it makes functionalist explanations circular
and basically untestable. Social phenomena do not necessarily have the same
The sociology of humor 367
function for all concerned, and they may well be dysfunctional, at least from
some people’s perspective.
Despite the demise of functionalism as a theoretical framework after
the 1960s, functionalist explanations of humor still are common in humor
studies. Since the 1970s, sociologists have not employed functionalism as
a complete theory or comprehensive framework, but instead have attempted
to combine functional analysis of humor with analysis of content and context.
Humor obviously fulfills important social functions, but more recent studies
tend to stress the multiple functions of humor, which can be a threat as well
as a contribution to the social order: cohesion, control, relief, but also the
expression of conflict, inciting resistance, insulting, ridiculing or satirizing
others (Holmes 2000; Martin 2006; Mulkay 1988; Palmer 1994).
Martineau (1972), in an early attempt to move away from one-dimension-
al functionalism, constructed a model connecting the functions of humor with
specific social relations. He distinguished esteeming and disparaging jokes,
within and outside a group, targeting people within or outside the group.
Depending on the conditions, he expected humor to solidify social bonds,
demoralize, increase internal or external hostility, foster consensus or rede-
fine relationships. Powell and Paton (1988) edited a volume concentrating
mainly on the complex interplay between resistance and control functions of
humor, summarized under the heading of “tension management”, but illus-
trating a variety of other, positive and negative, functions along the way.
The functions humor fulfills can be psychological as well as social. Black
or sick humor, for instance in disaster jokes, has often been explained as a way
to cope with unpleasant experiences, both individually and collectively, and
more generally to distance oneself from negative emotions such as fear, grief,
or shame (Dundes 1987; Morrow 1987. For a critique, see Oring 1987). So-
ciologist Peter Berger (1997) stressed the psychological effects of humor,
describing (some forms of) humor as consolation, liberation, and transcend-
ence. Thomas Scheff described humor and laughter as catharsis (Scheff 1980)
and “anti-shame” (1990). As in the social functions stressed by humor schol-
ars, psychological functions ascribed to humor tend to be beneficial. Scholars
focusing on the “dark” side of humor will be discussed below.
Robinson and Smith-Lovin (2001), in an excellent recent paper, attempted
to test functionalist explanations by looking at the use of various types of
humor in task-oriented groups in slightly differing social constellations. They
discern four main social functions of humor: meaning making (derived from
the symbolic interactionist perspective described below), hierarchy building,
cohesion building, and tension relief. In their study, which looked at groups
368 Giselinde Kuipers
anger. . . they are not sure of themselves, no matter how much they display
their might on the surface” (Obrdlik 1942: 716). Thus, humor has positive re-
inforcing functions for the ingroup, but in the context of intergroup relations
humor was more like a weapon: an expression of aggression and resistance.
The jokes described by Obrdlik are reminiscent of political humor in many
oppressive regimes, such as the Nazi regime (Stokker 1995) or the former
Communist regimes (Benton 1988; Davies 2007). Typically, the direct voic-
ing of dissent in such regimes is impossible or very dangerous, and even
joking may be a risky enterprise, as was memorably (though unscholarly) de-
scribed in Czech novelist Milan Kundera’s The Joke (1967). While this form
of humor is clearly correlated with conflict and antagonism, there has been
considerable disagreement about the effects of such humor. Humor in repres-
sive circumstances is usually clandestine – they were called Flüsterwitze or
“whispered jokes” in Nazi Germany (Speier 1998). This would imply that
the internal “morale-boosting” functions are more important than the effects
on the powerful “outgroup” that the jokes target. Because such humor “from
below” remains backstage or anonymous, many humor scholars conclude
that the effects of such humor are relatively marginal.
The 1988 collection of Powell and Paton on humor as “resistance and con-
trol” is organized around the interplay of these resistance and control func-
tions of humor. Most of the authors in this volume adhere to some version
of the conflict theory of humor, focusing on conflictive or unequal situations
that range from political humor under Communist rule to the much less dra-
matic example of humor in the workplace. Generally, the authors conclude
that the control function is the more important, and that resistance through
joking provides mostly temporary relief but stabilizes potentially conflictive
situations. As Benton states in his contribution on jokes under communist
rule: “… the political joke will change nothing. It’s the relentless enemy of
greed, injustice, cruelty and oppression – but it could never do without them.
It is not a form of active resistance. It reflects no political programme. It will
mobilize no one. Like the Jewish joke in its time, it is important for keeping
society sane and stable. It cushions the blows of cruel governments and cre-
ates sweet illusions. . . . its impact is as fleeting as the laughter it produces.”
(Benton 1988: 54). Or, as Speier (1998: 1395) succinctly put it: “Accommo-
dation, however much one peppers it with scorn, remains accommodation.”
However, other authors have more faith in the subversive potential of
humor, and have argued that such “weapons of the weak” (Scott 1985) may
be important in making people reflect critically on their situation, allow them
to express hostility against those in power, create an alternative space of
370 Giselinde Kuipers
r esistance, or even give people the courage to take up more concrete actions
(Gouin 2004; Hiller 1983; Jenkins 1994; Stokker 1995). Goldstein, in her
provocative ethnography of poor women in a Brazilian shantytown, which
she organized around the subjects and places of these women’s laughter, ar-
gued that “While the humor of the poor may not necessarily lead directly to
rebellions and political revolutions, it does open up a discursive space within
which is becomes possible to speak about matters that are otherwise natural-
ized, unquestioned, or silenced.” (Goldstein 2003: 10).
This debate on the subversive or conservative nature of humor is partly
the result of underlying theoretical disagreements that cannot be resolved
by empirical considerations. However, the dynamics of humor in conditions
of conflict, and hence humor’s revolutionary potential, strongly depends on
the power division and status relations between jokers and their targets. To
illustrate this using the case of political humor: in very repressive or unequal
conditions, the humor of those without power tends to be clandestine and
relatively toothless. “Downward” humor by those in power in such situations
easily becomes aggressive to the point of cruel. A recent example, described
by Paul Lewis (2006) is the cruel joking by American prison guards in Bagh-
dad. Such humor by the mighty has received relatively little scholarly atten-
tion, but as Speier remarked in his essay on “wit and politics”: “Jests ‘from
above’, from those of higher status, rather than those ‘from below’, that is,
jokes born of triumph instead of resistance, may be the prototypical political
jokes.” (Speier 1998: 1353).
In more open societies and conditions power differences tend to be less
marked, and the dynamics of humor and conflict is quite different: there are
fewer restrictions on humor, and joking is more likely to transcend bound-
aries or mobilize people. Open societies generally have a wide range of in-
stitutions, persons, genres and publications devoted (in part) to satire and
political humor (Lockyer 2006; Shiffman, Coleman and Ward 2007; Spei-
er 1998). Such institutionalized humorous genres are “free spaces” where
those in power can be mocked and ridiculed: within their assigned spaces
and clear limitations, much is allowed, and politics can be criticized or ad-
dressed quite clearly (Palmer 2005). On the other hand, political humor in
the private sphere tends to have much less of an edge than political humor in
repressive regimes – a familiar complaint in former Communist countries is
that, while everything else has become better, humor has worsened since the
“fall of the Wall”.
In open societies, the morale-boosting and resistance functions of pol-
itical humor can be played out more openly. Many political organizations,
The sociology of humor 371
After Burma, there have been many studies in which corpora of ethnic
jokes, the repertoire of comedians, or other “standardized” forms of humor
were linked with ethnic conflict, hostility, or some other problematic social
relationship (Draitser 1998; Dundes 1987; Dundes and Hauschild 1983; Gun-
delach 2000; Kuipers 2000; Oshima 2000). Generally, these studies attempt
to link the existence of ethnic humor, as well as the particular “ethnic scripts”
(Raskin 1985) about these groups to the – conflictive or strained – relation-
ship between joke-tellers and their targets. However, not all cases are as obvi-
ously related to conflict and inequality as the jokes described by Burma. As
Davies (1990, 1993, 2002) has pointed out, there are many ethnic joke cycles
that are not related to conflict or hostility, whereas there are other very con-
flictive relationships that are not reflected in jokes. Moreover, there are sev-
eral reported cases of groups who very often joke about themselves, the most
famous example of course being Jewish humor. This complicates the notion
that ethnic humor is necessarily the result of inter-ethnic conflict or hostility.
Another approach to the relationship between ethnic humor and ethnic
conflict is by looking at people’s appreciation of ethnic humor, and the way
this is related to their ethnic background or their opinion of the ethnic group
targeted. Middleton (1959) found that, while (as expected) Blacks have higher
appreciation of anti-White jokes than Whites, these groups didn’t differ sig-
nificantly in their appreciation of jokes targeting Blacks. This led him to con-
clude that identification with a superior group (or the social order as a whole)
is more important than ethnic affiliation in the appreciation of humor. A line
of research inspired by Middleton’s findings explores the role between the
appreciation of ethnic humor and identification. The studies conducted by
LaFave (1972) show that people tend to appreciate jokes more when they
target a group that people do not identify with. Such “identification classes”
do not have to correspond to one’s own background, and especially low sta-
tus groups may prefer jokes targeting their own group. For instance, some
studies have reported that women prefer jokes targeting women to jokes tar-
geting men, or that ethnic minorities tend to prefer jokes targeting their own
group to jokes targeting the dominant ethnic group (LaFave, Haddad and
Marshall 1974; Nevo 1985). In a related line of research, Zillmann (1983;
Zillmann and Stocking 1976) explored “disparagement humor”, concluding
that people generally most enjoy humor that disparages groups they dislike or
do not identify with. However, the conclusion that people like jokes more in
the context of conflict or hostility does not mean that humor is conflict or hos-
tility. After all, the same studies also show that people can very well like jokes
that target groups they like and identify with (just maybe not as much).
The sociology of humor 373
something in jest usually have more freedom to transgress norms and bring
up taboo topics (something also noted in functionalist analyses of humor).
Emerson (1969) analyzed how this shift to joking and the consequent free-
dom to transgress norms is accepted, or challenged. She described this pro-
cess as “negotiating the serious import of humor.”
Goffman (1974) used the notion of “framing” to describe this process of
shifting from one type of interactional logic to another. Humor is one of the
most common forms of framing used in everyday conversation. A humorous
“frame” redefines everything someone says: it is not supposed to be taken
“seriously” anymore. As many conversation analysts have shown, this shift
to serious conversation if often marked by laughter, which often occurs at the
beginning of a humorous utterance. Similarly, listeners may laugh as a sign
of acceptance of this shift of frames (Jefferson 1979; Sachs 1974). This per-
spective has made laughter a central theme in sociological humor studies, not
only as an automatic response to a humorous stimulus, but as a form of com-
munication on its own. Recently, Hay (2001), a sociolinguist, has given a so-
phisticated account of this process, describing it as the garnering of “humor
support” in the course of social interaction.
Symbolic interactionist studies have not only looked at the negotiating,
but also at the conversational effects and uses of this ambiguity or “non-
seriousness” of humor. Humor and joking are important in negotiations over
the meaning of things: the construction of norms, the debate about what is
“going on” in a particular situation (Robinson and Smith-Lovin 2001). As
Emerson noted, humor is used to bring up themes and topics that are taboo;
or to “feel out” other persons (Mulkay 1988). Both Sachs (1974) and Fine
(1983; 1984) noted how among teenagers humor is employed to bring up sex-
ual topics, and can get to function as some sort of test of sexual knowledge.
Among adults, too, sexual humor is very common in flirtation, which also is
a form of “testing” (Fine 1983; Walle 1976). Humor always provides a way
out: both the joker and the audience can ignore any potential serious import
of the joke. Similarly, humor can also be used to bring up and negotiate the
meaning of a wide variety of other possibly sensitive topics, such as political
opinions, money matters, or complaints about bosses or colleagues (Paton
and Filby 1988).
Moreover, conversational joking plays a role in the construction of social
relationships. Fine (1983) described how humor can be used to create and
define a “group culture” – not only by providing social solidarity in the func-
tionalist sense, but by the use of ingroup humor, repeat jokes, and specific
humorous styles and tastes that literally get to define a group, and be used to
The sociology of humor 375
demarcate its identity. However, this creation of a group culture also provides
a strong outside boundary: humor includes and excludes at the same time.
Many micro-interactionist studies have highlighted the ambiguous role of
humor in social relationships (Holmes 2000; Kothoff 2000; 2006; Mulkay
1988; Robinson and Smith-Lovin 2001). On the one hand, joking creates
closeness and solidarity and is important marker of “being on the same wave-
length”. On the other hand, humor has a strong power dimension, resulting in
a relation between social status and humor initiation, as well an oft-reported
tendency for people to joke “down” rather than “up”. Norrick (1993) has
pointed out some of the mechanisms at work in the relationship between con-
versational humor and power. He calls humor a form of “conversational ag-
gression”, because it disrupts the regular turn-taking pattern of conversation,
and because the shift from serious to joking conversation means a drastic shift
in the mode of conversation. Thus, any attempt at a joke implies a conversa-
tional “coup” on the part of the joker, who breaks both the serious frame and
the turn-taking pattern.
The relation between humor and gender has emerged as a central theme
in micro-interactionist studies of humor: how are masculinity and feminin-
ity formed and performed in the course of interaction? Until recently, most
studies found that men joked more and initiated more humor, which con-
firms older findings, such as Coser’s, that those in high status tend to joke
more. More generally, initiating humor seemed to be associated with mas-
culinity, whereas women were expected to laugh at men’s jokes (Crawford
1995; 2003; Hay 2000; Holmes 2006; Kothoff 2006; Kuipers 2006a). Many
studies in the symbolic interactionist tradition have analyzed the way people
“perform gender”, thereby creating and reinforcing gender roles as well as
power divisions. These studies on gender and conversational joking also il-
lustrate the larger implication of small-scale interactions: showing how social
differences on a macro-level are created and perpetuated in interaction. Also,
changes in society at large manifest themselves in small-scale interactions: as
Kothoff (2006: 13) observes, recent studies increasingly show women initiat-
ing jokes, which “marks historical changes in the cultural role of humor in
communication” (cf. Holmes 2006).
In the small-scale studies of symbolic interactionists, humor, joking, and
laughter are no longer marginal and frivolous. Rather, they are at the heart
of social analysis, crucial to the shaping of meanings, situations, selves, and
relationships. Critics of this approach have pointed out that symbolic inter-
actionist studies tend to be overly descriptive and particular, and hence hard
to generalize. In sociology, symbolic interactionism appears to have gone out
376 Giselinde Kuipers
of fashion after the 1980s. Since then, this line of humor research has been
very successfully explored by sociolinguists (many of whom are cited here).
Within sociology, symbolic interactionist understandings of humor have
been incorporated in phenomenological studies of humor, described below,
and in the sociology of emotions, which will be discussed in the section on
laughter.
world, based on turning upside down the rules and conventions of life. In the
early modern era, it functioned as a counterpoint to the process of rationaliza-
tion, but eventually, traditional folly was fully eclipsed by this process.
Bakhtin (1984, but writing in 1930s Communist Russia) also looked at the
thriving humorous traditions of the early modern period to understand humor
as an alternative conception of the world that exists alongside everyday modes
of interpretation (and behavior). Taking as his point of departure the raucous
humor of early modern France, exemplified in the work of Francois Rabelais
(c. 1490–1553), Bakhtin analyzed “the carnivalesque” as a space of freedom,
community, and equality, denoted by laughter, humor, and more generally
by corporeality, physicality, and the “grotesque”. In Bakthin’s view, carnival
can function as an alternative sphere of freedom and resistance. Theorist of
the public sphere Habermas (1992) acknowledged Bakhtin’s carnavalesque
as possible alternative to the bourgeois public sphere, allowing for a different
mode of “popular” civic participation. Phenomenological approaches diverge
from functionalist and conflict theories: because they see humor as a separate
sphere or perspective, they see more potential for humor as an agent of social
resistance and change (see also Goldstein 2003).
The most complete and sophisticated exposition of the social functions
and consequences of the humorous worldview is Mulkay’s On Humour
(1988). In what he calls the humorous mode “the rules of logic, the expect-
ations of common sense, the laws of science and the demands of propriety
are all potentially in abeyance. Consequently, when recipients are faced with
a joke, they do not apply the information-processing procedures appropriate
to serious discourse” (Mulkay 1988: 37) According to Mulkay, this enables
people to communicate about the many incongruous experiences that make
up (social) life, and to convey meanings and messages that are as ambiguous
as most of everyday life. As a result, humor can be used to expose and ex-
press the contradictory aspects of life, and to communicate and share this ex-
perience with others. However, in contrast with Bakhtin and Davis, Mulkay
concludes that in the end, humor mostly serves to maintain social equilibrium
and consolidate the social order. For instance, in an extended discussion of
sexual joking (drawing on Spradley and Mann 1976), Mulkay relates sexual
humor to the contradictory expectations and norms governing gender and
sexual relations. In his view, the content and the strongly gendered usage
patterns of sexual humor reconcile and neutralize these contradictory expect-
ations and norms.
The phenomenological approach generally contrasts the humorous
worldview with the “serious” worldview. Berger (1997) set out to compare
378 Giselinde Kuipers
many Western countries are related to changing gender relations. Some local
color is often added to such global jokes: in the UK, blonde jokes are told
about Essex girls, adding a working-class connotation these jokes don’t have
elsewhere.
The preoccupations reflected in humor may be more specific, and some-
times quite local. For instance, lawyer jokes are a typical American phenom-
enon, which is an index of the strong position of lawyers and the centrality
of the legal system to American politics and society (Galanter 2004). Folk-
lorist Oring (2003: 97–115) argues there is a particular brand of humor spe-
cific to frontier societies: Australian, American and Israeli humor all show
a fondness of tall tales and practical joking, and mock sophistication. Ac-
cording to Oring, such “colonizing humor” expresses the frontier experience
of starting anew, away from civilization, and helps to forge a new identity
based in this experience. A more detailed case study of this type of humor
by Shiffman and Katz (2005) analyzed the Israeli jokes told in the 1930s by
Eastern European old-timers at the expense of the formality, rigidity, and
general maladaptedness of well-bred German Jews (“Yekkes”), arguing that
these jokes reflect a very particular episode in Jewish migration history: the
ethnic superiority in these jokes turns the tables on earlier migration epi-
sodes in Germany and the US, in which Jewish immigrants from Eastern
Europe were denigrated by German Jewish immigrants.
Not only who, and what people joke about; but also how they joke about
this differs between cultures, as Kuipers (2006a) has demonstrated in her
study of humor styles in the Netherlands and the US. Starting out from the
appreciation of one particular humorous genre, the joke, she showed how
humor styles in both countries demarcate salient social boundaries. In the
Netherlands, joke telling is most popular among working or lower middle
class men, corresponding to a humor style that favors sociability, exuber-
ance, and performance skills. The college-educated upper middle classes
generally dislike jokes, since for this group, a good sense of humor shows
intellectual originality, deadpan restraint, and sharpness – qualities they do
not see in joke-telling. In the United States, humor styles are not as strongly
connected to class background, but gender differences tend to be stronger,
and Americans evaluate humor less in terms of intellect or sociability, more
in moral terms. This study shows that different social groups have different
criteria for good and bad humor, which means that they joke not only about
different subjects, but also in different ways. These standards are related
more to style than to content, and they are linked with broader communica-
tion styles, taste cultures, and notions of personhood.
382 Giselinde Kuipers
3. Issues
In the next section, I will discuss some issues which have recently been the
topic of special interest in humor sociology: the interpretation of humor at the
expense of others and more generally the “dark side of humor”; the relation
between humor and laughter; and the study of humorous forms and genres,
including mediatized forms of humor.
After many centuries in which humor and laughter had a bad reputation,
modern humor studies have tended to stress the beneficial character of humor,
both for society and for the psyche. However, within humor studies there has
been a consistent concern with the transgressive, aggressive, and conflictive
functions humor can have. This matter ties in to the more general question of
the “dark side” of humor.
Much humor is based on the transgression of societal boundaries, and
such transgression can cause offense as well as amusement. And while not
The sociology of humor 383
all humor has a butt, many jokes have some sort of target: groups, persons,
objects, ideas, or the world at large. The various theoretical traditions have
suggested different interpretations of transgressive or deprecating humor:
conflict theories stress its relation with conflict and hostility; functionalist
analyses interpret it as safety valve or social corrective; phenomenological
and symbolic interactionist stress its ambiguous and manifold meanings, and
its role in negotiating meanings and worldviews; and comparative-historical
studies tend to stress its connection with larger social and cultural concerns.
The present-day descendents of superiority theory take the dark side of
humor most seriously. Gruner (1978) and more recently Billig (2005) have
taken the position that humor and laughter are correlates of social superior-
ity: every joke is basically a putdown or an act of social exclusion. Gruner
has expounded the view that humor is a game with “winners” and “losers”,
and Billig (2005) argues, in his “social critique of humor” that humor and
laughter are social control mechanisms, based in ridicule and embarrassment.
Other authors have argued that humor, while not intrinsically connected with
hostility, aggression, or transgression, often overlaps with negative emotions:
people often joke about what they dislike or feel superior to, and dislike or
superiority adds to the liking of humor (see above). Oring (2003: 41–57) and
Billig (2001a) have shown that groups that are openly racist tend to underline
and express this both with serious and joking expression of ethnic hostility
and stereotyping. Ford and Ferguson (2004) showed that humor, because of
its non-seriousness and playfulness, can diminish barriers to the expression
of negative emotions, and thus facilitate hostility. Recently, Lewis (2006),
looking at American humor from talk radio to horror movie jokes, has argued
convincingly that humor (while not necessarily a force of darkness) reflects
the darker tendencies in American society: it highlights social rifts, exposes
shared cultural fears, and is an outlet for hostility, for instance in the rather
vicious humor of some “talk radio” hosts.
The meaning of transgressive humor is not only debated in Academia, but
a source of concern in everyday life as well. Transgressive humor is gener-
ally controlled by the “unwritten rules” of informal regimes (Kuipers 2006b;
Palmer 2005), and also – less frequently – by formal censorship (Davies
1988). Both in Academia and in society at large, the most heated debates have
been around ethnic and sexist humor, the most contested forms of humor in
modern Western societies. This issue has been the subject of various debates
in the HUMOR journal (Davies 1991; Lewis 1997; 2008; Oring 1991) and of
a 2005 book by Lockyer and Pickering (2005a), all revolving around the same
question: When, why, and under what conditions is humor targeting persons
384 Giselinde Kuipers
or groups “just a joke”, and when does it have a more serious meaning or con-
sequences? With the exception of some die-hard superiority theorists, humor
scholars generally concede they cannot solve the issue of ethnic and sexist
humor by simply pinning down the one true meaning of jokes. Rather, they
stress how the meaning of a joke is created within a specific context: whether
it is a private conversation or a public situation; what the position and back-
ground of the joke-teller is; what the relationship is between the joker and
his audience (and the butt); whether it is mediated or conversational humor
(Lewis 1997; Lockyer and Pickering 2005a; Palmer 1994).
Theorists of ethnic humor Davies (1990; 1991) and Oring (2003) have
stressed the inherent ambiguity of humor. Davies, especially, tends to down-
play the seriousness of humor, stating that humor is merely “playing with
aggression”, although he notes that in some cases ethnic joke scripts overlap
with actual ethnic hostility, which considerably changes these jokes’ serious
implications. Oring (2003: 65) argued: “Joke cycles are not really about par-
ticular groups who are ostenstibly their targets. These groups serve merely as
signifiers that hold together a discourse on certain ideas and values that are of
current concern. Polish jokes, Italian jokes, and JAP jokes are less comments
about real Poles, Italians, or Jewish women than they are about a particular
set of values attributed to these groups. These attributions, while not entirely
arbitrary, are, for the most part not seriously entertained.”
The contributors in Lockyer and Pickering’s volume take a more critical
view. Howitt and Owusu-Bempa (2005: 62), in the most explicitly critical
contribution, conclude that “no only [do] racist jokes provide ready oppor-
tunities to give expression to ideas of ‘racial’ superiority. . . they continually
reinforce the use of race categories”, leading them to denounce even jokes
mocking racism on the grounds that they reinforce racial thinking. However,
most other contributions attempt to carefully balance what the editors call
“the self-defeating, regulatory, left-wing arguments associated with political
correctness, and the opportunistic, unreflexive, right-wing denunciations of
its practice” (Lockyer and Pickering 2005b: 24).
In the insightful introduction to their book, Lockyer and Pickering, dis-
cussing what they call the “ethics” of humor, portray joking as a process
of “negotiation” about the line between funny and offensive. Billig (2005)
coined the concept of “unlaughter” – the pointed non-acceptance of an at-
tempt at humor – to make a similar point about humor’s processual nature and
uncertain outcome. This perspective on humor as the negotiation of boundar-
ies allows the authors to bring out the power dimension of humor. However,
The sociology of humor 385
it also illustrates how joking, when the negotiations are completed success-
fully, is about the creation of community. As Lockyer and Pickering put it:
joking is about the construction of a “we”, which implies inclusion as well as
exclusion.
In humor studies, there has been a tendency to exclude laughter from the an-
alysis, because there is no necessary one-on-one relationship between humor
and laughter. There are other possible responses to successful attempts at
humor (smiling, another joke, a verbal acknowledgment, groaning in re-
sponse to a lame pun); and laughter can be related to several other moods
and emotions, ranging from friendliness and play to nervousness and ridicule
(Provine 2000; Ruch 1998).
As we saw earlier, symbolic interactionists and phenomenologists brought
laughter to the center of sociological humor studies, describing laughter as
a marker of the shift to the humorous mode and of the acceptance of a joke, an
important signal of social acceptance, the expression of a humorous world-
view (Bakhtin), and as “the language of humor” (Zijderveld 1983). Recent-
ly, several authors have argued for inclusion of laughter in the sociology of
humor. Billig (2005) made laughter central to his theory of humor and em-
barrassment, seeing laughter basically as derision. On a more positive note,
Kuipers (2006a: 7) defined humor as the “successful exchange of jokes and
laughter”, arguing that while laughter may not be a necessary corollary of
humor, it is the ideal and most sought-after response to any attempt at humor,
and hence essential to the understanding of the social meanings of humor.
Outside of humor studies, sociologists have increasingly been paying at-
tention to the role of emotions in social life. This has led several of them
to take up the theme of laughter, generally without much awareness of the
insights from humor scholarship; while on the other hand, insights from the
sociology of emotion have not yet has much impact in humor research. One
of the challenges for sociological humor scholarship is to integrate develop-
ments in the sociology of emotions into humor studies (and, reversely, to
“sell” humor studies to the sociology of emotions).
Scheff, in his sociological theory of emotions, sees shame and pride as the
basic emotions of social life. In his work on catharsis, he described laugh-
ter as form of relief from social pressure (Scheff 1980). In later work on the
386 Giselinde Kuipers
3.3. The social shaping of humor: Genres and mediated forms of humor
genres, many of which are derived from earlier folk genres and office lore
with a strong do-it-yourself flavor (Kuipers 2005; Shifman 2007).
The consequences of genre and form for the interpretation and apprecia-
tion of humor is another understudied field in humor scholarship. Reception
studies of mediated humor are few and far between. Despite the centrality of
humor to popular media, media and communication studies have paid little
attention to humorous forms such as comedy, cartoons or humorous adver-
tising. The scarce reception studies of comedy mainly focus on racial issues
(Coleman 2000); there are two full monographs dedicated to the reception
of 1980s hit The Cosby Show (Fuller 1992; Jhally and Lewis 1992). These
studies seem more concerned with issues of race and representation than with
the humorous aspect of comedy shows. In his recent book on The Simpsons,
Gray (2006) presents a small reception study as part of a longer and percep-
tive study of this highly intertextual and media-savvy cartoon/sitcom hybrid,
interpreting the humorous aspect of this show mostly as parody.
Finally, the increasing prominence of mediated humor also sheds new
light on old questions about the meaning of humor. Lockyer and Pickering
(2005a) note that mediated humor seriously complicates negotiations over
the meaning of a joke, because mediated humor is not firmly located in one
context anymore, making mediated jokes even more polysemic and ambigu-
ous. The 2005–2006 controversy surrounding the Muhammad cartoons, ori-
ginally published in a Danish newspaper but leading to worldwide protests,
is a dramatic illustration of how an attempt at humor can lead to different
responses in different contexts (Lewis 2008).
4. Conclusion
ogy provides the tools to connect small-scale interactions with larger societal
developments; cultural conditions with individual amusement; and the social
functions of humor with its form and content. However, sociology’s weak
boundaries and its eclecticism also entail considerable risks: undertheorized
empiricism and overgeneralization from a single case or limited findings;
a proclivity to the “scavenging” of loose concepts, fragments of theories, and
isolated findings from other disciplines; the tendency to reduce all humor to
a single function or meaning; or more generally lack of theoretical or meth-
odological rigor. However, in the past decades, sociological humor scholar-
ship appears to have matured. Recent studies are generally more sophisti-
cated and rigorous: when theoretical, their claims are notably less brash, and
when empirical, the findings have a clear connection with wider theories.
Having reviewed the various sociological approaches to humor, it is clear
there is no one sociological theory of humor. The scholars and theorists dis-
cussed have very different perspectives on humor, generally derived from
a more general social theory. Hence, despite its openness to other disciplines,
the development of humor sociology looks a lot like the development of so-
ciology as a whole; while insofar as it resembles the development of humor
studies, this is mainly in its increasing rigor and sophistication. The connec-
tion between humor sociology and general humor theories, such as the vari-
ous versions of incongruity theory, and (with notable exceptions) superiority
theory, is still quite weak. So far, sociologists have not joined in the attempts
by linguists and psychologists to integrate their findings into a general theory
of humor. In my view, this is not a bad thing. The best sociology of humor,
both theoretical and empirical, has been firmly rooted in sociological theory:
incorporating insights from humor scholarship at large, with a sensitivity to
the ambiguities and specificities of humor, but basing its interpretive frame-
work and methodological approach in the author’s social theory of choice.
Notes
contributions and interesting case studies that directly address the issues dis-
cussed in this section.
3. This conceptual unclarity is partly caused by the theoretical background of
many conflict scholars of humor. Sociologists using this approach often adhere
to Marxist or Marxist-inspired traditions where society is conceptualized as
a struggle, which means that all forms of inequality necessarily imply conflict
and superiority and conflict are very much the same thing. Moreover, in humor
studies there has been a strong Freudian influence, which also leads to interpret-
ations of “unconscious” drives and motives in humor. Both Marxist and Freud-
ian theories, while very insightful at times, tend to facilitate interpretations of
humor in terms of conflict or aggression even when the concerned parties do not
agree with this interpretation and even disagree vehemently (blaming it on “false
consciousness” or “denial”, respectively).
4. I am using “symbolic interactionism” as an umbrella term for a variety for some-
times antagonistic schools in social research focusing on the construction of
meaning in everyday interaction, from the work of Erving Goffman (who re-
fused to be called symbolic interactionist) and ethnomethodologists (who also
refused to be called symbolic interactionists) to more recent work in sociology
and sociolinguistics by scholars who are not as particular about these labels any-
more.
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Beyond “Wit and Persuasion”: Rhetoric,
composition, and humor studies
Tarez Samra Graban
1. Introduction
mark of an orator’s good breeding and intellect over another. Aristotle began
for us what we might today call a serious study of “wit” and what would reap-
pear in treatises on stylistics and discourse through the twentieth century as
linked principally to concerns of ethos (the nature and character of the rhetor
as portrayed in the speech) and pathos (an appeal made to alter the judgment
of an audience).
But beyond the study of historicized “wit,” humor has invited – no, en-
ticed – a growing number of rhetoric and composition scholars to consider
its bearing on cultural production and inquiry. In investigating how these
scholars draw on humor studies, I have seen three dominant topic areas
emerge, which I attempt to explicate in this chapter:
1. the role of humor in historical studies of rhetoric, especially rhetorical
studies of irony, parody and satire in the texts of women writers;
2. the place of humor in composition pedagogy, both as a mode of instruc-
tion and as a form of enculturation into the first-year course, including its
use in writing textbooks; and
3. the role of humor as cultural production in contemporary (mostly polit-
ical) written discourse.
It makes sense, then, that rhetoric and composition’s interfaces with humor
would overlap with areas already covered by this book, including linguistics,
communication studies, history, philosophy, and education. I don’t mean to
suggest that no projects can be called distinctly “rhetoric and composition,”
merely to explain why the scholarship I discuss in this chapter will consider
humor as genre and methodology, intention and outcome, and linguistic and
cultural phenomenon.
the occasion (e.g., judicial, deliberative, or epideictic); knew the different top-
ics relevant for particular audiences; and had the ability to adjust the speech
to the audience’s needs, knowledge, and desires (Rhetoric II.22.10; Rhetoric
II.1.2). This includes his treatment of wit, stemming from the practice of
“dissimulating,” “understating,” or “hiding” a rhetor’s underlying intentions
(called eironeia). Like Plato, Aristotle suggested using humor to draw the au-
dience’s attention to aspects of the speaker’s or subject’s character. But where
Plato saw humor occurring somewhat uncomfortably in the mixed pleasure
and pain that came from responding to comical situations, Aristotle believed
that the educated wit could draw attention to that failing or a piece of ugli-
ness without producing pain, for the young audience are “fond of laughter”
(Rhetoric II.12.15) and of a certain “good taste” in playful social behavior
(Nicomachean Ethics IV.8.1), so long as it does not go to “excess in ridicule.”
In Rhetoric and Irony, Swearingen specifically notes Plato’s inherent mistrust
of irony because it was a “false discourse” (Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony
73), while Aristotle’s rhetorical tradition counted on suasive discourse occur-
ring in some part due to speaker, audience and situation, not solely based on
ethical truth. He was, therefore, more tolerant of double meaning and humor-
ous forms (Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony 125).
For Aristotle, the speaker’s reputation was enveloped in the truthful con-
tent of the speech and in the skillful way he established goodwill with the
audience. Thus, he persisted in differentiating between eironeia – which was
how a capable rhetor could ethically reveal the “ludicrous” by constructing
audience that looked down on subjects of lesser virtue – and “comedy” as
a mode of discourse appropriate for listeners “of a lower type” (Poetics I.5;
Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony 127). Although the Greek eironeia is the
closest origin of the English word irony, Aristotle used it to describe a kind of
intelligent “mock modesty” and juxtaposed it with more overt and ludicrous
buffoonery (Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony 127).
A fuller treatment of Aristotle’s humorous discourse may have existed at
one time. In Book III.18.7 of the Rhetoric, Aristotle refers to an earlier work
on eironeia, which George Kennedy describes as existing “in the lost second
book” (Kennedy 280). Though very little of the Rhetoric and the Poetics ac-
tually dealt with the employment and placement of humorous devices in the
speech, Aristotle’s system did distinguish between causes of humor, includ-
ing language embellishments such as ambiguity, synonyms, and diminutives;
and topical subjects or actual events such as deception, violation of laws, irra-
tional behaviors, and the “marvelous” (or the unexpected). While Aristotle’s
rhetor could not control external events, he could control how he portrayed
402 Tarez Samra Graban
himself in relationship to these events and he could control his language and
manner of delivery.
Aside from Aristotle’s references to understatement and mockery, An-
tiquity left us with two prominent treatments of humor in oratory situations
– Marcus Tullius Cicero’s dialogical de Oratore (c. 46 BCE) and Quintil-
ian’s Institutio Oratoria (c. 95 CE). For Cicero, humor was one way that the
speaker could undermine his opposition, revealing his opposition’s weak-
nesses while concealing his own (Volpe 322–323); thus, he advocated using
humor selectively in various modes of oratory to create pleasantries for the
audience and to reflect positively on the orator’s character when they carry a
“concealed suspicion of ridicule” and when they are uttered by a person who
is “not morose” (de Oratore II.69; Hughes). Cicero’s facetiae – a term used
to denote the two classes of humor as they are introduced into his dialogue
– relied on some shared presuppositions between the speaker and hearer, but
could be principally considered an appeal to ethos (a reflection of the speak-
er’s character) and, if used carelessly, extravagantly, or indecently, it would
more often function as a kind of insincerity or deceit (de Oratore II.67).
Ironical dissimulation is “an elegant kind of humor, satirical with a mixture
of gravity, and adapted to oratory as well as to polite conversation” (de Ora-
tore II.67).
The purposes governing the successful use of facetiae were slightly more
complex, and each is exemplified in another of Cicero’s texts, Pro Caelio
(The Defense of Caelius). The Caelius is discussed in greater detail in Bowen,
Graban (“Expecting the Unexpected”), Wisse, and in Chapters V and VI of
Geffcken, but is worthwhile mentioning briefly here. In this speech, Cicero
creates humor on a number of levels, appealing immediately to the audi-
ence’s psychological needs, revealing Roman values “more profoundly than
conventional political oratory” (Volpe 311), and constructing jests that rep-
resent political dissoi logoi, as described by Poulakos, in the way they reflect
“an awareness at once cognizant of its own position and of those positions
opposing it” (Poulakos 60).
De Oratore offers us one of the first significant classifications of humor
in the western rhetorical tradition, most likely as a way of arguing for its
teachability, although it isn’t until Quintilian’s responses to Cicero that the
notion of teaching humor will be made explicit. To be clear, in de Oratore
the character called “Caesar” demonstrates the difficulties of teaching humor
as an art, in so much as it is difficult to grasp the notion of what it means to
be funny (de Oratore II.54). However, Caesar also offers concrete ways of
recognizing the witty, even if its production cannot be clearly mapped. To
Rhetoric,composition, and humor studies 403
difficult to generalize on what was the acceptable nature of the comic (Bowen
428). She wonders why such adaptations of Ciceronian humor as jokes, rid-
dles, or moral fables would remain so popular into the sixteenth century if
Cicero didn’t have certain tropes in mind when he first discussed facetiae
(Bowen 429)? I extend Bowen’s question to wonder why women would em-
ploy facetiae when their status as public rhetoricians hadn’t yet been firmly
established?
The answer may lie in its appropriation as a kind of dissoi logoi (con-
trasting words or figures of opposition) by women in high-stakes situations,
given irony’s noted complexity (Ritchie, “Frame-Shifting”; Sperber and Wil-
son, Relevance; Kaufer, “Understanding Irony”), specifically in their use of
irony to simultaneously uphold while overturning discourse conventions that
restricted them and to forward their critiques in a somewhat uncertain trad-
ition. Beyond serving as a logical reasoning exercise, Walzer re-presents and
recasts the dissoi logoi tradition as something that has historically provided
rhetors with a way to “generat[e] a critique – all as a means to coming to the
best decision in situations of uncertainty” (“Teaching” 122). Barreca exam-
ines British women’s literary humor as functioning differently than men’s –
whereas male humor is reformist, female humor is strategist (to gain power,
cause revolutions, and instigate change) (Untamed and Unabashed).
Bilger notes that humor has historically served as a simultaneous psycho-
logical survival skill and emancipatory strategy for women in sexist societies
(Laughing Feminism 10). Politically, women have used humor as a method
for conservation of community principles and a subversion of community
expectations. While nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women were
seen as “lacking” a sense of humor, twenty-first century women who use it
must strike a particularly sensitive balance so as not to be seen as too cerebral,
forward, frivolous, or antagonistic (“Laughing” 50). Sanborn’s 1885 The Wit
of Women represents one of the earliest anthologies of U.S. women’s humor,
linking their employment of humor to the formation of social attitudes, in-
cluding understatement and “tact.”
A brief historical trace of rhetorical humor helps illustrate its various
alignments with character, empathy, truth, and logic, but a closer look at what
humorous devices recur in the writings of women helps explain why they
may have persisted with inventive humor even when mainstream rhetorical
instruction discouraged their use. Bilger says we should more systematically
study women’s use of humor because, unless we recognize the efforts that
were made to control their behavior, we are in danger of misunderstanding
the specific forms their humor takes and of overlooking their most trenchant
410 Tarez Samra Graban
It is not new or unusual that educated women have used parody to convey
their messages to mixed audiences, such as in “Jane Anger’s” anonymous
letter directed towards the better treatment of women (c. 1589), Bathsua
Makin’s 1673 Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, and
Maria Edgeworth’s 1795 An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification.
And irony as a broader rhetorical and linguistic register has been noted in the
writings of Hildegard, Christine de Pizan, Anne Askew, Anne Hutchinson,
Maria Edgeworth, Margaret Cavendish, Sojourner Truth, Helen Gougar, and
Mary Harris (Mother) Jones to name only a few prior to 1900. Yet although
we have a long history of being interested in the workings of irony, we have
a shorter history of understanding what it has offered women, beyond perpet-
uating stereotypes of self-deprecation, or why – in light of other possible un-
derstandings – the self-deprecation stereotype persists. I examine this issue
here, briefly.
Self-deprecation has become an acceptable script in women’s political
humor because it mirrors stereotypical assumptions about women’s inferi-
ority to men that are still prevalent in the political sphere, though more and
more women politicians are learning to use it to their advantage (“Laughing”
53). In “Humor, Intellect, and Femininity,” Walker traces American women’s
significant humorous writing from Sanborn’s 1885 Wit to Bruére and Beard’s
1934 Laughing Their Way to illustrate some of the earliest organized resist-
ance to women’s public humor before examining the changing post-Freudian
attitudes towards what makes a woman’s public sense of humor acceptable
(A Very Serious Thing). Walker argues for women’s public sense of humor
as intrinsically tied into cultural assumptions about her intelligence, com-
petence, and role (A Very Serious Thing 98). What Walker calls women’s
“double texts” represent the ways they use humor to manipulate these dom-
inating stereotypes so as to appear to accept them while actually indicting
their values.
Rhetoric,composition, and humor studies 411
to its authorial intentions or the intentions constituting the act, and whether
it seems ironic according to how much the author discerns the clues to that
intention (Booth 91). In fact, its relationship to humor is complicated by
shifting notions of intention (Lang 2–3) and truth (Lang 42), i.e., irony is
determined based on primary and originary intention regardless of whether
the audience “gets it,” while humor needs only to “diverg[e] from truth.” At-
tardo’s discussions of verbal irony as relevant inappropriateness (“Irony”)
have provided a more nuanced understanding of irony beyond simply “saying
the opposite of what one means” and as a linguistic phenomenon determined
more by context than bound by the speaker’s (or writer’s) singular intent.
Warnick reminds us that, in her signature work Le Comique du Discours,
Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca offered a method for analyzing comedic discursive
structures that Warnick identifies as “rhetorical” examination – particularly in
knowing how such phenomena as irony, parody, and the burlesque make use
of values, language, quasi-logical connections, and other aspects of “reality”
(audience-adherence) in order to be effective (“Olbrechts-Tyteca’s Contribu-
tion” 72). Olbrechts-Tyteca’s multilayered discourse analysis, and Olbrechts-
Tyteca’s and Perelman’s positing of irony as a rhetorical device realizes the
importance of audience in the successful outcome of ironic communication
and explains how some ironic exchanges can be theorized as lying, or seen
as more sophisticated devices for positioning and interaction even when they
miss the mark of their intended audience. Perhaps because of its linguistic
and cultural richness, women’s irony is ripe for examination as a way of
broadening the rhetorical tradition, beyond dissoi logoi.
Graban (“Feminine Irony”) and Bilger (Laughing) argue that women’s
employment of irony demonstrates their ability to participate in fairly so-
phisticated persuasive acts in religious and political spheres. Graban argues
that the ways that Renaissance women rhetors have used irony in their oppo-
sitional discourse can shed light on the ways they have implicitly challenged
established linguistic and rhetorical traditions, opening up new possibilities
in gendered communication beyond “silence,” “resistance,” and rhetorical
refusal (“Feminine Irony” 410). And Bilger suggests that the most successful
women’s use of public or political humor has historically been demonstrated
by those who knew how to play the strong-yet-properly-feminine persona
(“Laughing” 51).
Other theorists demonstrate how satirical irony has been put to pragmatic
use by women, as a way of gaining them subversive power over a speaking
or writing situation, especially in regards to equal rights in religion, suffrage,
and abolitionism (Browne; Dresner; Wright). Browne examines the use of
Rhetoric,composition, and humor studies 413
An interest in how women use humorous forms need not lead to essentializing
women’s humor. While some scholars do posit that women’s irony, parody,
and satire can either reverse sex roles or “act differently” than men’s (Barreca,
Unashamed), it is important to note that role reversal and sex difference are
not the only ways that women use these forms to disrupt social orders or cre-
ate cultural subversion. Neither does an explication of what makes “woman’s
humor” in writing necessarily undermine their desires for equality.
In her introduction to Last Laughs, Barreca challenges what she views
as “universal” standards for presencing and identifying humor, not to essen-
tialize “feminine” forms of humor, but rather to argue that we should not
414 Tarez Samra Graban
what effects, and how were their practices understood at the time (Ward 121).
Because of its complexity as mode and manner of discourse, humor offers us
just such a venue for this questioning.
Most significantly, humor has been linked with students’ successful ma-
nipulation of academic conventions and discourse through their deliberate
attempts to reflect on and/or parody those conventions. Irony, in particular,
allows student writers to experiment with forms that “highlight the difference
between expectation and reality” (Gibbs and Izzett 132). Booth argues that
teaching students to note and understand such stable forms as satire and par-
ody would enable them to “discover how their embodied intentions lead us
to go so far – and no farther – in seeing ironic meanings” (Booth 91), and in
understanding how styles are imitated and distorted (Booth 123). For Booth,
context describes the “range of inferences about what the author would most
probably mean by each stroke, and to our range of possible genres” (Booth
99), thus it leads to sophisticated generic understandings. Furthermore, such
reading of ir/relevant contexts in order to uncover evidence and unspoken
assumptions has argumentative value, inasmuch as students being to more
systematically recognize and cope with ironic deception (Booth 106). Purdy
argues that ironic forms in general represent one way for Generation X to
handle the postmodern condition of doubt and uncertainty, because they ac-
commodate “initiating while questioning,” “enacting while overturning,” and
“challenging while sublimating” (For Common Things).
Parody, in particular, tends to perpetuate as a kind of enculturation of
students into the first-year composition course, the WID (Writing in the Dis-
Rhetoric,composition, and humor studies 419
ciplines) course, and the introduction to the discipline course because it re-
lies on interpreting and functioning within multiple levels of meaning. For
example, Rose and Kiniry construct a parody assignment to enhance the stu-
dent writer’s movement through several of their six stages of critical thinking
in the writing classroom (“What’s Funny?”), Peterson and Strebeigh teach
parody as one of two critical methods for understanding stylistics and “ver-
bal dress” (“Teaching” 210), and Bergmann examines first-year college pa-
pers for accidental humor, jokes and anecdotes that demonstrate how student
writers position themselves as emerging participants in a social community
(“Funny Papers” 21). Hutcheon advocates using parody as a way of popu-
larizing the academic and questioning subject positions, i.e., “why does X
appear now in this text?” or “what makes this funny to audience X by abomi-
nable to audience Y?” All of these practices reflect an understanding of levels
of exaggeration and juxtaposition, where students may initially mimic textual
forms but soon be called upon to determine how little or much and in what
discursive capacity their texts will depart from the original (Peterson and
Strebeigh 207).
Bergmann likens the parodic classroom to Mary Louis Pratt’s notion of
“contact zone” (or linguistic sites of “colonial encounters”) and Susan Mill-
er’s “textual carnivals” to describe a place where students can demonstrate
their ability to challenge and contend with several communities at once – that
is, beyond just serving as academic socialization, Bergmann says humor has
the potential to subvert values of complex academic communities (“Funny
Papers” 25). Analyzing some of her own students’ progress in using humor
deliberately, Bergmann discusses how, on one level, a “playful manipulation
of discourse” can gain students confidence in writing within, from, and about
certain “codes” (28). But it is also possible (and preferable) for them not to
stop at figuring out and expertly utilizing a discursive code, but rather to find
and generate humor beyond the code itself. Thus, on another level, parodying
the actual discourse of a class or a discipline can help student writers more
closely identify what they are opposing within that discourse community and
why it should be opposed, and further positions them as critics who are work-
ing through inequalities (29).
For example, the student creating an advertisement for The Gospel Ac-
cording to Bill (a Shakespearian rendition of the Bible) demonstrates a com-
plex understanding of a number of levels of discourse: on a concrete level,
this advertisement parodies the assignment by presenting a playful rendition
of a serious topic within a visual framework more colorful than a formal
paper. On an intermediate level, the student pokes fun at both classical and
420 Tarez Samra Graban
While Bergmann offers an explanation of and argument for how “funny pa-
pers” can enhance this awareness through generic subversion on a number of
levels, other scholars argue its potential to reveal or challenge logocentric (or
truth-centered) discourse on a more fundamental basis. This seems to be the
case especially with our understanding of humor as incipient to dialogical
play, and of play as representative of how the writing classroom can embody
broader cultural moments. Geoffrey Sirc writes extensively on the dissonant
and paralogic use of humor in first-year composition to help students un-
derstand that knowledge of how to produce authentic texts can and does go
deeper than genre. Influenced by Lyotard’s paralogy (or moving against es-
tablished ways of reasoning), Sirc advocates for a “new academic urbanism”
to replace the “simplistic, arbitrary, and constrictive” classroom situations
and spaces that students are expected to design and invent in with an eye
towards real-world applications of their work (Sirc, “Writing Classroom”).
Sirc locates student writers’ verbal heritage largely in the physical objects
they interact with day to day, like textile branding and logos (“Writing Class-
room”). Though not a “humorist” in any strict sense, Sirc frequently draws on
parody to relocate student composing in the more avant-garde “happenings”
of American abstract painter Jackson Pollock and French-American artist
Marcel Duchamp, rather than in more modernist textual practices of analysis
and interpretation (“English Composition”), thus mirroring rethought notions
of invention, authorship, and play.
Rhetoric,composition, and humor studies 421
It is unlikely that these particular texts and examples would act as relevant
cultural influencers in contemporary rhetoric and composition pedagogy.
However, there is still cultural and disciplinary value in understanding how
we have used humor has promoted and represented what we consider to be
rhetorically “acceptable” on the one hand and influential on the other, and
how those understandings and representations shift over time. Understand-
ing how we seek to commodify certain pedagogical aims, and then determin-
ing in what way humor reflects them (i.e., do we use it to demonstrate fixed
principles or to negotiate unstable ideals?) helps us to more fully reflect on
whether and how our use of humor actually promotes the pedagogical aims
we think it does. Furthermore, attending to questions of who uses the humor,
to what degree, in what contexts and forms, and at whose expense can tell us
much about how our notions of discursive agency and disciplinary power act
as shaping forces in the public sphere.
Though they are not all described in this way, a fair number of business,
technical and professional communication guides are authored for disparate
writing communities or created based on research into extra-academic con-
texts (Bridgeford, et al., Innovative Approaches; Cox, et al., “Male Female
Differences”), while others are designed for the classroom but with an extra-
academic focus (Berk, “Professors are from Mars”; Hurley, Humor and Tech-
nical Communication; Pieper, “The Scoop”). It may be this mixed – some-
times dissonant, typically extra-academic – trajectory that makes humorous
practices persist in professional writing, and that invites us to broaden our
understanding of humor in rhetoric and composition beyond insular notions
of “writer,” “reader,” “text,” or even “situation,” and beyond fixed notions of
how rhetoric functions in the public sphere.
rhetorical theories of irony beyond the purely ideal or aesthetic – he has also
succeeded in limiting irony’s linguistic and rhetorical context. But in revising
rhetoric’s reliance on and evolution alongside irony, Swearingen asks, to what
extent do beliefs about the nature of language shape how language is used?
I extend this question here to ask: To what extent do beliefs about the nature
of humor shape our beliefs about rhetorical culture? What is humor’s role (or
set of roles) in rhetorical production, i.e., beyond a cultural phenomenon to
which rhetorical analysis can be applied?
One possibility is in how humor studies cause us to rethink audience as
producer of the rhetorical culture, rather than as recipient or follower of it.
For example, Olson and Olson argue for a more nuanced understanding of
how readers bring significant extra-textual information to irony that allows
us to consider irony’s purpose beyond authorial intention and beyond the
practical/aesthetic binary. By paying more attention to what the reader brings
to the ironic event, writers, rhetoricians, and rhetorical theorists are better
poised to argue for contingencies as worthwhile aims (Olson and Olson 32).
Another possibility is in understanding rhetorical invention as shaping or
influencing – rather than being shaped or influenced by – the principles that
govern public discourse, which in turn raises questions about shaping new
rhetorical cultures, or new rhetorical questions about shaping culture. For ex-
ample, in reclaiming classical notions of inventive art from the knowledge bi-
naries that have traditionally limited them (i.e., theory vs. practice, aesthetic
vs. utilitarian, subjective vs. empirical), Atwill invites us to rethink what it
means that rhetorical invention is “concerned with practice, but … aim[ed] at
creating arts that can inform practice across situations” (“Introduction” xvii).
In other words, her theorizing urges us to understand invention not as creat-
ing static, normative, or even representative knowledge but as always redefin-
ing knowledge boundaries (Atwill, Rhetoric Reclaimed 48). We might extend
this idea to imagine a rhetorical humor beyond purely productive or purely
aesthetic aims by eliding simplistic classifications of humor in rhetoric and
composition, or by reconceiving their categories of use.
A third possibility is in considering the performative dimensions of rhet-
orical humor in the public sphere. For example, Holcomb’s study of how
Stephen Colbert enacts a Bush-era “presidential discourse” on Jon Stewart’s
The Daily Show by using tricolon and anaphora, represents one way of using
the analysis of political humor not merely to understand tricolon and anaph-
ora as rhetorical devices, but rather to know the rhetoricity of such devices
when employed in this ironic political context. This means knowing how they
complicate our classifications and understandings of rhetorical device, just as
Rhetoric,composition, and humor studies 433
Notes
and kind of classroom pedagogies and texts – the reader might consult Berlin’s
Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges, Lindemann and
Tate’s An Introduction to Composition Studies, or Bloom, et al’s Composition
Studies in the New Millennium. These are only three of several dozen worthwhile
overviews.
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Applications of humor: Health, the workplace,
and education
John Morreall
Introduction
Over the last three decades humor researchers, largely in psychology and the
behavioral sciences, have found that humor has many benefits for individuals
and groups. In the last twenty years, hundreds of people have been apply-
ing these findings in such fields as medicine, business, and education. A new
profession has been created – the humor consultant. The most successful of
them, Joel Goodman of the Humor Project, has done presentations for over
one million people worldwide.
A growing number of psychotherapists use humor with their patients. One
bills himself as a “Mirthologist and Clinical Psychologist.” Organizations
like the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor get larger with every
convention. Hundreds of hospitals have created “comedy carts” with funny
books, audiotapes, and videotapes, or whole “humor rooms” for their patients
and their families. In New York City clowns from the Big Apple Circus have
formed Clown Care Units to visit hundreds of patients and their families
every day. Many nursing and healthcare conventions now feature lectures and
workshops on humor. Before the untimely death of its editor, the Journal of
Nursing Jocularity had over 30,000 subscribers.
In the business world, companies like IBM and AT&T regularly hire humor
consultants to conduct programs on how humor reduces stress, improves re-
lations with customers, and promotes creativity. For five years IBM’s pres-
tigious Advanced Business Institute, which conducts 3-day “colleges” for
business leaders from outside IBM, has integrated presentations on humor
and new styles of management into many of its programs. Sessions on humor
can also be found throughout the world of education, from Head Start confer-
ences, to school districts’ “in-service” days, to lectures in medical schools.
A handful of those applying the benefits of humor to healthcare, business,
and education have academic credentials in humor research. Dr. William Fry,
M.D., the pioneer of both humor research and its applications, is emeritus at
450 John Morreall
ing, “I’m feeling a little crabby today. Does it show?” Many of these people
distribute adhesive-backed red foam clown noses for the audience to put on.
Some bring a basket of props and sight gags onto the platform and spend most
of their presentation demonstrating them. A few of these consultants sell props
as “humor supplies” on their web sites. When such people have a message, it
is usually that being more playful and humorous will reduce stress. Their con-
cluding advice is often “Keep this clown nose in your pocket or purse and put
it on the next time you are feeling stressed-out.” Like the owners of old-fash-
ioned “joke shops,” these consultants have a limited understanding of what
humor is and how it can be beneficial.
Adding to the lack of accountability among humor consultants is the fact
that they are seldom a long-term part of the organizations they speak to, and
they do not conduct follow-up studies with their clients. If they have recom-
mended techniques to incorporate humor into the workplace, for example,
no one checks to see if the techniques are put into practice or if anything im-
proved.
For all of the claims being made about the benefits of humor, there are remark-
ably few research studies. The vast majority of books published in this area,
even the medical and management books, are more “self-help” than science,
and include many more anecdotes and tips for using humor than reports of
scientific data about humor. Even authors who know something about humor
research tend to downplay it to avoid “turning off” the average reader. Despite
decades of humor research, there is still a common assumption that a book
about humor has to be a humorous book, and scientific data are not funny.
Most books and articles on the benefits of humor fall into one, or oc-
casionally two of these categories: Humor and Health, Humor in the Work-
place, and Humor in Education. We can consider them one at a time.
The humor and health movement is often traced to the 1979 publication of
Norman Cousins’ Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflec-
tions on Healing and Regeneration, a book in which Cousins tells of his
recovery from a life-threatening disease (ankylosing spondylitis) through
452 John Morreall
tured in the same six sections as in the first volume. Echoing Allport’s com-
ment quoted earlier, Paul Watzlawick says in the Foreword that “From our
work we know that people are half over their emotional problems once they
manage to laugh at their predicament.” Topics in the eleven chapters include
humor in therapy with adolescents, using favorite jokes in child therapy,
humor in substance abuse treatment, humor as a religious experience, humor
in relation to obsessive compulsive disorders, humor in a college mental
health program, humor and spirituality, and the implications of Kierkegaard’s
humor for indirect humorous communication in psychotherapy. The volume
also has a 25-page Comprehensive Research and Clinical Bibliography on
Humor and Psychotherapy (1964–1991) with abstracts of each item from the
American Psychological Association’s Psychological Abstracts.
A shorter, less well-known anthology is The Handbook of Humor:Clinical
Applications in Psychotherapy by Elcha Shain Buckman. Along with a re-
view of the literature, this book has nine chapters on such issues as humor
in children’s and adolescents’ therapy, humor as communication facilitator
in couples therapy, humor in family therapy, the use of absurd statements in
therapy, humor in treatment of the elderly, and humor with cancer patients.
Though the authors do not break much new ground, they often illustrate their
points with good cases. As an example, one of the authors met with a potential
client for an intake session in which he seemed suspicious and hesitant. The
therapist told him what she saw as main problems, how she would proceed
with therapy, and what the fees would be. He asked, “Do you really think you
can help me?” ”No,” she said, “but I do want your money.” The man laughed,
realizing that she had intuited his concerns, and he committed to therapy.
In the early 1980s, as the medical community was getting interested in humor,
business was too. This was a time of huge changes in the workplace. The In-
dustrial Age had given way to the Information Age.
Traditional approaches to management had grown out of the practices of
factory managers in the early twentieth century. The classic text here was
Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management, in which workers were presumed
to be lazy and irresponsible. The manager’s job was to divide the work into
small, repeated, easily monitored tasks. Taylor himself did time-motion stud-
ies at a steel mill in Pittsburgh to determine exactly how many pounds of
458 John Morreall
coal the workers should lift on their shovels and exactly how many times per
minute they should toss the coal into the blast furnace. That style of manage-
ment was also applied to office jobs. It created mechanical jobs and bored
workers, but also made businesses profitable.
In the 1980s, however, as simple mechanical tasks were taken over by ro-
bots, and the jobs left for humans required more judgment, decision-making,
and cooperation with other workers, the old management techniques were
not working. To add to managers’ headaches, increased foreign and domestic
competition put pressure on companies to be more productive and innova-
tive, to “do more with less.” They had to produce more varied products and
services and change often to satisfy shifting markets. Quality control had
to improve, too, and so workers had to be more involved in the work they
were doing. New computer-driven technologies had to be implemented more
quickly, so workers had to go through lots of training. All of these changes
created anxiety in workers and managers. To make work even more stressful,
companies started watching their bottom line more closely, and laying off
workers in unprecedented numbers. Kodak, IBM, and other firms that had
never before laid off workers, did so to increase quarterly profits. The workers
left standing after waves of downsizing, had more work to do and wondered
whether they would survive the next wave.
In the 1980s health-claims prompted by stress increased 700% in Califor-
nia. By the end of the decade, the American Academy of Family Physicians
estimated that 65% of visits to the family doctor were prompted by stress, and
stress was estimated to cost American employers $200 billion per year.
Business leaders saw the need to change traditional Taylor-style manage-
ment practices in order to preserve the sanity and productivity of their work-
ers and managers. Led by consultants like Tom Peters, the most successful
business of the last two decades, they “flattened” their organizations, that is,
reduced the number of levels of management. They empowered workers by
giving them more discretion and more input into decisions affecting them.
They also looked for ways to change employees’ attitudes towards their work,
and even their emotions, not just to reduce workplace stress but also to make
workers more adaptable to change and less risk-aversive. They wanted to
boost morale and teamwork, too, and foster creative thinking. Because humor
was linked to all of these goals, it began showing up in training strategies and
even in company philosophies.
A good example is the philosophy of New England Securities, rewritten
by a new president who at his first meeting with employees read a Dr. Seuss
story, Oh the Places You’ll Go. The philosophy has 13 points:
Health, the workplace, and education 459
Except perhaps for the line about total quality, all of these directives would be
easier to implement in an environment where humor was encouraged.
Several studies showed that business leaders recognized the potential of
humor to help in the management revolution of the 1980s. In the middle of
the decade, Robert Half International conducted a survey of 100 of the larg-
est American corporations and found that 84% of vice presidents and human
resource directors thought that employees with a sense of humor are more
effective than those with little or no sense of humor. The organization’s re-
port concluded that “People with a sense of humor tend to be more creative,
less rigid and more willing to consider and embrace new ideas and methods.”
In a Hodge-Cronin survey polling 737 CEOs of major corporations, 98% of
respondents said that humor was important in the conduct of business, that
most executives did not have enough humor, and that in hiring they gave pref-
erence to people with a sense of humor.
One director of human resources, Nancy Hauge, of Sun Microsystems,
comments that in job interviews she notes how soon job candidates laugh.
“How long does it take the interviewee to find something funny, tell me some-
thing funny, or share his or her sense of humor? Because humor is very im-
portant to our corporate culture.”
A 1994 article in Human Resources magazine called for human resource
managers to start programs to show employees how to lighten up. Soon humor
consultants were doing workshops on humor as an antidote to stress. Compa-
nies around Chicago, and even the University of Chicago’s MBA program,
460 John Morreall
hired instructors from the Second City comedy troupe to conduct improvisa-
tional comedy exercises with their people, to increase their creative thinking,
ability to work in teams, and communication skills.
Humor was also touted for its association with innovation and the ability
to recover from mistakes. Tom Peters had this comment in his 1988 Thriving
on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution: “Urgency and laugh-
ter go hand in glove. ‘Get going’ and ‘try something’ are among this book’s
central tenets. To speed action-taking, we simply must learn to laugh at our
own (personal, organizational) bureaucratic, action-delaying foibles; and we
must learn to laugh at interesting and useful mistakes.” On the back cover
of his 1994 book The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Or-
ganizations, he appears dressed in a gray suit from the waist up and in loud
orange-print undershorts from the waist down. Above the photo is this quote
from Peters, “Welcome to a world where imagination is the source of value in
the economy. It’s an insane world, and in an insane world, sane organizations
make no sense.”
By the mid-1990s most Fortune 500 companies were listening to the mes-
sage that humor and fun could help boost their bottom line. Eastman Kodak
was operating a “humor room” at its headquarters in Rochester, New York;
Hewlitt-Packard, Price-Waterhouse, and dozens of other companies had simi-
lar facilities. One branch of Digital Equipment had created a “Grouch Patrol,”
whose members would respond to sour faces with “bat faces.” To make a bat
face, push the tip of your nose up, flick your tongue in and out quickly, and
make a high-pitched “Eeeee” sound.
The new “play ethic” supplementing the old “work ethic” encouraged not
just humor but fun generally. In 1996, Karen Donnalley, head of IBM’s Inside
Sales Center, a 75-member sales team selling mid-sized computers to 17,000
customers, got together colleagues who played musical instruments to form
a pick-up orchestra of tubas, accordions, and anything else anyone brought
in. The group also began recording sales in fun ways. When team members
made their first sale of the day, they smashed a gong and moved race horse
icons with their pictures on them out of a starting gate. Within a year Don-
nalley’s unit’s sales figures were up 30 percent.
Academic studies in psychology and management backed up the new ap-
proach. David Abramis did a study in which small groups who laughed to-
gether were more productive in thinking up anagrams (in Pollio and Bainum
1983). Alice Isen of the Department of Psychology and Johnson Graduate
School of Management at Cornell University reported that groups who en-
Health, the workplace, and education 461
gaged in a humorous task and then did a brainstorming exercise came up with
more ideas and a greater range of ideas than control groups.
David Abramis studied 923 adult workers from a wide range of jobs. He
had 678 fill out a detailed questionnaire about humor and fun at work, and
347 were interviewed at length. Those who reported that they enjoyed more
positive humor at work were also more involved with their jobs, had greater
job satisfaction, and higher mental health scores. They were less anxious and
depressed, and more satisfied with their lives in general.
According to Abramis, there are six ways in which work quality and men-
tal health may increase where fun is encouraged. Fun relieves boredom and
fatigue, fulfills human social needs, increases creativity and willingness to
help coworkers, fulfills needs for mastery and control, improves communica-
tion, and breaks up conflict and tension.
In trying to get their employees to relax, many companies relaxed their
dress codes at least once a week. In 1994 the Campbell Research Corpor-
ation did a survey of 750 major companies, in which 66% of the companies
reported that they had casual dress days. 81% of those companies said that
these days improved morale, and 47% said that it improved productivity.
Several management studies also showed the importance of humor in man-
agement. A survey of more than 350 alumni from Salisbury’s Perdue School
of Business found that women managers who used humor in the workplace
were viewed by their staffs as more effective than those who did not use
humor (in ”Humor on the job – avoid it to your detriment”).
By the late 1980s there were a dozen books on humor and fun in the
workplace. While they sometimes referred to the psychology and manage-
ment literature, they were intended mostly as practical guides rather than as
research reports. Usually they were shelved under Psychology or Business or
Self-Help. Virtually all of them were written by humor consultants and, like
the oral presentations from which they were developed, they are light on the-
oretical studies and heavy on entertaining examples.
One of the earliest entries in this field was Esther Blumenfield and Lynne
Alpern’s The Smile Connection: How to Use Humor in Dealing with People.
Based on a popular course the authors taught at Emory University, this book
presents ideas and stories about workplace situations where humor can help:
getting attention, presenting new information or risky opinions, criticizing,
bringing people together, building morale, announcing unpleasant surprises,
and training. There are chapters on humor in speeches, humor in dealing with
difficult people, humor in friendship and romance, and humor in families.
462 John Morreall
managers. Their mantras are “M-I-B” (Make It Better) and “I Care – You
Matter – This Job Should Be Fun.” The text consists mostly of bulleted lists,
checklists, motivational quotations, etc.
Steve Wilson’s The Art of Mixing Work and Play is about incorporating
laughter, playfulness and humor into the experience of work. The author
of Eat Dessert First, ”Joyologist” Wilson got interested in humor through
his practice as a clinical psychologist. In human babies, he says, the neural
substrates for laughter are in place at birth, and laughter is our birthright.
When we see ourselves and the world with a sense of humor, we acknow-
ledge the human condition, that we are born vulnerable, valuable, imperfect,
dependent, and immature. In his chapters on play in the workplace, Wilson
discusses how play keeps people motivated, upbeat, and productive; and he
suggests 89 fun activities.
Matt Weinstein’s Managing to Have Fun: How Fun at Work Can Motivate
Your Employees, Inspire Your Coworkers, Boost Your Bottom Line is based
on the author’s work for over twenty years with Playfair, Inc., a company that
runs workshops on incorporating fun into workplaces. Having fun activities
at work, Weinstein says, is an effective way of rewarding and recognizing
workers. He divides his 52 fun activities into those carried out by one per-
son, those carried out by teams, company-wide initiatives, and fun rituals and
celebrations. His closing chapter is “Having Fun in Difficult Times.” Wein-
stein has four principles for introducing fun into the workplace: think about
the specific people involved; lead by example; if you’re not getting personal
satisfaction from what you’re doing, it’s not worth doing; and change takes
time. Here are some representative ideas: Pay for the car behind you at the
toll gate. Play “Happy Birthday to You” on the telephone keypad (4 4 5 4 9
8). Arrange an Ugly Tie or Ugly Shoe Contest. Have casual dress days. Ar-
range a monthly outing. Reverse Roles. Distribute stuffed animals. Post baby
pictures of employees on a bulletin board.
Education
critical, and divergent thinking; catch and hold students’ attention, increase
retention of learned material, relieve stress, build rapport between teacher
and students, build team spirit among classmates, smooth potentially rough
interactions, promote risk taking, and get shy and slow students involved in
activities.
Marilyn Droz and Lori Ellis’s Laughing While Learning: Using Humor in
the Classroom has two parts. The first, Understanding Humor, covers humor
and cognitive development, the general benefits of humor, and humor in
school. Droz and Ellis have read the psychology material and deal with issues
like gender differences in humor and teasing. The second part, Putting Humor
to Work for You, applies humor to the classroom. It offers many suggestions
for working humor into the curriculum for reading (with joke analysis), writ-
ing (making up tall tales), math, spelling, science, and history. There are also
chapters on class clowns, shy students, using humor in discipline, and teach-
ing students with disabilities.
The Laughing Classroom: Everyone’s Guide to Teaching with Humor and
Play, by Diane Loomis and Karen Kolberg, is similar to Laughing While
Learning, but has more exercises and tips. The authors relate humor to posi-
tive thinking and to self-esteem. Ideas for humor in discipline include ask-
ing students to add to a running list of “Exceptional Excuses.” There are
many imaginative exercises adapted from Edward de Bono, Victor Borge, and
Jonathan Winters.
Fred Stopsky’s Humor in the Classroom: A New Approach to Critical
Thinking is written by a former social studies teacher, and has dozens of tips
and exercises to bring critical and divergent thinking into the social studies
curriculum. Among them are designing “Wanted” posters and scripting tri-
als for Hitler and Cortez. The exercise “Ludicrous Laws” has students study
odd laws like the one in Brooklyn, New York which made it illegal to let an
animal sleep in a bathtub, and then make up similar laws. In another exercise,
students discuss famous bad predictions such as Lord Kelvin’s “Heavier than
air machines are impossible,” and Harry Warner’s 1927 comment, “Who the
hell wants to hear actors talk?” There are also interesting menus from history
and song lyrics like “No Irish Need Apply.”
The best known advocate of the educational value of humor is John Cleese,
formerly of Monty Python, who in 1973 started the Video Arts company to
produce training videos for business. The company is now the largest and
most successful of its kind. By getting trainees to laugh, Cleese says, you
get them to both pay attention and relax, an optimal combination for learn-
ing. Humor is especially useful in promoting a non-defensive attitude toward
466 John Morreall
Issues
In each of the three applied fields we have discussed – health, business, and
education – the basic question is what benefits can be expected from humor.
We will consider that question in each field separately, adding other important
issues where appropriate.
Health
Many physical health claims have been made for humor. Several of these
come from the research of William Fry and colleagues. For the muscles of the
upper body, it is said, laughter provides moderate exercise. Twenty seconds
of hearty laughter, Fry has often been quoted as saying, gives the heart and
lungs a workout equivalent to three minutes on a rowing machine
Laughter increases the circulation of the blood, as heart rate and blood
pressure increase. The rapid inhaling and exhaling in laughter ventilate the
lungs and increase the uptake of oxygen (six times the rate during quiet con-
versation). Laughter replaces residual air in the lungs with fresh air, which
may reduce the level of water vapor and carbon dioxide in the lungs, and thus
the risk of pulmonary infection.
When laughter stops, heart rate and blood pressure drop to below normal,
and remain below normal for up to 45 minutes. Muscles throughout the body
relax.
In the blood, humorous laughter lowers the level of stress hormones
(epinephrine, cortisol, dopac, and growth hormone). In the brain, catecho-
lamines are secreted, which may increase alertness, reduce inflammation,
and trigger the release of endorphins, the brain’s natural opiates. This may
account for the reduction of pain often reported after laughter.
The most encouraging claims about laughter and humor in recent years
have been in the area of psychoneuroimmunology, the study of the mind’s
relation to the immune system. In the research of Lee Berk and Stanley Tan,
several indicators of immune system activity increase when subjects laugh at
a funny video, and that boost lasts for at least a day.
While all of these claims have been warmly received by popular and medi-
cal audiences alike, a few critics warn that not all have been verified with
sufficient rigor to be announced as scientific truth. At the 1999 meeting of
the International Society of Humor Studies in Oakland, California, Professor
Rod Martin argued that claims for the benefits of humor “are often simplistic,
Health, the workplace, and education 469
have difficulty controlling the thought patterns of normal people, how much
harder it must be for therapists to predict just how a client will respond to
some funny line that comes to them spontaneously. Many therapists, there-
fore, use only the safest and gentlest humor, so that even if it fails to amuse
the client, at least it will not hurt the therapy. Others, such as some in Rational
Emotive therapy, routinely use more risky confrontational humor.
Workplace
intimidation. But consider how everything changes when the debt collector
gets the debtor to laugh, as in this middle paragraph from a debt collection
letter:
We appreciate your business, but, please, give us a break. Your account is
overdue 10 months. That means that we’ve carried you longer than your
mother did.
Humor has been shown effective in managing difficult people, even in situ-
ations of physical hostility. After completing a humor training course, one
California police officer was called to a family fight. As she pulled up to the
house, she heard loud noises and screaming. As she approached the front
door, a portable TV set came crashing through the front window. When she
knocked loudly on the front door, a voice bellowed, “Who is it?” “TV Re-
pair,” she answered. The couple stopped fighting, laughed, and came to the
door. Now they could begin to sort out their problems.
One indicator of the importance of humor in the new workplace is the
number of corporate leaders who are showing humor in their public personae.
Instead of acting omnipotent and omniscient, as old authoritarian leaders did,
they are friendly and even playful with subordinates. Renn Zaphiropoulos,
CEO of Versatec, a Silicon Valley firm, for example, hosts an annual cer-
emony for all employees announcing the bonus. One year he arrived at the
festivities on an elephant accompanied by the Stanford University Marching
Band. The year before he had announced the bonus by singing a country song
he had written himself.
Part of the new style of leadership is soliciting input from everyone in the
organization, encouraging critical thinking, and sharing knowledge to em-
power others. Here playfulness and humor are a big help. An example is the
CEO of a large Canadian bank who appears in the monthly corporate video
shown to all employees. He comes on camera to discuss recent issues and
plans, but part way through his presentation, a hand puppet appears to ask
him questions about recent problems in the bank and even to poke fun at him.
This playful criticism encourages bank employees to think critically and to
figure out solutions for current problems.
The critical side of humor, of course, is not always so good-natured. Much
of the humor circulating in the workplace today is negative and sarcastic. The
website WorkingWounded.com is a forum for disgruntled workers to mock-
ingly complain about how they have been mistreated. The site toxicboss.com
lets people vent their feelings about how bad their bosses are. An even more
472 John Morreall
Education
Among healthcare, business, and education, the slowest to join the humor
movement is education. Traditional teachers, from first grade to graduate
school, usually suppressed humor in the classroom unless they were initiating
it. “What’s so funny, Mr./Miss Smith?” was one of their strongest putdowns.
It was during our first week at school that most of us learned to suppress our
natural urges to play and to be funny.
Today there are many primary and secondary teachers trying to overturn
this traditional prejudice against humor and playfulness. They agree on the
central benefits of humor in the classroom, that it makes the teacher appear
fully human, relaxes the students, creates an open and non-threatening atmos-
phere for learning, gets and holds attention, increases retention of learned ma-
terial, promotes critical thinking, and promotes divergent or creative think-
Health, the workplace, and education 473
ago the Federal Aviation Administration asked Southwest to stop singing the
flight safety announcements to the tune of the theme song from the Beverly
Hillbillies TV show. Such antics, along with the best records for on-time ar-
rival and baggage handling, have earned the airline top ratings from custom-
ers for many years.
The spirit of fun also creates unparalleled camaraderie in Southwest em-
ployees, who often speak of the airline as a family. Although it is an 80%
union shop, the company has the lowest turnover rate in the industry. And
they have never laid off workers, even after the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attack. Alan Boyd, retired chairman of Airbus North America, has said that
“at other places, managers say that people are their most important resource,
but nobody acts on it. At Southwest, they have never lost sight of the fact.”
Understandably, Southwest regularly appears at or near the top in rankings of
the best companies to work for.
Kelleher’s own leadership style is nicely illustrated in an event held at the
Dallas Sportatorium in March 1992. Southwest began running its “Just Plane
Smart” advertising campaign but quickly learned that another company, Ste-
vens Aviation, had been using “Plane Smart” as its slogan for over a year. In-
stead of taking the matter to court, Kelleher and Stevens CEO Kurt Herwald
agreed to an arm-wrestling match. The winner of best two out of three would
get to keep the slogan and the loser would donate $5,000 to the winner’s fa-
vorite charity.
Herwald, a beefy 37-year-old weight lifter, strode into the ring in a dark
muscle shirt. Keller, then 61, a long-time smoker and afficionado of Wild
Turkey bourbon, came down the aisle in a white t-shirt and gray sweat pants
under red boxer shorts, to the trumpet blasts from Rocky. He had his right arm
in a sling (an injury he said he got saving a little girl from being hit by a bus)
and a cigarette dangling from his lip. His handler wore a bandolier holding
rows of airline-size bottles of Wild Turkey.
In one sense, Kelleher lost the contest – and he blamed that on a stub-
born case of athlete’s foot and having accidentally overtrained by walking
up a flight of stairs. But in a wider sense he won. The stands were full of
Southwest people chanting, “Herb, Herb, Herb,” who still tell the story of that
night. The publicity Southwest received was inestimable. And at the end, the
head of the other airline laughingly told Kelleher that he could keep using the
slogan anyway.
Of the many accounts of Kelleher and Southwest Airlines, the most com-
plete is Nuts! Southwest Airline’s Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal
Success by Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg.
Health, the workplace, and education 475
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Humor and health
Rod A. Martin
A sense of humor and the ability to laugh have long been viewed as import-
ant sources of both physical and psychological health. Since medieval times,
a number of physicians and philosophers have suggested that laughter has im-
portant health benefits, such as improving blood circulation, restoring energy,
counteracting depression, and enhancing the functioning of various organs of
the body (for reviews see Goldstein 1982; Moody 1978). In the past century,
various psychologists and psychotherapists such as Sigmund Freud (1928),
Abraham Maslow (1954), and Rollo May (1953) have also discussed the im-
portance of a benign sense of humor for mental health.
Belief in positive health benefits of humor and laughter has become in-
creasingly popular in recent years. Public interest in therapeutic benefits of
humor and laughter was particularly stimulated by the publication of Norman
Cousins’ (1979) account of his recovery from ankylosing spondilitis follow-
ing a self-prescribed treatment regimen involving daily laughter and massive
doses of vitamin C. The development of the field of psychoneuroimmunology
and the popularization of alternative and complementary approaches to West-
ern medicine provided a context that further fostered such ideas. These popu-
lar beliefs have been further bolstered by media reports of scientific research
purportedly showing evidence of beneficial effects of laughter on health. As
one example, a recent issue of Reader’s Digest (Rackl 2003) reports claims of
scientific evidence that humor can alleviate allergy symptoms, increase pain
tolerance, strengthen the immune system, reduce the risk of stroke and heart
disease, and even help diabetics control their blood sugar.
Stimulated by these ideas, a burgeoning “humor and health movement”
has developed, made up of nurses, physicians, and other health care pro-
viders, psychotherapists, educators, clowns, and entertainers, who enthu-
siastically promote the therapeutic benefits of humor through conferences,
seminars, workshops, books, videotapes, Internet websites, and organiza-
tions such as the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH).
In recent years, the growth of the “laughter club movement,” whose adher-
ents promote laughter as a form of yogic exercise (Kataria 2002), has further
added to the chorus of claims for beneficial effects of even non-humorous
480 Rod A. Martin
laughter on physical, mental, and spiritual health, as well as its potential for
resolving conflicts at both the personal and the international level.
The aim of this chapter is to provide an introduction to empirical research
methods and findings regarding the role of humor and laughter in both phys-
ical and psychosocial health. I will begin by discussing some of the concep-
tual issues relating to the potential mechanisms involved in the humor–health
relationship, and the definition and measurement of humor. I will then selec-
tively review the existing research, summarizing the major findings, pointing
out questions that remain unanswered, and noting some of the strengths and
weaknesses of different research approaches (for more detailed reviews of
this research, see Martin 2001; 2007; Lefcourt 2001). This overview of the
literature will include a discussion of directions for future research, suggest-
ing potentially fruitful avenues to pursue, as well as pitfalls to avoid.
Besides offering suggestions for those interested in conducting research in
this area, it is hoped that this chapter will be useful to practitioners who are
interested in applying humor in health care settings and psychotherapeutic
interventions. In addition to providing information about what we know and
what we don’t know about the effects of humor and laughter on health, this
chapter emphasizes the need for practitioners to be clear about what aspects
or components of humor they are targeting in their interventions, and the
mechanisms by which these interventions are expected to have their benefi-
cial effects.
Conceptual issues
Theoretical mechanisms
humor interventions, and researchers often are not specific about which hy-
pothesized mechanism they are testing in a given investigation. Systematic
research is needed to investigate each of these potential mechanisms individ-
ually, and to determine which, if any, are supported by the data. Only when
we have gained such knowledge can practitioners begin to design effective
therapeutic interventions based on these findings.
First, health benefits may potentially result from the respiratory, musku-
loskeletal, vocal, and cardiovascular activity associated with laughter. For ex-
ample, it has been suggested that frequent hearty laughter might reduce blood
pressure or confer some of the cardiovascular benefits of aerobic exercise. In
this hypothesized pathway, hearty laughter is the crucial component in the
humor-health connection; humor and mirth without laughter would not be ex-
pected to provide any health benefits. Indeed, laughter might even be expect-
ed to have beneficial effects without humor and genuine mirth (e.g., feigned
or forced laughter), as advocated by leaders of the laughter club movement
(e.g., Kataria 2002). From this perspective, the person with a “healthy” sense
of humor is the one who laughs uproariously as often as possible, rather than
the one who enjoys dry humor accompanied only by the occasional chuckle
or smile. In this model, humor interventions should be aimed particularly at
encouraging people to engage in frequent and intense laughter.
To test this hypothesis, researchers need to be sure that participants in
their studies actually laugh (although this has not always been done in past
research), and to examine whether differences in the duration and intensity
of laughter account for differences in health-related outcomes. In addition,
to ensure that any observed results are due to laughter and not the underly-
ing positive emotion of mirth, they should compare participants who laugh
with those who are also amused but do not laugh. The Facial Action Coding
System (to be described below) should be used to distinguish between genu-
ine and forced smiles and laughter, and their correlations with the outcome
variables can then be examined to determine which, if any, account for any
health-related effects.
A second, alternative mechanism by which humor may potentially influ-
ence both psychological and physical health is through the positive emotion
of mirth which is associated with humor. Like other positive emotions, mirth
may enhance feelings of well-being and counteract negative emotions such
as depression or anxiety. Consequently, individuals who frequently engage
in humor may be less prone to various forms of emotional disturbance. Also
like other emotions, mirth is associated with a variety of biochemical pro-
cesses in the brain and other parts of the body, including changes in the levels
482 Rod A. Martin
scores on some humor scales were associated with greater obesity, increased
smoking, and factors associated with greater risk of cardiovascular disease.
Similarly, the well-known Terman life-cycle study, which followed a large
sample of highly gifted individuals over many decades, found that those who
were rated as being more cheerful as children (higher sense of humor and
greater optimism) were more likely to smoke and consume alcohol as adults
(L. R. Martin et al. 2002).
These possible associations between humor and unhealthy lifestyle be-
haviors may be due in part to the more extraverted personality traits of high-
humor individuals (Ruch 1994). Past research has shown that extraverted
individuals, in comparison with introverts, are more likely to drink alcohol
(Cook et al., 1998), more likely to smoke cigarettes (Patton, Barnes, and Mur-
ray 1993), less likely to quit smoking (Helgason et al., 1995), and more likely
to be obese (Haellstroem and Noppa 1981). Although findings of an associ-
ation between sense of humor and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors are in need
of further replication, the evidence to date provides further support to the
contention that humor may have deleterious as well as beneficial health con-
sequences.
The foregoing discussion suggests that researchers who are interested in stud-
ying the relationship between humor and health, as well as practitioners seek-
ing to develop humor-based interventions, need to be clear about their con-
ceptualizations and operational definitions of humor. If humor and/or laughter
are beneficial for physical and psychosocial health, then people with a greater
sense of humor should be happier and better adjusted, enjoy better physic-
al health, live longer lives, and so on. But what aspects or components of
“sense of humor” are likely to be health-enhancing? As we have noted, humor
is a very complex phenomenon, involving cognitive, emotional, behavioral,
physiological, and social aspects (Martin 2007). These different components
of humor are also reflected in different conceptualizations of sense of humor,
which refers to a set of humor-related personality traits or individual differ-
ence variables (Ruch 1998). Indeed, no single dimension or measurement
instrument can adequately capture the whole concept of sense of humor.
For example, sense of humor may be conceptualized as: (1) a cognitive
ability (e.g., ability to create, understand, reproduce, and remember jokes;
Feingold and Mazzella 1993); (2) an aesthetic response (e.g., humor appre-
Humor and health 485
easure different aspects of humor, factor analytic studies indicate that these
m
self-report measures all tend to load on the same basic dimensions (Kohler
and Ruch 1996; Ruch 1994). Moreover, similar patterns of results are typ-
ically found with these different measures, with correlations being stronger
sometimes for one measure and sometimes for another, but no consistent
evidence of differential relationships with different components or aspects of
health or well-being.
Beyond the fact that sense of humor is multifaceted and that different com-
ponents may or may not be related to health, it is also important to recognize
that humor may actually be used in ways that are detrimental to health as well
as beneficial. Although it can be used to enhance relationships and reduce
interpersonal tensions, humor also can be used in ways that are aggressive,
domineering, and manipulative. It can be a healthy means of gaining perspec-
tive on a stressful situation, but it also can be a form of defensive denial to
avoid dealing constructively with problems. It can be self-deprecating, but it
also can be excessively self-disparaging. One could perhaps even make the
case that there is nothing inherent in humor that makes it particularly healthy:
whether or not it is healthy depends on how it is used.
Prior to the twentieth century, the word “humor” had a narrower mean-
ing than it has today, and it was used to refer only to a sympathetic, tolerant,
and benevolent amusement at the imperfections of the world and the foibles
of human nature generally (Wickberg 1998). Humor was distinguished from
wit, which referred to more aggressive forms of amusement such as sarcasm,
satire, and ridicule. When Freud (1928, p. 6) spoke of humor as being the
“highest of the defense mechanisms” and a “rare and precious gift,” he was
referring only to humor in this narrow and special sense. Over the past cen-
tury, however, humor has taken on a much broader meaning in popular usage,
and has now come to be an umbrella term covering all forms of laughter-re-
lated phenomena, including jokes, stand-up comedy, television sitcoms, pol-
itical satire, teasing, and ridicule. In this sense, humor now can be aggressive
and hostile, as well as benevolent and philosophical (Ruch 1996).
Recognizing this broadened meaning of humor, psychologists such as All-
port (1961), Maslow (1954), and Vaillant (1977) have been careful to define
what they consider to be “healthy” humor, noting that healthy psychologic-
al functioning is associated with distinctive uses or styles of humor (e.g.,
affiliative, self-deprecating, or perspective-taking humor), and that other
forms (e.g., sarcastic, disparaging, or avoidant humor) may actually be del-
eterious to well-being. They noted that the funniest humor is not necessarily
the healthiest, and that much of the comedy shown in the popular media is
Humor and health 487
quite consistent with the way humor is often conceptualized in the humor and
health literature (e.g., Lefcourt 2001).
Besides the different components of sense of humor, it is also important
to recognize that there are different forms of laughter that may have differ-
ential relevance to health. For example, although laughter can be a largely
involuntary expression of genuine amusement and mirth, it can also be forced
or feigned, and can include a blend of emotions, including hostility, fear, or
sadness. The Facial Action Coding System (FACS), developed by Ekman
and Friesen (1978), can be used to distinguish between genuine enjoyment
(“Duchenne”) smiles and laughter (characterized by symmetric involvement
of the zygomatic major and orbicularis oculi muscle groups) and faked or
non-enjoyment smiling or laughter (characterized by the absence of the or-
bicularis oculi action, asymmetrical facial displays, involvement of muscles
indicating a mixture of emotions, and/or unusual intensity or timing of muscle
actions). A number of studies have found differential health-related outcomes
for these two different types of facial displays, suggesting that genuine en-
joyment laughter may be associated with positive outcomes, whereas forced
laughter may not be (e.g., Bonanno and Keltner 1997; Zweyer, Velker, and
Ruch 2004). Researchers should distinguish between these different types
of laughter in investigations of the association between laughter and health.
In addition, practitioners need to consider the types of laughter that they are
promoting in their interventions.
confidence about the effects of mirth and laughter on the brain, muscles, en-
docrine system, and immune system (see Ruch and Ekman 2001, for further
discussion of research on laughter).
Immune system
continued 20 minutes later. These findings indicate that neither laughter nor
humor production are necessary, beyond simple amusement, for the pain
reduction effect to occur. Moreover, the observed increases in pain tolerance
were positively associated with genuine enjoyment smiles (Duchenne dis-
play), but not with the frequency or intensity of laughter. In fact, voluntary
efforts to exhibit or amplify laughter-related positive emotions were actually
negatively associated with pain tolerance. Thus, this study casts doubt on the
hypothesis (derived from the case of Norman Cousins) that hearty laughter
is necessary for the increase in pain tolerance. Instead, the results suggest
that the mechanisms have more to do with the amusement-related positive
emotion of mirth. Laughter does not seem to be necessary and, in fact, for-
cing oneself to laugh seemed to have a contrary effect. Although these find-
ings should be replicated before we can draw firm conclusions, this study,
with its careful assessment of different types of smiles and laughter using the
FACS system, provides an excellent model for future experimental research
exploring the mechanisms and parameters of effects of humor and laughter
on health-related variables.
Blood pressure
Although some have speculated that hearty laughter may lead to a reduction
in blood pressure over time, experimental studies indicate that laughter is ac-
tually associated with short-term increases in blood pressure and heart rate,
but no longer-term effects. White and Camarena (1989) conducted a 6-week
intervention study to examine the effects of a laughter intervention on systo-
lic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and heart rate (HR). They ran-
domly assigned participants to a laughter treatment group, a relaxation group,
or a health-education control group, each of which met for 6 weekly sessions
of 1½ hours. The results showed no significant pre- to post-session changes
in DBP, SBP, or HR in the laughter or health-education groups, whereas the
relaxation group showed significantly lower post-session HR and SBP in
comparison with both of the other groups. Thus, this study did not support
the hypothesis that sustained laughter results in lower levels of heart rate and
blood pressure over time.
In a study of the relationship between sense of humor (i.e., trait humor)
and blood pressure, Lefcourt and colleagues (1997) examined the correlation
between participants’ scores on sense of humor tests and their SBP levels dur-
ing a series of stressful laboratory tasks. They found an interesting sex differ-
Humor and health 497
ence in the pattern of correlations: women showed the expected negative cor-
relations between sense of humor and SBP, whereas the correlations for men
were in the opposite direction, higher humor being associated with higher
SBP. These authors suggested that the findings may be due to differences in
the ways in which men and women express humor, with women engaging in
more tolerant, self-accepting, and adaptive forms of humor, potentially lead-
ing to more beneficial physiological effects. Again, these findings hint at the
possibility that different styles or types of humor may have quite different
health consequences.
Longevity
If humor and laughter have beneficial effects on health, then it should be pos-
sible to demonstrate that, on average, people who laugh more frequently and
who have a greater sense of humor tend to live longer than others. Indeed, this
would seem to be the most important test of the humor-health hypothesis. Al-
though one could still argue that frequently engaging in humor and laughter
can at least improve the quality if not the duration of life, it is difficult to see
how claims for actual physical health benefits of humor and/or laughter can
be sustained if these do not result in greater longevity. However, the research
evidence in this regard, although limited, is not very encouraging. Rotton
(1992), in a series of four separate studies, found no differences in the life
duration of comedians and comedy writers, as compared with that of serious
entertainers and authors. Interestingly, though, he found that both profes-
sional humorists and serious entertainers died at a significantly younger age
than did people who were famous for other reasons. Thus, the ability to cre-
ate humor and to make other people laugh (as epitomized in individuals who
make a living by their comedic abilities) does not appear to confer any health
benefits resulting in greater longevity. If there are any health benefits to hav-
ing a sense of humor, it would appear that it is a different component or aspect
of humor that is involved.
Friedman and colleagues (1993) reported analyses of data from 1178 male
and female participants from the Terman Life-Cycle Study who have been
followed since 1921. A composite measure of cheerfulness was derived from
parent and teacher ratings of sense of humor and optimism that had been ob-
tained on these individuals at the age of 12. Surprisingly, survival analyses
revealed that those individuals rated as having higher cheerfulness at age 12
had significantly higher mortality rates throughout the ensuing decades. Thus,
498 Rod A. Martin
Illness symptoms
as defined by high scores on such self-report tests as the SHQ) are no more
healthy overall than their low humor counterparts. If a sense of humor does
confer any health benefits, it would appear that either they are too subtle to
be captured by such a cross-sectional design, or the type of humor involved is
not adequately captured by the SHQ. For example, this study did not include
a measure of life stress, so the authors were unable to examine the possibil-
ity of a stress-moderating effect of sense of humor on health. In addition, the
possibility remains that effects of humor on health might emerge over time
in a longitudinal design.
A study by Kuiper and Nicholl (2004) also bears on the relationship be-
tween sense of humor and satisfaction with health. These authors suggested
that it may be important to distinguish between actual and perceived physical
health, and proposed that a greater sense of humor may contribute to more
positive perceptions of physical health than may actually be warranted. Using
a sample of undergraduate students, they found that individuals with higher
scores on sense of humor measures report more positive health-related per-
ceptions, such as less fear of death or serious disease, less negative bodily
preoccupation, and less concern about pain. These results are consistent with
the finding of Svebak, Martin, and Holmen (discussed above) that higher
sense of humor is related to greater subjective satisfaction with health but
not with more objective indicators of health status. These findings may help
to explain the popularity of the idea that humor is beneficial for one’s health.
People with a greater sense of humor may perceive themselves to be healthi-
er, showing less concern about symptoms of illness, even though they are not
objectively healthier. Ironically, this greater health satisfaction and lowered
concern about health problems may actually lead to more risky health be-
haviors and consequently the higher mortality rates found by Friedman and
associates (1993).
As with physical health, there are many different ways of conceptualizing and
assessing psychological health. Various definitions of psychological health
include such components as: freedom from psychological distress and dis-
turbance (e.g., depression, anxiety); presence of positive moods, self-esteem,
self-confidence, optimism, purpose in life, etc.; ability to adapt to changing
circumstances and to cope effectively with stressful events; and ability to
maintain stable, intimate, and satisfying relationships with others. Theorists
Humor and health 501
have suggested that a sense of humor may have beneficial effects on psycho-
logical health in all of these areas.
imilarly, Nezlek and Derks (2001) found a correlation of only -.16 between
S
the Coping Humor Scale (CHS) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)
in a sample of 286 college students. With regard to more positive adjustment
variables, Kuiper and Martin (1998), in a series of five studies, found only
modest relationships between four measures of sense of humor and a measure
of optimism (average r = .17). Sense of humor was also related to only one of
the six subscales of the Ryff (1989) measure of psychological well-being (the
Personal Growth scale). Little or no relationship was found between sense
of humor and other well-being constructs such as self-acceptance, purpose in
life, positive relations with others, autonomy, and environmental mastery. In
addition, the correlations between sense of humor and various dimensions of
psychological health and well-being were considerably weaker than those be-
tween optimism and these same well-being measures, indicating that sense of
humor is less strongly related to well-being than is optimism. Thus, although
the research to date provides some evidence of relationships between sense
of humor and psychological well-being, the findings are often weaker than
might be expected.
The generally weak and inconsistent relationships between sense of humor
and well-being variables may be partially due to the fact that the most widely
used sense of humor measures tend to be quite strongly related to extraversion
but only weakly (negatively) related to neuroticism (Ruch 1994), whereas
most well-being constructs load primarily on neuroticism and not extraver-
sion. Research is needed to determine whether there are some forms of humor
that are less strongly related to extraversion (and perhaps even associated with
introversion) and more strongly related (either positively or negatively) with
neuroticism, and therefore more relevant to psychological well-being.
The recently developed Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) represents
a step in this direction. The self-enhancing humor subscale of this measure
seems to be more strongly (negatively) related to neuroticism and less strong-
ly related to extraversion than are most previous humor scales, while the self-
defeating humor scale is actually positively related to neuroticism (Martin et
al., 2003). Thus, these scales may capture some styles of humor that are more
relevant to well-being (both positively and negatively) than are many earlier
measures (Martin 2007; Martin et al., 2003; Kuiper et al., 2004). Interest-
ingly, some previous humor scales, such as the MSHS, have been found to be
positively correlated both with the presumably negative and positive humor
dimensions assessed by the HSQ (Martin et al. 2003). This finding supports
the contention that measures such as the MSHS blur the distinction between
potentially beneficial and detrimental humor styles, and may explain why
Humor and health 503
Interpersonal relationships
Conclusion
Despite reports in the popular media and claims made by adherents of the
“humor and health” movement, the research findings on health benefits of
humor and laughter are not as strong, consistent, or unambiguous as is com-
monly believed. With regard to physical health, the strongest evidence sup-
ports the idea of humor-related increases in pain tolerance, although the mech-
anisms are still unclear, and there is evidence that similar effects can also be
found with negative emotions. The empirical support for beneficial physio-
logical effects of humor or laughter on the immune system, blood pressure,
stress hormones, muscle relaxation, and so on, is weak and contradictory.
Indeed, there is some indication that a greater sense of humor is associated
with unhealthier lifestyle behaviors and a shorter life expectancy. With regard
to psychological health, there is some evidence that a sense of humor can
play a beneficial role in coping with stress, enhancing interpersonal relation-
ships, and contributing to general well-being, although this research is also
somewhat inconsistent.
As I have attempted to show in this review, it is unrealistic to hold a sim-
plistic view that all forms of humor and laughter are beneficial to a wide
array of physical and psychological health variables. Some types of humor
and laughter may be beneficial to some aspects of mental or physical health,
some may be neutral with regard to health, and some may even be detrimen-
tal. Furthermore, different mechanisms may be involved in different effects,
and some forms of humor may be beneficial in some ways and detrimental
in others. The mixed and weak findings in the research to date may be due,
at least in part, to the fact that researchers generally have not distinguished
different styles of humor that may be more or less relevant to health.
In addition, the inconsistent findings may be due to a number of methodo-
logical weaknesses that are apparent in much of the research. Due in large
part to a lack of adequate funding for such research, many of the experimen-
tal studies (especially those examining immune system variables) have been
small scale, with inadequate control groups, making it difficult to draw firm
conclusions one way or the other. Researchers often seem to have chosen
510 Rod A. Martin
their humor measures and research procedures simply on the basis of what
was readily available, rather than developing measures and methods based
on well-formulated theoretical models. Most investigations in this field have
been single studies, each using a different set of paradigms and measures,
making it difficult to compare results across studies and draw firm conclu-
sions. The field is in need of more systematic and programmatic research,
employing more well-formulated theoretical models, developing rigorous
and sophisticated paradigms and methodologies, replicating findings across
studies, carefully testing competing hypotheses, and thus providing an accu-
mulation of knowledge.
A number of suggestions for future research have been noted at various
points in the preceding review. Rather than reiterate these here, I will make
only a few general concluding comments. Future research should examine
different components and styles of humor and laughter to determine which
kinds of humor are beneficial for which aspects of health through which
mechanisms, as well as which aspects or styles of humor are irrelevant to
health, and which may even be detrimental to some aspects of health. The
Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin et al., 2003) is one attempt to develop
a measure of various styles of humor that may be differentially related to
health variables.
Much of the existing research has taken a correlational approach, using
self-report trait measures of sense of humor. Although some weak to moder-
ate correlations have been found between these humor measures and various
health-related variables (more so for psychological than physical health), this
approach suffers from a number of limitations, including an inability to deter-
mine the direction of causality, reliance on self-report, and a trait approach to
humor which may be insensitive to subtle relationships. To determine causal
relationships, experimental methodologies are needed, in the form of either
laboratory investigations or intervention studies. Such methods of course re-
quire appropriate control groups to rule out possible alternative explanations
of results. To determine the degree to which laughter or the humor-related
emotion of mirth are responsible for any observed effects, these should be
monitored via observational coding (e.g., the FACS system), physiological
measures, and self-report scales (e.g., state version of the STCI), and analyses
should be conducted to determine possible mediating effects of these vari-
ables. Humor intervention studies would be particularly beneficial to exam-
ine the longer-term significance of laboratory findings. Can people be taught
to laugh more frequently in their daily lives, to engage in more healthy forms
of humor, or to use humor as a coping strategy, and do these changes in humor
Humor and health 511
whether humor and laughter actually hasten the healing process or protect
one from becoming ill in the first place. Clearly this is a very interesting
field of research, with a great deal of potential for further discoveries.
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Humor in literature
Katrina E. Triezenberg
world experience, and how each of these readings differs from the author’s
idea of what he meant), every piece of literary humor can be said to become
a new joke every time it is read by a new person at a new time.
Of course, there are at least two possible ways to interpret the phrase “lit-
erary humor”: first, as the preservation of a joke through writing, and second
as an instance of a joke inside a work of literature. The dissection and criti-
cism of what writing is “literature” and what is not is a question not answered
here, though it is easy to find it argued and re-argued elsewhere. For the
purposes of this chapter, “literary humor” shall be defined as anything funny
inside any piece of fiction, drama, or narrative. What is and is not “funny”
depends on what theory of humor is being subscribed to, and these theories
are discussed elsewhere in this primer.
This chapter will first give an overview of some major works of “humor-
ous” literature in the Western tradition, beginning with the Greek playwrights
and ending with 20th century satirists, and will subsequently or simultan-
eously describe literary terminology associated with the study of humor as
well as various historical theories and observations about the qualities of hu-
morous texts, very often made by the same people who produced the texts.
The second part of this chapter will be theoretical itself, focusing on Raskin’s
theory of humor (1985), which will be found to be a summation of most of
the prior discussion of humor in literature, and Raskin and Attardo’s exten-
sion to this theory, which is particularly suited to the study of literature, as
well as Attardo’s own work using linguistic approaches to studying humor-
ous literature. The chapter will then end by discussing two mild challenges
to these theories, first the issue of “humor enhancers” in humorous litera-
ture, and then the interesting instances of literature that seem to conform to
Raskin’s theory but are clearly not humorous.
with the classical meaning of “comedy” as a story about the powerless vs.
the powerful, or the little man vs. the big man, or even about the perils and
pitfalls of social pretence. Thus Dante named his magnum opus “The Divine
Comedy” even though it is not in all parts (most notably the Paradiso, but also
most of the Purgatorio and some of the Inferno) at all funny. Greek comedies,
from the language of which the word is derived, were often bawdy or ribald
and ended happily for everyone. To Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other writers
of the Middle Ages and Renaissance a comedy was a story (but especially
a play, as to the Greeks) with a happy ending, whether humorous or not.
Throughout this chapter, the term “comedy” and its derivatives will be used
in the classical rather than the common sense.
The comedy was developed as a stage play by the ancient Greeks and is
generally divided into three major phases, the Old Comedy of the sixth and
fifth centuries bce, which often makes fun of a specific person and of current
political issues, the Middle Comedy of the fifth and four centuries bce, which
makes fun of more general themes such as literature, professions, and society,
and the New Comedy of the fourth and third centuries bce which typically
revolves around the bawdy adventures of a blustering soldier, a young man in
love with an unsuitable woman, or a father figure who cannot follow his own
advice. Of the Old and Middle comedies, the only that have survived com-
plete are eleven plays of Aristophanes’. The Clouds (of which only a revised
version survives) lampoons Socrates in heaven, in the Old tradition, while
Lysistrata makes fun of human nature in general, and Plutus personifies both
wealth and poverty in Athens, who so distract the citizenry that they neglect
the gods, and is considered to be a Middle comedy.
The author of New comedy whose work has best survived the ages is
Menander, whose complete play Dyskolos (The Grouch) was discovered in
1957. Many other long pieces of Menander’s work have survived in Latin
translations by Terence and Plautus.
The stage was not the only medium of comedy recognized by the ancient
Greeks. Aristotle’s Poetics, written towards the close of Middle Comedy, in-
cludes Homer in his discussion of the comic: “A poem of the satirical kind
cannot indeed be put down to any author earlier than Homer; though many
such writers probably there were. But from Homer onward, instances can be
cited – his own Margites, for example.” The Poetics also includes a beautiful-
ly concise observation of the differences between comedy and its evil twin, or
photo-negative, the tragedy: “for comedy aims at representing men as worse,
tragedy as better than in actual life.” Satire was firmly established in ancient
Greece, and nothing was safe from it – not the gods, not professions, not even
526 Katrina E. Triezenberg
poetry itself. Lucian (120–180 ad) wrote his own Symposium, in which the
diners are rowdy and drunken.
Comedy in the Roman Empire is generally reduced to the works of the
aforementioned Plautus and Terence, the former of whom lived at about the
same time as Menander, the latter about a century later. Both of these men
wrote plays of essentially the Old Greek kind – farces involving the same
stock characters (father, soldier, slave) and which, unlike the plays of Aris-
tophanes, offended no one in particular. More than a dozen plays of Plautus’
have survived. Six plays of Terence have survived, and were enormously
popular through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.
In the Middle Ages, the farces, bawdies, and satires of Greek and Roman
literature continued to be popular. Geoffrey Chaucer is best known for his
Canterbury Tales, some of which (most famously, perhaps, The Miller’s Tale)
are both bawdy and still funny by today’s standards. Chaucer also penned The
Romaunt of the Rose, a satire on love and courtship, and The House of Fame
which seems to spoof Dante’s idea of the narrator and the guide – in Chau-
cer’s version, he the narrator would rather not listen to the guide. The Inferno,
the first installment of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, describes damned souls
engaging in bawdy behavior and word play. Dante and his guide Virgil also
encounter a great many Florentines who sometimes regret their sins and some-
times do not, thus satirizing Florentine society. The second and third install-
ments of the Divine Comedy are however distinctly not funny, and clearly il-
lustrate that by the fourteenth century a comedy need do nothing more than
end happily. Chaucer seems to have also been heavily influenced by another
Italian writer, Bocaccio, whose Decameron is a collection of stories told by
a group of ten nobles who have fled the Black Death by shutting themselves up
in a lonely castle. Many of these stories involve the same themes as New Greek
comedy and Roman comedy before them.
A century after this trio of comic writers, a French monk named Rabelais
published a series of five books collectively known as Gargantua and Panta-
gruel. Gargantua and his son Pantagruel are two giants of unfixed size, who
can sometimes fit into a normal building and sometimes hold whole civiliza-
tions inside their mouths. These books contain satires on the Roman Catholic
church, bawdy stories, and scatological humor as well as plain silliness that
reminds the modern reader of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. These books are
not particularly associated with Comedy, but are undeniably humorous. Rab-
elais’ brand of silliness and freedom from the laws of physics and of logic was
discussed by the critic Bakhtin, who calls this atmosphere the “carnival” world.
More on carnival can be found in dozens of books by Bakhtin and others.
Humor in literature 527
and ridiculous. Though the substance of her plots is always earnest and could
not have offended anyone, all of her novels can simultaneously be read as
scorching satires of human nature and society manners.
Among the Victorians can be found many instances of humor, as Charles
Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray both became enormously popular
for sympathetic portrayals of eccentric characters and were copied by other
novelists and story writers. Though there are many straightforward jokes and
satire in their novels, and the novels themselves can be considered comedies
because they end well for almost everyone, it is instructive to consider why
precisely a Dickens characterization – of Silas Wegg and Mr. Venus from Our
Mutual Friend, for example – is labeled as being “funny.” These characters
do not tell jokes themselves, and most of their dialogue is not particularly
witty, and yet they make us laugh in delight at the recognition and exaggera-
tion of a “type” of person that we ourselves have met in real life. Perhaps
for this reason, Dickens is rather more successful with British readers than
with Americans, who are sometimes left out in the cold by his humor, while
Americans more readily recognize the same humor in the works of Samuel
Clemens, known as Mark Twain. Twain did very much the same thing that
Dickens was doing, writing stories about characters that are more real than
real life, more true to type than any true person could be.
At the same time in Russia a story writer named Nikolai Gogol was writ-
ing short stories that were as much ahead of their time as Tristram Shandy
was ahead of its own. Gogol’s short stories alternate between being simply
bizarre, almost to the point where humor is lost to wonder and confusion
(such as The Nose, in which a man’s nose goes AWOL and walks about the
city causing trouble), and so dark and horrible that, while the story is most
certainly a joke with a punch line, the reader is loathe to laugh (such as The
Overcoat, in which a poor clerk starves himself to buy a new coat, which is
stolen from him on the first night he wears it).
1890–1900, a period called the fin-de-siecle by students of English lit-
erature, was the golden age of Oscar Wilde, a great comic playwright whose
only joke, it seems, was to contrast the honest, industrious mores of the pub-
lic world with the lazy and selfish motivations of his elegant heroes. Wilde’s
plays exhibit a gift for word play and repartee, as well as cultivation of ridicu-
lous situations, which has become a staple of “comedy” in the 20th and 21st
centuries.
Satire and characterization continued to be popular kinds of literary
humor in the 20th century novel, as exhibited in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22
and Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk. P. G. Wodehouse’s long string
530 Katrina E. Triezenberg
of novels, mostly featuring the nitwit Bertie Wooster and his gentleman’s
gentleman Jeeves, are reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s comedy sans elegance
and with an extra infusion of silliness. Like Wilde, Wodehouse’s works usu-
ally hinge around a ridiculous social situation created by the characters them-
selves, very much in the same line as the late 20th century’s televised situ-
ational comedies, or sitcoms, which are too numerous and too well-known to
list here. Television in general opened up huge new vistas for humor along
with every other kind of performing art. In addition to the sitcom, humorous
variety shows with invited guests (such as Laugh In and Saturday Night Live)
and collections of sketches (such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus) were
popular in the 20th century. Before television, cinema provided a new venue
to perform the same kind of comic plays that had been popular ever since
the Greek theatre, and for comedians to become household names the world
over. Independent of technological innovations, the 20th century also saw the
beginning of the musical comedy in 1943, when Oklahoma! premiered.
Twentieth century authors who are known to have meditated on the sub-
ject of humor include E. B. White, who suggested this chapter’s introduc-
tory metaphor when he said, “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the
thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure
scientific mind” (White and White 1941). Isaac Asimov, better known for
writing science fiction, has published two books of jokes (1971, 1993) that
include commentary on why the jokes are funny and suggestions on how to
successfully tell the jokes. He recognizes that humor comes from an abrupt
change in point of view. Comedian Rowan Atkinson, familiar from his hu-
morous sketch show Mr. Bean, proposes that a person can be funny in three
ways: by being in an unusual place (as Lemuel Gulliver), by behaving in an
unusual way (as Monty Python’s sketch The Ministry of Silly Walks), and by
being the wrong size (as Gargantua and Pantagruel – but is Alice funny after
she drinks potions in Wonderland?) It is suggested that the reader keep these
theories in mind, for discussion later in this chapter. But first, the author has
judged that it would be expedient to include a short glossary of literary terms
commonly used in the discussion of humor.
Absurd: aside from the general meaning of illogical or impossible, absurd can
specifically refer to the purposelessness of existence. This meaning comes
from the existentialist writings of Albert Camus.
Humor in literature 531
leaps of logic. Also called Varronian satire, after the Roman playwright
Varro and the Greek playwright Menippus.
Mime: today’s mimes are a variety of clown whose performances are not ne-
cessarily funny. In Greek usage, a “mime” is a farce.
Mock epic: a satiric spoof of the epic form. Alexander Pope’s Dunciad is an
example of this genre.
Mock heroic: the same as an epic, though not necessarily on such a grand
scale. The grandiosity of language employed is at odds with the low sub-
ject matter, creating humor.
Paraprosdokian: a phrase or list with an amusingly out-of-place ending.
Parody: a humorous work, mimicking the style of another author. While
mock epics and heroics are spoofs on a genre, parodies are usually iden-
tifiable as spoofs of the work of one particular person. Aristophanes’ play
The Frogs is a parody of Euripides; in the modern day, the musician Weird
Al parodies the popular songs of other musicians.
Pun: an expression that has two or more possible meanings all hinging on
one word being polysemous or homophonous with another, or two words
together being phonologically similar to a third word. Also called parono-
masia.
Repartee: rapid, witty dialogue, funny either explicitly through its content or
implicitly because it contrasts so sharply with everyday speech.
Restoration comedy: a particular kind of comedy that hinges around repar-
tee; popular during the English restoration. William Congreve’s plays are
of this type.
Ribaldry: literature that discusses sex in a humorous fashion; the same as
bawdry.
Romantic comedy: a comedy that revolves around the adventures of lovers.
Sarcasm: verbal expression of irony or satire, often with a particular vocal
intonation.
Satire: literature that criticizes individuals or organizations, preferably in
a witty manner. The best satire, with the best picked targets, does not have
to resort to grotesquerie to make its point.
Scatology: literature that discusses excrement and its production. One of
Rabelais’ favorite subjects.
Sentimental comedy: popular in the 18th century, sentimental comedy’s
characters are virtuous if not also attractive, affectionate, and industrious,
and the happy ending is domestic. Noted here because this particular kind
of comedy is not well-known for containing any humor at all.
534 Katrina E. Triezenberg
Since the ancient Greeks (or possibly before) writers and philologists have
speculated about what precisely “humor” is, what makes something funny,
why laughter is the response, and what good laughter does. Humor can be
conveyed through an enormous number of media, but because this chapter
focuses on literary humor, it is natural to look for work on literary or verbal
humor specifically. Raskin’s Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (1985) was
written specifically with verbal humor in mind. To sum up the whole book,
Raskin posits that humor occurs when two scripts that shouldn’t be in the
same place, are put in the same place, and somehow made to make sense
within that place. A “script” is the stereotypical understanding of an object or
an event – for example, the script for “doctor” includes ideas like “studied for
a long time, is intelligent, serious, and thoughtful, knows a great deal about
human physiology, growth, and infection, can be trusted to do no harm, and
can be privy to embarrassing secrets and keep them to himself.” This script
for what a doctor should be is in direct opposition to the greedy, careless, and
cold-hearted behavior sometimes perceived by patients. Thus, the following
line is funny:
Doctor to patient: “Well, Mrs. Jones, you’re not quite as sick as we’d
hoped.”
In later work, Raskin includes a list of what he believes are all of the funny
script oppositions, thus narrowing the playing field and quietening some objec-
tors who had claimed that if one looks hard enough, one can find humor in any-
thing, according to his theory. Many of Raskin’s script oppositions are open to
Humor in literature 535
extremely broad interpretation, however, for example reality vs. unreality and
expected vs. unexpected. Others, such as sex vs. religion, are less murky.
Let us compare Rowan Atkinson’s quotation about the three ways a per-
son can be funny, to Raskin’s theory. Atkinson said that a person can be funny
by being in an unusual place, by behaving in an unusual way, and by being
the wrong size. The first two are instances of the expected vs. unexpected op-
position, the third of reality vs. unreality. Mr. Atkinson therefore agrees with
Raskin, but Raskin’s theory wins in breadth of applicability.
Most theories of humor, in fact, can be boiled down to something like the
Script Semantic Theory of Humor. One theory of humor that stands in stark
contrast is the aggression theory, according to which laughter is an aggres-
sive social mechanism, and all jokes must have a butt. A common argument
against the aggression theory of humor is that there are jokes that seem to
have no butt at all, for example the elephant jokes popular in the 1950s:
Possibly one could say that the silly elephant is the butt of the joke. Possibly
someone adept at the black magic of literary theory could come up with an
even more interesting target. But really, the joke is funny just because it’s silly
– or according to script opposition, because it pits the elephant’s enormous
bulk against the small size and negligible strength of a cherry tree.
Script opposition is not enough to make a joke even in Raskin’s theory,
however. Not every pair of incongruous things are funny. For example, there
are several literary terms that would seem, at first glance, to qualify as jokes,
but which are not. Here are some of them:
Allegory: a story that has two meanings, that is really about two things. For
example, George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm is on the surface a story
about anthropomorphized farm animals – but it is arguably about the Rus-
sian revolution. Allegories are not usually funny because though the story
means two very different things, they are really the same, and really very
parallel to each other.
Anagogy: a text that has some sort of higher meaning, beyond the literal one
of the text. For example, some medieval theologians believed that the
Bible could be read at several levels, each accessible to people who had
attained a certain level of spiritual enlightenment. To people sufficiently
unenlightened to read only the lowest of these levels, there would be no
script opposition at all – and everyone else would see either an allegory, or
536 Katrina E. Triezenberg
In 1991 Attardo and Raskin (1991) extended the script opposition theory into
a full-blown theory of verbal humor. In the General Theory of Verbal Humor,
the script opposition (now called SO) is only one of six possible dimensions
of a joke. The others are the target of the joke (TA), the logical mechanism by
which the SO is resolved (LM), the situation in which the joke is set (SI), the
language used to tell the joke (LA), and the narrative strategy used to tell the
joke (NS). Not all of these dimensions apply to every joke; for instance, as
noted during the discussion of the aggression theory of humor, not all jokes
have targets. The language, or diction, used to tell the joke may also vary con-
siderably from telling to telling especially if the humor is verbal rather than
written, and a lot of jokes are really the very same joke put in a different situ-
ation, or as literary scholars would call it, setting. In fact, one can argue from
the perspective of a person who is studying humor and the variety of jokes,
that the only two which are unique to humor are the SO and the LM.
Humor in literature 537
GTVH goes a long way towards explaining what goes on inside an isolated
joke, and Attardo’s further work has gone a long way towards applying the
GTVH to literary humor. Such regular, structured theories have been created
to explain all mediums of artistic expression and the student beginning stud-
ies in any particular art will quickly be acquainted with the formal theories he
needs to know in order to take part in the medium’s discourse and evolution.
Just knowing the theories, however, does not an artist make – and nor can the
theories ever fully explain why one artist is successful and another isn’t. It is
therefore inevitable that, while a scholar may agree with the SSTH and the
GTVH (although it should be noted that there are some who agree with nei-
ther), these theories cannot be accepted as the be-all and end-all of humorous
expression, especially not of humorous literature, which combines the craft
of humor with the craft of storytelling. Triezenberg (2004) explored the tech-
niques that a humorous writer or narrator uses to help the audience appreciate
the humor in texts, and found a number of standard techniques (though by no
means an exhaustive list of them) called humor enhancers. A humor enhancer
is a narrative technique that is not necessarily funny in and of itself, but that
538 Katrina E. Triezenberg
easily digest such humor, which makes the columnist appeal to a broader
demographic. An author like Jane Austen has been around for so long that
the literate public is more or less familiar with the way she pokes fun at her
characters’ little foibles and faults, but she does it so cleverly that few authors
have been able to successfully mimic her, and so the person who is reading
her for the first time may have never encountered such social criticism before
and may miss her humor entirely – especially since so much of it consists of
(sexually innocent) double entendres. Familiarity also, for a reason that has
never been satisfactorily explained, can be funny in and of itself. A comedian
who can describe something spot-on elicits laughs, as does an actor who can
do good impersonations.
Repetition and variation can also be used to enhance humor in a piece,
though unlike the other humor enhancers they can be interpreted as actual
script oppositions, because normal language strives to avoid repetition, and
so when it occurs an expected/unexpected opposition occurs. Repetition with
skillful variation allows an author to use the same joke over and over again,
magnifying it each time and also impressing the audience with his inventive-
ness. Good use of repetition makes a good joke even better, takes advantage
of both stereotypes and familiarity to make the humor funnier.
The script opposition structure works very well to describe an individual
joke, and pretty well to describe a piece of humorous literature that depends
on one big punch line near the end, such as many of O’Henry’s short stories
or Gogol’s The Overcoat. It works less well to describe the overall struc-
ture of a piece that is primary literature and, secondarily, funny, such as the
works of Oscar Wilde and P G. Wodehouse (although, if one dissected the
humor out of the average Wodehouse novel, there would be precious little
left). Three of Attardo and Raskin’s knowledge resources are universal to all
literature: the diction or word choice, the setting, and the narrative strategy.
The other three, the target, script opposition, and logical mechanism, are se-
lectively applicable to various works. One could say that Animal Farm for
example had Soviet Russia as its target and that, by extension, all works of
satire or parody have a target.
finds that jokes and lies are both non-bonafide modes of communication, as
is play-acting. One particular genre of literature is very interested in lies, and
that is the mystery novel, the action of which often hinges around lies told
by various characters. Part of the fun of reading a mystery is to try to tease
out what characters are saying truths and untruths, and why they are doing
it. The reader catches lies by catching script oppositions: by discovering that
two incompatible scripts are supposed to be compatible. For example, in
A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie, Dora Bunner calls her friend
Miss Blacklock both Letty and Lotty, alternately. This is a script opposition:
Miss Blacklock’s name is Letty, versus Miss Blacklock’s name is Lotty. The
observant reader (as opposed to the merely voracious reader) will notice this
disparity, and will find a reason to dismiss it: Dora Bunner is a scatty old lady
who can’t keep anything straight in her head. This is a form of logical mech-
anism, from a strictly theoretical point of view. It allows the reader to see two
incompatible ideas, and make them compatible. A similar script opposition
happens later in the novel when Miss Blacklock receives a letter from Julia
Simmons, who asks if she may come to live with Miss Blacklock – and Miss
Blacklock is already sheltering Julia Simmons. Opposition, Julia Simmons
is already living at Little Paddocks vs. Julia Simmons wants to come live at
Little Paddocks. The logical mechanism that resolves this script opposition
is impersonation: the Julia Simmons already living at Little Paddocks isn’t
Julia Simmons at all.
One can begin to build up a list of logical mechanisms used in mystery
novels, and they are different from the logical mechanisms used in jokes.
Experienced comedians have often observed that there are really very few
jokes in the world, by which they most likely mean there is a finite list of
logical mechanisms, and all jokes that use the same logical mechanism are
fundamentally the same (interestingly, Ruch et al. 1993 found that readers of
jokes were the least likely to rate two jokes with the same logical mechanism
as being similar, compared to jokes that shared other knowledge resources
– and yet, one instinctively thinks that all “garden path” jokes must be the
same, and all “figure/ground reversal” jokes too, and one is absolutely sure
that all linguistic deixis joke are the same, because there is an English word
for them – puns. Why precisely the logical mechanism was so problematic
should be explored further, but in the meantime, two explanations are prof-
fered: first, that the logical mechanism lies so deep in the semantic structure
of a joke that the naïve listener may not be aware of it while the experienced
comedian, after hearing several tens of thousands of jokes, begins to make the
Humor in literature 541
connection; second, that at the time the paper was written, the list of logical
mechanisms was insufficiently elaborated). Just as the same logical mech-
anisms are used over and over again in joke after joke, they also begin to be
used again and again by mystery writers. There are, after all, only so many
ways to lie. Script opposition resolution through the two mechanisms given
as examples, faulty memory and impersonation, are very common.
What is particularly interesting about these logical mechanisms for mys-
tery novels is that they can be divided into two different kinds. Both of them
are the explanations that the reader is supposed to accept for the given script
opposition, but while some of them really do represent the true resolution of
the ambiguity in question, others are the lies, linguistic and otherwise, that
characters in the novel have used in order to dismiss the incongruity. The
reader is referred to A Murder is Announced to find out which of the two ex-
amples given is which.
The last question to answer is the one that ought to have been in mind
for several pages now: given that mystery novels seem to follow not only
the GTVH, with knowledge resources, but also the SSTH with script op-
positions, why are they not necessarily funny? The answer to this mystery
is well-hidden in the earlier part of the chapter: the key to making the whole
theory of humor work is the trigger, which alerts the reader to the fact that
not only are two incompatible scripts trying to occupy the same space, but
that there is a way to resolve this incongruity. In a joke, the realization comes
upon the reader all at once, and this sudden reversal – very much what Isaac
Asimov probably meant by “a sudden change of viewpoint” – elicits the ex-
perience of humor. The lies in a mystery novel, on the other hand, are often
realized slowly, as the reader puts the pieces together, and so humor is often
lost. Some of the very best and most famous mystery novels, however, such
as Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, do save the whole
explanation for the very end, and the explanation is skillfully and concisely
enough written that the reader feels like laughing in delight – this is not quite
an experience of humor, but something akin to it.
This part of the discussion has been presented in order to illustrate the
usefulness of humor theory in other types of literature besides the kind that
is strictly humorous. A modified version of the GTVH has been found to
successfully describe many aspects of the standard murder mystery. Further
research may discover (and has in the past discovered, a la Vladimir Propp’s
formula for fairy tales, Propp 1971) that other genres are also amenable to
structural theories.
542 Katrina E. Triezenberg
References
Asimov, Isaac
1971 Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor. A Lifetime Collection of Favorite
Jokes, Anecdotes, and Limericks with Copious Notes on How to Tell
Them and Why. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
1993 Asimov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Jokes, Limericks, and Anec-
dotes. New York: Harper Books.
Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin
1991 Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation
model. Humor 4 (3/4): 293–341.
Attardo, Salvatore, Christian F. Hempelmann, and Sara Di Maio
2002 Script oppositions and logical mechanisms: Modeling incongruities
and their resolutions. Humor 15 (1): 3–46.
Grice, H. Paul
1975 Logic and conversation. In: Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.),
Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 3: Speech Acts, 41–58. New York: Aca-
demic Press.
Hempelmann, Christian F.
2004 Script opposition and logical mechanism in punning. Humor 17 (4):
381–392.
Propp, Vladimir
1971 Morphology of the Folktale. Bloomington: American Folklore Soci-
ety and Indiana University.
Raskin, Victor
1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Ruch, Willibald, Salvatore Attardo, and Victor Raskin
1993 Towards an empirical verification of the general theory of verbal
humor. Humor 6 (2): 123–136.
Triezenberg, Katrina
2004 Humor enhancers in the study of humorous literature. Humor 17 (4):
411–418.
White, E. B., and K. S. White (eds.)
1941 A Subtreasury of American Humor. New York: Coward-McCann.
Communication and humor
Dineh Davis
Introduction
Defining humor
First, it is helpful to realize that the mere process of defining such a broad
concept as humor has its own drawbacks and dangers. While some authors
have used a variety of words and concepts interchangeably with humor (such
as wit, comedy, risible, mirth, etc.), others have gone to great lengths to dis-
tinguish the nuances evident in such lists. Samuel Butler noted that defin-
itions are “A kind of scratching, and generally leave a sore place more sore
than it was before.” (Webster’s quotable definitions, 1988). Yet, operation-
alizing a definition is instrumental in achieving common ground. At least,
544 Dineh Davis
for the purposes of the current discussion, I must submit to a broader and
more flexible definition than those adopted by some other scholars. McGhee
(1979), for example, defines humor “as a form of intellectual play, (p.42)” He
then suggests that there are two forms of such play, one which is quite serious
and involves knowledge expansion; while the other is intended to be playful
and focuses on resolving fantasy incongruities – which he identifies as the
essence of a child’s sense of humor.
Though I can easily agree with this working definition, I do have a con-
cern with what McGhee has chosen to exclude from his studies: the concept
of mirth. He states, “we are mirthful when we are merry and in a gener-
ally lighthearted mood… Mirthful laughter may result from one’s gay mood
and a sense of fun and amusement, though, without anything being funny in
a humorous sense. (p. 8)” Here, I presume, he is using the term “humorous”
to be limited to obvious and addressable incongruities easily discernible in
a punch-line. It presumes that we all share the same concept of what is “hu-
morous.”
Gruner (1997) has further reduced the concept of intellectual play into a
“game” and further delimits the concept of a game to that which has a win-
ner and a loser. Yet, unlike Gruner, there are many who don’t consider every
humorous episode as a win/lose proposition – nor would some consider any
act of losing as an occasion for grieving. My definition expands to the meta-
level of life as a game – potentially with many winners who are at the same
time losers – given that none of us has yet managed to get out of this life
alive. Therefore, life itself is full of incongruities; yet, for many individuals
and for most of the time, such incongruities are strictly a cause for pain. This
tragicomic view of life is clearly within the greater tradition of communica-
tion as a narrative or story-telling paradigm (Fisher 1978; Fisher 1987) As
such, game-playing may be considered the essence of each human commu-
nication act.
At the risk of getting ahead of myself in the discussion of humor and
gender, I must admit to having read a variety of books and articles on humor
without ever choosing to stop and define the word humor, per se. In fact,
I chose to read and enjoy most of two books by McGhee (1979; and with
Chapman 1980) before retracing my steps and looking more carefully at his
definition of humor. I did so only because I was baffled by some of the gen-
der differences noted in research environments that worked from pre-selected
items of a humorous nature – as defined by the researchers. Once I did submit
myself to the parameters drawn for humor, however, I recognized its exclu-
sionary nature and the artificiality of its limitations.
Communication and humor 545
the primary testing ground for determining one’s humor quotient!) by many
Western humor researchers. Along these lines, another wrote: “I also think
that maybe both happiness and humor evoke that same feeling in a person...
the feeling of satisfaction maybe?” Though Gruner would zero in on the word
“satisfaction” here as an indication of “winning,” there is no reason to assume
that someone else has, by default, “lost” something in the process.
Humor is the ability to mock reality; a will to experience joy (versus condem-
nation for one’s awkwardness)” said one man who had pondered for several
weeks why he was always so serious and unable to appreciate humor. The
revelation came to him quite self-consciously in a friendly get-together in
which others, near-strangers, had tried to put him at ease by making light of
his awkwardness. Here was a situation that was not “funny” for any of the
participants, yet it brought a sudden and deep appreciation for what became
the embodiment of the self-definition of humor in a highly-reasoned humor-
ous moment. A final thought on a sense of humor sums up the various points
made so far: “A sense of humor to me is the ability, desire and willingness to
sieve through all that tragedy and suffering, and recognize the little pockets
of optimism and hope. It is like panning for gold- you have to go through all
the dirt and muck first. (Lim 2002)
the world that casts some doubt on the narrower definitions of humor and its
relationship to a sense of humor.
Thus, still hesitating to choose a single, exclusionary definition for humor,
I propose this broader (and therefore much more vague) concept: humor is
any sudden episode of joy or elation associated with a new discovery that is
self-rated as funny. A sense of humor is the subtle but consistent ability to
remain lighthearted in a wide range of circumstances, from the obvious oc-
casions of happiness and joy to the more sacred and grave encounters with
distress and tragedy. Given that all interpretations by humans are ultimately
subjective and self-directed, this definition extends to any discovery in its
broadest sense, as it becomes conscious in one individual’s mind and causes
that person to believe she or he has experienced the essence of humor. Such
joy is created intrinsically, but may manifest itself outwardly in smiles or
laughter and is very much affected by a person’s general environment, includ-
ing immediate natural and social surroundings as well as the larger cultural
contexts.
Having established my preference for a subjective and inclusive defin-
ition of humor from a personal perspective, I must indulge in a paradox of
offering some options on what humor may not be – from a social perspec-
tive or in certain specified contexts. As a culture, we have come to acknow-
ledge the Political Correctness of not using hurtful humor to stratify society.
In a more specific context, it seems perfectly logical to differentiate among
terms that may be considered synonymous with humor. In a lucid example of
this variety, Kronenberger (Kronenberger 1972) differentiated between wit
and humor as follows:
Where wit is a form of criticism or mockery, humor includes an element
of self-criticism or self-mockery; where wit tends to proclaim imperfection,
humor wryly acknowledges it; where wit undresses you, humor goes naked.
At its best, humor simultaneously hurts and heals, makes one larger from
a willingness to make oneself less. It has essentially much more breadth than
wit, from being much more universal in appeal and human in effect. If harder
to translate or explain, it often need not be explained or translated at all, re-
vealing itself in a sudden gesture, a happy juxtaposition. We speak constantly
of ‘the humor of the situation,’ almost never of the wit; just so, virtually every-
thing that is farcical or funny derives from humor gone a bit wild. (p. 11)
The list of synonyms for humor and related words and concepts is obviously
quite long. In reviewing such a list, it becomes quite apparent that one cannot
arbitrarily include or exclude any one of them based on their positive or nega-
tive connotations. I asked a broad range of individuals to provide me with
548 Dineh Davis
words they associated with humor. The following sample compilation from
their suggestions will indicate the quite subjective interpretation of the con-
cept of humor – given that some of these words have quite negative connota-
tions: burlesque, cachinnate, chestnut, clown, comic, farce, farceur, farcical,
fleer, fun, funny, hilarity, inside joke, irony, irreverent, jape, jest, jester, jocos-
ity, jocularity, jovial, joke, jolly, joy, laugh, laughter, merry, mirth, mockery,
nicker, pantagruelism, parody, practical joke, riant, ribald, ridden, ridicule,
ridiculous, risible, risqué, roast, sarcasm, satire, scoff, scurrilous, silly, sneer,
snigger, tease, wag, waggery, wheeze, wit. This exercise provides further evi-
dence of the subjectivity of humor in a single society.
Literature review
Berger 1993) and its functionality or applicability in various contexts and cir-
cumstances (Alberts 1990; Bippus 2000; Boland and Hoffman 1983; Grun-
er 1997; Honeycutt and Brown 1998; McGhee and Chapman 1980; Meyer
2000; Perry et al., 1997). These issues are potentially less complex and more
amenable to objective observation, thus lending themselves more readily to
scientific inquiry. What is less directly examined is what affects the send-
er’s perceptions of humor and what allows the recipient to understand the
true intentions of the sender of a humorous message. Such inquiries face
the familiar dilemmas of too many variables within the social environment
(Chapman et al., 1980). Therefore, after defining humor and offering a brief
literature review - based on sources of influence, I will turn to those issues of
a purely subjective nature such as gender and humor, and my perspective on
the role of archetypes in universalization of humor.
A discussion of the physiognomic origins of laughter and the innate pre-
disposition of humans to use these facial gestures to signal peace, happiness,
or submission and to enhance harmony and survival is beyond the scope of
this discussion, but is well documented in a variety of related disciplines
and in early works (see, for example, Chapman and Foot 1976; Haig 1988).
Nevertheless, by focusing specifically on the positive social role that such
nonverbal communication plays, it is hard to relegate the origins or func-
tions of humor to an arbitrary subset of human needs for communication
and interaction. Rather, we must recognize the central role of humor in any
human communication and strive to legitimize its continued and systematic
study.
Humor begins within and may remain entirely within the individual
(such as in self-talk or self-discovery); and as such can be dealt with within
the disciplines of philosophy or psychology. Once it manifests itself in any
public sphere where two or more individuals are involved, however, we can
most justifiably examine its consequences or effects within the discipline of
communication. As with any human communication environment, we can
identify several clusters of elements that can affect a single act of humor
communication. One of the earliest and simplest communication theories
describing the functions of mass communication identifies the critical elem-
ents in this process as the sender, message, receiver, channel, and outcome
(“Who says what in which channel to whom and to what effect?” (Lasswell
1948). Depending on the specific focus of researchers in the field, numerous
other elements have been identified since then.
The following compilation and expansion on those elements recogniz-
es the complexity and nuances of understanding and enjoying humor from
550 Dineh Davis
Hackman 1993). Ethnic jokes are the most blatantly obvious manifest-
ation of this effect. However, cultural biases and effects are not limited to
regional, national, or racial/ethnic differences among us. Other subcultures
such as gender, sexual orientation, various disabilities, and age are among
the many classifications that provide cohesion for the inner circle and tend
to exclude “outsiders” in humor-related circumstances.
–– Environment: natural elements such as the weather, geographic location,
seasons, and the like serve not only as unique settings for humor but also
affect the perception and mood of humor recipients. Despite the negative
emotions associated with natural disasters, such settings provide one of the
staple scenarios for jokes: storms and floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and
the like provide ample opportunities to throw together those human elem-
ents in society that don’t typically interact under normal circumstances.
Supernatural elements (such as humans meeting at heaven’s gate or in the
depths of hell; appearance of ghosts or aliens, etc.) are also used in abun-
dance to add mystery and magic to the environment.
–– Surroundings: combination of human and natural elements in a more im-
mediate sense, can determine the receptivity of the humor recipient. For
example, the same joke that may be considered quite hilarious in a locker
room with same-sex friends, may fall flat at a formal dinner party with the
same set of friends, but within a larger group. I am, therefore, separating
the more specific concept of “surroundings” from the more general vari-
ations of an environmental or cultural system. Furthermore, within such
specific surroundings, other characteristics will continue to cause situation-
al differences. Thus, the adage: “You had to be there!”
–– Situational characteristics:
–– Mood: Based on the surroundings, as described above, receptivity can
change dramatically. Even the sequencing of jokes can result in after-
effects or residual mood-shifts that will affect the outcome of new in-
teractions
–– Demographics of EACH of the senders and receivers and bystanders in
the surroundings: Age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, race, ethnicity,
education, economic status, power status, birth order, ad infintum…
–– States of life: Pregnancy, Infancy, Toddlerhood, Childhood and being a
“student” – preschool through grad school, dating & courtship, Marriage
& divorce, old age, death, illness, & other morbidities. Clearly, even
within the same category in the “state of life” one must remain sensitive
to the recipient’s moment-to-moment situation to make sense of what
may be appropriate humor. For example, what may be quite a funny and
552 Dineh Davis
the sender’s intent is, in fact, the locus of a great deal of research in com-
munication and humor. Such functions, as succinctly described by Meyer
(2000) fall into two major categories of unity/division and are further sub-
divided as follows:
–– To unite (helping to bring people together in one group)
–– Identification:
–– as credibility enhancer
–– for group cohesiveness and resource for affiliation (Murstein and
Brust 1985; O’Donnell-Truijillo and Adams 1983)
–– to communicate feelings
–– to deepen relationships
–– to enhance uncertainty reduction
–– To clarify issues or positions
–– To create or promote division (separating the in-group from Others)
–– For enforcement of social norms
–– To facilitate differentiation. All of the above functions are fully ex-
plored by Meyer (2000)
–– Context: Ranges from interpersonal (Honeycutt and Brown 1998; Wanzer
et al., 1996) and small group settings (Bethea et al., 2000) to organizational
(Brown 1990) and mass media contexts (Perry et al., 1997) and in every
imaginable field of endeavor. In addition, to the basic issues of context,
scholars have also paid attention to the recontextualization of rhetoric as
in the case of re-presentation and creation of the “Dole humor myth” (Le-
vasseur and Dean 1996). The concept of context is too broad to quantify in
this chapter, so the following examples serve as a somewhat random walk
through the context territory:
–– Interpersonal relationship building and maintenance (O’Donnell-Truijillo
and Adams 1983; Payne 2001); role of humor in overcoming communica-
tion apprehension (Hackman and Barthel-Hackman 1993); and functions
of humor in conversation (Graham et al., 1992)
–– Educational setting (Wanzer and Frymier 1999)
–– Intercultural studies (Hackman and Barthel-Hackman 1993)
–– Political humor and its effectiveness in political campaigns and gaining
popularity in office (Chapel 1978; Levasseur and Dean 1996; Meyer 1990;
Moore 1992) and even an analysis of the role of cartoons in depicting the
role of the first lady/first wife (Edwards and Chen 2000)
–– Religious settings (Jablonski 2000)
–– Humor in public address is a very well studied area both in terms of edu-
Communication and humor 555
cation and effectiveness (Chang and Gruner 1981; Grimes 1955a; Grimes
1955b; Gruner 1967; Gruner 1985; Hackman 1998).
–– Effects of humor in mass media (King 2000; Perry et al., 1997)
–– Bystanders: though not typically considered a part of the communication
environment, we must add the “innocent” bystander who may easily play
an unforeseen role in the creation, execution, or enjoyment of the humor in
any potentially humorous communication act and thus lose the bystander
status in the process of humor assimilation!
–– Disciplinary bystanders: though we associate the study of humor with a var-
iety of arts, humanities, and social science disciplines, we are less inclined
to look for connections to certain other disciplines such as mathematics. To
illustrate that humor can be studied from nearly every angle, Paulos (Paulos
1980) offers a book on mathematics and MacHovec (MacHovec 1988) re-
lies on the astronomical concept of syzygy to build a theory of humor that
once again demonstrates the subjective perceptions of the receiver even
when the outcome is a scientific offering.
As can be deduced from the above list and the numerous additional elements
at play in any given communication act, humor is likely to be too subtle, field-
dependent, and riddled with individual differences to lend itself readily to
communication research at an inclusive or unified level. The most universally
visible and therefore the most researched and explored forms of humor are
those that are premeditated and contrived. These consciously purposive forms
of humor may, in fact, form the smallest subset of all experienced humor in
daily life for the majority of the world’s population. Just the same, because of
the convenience and availability of such resources as well as their reproduc-
ibility, observability, and sharability through public media, this is the primary
base for most humor research in the field.
Issues
There are a wide range of issues to be considered in the study of humor in com-
munication. The literature review section above provides a glimpse of where
most research has taken place, thus leaving open a wide range of topics that
remain to be explored by future researchers. I have chosen two inter-related
issues that are of potential interest to the general public and that blend well
with my subjective approach to the concept of humor in communication.
556 Dineh Davis
Got me thinking regarding the ‘win/lose’ strategy: There exists the socio-
logical tendency to dichotomize ‘us vs. them’, however, I do not feel that it is
a grand theory at all. Rather, in my opinion it is our INABILITY to see beyond
this dichotomy that restricts us in this life. It was suggested to me recently by
a very ‘intelligent’ individual (my framing) that there is NO SUCH THING
as win/win; there is just compromise/compromise or win/lose. The implicit
assumption: that ‘our’ goals are conflicting, that we cannot ‘both’ get what we
want at the same time. I thought that this was a rather pessimistic take on the
subject… You REALLY made me wonder about myself & my own outlook
on life (although it might explain why I really don’t appreciate much humor
(ethnic, gender, etc) - to me it is insulting even if I am not “the party” being
selected out. However, am I taking it too seriously? And, is humor a game? Is
life a game? If I only had these answers...
I don’t own a television set myself [because I would spend far too much time
watching], but have been house-sitting for some friends who have cable and
I decided to catch up on viewing some sitcoms. I was amazed and depressed
at all the dissing that goes on. How is this funny? It is especially depressing
to see women (and worse yet, women on women) using this technique to get
laughs. Don’t we get dissed enough every day of our lives? Why do we need
to subject ourselves to even more of this in the name of humor?
One of the most useful theories applied to communication acts and outcomes
from the perspective of the “underdog” is the Standpoint theory which ac-
knowledges the unique perspective of those in less powerful positions. It con-
tends that while those in power need see and interpret events only from their
own point of view, those with less power have to learn at least two perspec-
tives based on their status in life: that of the group in power as well as that of
their own. This is simply a matter of survival. A clear example of Standpoint
theory in the context of humor involves the very definition of this term.
McGhee (1979) notes in his study of children that it is not considered
socially acceptable to ask children to react to humor that relies on sexual
innuendoes whereas it is permissible to share aggressive and hostile humor
with kids. This points out the dilemma referred to earlier in defining “humor”
Communication and humor 557
and how other researchers had defined humor in the existing literature. There
is considerable anecdotal evidence that the majority of the fans of the Three
Stooges are boys and men. Because boys and men find inflicting physical
pain upon others (such as poking someone’s eyes out or beating them over
the head) as hilarious, it seems perfectly natural to define humor within such
parameters that make physical abuse a funny – or at the very least, a trivial -
matter.
It is not so much an objection to Three Stooges – for humor is subject-
ive and therefore if this is what some find funny, so be it. I am in no position
to deny someone their reality of considering physical abuse done in jest as
funny. What is more bothersome is the exclusionary clause that tends to limit,
from my standpoint, what I may find equally humorous from the definition
for humor. In other words, why would a scholar/researcher limit my real-
ity by using Three Stooges as an example of humor but a win/win game of
word-play or a challenge to create a new, and potentially funny word for an
existing concept as “not funny” - by declaration - simply because this mental
challenge does not have a punch-line or a loser? The following may serve as
another illustration of how such declarations or exclusive definitions may
bias our views of what can be legitimately considered funny.
Past studies have identified a greater ability on the part of boys and men to
create humor (as self-defined by men). It is also well-documented by educa-
tors that the single category of verbal skill at which boys, on the aggregate,
outscore girls on the SAT exams is the understanding and making of analo-
gies. It may be interesting to research the common connection between the
skill of solving analogies, and the linking of two incongruous concepts, i.e.,
a mainstream definition of humor. This, in turn leads to the types of riddles
that can only be solved by their makers, thus easily associated with the win/
lose theory of humor as a game.
Of course, there are those among us who have no particular genetic or
socially constructed mandate to try to solve riddles; in which case there is
more amusement when the riddle is presented “solved” in a joke’s punch line.
One such joke used by a stand-up comic recently can be represented as a rid-
dle here: How is an Irishman at the beach the same as a fork in a microwave
oven? A much older example that uses an analogy format yet defies – or de-
feats – the logical semantic purpose has been used on bumper stickers and
T-shirts: “A woman without her man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Another
variation on this theme is metaphor building as a common joke script. An ap-
propriate example in this case would be: “Women are like dictionaries, they
have a million different words to describe the same thing.”
558 Dineh Davis
McGhee (1979: 211) cites a 1933 study by Brackett confirming that pre-
school boys and girls at play show equal amounts of laughter. Once children
reach school age, social and cultural norms for humor have already become
better established. Is it any wonder then, that if the prototypical jokes “tested”
with children are reinforcing humor preferred by men or boys that they will
show a preference for it in research settings as well? The long-term differ-
ences continue to show divergent reactions by men and women to the same
stimuli considered to be humorous in nature. For example, King (2000) re-
ports a distress reaction by women who watch movies where the hero makes
wisecracks, but that subsequently reduces their stress level when measured
after viewing televised depictions of nonhumorous real violence. Converse
to this reaction, men watching the same wisecracking hero found the film
less distressful than the women, yet noted greater distress when watching the
real nonhumorous violence. Although these reactions were extremely short-
lived, they still point to a basic difference in the way such information is
processed by women and men, which the researchers are attributing to their
disposition.
The same social roles that boys and girls learn in their early school years
are also reflected in their later intimate relationships and well into their mar-
riage. Men tend to be the joke-tellers while women stay with their supportive
roles of enjoying the jokes offered (Honeycutt and Brown 1998). McGhee
(1979) showed tremendous foresight, however, in predicting that the women’s
movement of the early 1970s was likely to produce a feminine genre of humor
that could have universal appeal. As with all other social movements, the out-
come was perhaps not quite as immediate as hoped for, but by 1993 Morreall
(1993) was reporting the following differences in the origins and delivery of
traditionally masculine and emerging feminine forms of humor: While men
displayed a competitive attitude stemming from distrust, hostility, envy, and
jealousy, used a negative tone and singled out victims and aimed to make
some people feel good at the expense of others, women’s humor stemmed
from a caring concern for everyone and depended on a cooperative attitude
to bring everyone together and make them feel good. Men were more likely
to single out one person and target the weak while women took aim at the
powerful but did so in a positive light and focused on what many of us do.
Women have also been noted for using more self-disparaging humor than
men (McGhee 1979: 206)
One of the advantages of Xerox-lore, Fax-humor, and Internet-based
humor is that the collective contributions from a wide range of participants
lend and even-handedness to gender-based humor. For example, metaphor
Communication and humor 559
lists are combined to present both male and female perspectives on a variety
of topics. One of the most popular examples of this genre involves compar-
ing both men and women to computers. Here are two finalists in this genre:
A computer must be female because as soon as you make a commitment to
one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it. Yet,
a computer must be male because they’ll usually do what you ask them to
do, but they won’t do more than they have to and they won’t think of it on
their own.
The singular subjectivity of the experience of humor as compared to other
universal states of mind is quite apparent when we begin to delve into our
mass media instruments. One might notice, for example, that American tel-
evision programs don’t resort to fake audience “gasp tracks” to show surprise
or fear in scary scenes, whereas many feel compelled to use laugh tracks to
increase audience compliance to consider something humorous. In fact, this
points to two different observations regarding the truly subjective nature of
humor: (1) that despite the universality of humor in human life, there is no
single way to represent, depict or evoke this emotion beyond the verbal and
visual cues (such as showing or hearing an audience’s laughter) whereas, for
example, we might find a universal aural or musical cue to arouse other emo-
tions – such as fear or grief; and (2) there is a need to reinforce the concept
of humor in mass presentations or use social pressure to bring every viewer
into compliance with what the media (message sender) would like to dictate
or establish as a humorous “norm.”
Use of laugh tracks, even when taken from a “real” audience but super-
imposed over a single person’s way of seeing and interpreting creates simply
an illusion of humor, therefore putting the onus on the individual viewer to
justify why they “just don’t get it.” Gender differences point toward women’s
greater proclivity to enjoy humor as a social construction above and beyond
their equally inherent ability to see the logic of a humorous piece. (McGhee
1977) Why, then, do so many men and women consider the use of laugh-
tracks offensive? Would such contrivances not be superfluous if something
rang genuinely funny to the audience because of a shared sense of humor?
The mere fact that girls and women feel socially compelled to laugh at
a joke and see humor where none really existed for them before should not
be a license for promoters of any message to capitalize on this behavior to
further their own cause. Still, what the public hears from the scientific com-
munity is that laugh-tracks work, rather than the how or why of this phenom-
enon. Clearly, we offer few courses to men and women on media literacy
and its gendered nuances. Thus we continue with a sanctioned exploitation
560 Dineh Davis
For this issue, I would like to begin by building the following scenario: Let
us presume, for the purposes of this discussion, that there is only one “proto-
type” human on earth who embodies the entire human race as we know it
today. Because this person is alone and strictly a unified prototype, we need
not gender-differentiate, nor can we recognize a race or ethnicity. Finally,
because time and distance are not of the essence, there is no need to consid-
er space/time variations that affect its sensibilities. In a Jungian tradition we
may consider this person the embodiment of our collective unconscious. This
person, then, will possess all the human qualities we recognize and attribute
– in part – to those around us today. This is Every Human about whom myths
and legends abound.
Psychologists and other social scientists rediscovered through scientific
methods the essence of Every Human in ancient myths and folklore: that,
in the aggregate, people have a predictable set of personality traits. Some
traits may be more pronounced – or even overpowering – in some individ-
uals while minimized or not quite as apparent in others. Clearly, it is more
than a coincidence that various spiritual traditions of the world have identi-
fied a similar set of vices and virtues for their own practitioners. A reason-
able representation of such vices in Western tradition are the Seven Deadly
Sins: pride, gluttony, covetousness, sloth, lust, envy, and anger. If we were to
look carefully at the majority of scripted jokes and humor around the world,
we would be sure to find that the greater percentage of the cause for laughter
stems from violations of what – somewhere deep in the recesses of our mind
- we hold to be moral values.
Now, let us look back at our Every Human. In some cultural traditions for
the telling of a humorous story all the qualities of Every Human are trans-
ferred into a single character, typically necessitating the creation of an idiot-
savant. Such is the case of Mulla Nasr’aldin, the ever-present character in all
Sufi jokes. Sometimes he seemingly behaves like an idiot, sometimes he is the
wisest person around. The stories may make us laugh or they may just make
Communication and humor 561
us wonder. While Mulla Nasr’aldin served the Sufis well, for the rest of us it
may be easier to provide a wider range of culturally discernible “shorthand”
joke characters that epitomize certain qualities. Thus, stereotypes are born.
Rather than speak of the frailty within, some of us are happy to attribute
shortcomings to the “Other” (thus freeing ourselves of the need for the virtue
of humility, I might add!) Once we become familiar with humor from other
cultures, it is relatively easy to see that the stereotypes are localized or glo-
balized depending on the country and the occasion and the level of national-
ism (among, I’m sure, hundreds of other variables that shall remain unac-
counted for here). Suffice it to say that if we wish to have a joke “work” with
little set-up or prior character-building, it helps to have an easily identifiable
cast of characters ready for plucking. We are constantly building new stere-
otypes and the media play a large role in perpetuating the process. A cosmo-
politan audience, for example, has no problem catching on to the innuendoes
posed by Rueters (Reuters News Service 1999) in the following news story:
LONDON (Reuters) – If you are Swedish, you stroke it. If you are Spanish,
you beat it. If you are German, you cover it in food. And if you are British,
you use it as an excuse not to have sex. The attention-grabbing personal com-
puter is taking over. A quarter of Britons would rather be on their PC than
making love. And more than half of the population admits to talking to the
screen – not bad for a nation which once ridiculed Prince Charles for talking
to his plants.
PCs in Spain suffer violence with 57 percent of owners admitting to hit-
ting them, according to a survey of computer use in five European countries
by technology giant Microsoft. Another 18 percent of Spaniards are driven to
tears of frustration while Germans are distinctly unamused by them – only
one in six has enjoyed a laugh with their PC.
the human archetypes without ever having to rely on verbal language. The
performers’ only reference to gender shifts is through voice or sound pitch
differences (both roles being performed by the same performer, which further
minimizes human differences). Universal qualities of ambivalence and strug-
gle with cosmic issues such as life and death, love and loss, joy and sadness,
fantasy and nightmare, loneliness and fear are portrayed nonverbally. Lim
(Lim 2001) begins his review of this program as follows;
It was pure delight … and to my surprise the child in me came out to play….
The musical choreography was enticing, with opera, classical, samba and
jazz; all adding up to paradoxically sculpt and shape reason and gibberish,
emotion and anesthesia, significance and inconsequentiality, into the dream
that is SLAVA’S SNOWSHOW. A clown laughs at society’s ills, while we
laugh at the clown… Comic tragedy- a paradox that somehow really works.
In SLAVA’S SNOWSHOW, the discovery is within the individual. Skim the
surface and laugh at the antics; then Slava dares you to plunge into the soul
and really, really look.
It is, therefore, my contention that if we begin to view and to communicate
what we perceive as humorous in the context of Every Human, we can see
past the stereotypes that had to be created in order to allow humor to function.
By this I am referring to the inherent “needs” of humor with its dependence
on a short and fast-moving set-up that does not get caught up in having to
explain an entire culture’s interpretations of vices and virtues. Of course, that
may be easy for me to say since I don’t necessarily see myself as fitting any of
the pat and negative stereotypes – except as a woman. I am quite sympathetic,
however, to the plight of the visibly “blonde” or the “jock” who does not
share the low intelligence gene with the stereotypes and see nothing funny
about such humor, even if it is rationally represented as a simple joke script.
One could make a case for the argument that humans exist to fulfill their
desire and capacity to lead happy, joyful, and playful lives. As such, one
cannot preclude a sense of humor closely associated with well-being. His
Holiness the Dalai Lama has lectured and written extensively on the Art of
Happiness and the merits of a joyful life (Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho and Cutler
1998). One does not often associate the games of one-upmanship and acts of
hostility and aggression with the Dalai Lama. Yet, for anyone who is famil-
iar with this man, it would be difficult to say that he does not have a highly
Communication and humor 563
developed and keen sense of humor and appreciation for this form of human
communication.
A sense of humor is seen, potentially, as a stand-in for a larger cluster
of positive human traits that may be too nebulous to enumerate. This trait
does seem to represent to many an indication of a better overall “mood” and
a greater facility in dealing with conflicts and stress. A good sense of humor,
therefore, can be a good indicator of an individual’s stability, values, needs
and interests, imagination and intelligence, and a reasonable credential for
long-term life or business partnerships (Murstein and Brust 1985). On the
other hand, these are not necessarily the inherent qualities of someone who
studies humor or delivers humorous lines or jokes in a personal or profes-
sional capacity. Almost anyone can be taught to laugh at jokes or to deliver
them during a public address, but developing a sense of humor must come
from within. Yet, communication scholarship has not necessarily differenti-
ated in any systematic way the concept of having a sense of humor from that
of being humorous.
Humor can be used as the most vivid prototype for all manner of com-
munication because of its great depth –with biological origins - as well as its
amazing breadth and persistence across cultures and contexts. It exemplifies
an archetypal response that is very difficult to fake. While many can feign
seriousness or remain expressionless under difficult circumstances (e.g., by
having a “poker face”) most false laughter is easily detectable and a sense of
humor remains apparent only when it actually exists. It can therefore be one
of the most accurate measures of a person’s true attitude toward others.
There are many intriguing questions in life for which we cannot devise
straightforward scientific experiments or even conduct “doable” research in
a systematic manner. If we eliminate enough variables that can affect a per-
son’s humor we are sure to approach such a small subset of the field that gen-
eralizations become problematic. On the other hand if we choose to overlook
so many factors related to this equation in an attempt to develop a unified the-
ory of humor, the concept will become so nebulous as to render the general
theory relatively useless for scientific inquiry. Just the same, this complexity
should not keep us from looking at the wonder of humor in communication
and its positive influence and strong effect in every context of human inter
action.
Humor and its ensuing laughter come from ironies, incongruities, surpris-
es, and paradoxes that surround us, and from simply living our mundane daily
lives. They need not be contrived or premeditated, nor have a punch line, or
demand a logical explanation. They simply need to be enjoyed.
564 Dineh Davis
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568 Dineh Davis
Introduction
It is a well known fact that verbally expressed humour (VEH) travels badly.
Regrettably, beyond the boundaries of the society in which it originates, VEH
will encounter two major barriers which will restrict its purpose: different
languages and different cultures. Translations are attempts at demolishing
these apparently insurmountable barriers but, the translation of VEH is a no-
toriously arduous task the results of which are not always triumphant. Gener-
ally considered to be untranslatable, yet systematically translated, no matter
how complex the VEH in question, the translator feels obliged to desperately
search for an adequate solution to what is often a multifaceted linguistic and/
or cultural rebus. As far as humorous discourse is concerned “Il en est de la
traduction comme des sports: la limite semble pouvoir toujours être reculée.”
(Laurian 1989: 6).
This chapter aims at examining issues concerning the interlingual1 transla-
tion of VEH (i.e. translation from one language to another) within the broader
framework of Translation Studies (TS).
has been due to the sheer complexity involved in the production of adequate
translations which were initially witty in intent. Hence, apart from the odd
exception, (Laurian and Nilsen eds. 1989; Mateo 1995; Ballard 1996; Pisek
1997), the translation of VEH has been generally swept beneath the carpet
and ignored. Furthermore, scholars who have dared venture into the field,
have tended to approach the subject from a literary angle, typically analysing,
for example, the puns of Shakespeare (Delabastita 1993) and Joyce (Golden
1996). Only recently have TS begun to wake up to the fact that both humour
and translation can also occur beyond the realms of purely literary phenom-
ena. Yet despite this, in two entire volumes dedicated to the translation of
puns (Delabastita ed. 1996, 1997), only three essays endeavour outside the
literary to deal with the translation of humorous phenomena in oral and/or
multimedia texts (see Chiaro 2000a). Furthermore, it would appear that hu-
mour scholars have also largely ignored the issue of translation, exceptions
being Vandaele (2003) and Chiaro (2005) who have attempted to bring to-
gether Translation and Humour Studies.
The issue of the interlingual translation of VEH, whether written or oral,
opens up an extremely problematic area within the discipline of TS. In fact,
whether the kind of VEH to be translated is a short text such as a joke, whether
it is a longer text such as a novel or a more polysemiotic entity such as a film,
a play or a sitcom and whether we are dealing with puns or irony, satire or
parody, the transposition from source language (SL) to target language (TL)
will present the translator with a series of thorny problems which will be both
practical and theoretical in nature. Such difficulties are due to the fact that
the translation of VEH manifestly touches upon the most central and highly
debateable issues in TS, those of equivalence and translatability.
In this respect, the translation of VEH shares many problems with the
translation of conventional poetry. In poetry linguistic deviation is very
high. As well as the presence of unusual lexical collocations and irregular
word order, poetry relies on patterns of repetition at all levels of sound, syn-
tax, lexis and meaning. Furthermore, the visual impact of a poem is also es-
sential, and this is even more so the case with regard to more unconventional
poetic forms such as concrete poetry. As it is highly improbable that any two
languages will share such similar features as to be able to reflect identical
effects, poetry is theoretically untranslatable. Yet, paradoxically translations
of poetry do obviously exist. However, just how comparable a Shakespear-
ian sonnet in Italian is to its original is a disputable issue. No matter how
proficient the translator may be, the very nature of the two codes in question
make a mockery of the concept of formal equivalence. In other words, the
Verbally expressed humor and translation 571
formal features of the poem, the length, the shape, rhymes, rhythm and other
stylistic devices contained in the target text (TT) are bound to be unlike
those of the source text (ST). Thus readers are forced to content themselves
with some manner of linguistic compromise in the name of functional cor-
respondence. Although what results in the TL is a poem on the same topic
as the SL poem, it is likely to share few physical and consequently poetic
similarities to the ST. Yet, albeit a new poem, it is still a poem and, as long
as readers are willing to accept it as such, it is a translation of the ST, thus
the function of the ST remains respected. (For detailed discussions of the
untranslatability of poetry see: Kristeva 1968; Lefevère 1975; Popovič 1976;
De Beaugrande 1978.)
VEH in translation suffers a similar fate to poetry in translation. How-
ever, whereas in conventional poetry the translator attempts to emulate the
SL unyielding patterns of stanza, rhythm and rhyme, in the case of humour
s/he has to deal with anarchic breaking of such patterns. For example, puns,
a common feature in jokes, are notoriously untranslatable. When dealing with
an example of wordplay which pivots around a pun, an interlingual transla-
tion is bound to involve some kind of compromise due to the fact that the
chances of being able to pun on the same word in two different languages is
extremely remote. And even in the prospect of such a possibility, the chances
of finding the same type of pun (i.e. a homophone, a homograph, a homonym
etc.) are even slimmer. Thus, as with poetry, generally speaking, as far as the
translation of VEH is concerned, formal equivalence is sacrificed for the sake
of dynamic equivalence. In other words, as long as the TT serves the same
function as the ST, it is of little importance if the TT has to depart somewhat
in formal terms from the original. Some feature of the ST is lost in exchange
for a gain in the TL.
“Don’t you mean purpose?” said Alice. “If I’d been the whiting,” said Alice,
whose thoughts were still running on the song, “I’d have said to the porpoise,
‘keep back, please, we don’t want you with us’.”
“They were obliged to have him with them’, the Mock Turtle said:” No wise
fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.”
“Wouldn’t it really?” said Alice in a tone of great surprise.
“Of course not,” said the Mock Turtle: “why if a fish came to me and told me
he was going on a journey, I should say ‘with what porpoise?’”. (Lewis
Carroll 1962: 91)
“Si j’avais été à la place du merlan” déclara Alice, qui pensant encore à la
chanson, “ j’aurais dit au brochet : ‘En arrière s’il vous plaît ! Nous n’avons
pas besoin de vous!’”
572 Delia Chiaro
1996). So the next question is, which TL variety can replace Cockney? The
connotations attached to a Cockney accent are quite different from those be-
longing to a Sicilian, a Neapolitan or a Viennese accent. Thus the translator
is on the horns of a dilemma, either s/he translates the text as faithfully as
possible in the hope that the recipient’s world knowledge will suffice to ap-
preciate its humorous intent or s/he is unfaithful to the ST and rewrites it
substituting skinheads with some other genre of local youth. In the case of
such a culture-specific text, either way, loss in correspondence to the ST is
likely to be greater than gain.
In fact, the substitution of one culture with another is rarely a winning
option. The Italian version of the US sitcom The Nanny (CBS Television,
1993–1999.)was broadcast in Italy between 1995 and 1999. The sitcom stars
Jewish nanny Fran Fine (Fran Drescher) from Flushing, Queens who falls in
love with her gentile boss Maxwell (Charles Shaughnessy). Like many US
sitcoms and series, The Nanny is heavily based on Jewish-American culture
(e.g. The Passed-Over Story; The Hanukkah Story) and New York Yiddish
terms are used quite liberally for comic effect. However, while across Eu-
rope the sitcom retains its ‘Jewishness’ (Die Nanny in Germany; Une Nou-
nou d’enfer in France), in Italy, La Tata4 Fran was transformed into an Ital-
ian born immigrant, Francesca Cacace, who goes to live with her relatives
in Queens. Thus many allusions to Kosher culture are replaced with others
pertaining to Frosinone, a town in South-central Italy where Italian Fran was
born. This choice was made by translators and dubbing-scriptwriters5 of the
series who considered Italian audiences to have insufficient knowledge of
Jewish-American culture to understand what was going on and thus inter-
vened and replaced the original situation with another one closer to the target
culture. In the following example, Fran’s teacher Steve, invites her on a date
on a Saturday, but then retracts when he remember that it is his nephew’s
Bar Mitzvah.
In Italian, the invitation is changed from Saturday to Sunday and the excuse
for Steve changing his mind becomes the obligation to have lunch with his
family. Again, reminiscing about her daughter’s birth, Fran’s mother Silvia,
remembers how she almost ate meat on Jewish New Year:
In the Italian version, Fran’s mother (who for some bizarre reason, in the Ital-
ian version becomes her aunt) is given chocolate eggs for breakfast, because
it is Easter. Notably, the irony of the stereotypical Jewish mother: “I’m not
a complainer” is also deleted in the translation. Yet, amazingly perhaps, the
series was extremely successful in Italy and was given several re-runs, yet
such gross manipulation is beginning to become less tolerated by ever more
knowledgeable audiences (Chiaro 2008).
2.1. Equivalence
Although rather démodé in the 21st century, the issue of the fidelity or the
faithfulness of translation is one which has raged for hundreds of years with
regard to the translation of sacred, historical and literary texts. The question
regarded how much formal freedom a translator could exercise in the TT with
respect to the ST. What was the unit of text to be translated at any given time;
the word, the phrase, the sentence or the paragraph? How was the translator to
Verbally expressed humor and translation 575
overcome the hurdle of different word order? This debate divided translators
between those who were SL oriented, and consequently preferred a transla-
tion which perfectly mirrored the ST and tried to remain as closely as possible
to the original text and those who were TT oriented and favoured a translation
in which the ST served as a model from which the translator was free to elab-
orate a completely new TT. Steiner pertinently takes stock of centuries of tug-
of-war between these two factions as follows: “…the craft of the translator
is…deeply ambivalent: it is exercised in a radical tension between impulse to
facsimile and impulse to appropriate recreation.” (1975: 235).
Consequently, through the centuries theorists argued either in the direc-
tion of the word or in the direction of sense without ever coming to any clear
conclusions or even getting much further than their Roman predecessors.6
The word/sense debate continued well into Romanticism and beyond and it is
also worth reflecting on Steiner’s view of translation history: “List St.Jerome,
Luther, Dryden, Hölderin, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Nietsche, Ezra Pound,
Valéry, MacKenna, Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin Quine – and you
have very nearly the sum total of those who have said anything fundamental
about translation.” (quoted in Bassnett 1980: 74).
Fortunately, nowadays there is a greater realization that neither fidelity or
freedom are mutually exclusive, No longer restricted to the sacred or the liter-
ary, translators are faced with a myriad of extremely diverse text types which
stretch from scientific documents and technical manuals to advertisements
and multimedia texts such as films and web pages. Thus, whether to take an
SL oriented approach or a TL oriented approach will depend not only upon
the text itself, but also upon the modality in which it is couched, as well as
its intended recipients. In the case of interlingual translation, texts need to be
adjusted and/or localised for them to be able to pass into the target culture. As
we shall see, the issue of equivalence is especially significant with regard to
the translation of VEH because the nature of these texts tends to be such that
the ST is either so language-specific or culture-specific that the translator is
compelled to make radical changes in the TT if s/he wishes to retain the text’s
original communicative function i.e. that of attempting to amuse the recipi-
ent, or at least making a recognizable attempt at doing so.
What has fifty legs and cannot walk?
Half a centipede.
(Laurian 1989: 6)
In order to translate this riddle into French and produce a functional equiv-
alent, i.e. an utterance which functions as the same riddle in French, the
576 Delia Chiaro
number fifty has to be transformed into five hundred simply because in France
centipedes are known as mille-pattes (literally ‘thousand-pedes’):
Needless to say the two riddles are no longer formally equivalent – they could,
of course never be so even between closely related languages such as French
and Italian, let alone French and English – yet they are equivalent in several
other ways. If we test the translated riddle according to the equivalence typolo-
gies formulated by Koller (1979: 187–191; 1989: 100–4) we find that despite
the number of legs the insect actually has, the riddle does in fact possess what
he labels connotative equivalence. In other words, both ST and TT supposedly
refer to the same thing in the real world and on the basis of their referential or
denotative equivalence the two texts trigger off the same or similar concepts
both in the SL and TL cultures: The riddle also passes the test of text normative
equivalence (1989: 102) as it contains SL and TL words which are adopted
in similar communicative contexts in both cultures, in this case the frame of
a riddle What has…but…/ Qu’est-ce que a…et… Finally the riddle also pos-
sesses pragmatic (ibid.) or dynamic (Nida 1964) equivalence as it should pro-
duce the same effect on both SL and TL recipients i.e. that of being recognized
as a riddle. In such a loose sense the two riddles may be considered as being
equivalent.
Furthermore, with regard to equivalence, the 20th century produced a ser-
ies of dichotomies which range from Nida’s distinction between formal trans-
lations and dynamic translations (1964, 1969, 1975) to Newmark’s division
between semantic translations and communicative translations (1982, 1988,
1991). Although these scholars shift the emphasis onto the process of transla-
tion, it would appear that different labels are however being attached to similar
concepts. With the realization that equivalence cannot be absolute, Nida im-
agines that translation should aim at “closest natural equivalent of the source
language message” (1975: 12) hence mitigating the extreme positions of the
past. Yet all this rings uncomfortably familiar. Thus, when all is said and done,
the issue of equivalence seems to have come full circle and rather like the dog
that bites its tail, it has essentially made little progress. On balance, are such di-
chotomies any different from what was deduced by Cicero in the first century
BC? Is it best to produce a text which strictly reflects the ST with the risk of it
being user-unfriendly or are we better off with a text which is to some degree
divorced from the ST yet digestible by the target culture?
Verbally expressed humor and translation 577
“Well, have a plum,” said the doctor in an effeminate voice. “If you swal-
low the stone you’ll put on weight.” (The Children of Dynmouth, William
Trevor.)
‘Mangia I tordi’ egli gli disse in falsetto. ‘Così ingrasso dottore?’ ‘Cinqu-
etti!’ (translated by Lucia Sinisi and Chris Williams)
The substitution of ‘plum’ with tordi ‘thrushes’ allows the patient to ‘chirp’
cinguettare a verb which in the second person singular of the present tense
(tu) cinguetti is conveniently (loosely) homophonic with ‘five hundred grams’
= cinque etti = cinqu’etti .
Naturally the two texts are very different both formally and semantical-
ly yet the translators have succeeded in retaining the concept of weight gain
from the ST into the TT. Popvič’s notion of the “invariant core” (1976) can
be useful here. According to Popovič if a dozen translators were given the
same poem to translate they would come up with twelve different versions yet
all would have something in common. These shared elements are the stable,
constant, basic ingredients of the ST, the existence of which can be proven
578 Delia Chiaro
ST TT
Figure 1.
However, translations are atypical text types in virtue of the fact that their
being is possible because of the existence of a primary text in another lan-
guage. On the one hand, if a translation of a text exists as a totally new entity,
represented by a new circle, this circle can never be entirely independent of
the original circle from which it stems. Thus, instead of two independent cir-
cles, a translated text can be conceptualised in terms of a single circle deriv-
ing from the pre-existing circle of the ST. Let us imagine the occurrence of
a sort of osmosis of the quintessence of the ST which permeates into the TT
to create a translation. The quality, naturalness and indeed degree of equiva-
lence of this translation could well be defined in terms of the least critical
area between two the texts in question. We could now consider ST and TT
in terms of two concentric circles with the area of overlap between the two
representing the least critical area between the two texts. Thus if we compare
Figure 2a to Figure 2b, in which the shaded areas represent the least critical
area, the latter represents the more natural text in the TL. In other words, the
greater the least critical area, the better the translation.
a. b.
ST TT S TT
T
Figure 2.
580 Delia Chiaro
Two very diverse solutions neither of which manage to encapsulate the se-
mantic bivalency attached to the words ‘red/read’ nevertheless, solution
a does capture the ‘reading’ element of the original riddle coupled with the
metaphorical value of the colour term ‘red’ attached to a popular left wing
newspaper L’Unità. We could thus assign the translated riddle with an aver-
age area of criticalness such as that illustrated by the shaded area of Figure 2.
However what we are doing is translating a children’s riddle and let us not
forget that it is unlikely that the average 7- to 10-year old will be au fait with
the intricacies of press and politics. Thus it might be more reasonable to as-
sign a greater shaded area to solution b (see Fig. 2) simply because, unlike
solution a, in terms of Skopos it is clearly a children’s riddle. Although the
‘reading’ element is lost, the riddle certainly gains in the kind of silliness nor-
mally associated to children’s riddles and no longer requires access to adult
knowledge resources (Attardo 1994). We can thus conclude that solution b
possesses a greater degree of equivalence than a.
Italian joke for example, (first heard Summer 2002) contains all the ingredi-
ents necessary to render it ‘untranslatable’.8
Hai saputo che Monica Lewinsky riprende a lavorare nella Casa Bianca?
Sembrerebbe che dovrà prima superare una prova scritta.
(Literally: Have you heard that Monica Lewinsky is going to start work-
ing at the White House again? Apparently she’s got to sit a written exam
first.)
In English the joke is a non starter owing to the fact that the two opposing
scripts of the ST (Raskin 1985) are no longer such in the TT. There is a mis-
match in the two scripts simply because the testing systems which exist in
schools and colleges in most English speaking countries and are very differ-
ent from those in Italy. In Italian schools and universities most courses end
with a written test or examination called a prova scritta, which is in turn fol-
lowed by a viva known as a prova orale, literally an ‘oral test’. Thus the Italian
joke works on the opposition of scritto/orale (written/oral) and the obvious
references to Ms Lewinsky’s extra-curricula activities at the White House. In
English-speaking cultures, the absence of an examination organization sys-
tematically based on ‘written first’ + ‘oral testing second’(i.e. viva) would
render a translation which included the term ‘written’ slightly contorted for
the recipient who would need to unravel the conundrum in order to arrive
mentally at the polysemic term ‘oral’. An understanding of the ‘written/oral’
opposition in the real world is essential to gaining an understanding of the
contrasting humorous text – a good linguistic translation which refers to hav-
ing to pass a viva would simply not do in humorous terms. In such a sense
the joke remains untranslatable.
The basic problem in theories for and against translatability is the relation
between ST locutionary acts and meanings which are subject to mediation in
the act of transference into the TT. Thus, traditionally, the concept of translat-
ability can work in one of the following three ways:
a. according to rationalists, meanings are universal and are generally trans-
latable.
b. according to relativists thinking and speaking are inextricably linked and
translation is thus “an attempt at solving an impossible task” (Humboldt
1796/1868:vi).
c. according to compatibilists all languages are highly individual but they
can be translated and the translators task is to make sense of the ST and
at the same time express their understanding of it.
582 Delia Chiaro
This issue can be most clearly illustrated through kind of hermeneutic argu-
ment which is linked to the untranslatability into French of the utterance “The
first word of this sentence has three letters” since the first word can only have
two letters (Le premier mot…) and thus translation is forced to adopt the prin-
ciple of necessary sacrifice (Burge 1978). For example, an acceptable instru-
mental translation could be Le premier mot de la phrase en anglais a trois
lettres. Such dynamic translatability thus depends on the TL. As far as VEH is
concerned, more often than not, translational sacrifice is frequently inevitable
and the concept of dynamism can be quite useful.
analysis restructuring
transfer
Figure 3.
Verbally expressed humor and translation 583
he cosa scrivono sul fondo delle lattine di Coca Cola che si trovano nei
C
distributori di bibite nelle caserme dei carabinieri?
Aprire dall’altro lato.
584 Delia Chiaro
carabinieri/coke/
guinness /ireland
police station
analysis restructuring
Figure 4.
In this translation the decision was made to replace part of the SL the joke’s
invariant core (i.e. drink) with another object, a flag, arguing that, the in-
variant core is not the object itself but the geometry of the object, i.e. in the
original text the top and the bottom of a bottle were easily confused by the
stupid group. As the Austrian flag is composed of a white stripe sandwiched
in between two red stripes, in the TT it is the colours placed at the top and
the bottom of the flag which must be simplified so as not to be confused by
the butt of the joke.
Verbally expressed humor and translation 585
…before the joke can be discharged in all its swiftness there is much to be ap-
prehended about cultural and social facts, about shared beliefs and attitudes,
about the pragmatic bases of communication. (…) We share our humour with
those who have shared our history and who understand our ways of interpret-
ing the experience. There is a fund of common knowledge and recollection,
upon which all jokes draw with instantaneous effect.” (Nash 1985: 9)
term in one of the languages, but simply because the signification of a term
may not coincide in the two cultures.
No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as represent-
ing the same social reality. The worlds in which societies live are distinct
worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached. (Sapir
1956: 59)
vincent: You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in Paris?
jules: They don’t call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
vincent: No man, they’ve got the metric system, the don’t know what the
fuck a Quarter Pounder is!
jules : So what do they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
vincent: They call it a Royale with cheese.
jules: Royale with cheese.
vincent: That’s right.
jules: What do they call a Big Mac?
vincent: A Big Mac’s a Big Mac only they call it Le Big Mac.
jules: Le Big Mac. What do they call a Whopper?
vincent: I don’t know, I never went to a Burger King. You know what they
put on French Fries instead of Ketchup?
jules: What?
vincent: Mayonnaise.
The observations made by a rather ineloquent hit man Vincent (John Tra-
volta) in this brief dialogue with Bible basher Jules (Samuel L. Jackson)
are unwittingly worthy of any serious treatise on translation theory. The fact
that Quarter Pounders are known as Royales in France appears to fill Jules
with wonder until Vincent explains that within the metric system, the original
label would be meaningless. Further amusement is caused by the fact that the
French precede the item Big Mac with the definite article le and in addition
prefer mayonnaise to ketchup on their fried potatoes. Indeed, the excellent
linguistic mediations produced, presumably, by hidden teams of linguists,
semioticians and translators behind multinationals like MacDonald’s reveal
the meticulous research that must go into the internationalisation (and hence
Verbally expressed humor and translation 587
The substitution of England for France does indeed provide an adequate so-
lution for a joke which contains neither paranomasia nor features which are
strikingly referential in nature. Yet, as a French colleague checking my trans-
lation dryly pointed out, “Why should someone French want to go to Eng-
land?” Naturally, the pre-suppositions underlying the two exchanges are rad-
ically diverse. Different languages, different worlds.
2.4. Puns
Naturally, when the VEH in question is dependant upon a pun which owes
its meaning to the very structure of its own language, once divorced from
and transported into another language, it is unlikely to be able to function
any longer as a pun. With the logic of the Age of Reason, Addison defines
the pun as:
… a Conceit arising from the use of two words that agree in the Sound, but
differ in the Sense. The only way to therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to trans-
late it into a different Language. If it bears the Test you may pronounce it
true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been
a Punn. (1928 [1711]: 343)
Furthermore, let us not forget the etymology of the term ‘translation’ from
the Latin traductio which not only meant ‘transposition’ but also a rhetoric-
al device and, according to Lausberg: ”Figures of moderate similarity are
588 Delia Chiaro
included within the term traductio…” which he goes on to gloss with the
French terms jeu de mot/calembour and the English term ‘pun’ (1967: 147).
And it is precisely the pun which embodies the concept of untranslatability.
In the same way as it is ‘impossible’ to flawlessly represent countless cultural
phenomena in another language, an identical imitation of a language’s puns
would be equally arduous. However let us, for the sake of argument consider
Laurian’s challenge (1989: 8) regarding the impossibility of translating the
following quip into any other language:
The world is so full of problems that if Moses came down Mount Sinai
today, two of the tablets he would be carrying would be aspirins.
The ‘impossible’ pun is, of course, the item ‘tablets’ which, according to Lau-
rian, it would seem, only in English can refer both to slates of stone, rock or
marble as well as to drugs. What Laurian together with many others probably
means by the term untranslatable is based on the fact that the item ‘tablet’ is
only paranomastic in English and that consequently a semantically identical
translation into another language would be impossible. Thus the following
literal translation into Italian is simply not a joke :
Il mondo è talmente pieno di problemi che se oggi Mosé scendesse dal
Monte Sinai, due delle tavole che porterebbe sarebbero aspirine.
However, a feasible Italian translation below ignores the pun on ‘tablet’ but
nevertheless creates a good line by retaining a significant slice of the ST in-
variant core i.e. insufficiency and medication.
Il mondo è talmente pieno di problemi che se oggi Mosé scendesse dal
Monte Sinai, anziché contenere i 10 comandamenti, le due tavole dovreb-
bero prescrivere una serie di medicinali.
‘The world is so full of problems that if Moses came down Mount Sinai
today, instead of the 10 commandments the tablets should prescribe a list
of medications.’
In conclusion, as with the issue of equivalence, at the end of the day trans-
latability is a question of linguistic and cultural compromise. If a translation
of VEH is necessary, it seems only fair that the means should justify the
functional ends of attempts to amuse even if formal equivalence is compro-
mised.
Complex as they may appear, the issues examined so far are pretty straight-
forward when compared to the intricacy of having to translate an instance of
VEH embedded within a multimedia text. As the term itself suggests, a mul-
timedia text is both created and received via a number of different tech-
nological media. Thus, a film, which is produced with cameras, recording
equipment and computers and is then perceived by audiences audio-visually
is a typical example of a multimedia text, as are conference interpretations
and automatic translations. As we shall see, such texts require extra attention
in the translation process, as we are no longer simply translating a written
text in Language A into a written text in Language B. Characteristically, the
process of an audiovisual translation such as a film, as opposed to traditional
translation, also requires matching the visual and verbal codes of the original
product to the verbal codes of the target language – bearing in mind that the
visual code remains the same. Multimedia translations include the linguistic
mediation for a vast assortment of text-types which span from automatic and
on-line translations to theatrical products (plays, musicals, opera, etc.); au-
dio-descriptions available in museums and art galleries; films for cinema and
dubbed, subtitled and ‘voiced-over’ products for television, video cassettes,
DVDs, computer games and mobile phones.
Screen translations are normally oral texts based upon the translation of
written scripts, in the case of dubbing, dubbing-scriptwriters need to bear
in mind the tricky question of lip-synchronization and of matching the new
script to the lip movements of the TT (Paolinelli and Di Fortunato 2006). If
subtitling is the chosen mode of translation, operators need to bear in mind
issues regarding condensation of the message and the timeliness of the words
on screen, in other words, they must ensure that audiences have enough time
to read the subtitles and follow the action of the movie at the same time
(see Ivvarson 1992). Thus, screen translation is concerned with spoken texts
which are totally dependent on a visual code. For example, a hypothetical
episode of a typical US soap or sitcom regarding a ‘baby shower’ will re-
590 Delia Chiaro
quire some sort of extra linguistic mediation for the average Italian, French
or German viewer who will need some gentle nudging to be able to put two
and two together and understand a North American custom which is clearly
illustrated on screen but for which no word exists in the respective target lan-
guages.
“He’s so dumb he thought that the Gettysburg Address was where Lincoln
lived.”
This joke is both linguistic and cultural. Italian has no polysemy attached to
the term ‘address’ and Italian audiences are likely to be unaware of the epi-
sode in the American Civil War with which British and American audiences
are familiar, so in the Italian version we find:
The original wordplay based on the assonance between ‘did you’ and ‘Jew’
is replaced by wordplay between concisione/conciseness & circoncisione/
circumcision and an extra compensatory line which includes a corrupted
592 Delia Chiaro
This solution is the most difficult and consequently the less frequently adopt-
ed of all and dependent on the dexterity of the translators and dubbing-script-
writers, at least one aspect of the original pun may still be captured. Natu-
Verbally expressed humor and translation 593
rally, this is the most satisfying solution for audience. A good example occurs
in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994, Mike Newell, UK) when novice
priest Rowan Atkinson botches-up one of the four ceremonies by missing
out certain sounds in the litany. The Italian dubbing-scriptwriters solved the
problem by adding syllables to the Italian litany thus creating an equally ir-
reverent effect:
However, here too, apart from lip-synch, we are still not facing really tricky
screen translation problems of the calibre of the classic scene in which dean
of faculty Groucho Marx signing a document in Horse Feathers (Norman
McLeod, 1932, USA) asks someone to give him a seal, Harpo quite typic-
ally produces an animal. In Italian the item ‘seal’ sigillo is monosemous so
the film’s dubbing-scriptwriters were faced with running the risk of puzzling
spectators with a word to word translation. Long before the days of digitali-
sation, the visual code could not be modified in any way and by a stroke of
luck, the dubbing director came up with Focalizziamo as a solution meaning
literally, ‘Let’s focus on it’. Although different in formal terms, a claim for
equivalence can easily be made not only in terms of communicative function
(i.e. it is clearly a joke) but also because a portion of the ST core meaning is
retained through the stem foca which denotes the animal ‘seal’.
The Italian translations of Marx Brothers’ films are a never-ending source of
inspired solutions to puns on screen. In Monkey Business (Norman McLeod,
1931, USA) we find the following exchange:
The pun is based on the weak homophony between ‘vessel’ and ‘whistle’. There
is no way the translator can escape the pun as Chico is seen unambiguously
594 Delia Chiaro
Once again the Marx Brothers offer an interesting example, in Duck Soup
(1933, Leo McCarey, USA). Groucho (Firefly) is president of Freedonia and
Chico and Harpo are two incompetent spies:
Once again we have a typical screen translation dilemma as the object of the
joke is clearly visible to audiences. Ignoring a reference to a record would
simply create a non sequitur. The problem is resolved by replacing the polyse-
mous ‘record’ with an idiom: cambiare disco = ‘ to change the subject’ (liter-
ally ‘change the record’ in which the word disco denotes a disc/record).
trentino: “Volete rispondermi a tono una volta per tutte! Cambiate disco
per Bacco!”
Interestingly, when a pun is ignored, one is never sure whether the omission
is a deliberate translation strategy or the lack of recognition of the pun in the
Verbally expressed humor and translation 595
original text. An example of an unchanged pun occurs in The Big Chill (1983,
Lawrence Kasdan, USA) when Sam (Tom Berenger) is reluctant to father
Meg’s (Sarah Kay Place) child :
if the viewer has no access to the cultural presuppositions behind the irony,
despite a straightforward translation which apparently presents no particular
culture-specific or linguistic difficulties, the humour involved may well be
lost. Zabalbeascoa considers the opening monologue of the film Trainspot-
ting (Danny Boyle, 1996, UK):
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a fuck-
ing big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players,
and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental in-
surance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home.
Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose
a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY
and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that
couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking
junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing
your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the
selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your
future. Choose life. I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the
reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you’ve got heroin?
tain whether audiences appreciate the films in the same way from culture
to culture. For example, watching the same film, do Italian audiences laugh
in the same places as British audiences? And does this depend on a differ-
ent sense of humour or could it depend upon the translation? The charac-
ter of Charles (Hugh Grant) in Four Weddings and a Funeral comes across
very differently in the Italian version precisely because of the translation-
al choices adopted (Chiaro 2000c). In the original, he is a dithering, over-
grown ex-public schoolboy who is unable to get his act together with cool
American beauty Carrie (Andie McDowell). His sexual insecurity is reflect-
ed in his speech as he stumbles through his lines in a stereotypically British
way. A glance at any electronic corpus of spoken British English will reveal
a high frequency of hesitations, repetitions and general verbal treading of
water. Thus Charles’s speech contains endless examples of vague language
such as ‘sort of…’; ‘…or something…’; ‘…and anything…’; ‘…and every-
thing…’ ; ‘you know…’; ‘sort of…’ etc. In translation this vagueness is lost
as dithering Charles is transformed into assertive Charles and consequently
he becomes less amusing.
Do you think…you might agree not to marry me, and do you think not
being married to me may be something you might consider doing for the
rest of your life? I do, do you?
Tu credi che…tu saresti d’accordo di non diventare mia moglie? E credi
che il fatto di non sposarmi è una possibilità che potresti valutare, voglio
dire per il resto della tua vita? Vuoi?
Success
Flop
Figure 5.
There is, in fact, a growing feeling among scholars of a certain lack of inter-
disciplinarity14 within the field, one which is itself still wanting in a definition
of the very term with which it is concerned. Apart from attempting to under-
stand what different cultures find humorous and why, we are still unaware of
exactly what is understood by the term humour in all cultures. A pilot psyc-
holexical investigation carried out via the World Wide Web sought, amongst
other things, to establish humour related terms in as many languages/cultures
as possible.15 This laudable first step, however, involved the administration of
a questionnaire which was couched in the English language. Linguistic im-
perialism apart, the pre-suppositions underlying the English term in the first
place may well differ greatly from the equivalent term in another language
and culture. Thus psychologists and lexicographers would do well to work
hand in hand on such projects. And beyond the theories of equivalence and
translatability of jokes and quips discussed at length in this chapter, surely
such a new and unexplored area within Humour Studies is exactly where
Translation Studies can be most beneficial.
Some steps in this direction are beginning to bear their fruits. Special
issues dedicated to humour and translation of prestigious journals have un-
derscored the need for interdisciplinarity and have included studies on areas
such as dealing with humour in conference interpreting and perception of
humour in screen translation (Vandaele 2003; Chiaro 2005). Furthermore,
recent empirical studies carried out in the field of screen translation in Italy
show that translation does indeed have an impact on the positive humour
response of foreign audiences (Antonini et al 2003; Chiaro 2004, 2007; An-
tonini 2005; Bucaria 2006; Bucaria and Chiaro 2008). Based on Ruch’s 3WD
Test (1992, 2001) which originally set out to measure personality and sense
of humour, the quoted studies all aim at measuring the humour response to
VEH in translation in comparison to the response of the same attempts at
humour in the TL. And results clearly show that, bearing in mind Ruch’s
strait-trait variable, while humour responses are very similar both in Italian,
US and UK audiences in the case of non-verbal humour, less positive are
responses when interviewees are faced with instances of VEH in translation.
Furthermore, when the VEH in question is complex, the positivism and de-
gree of the response appears to depend on the quality of the translation (Chi-
aro 2007, 2008). Naturally, there is a need for more studies on robust samples
in numerous language combinations before any kind of generalization can be
made.
600 Delia Chiaro
Conclusions
This chapter has attempted to provide an overview of the chief issues tradition-
ally connected to the translation of VEH, namely equivalence and translate-
ability. While these two concerns render the actual translation of humorous
discourse difficult, shared language and encyclopaedic knowledge between
perpetrator and recipient of VEH are paramount for it to be conveyed suc-
cessfully. As we have seen, the field of translation of VEH is a particularly
interesting one in terms of scope of research as a better understanding of
humour responses to translated VEH can provide significant insight into the
whys and wherefores of sense of humour and to the extent of its culture-
specificity.
Notes
worth the source culture, another which enters into the spirit of the target culture
and a third which absorbs the sense of the ST but reconstructs it without radic-
ally altering the original.
7. Rewritings refer to adaptations of source texts. For example, how far can West
Side Story be considered an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and
how far can it be considered a translation?
8. Of course I have provided a translation thus rendering the term ‘untranslatable’
a contradiction in terms. However, what is commonly meant by the term refers
to the transfer of meaning across two or more languages without undergoing rad-
ical changes.
9. As Davies points out, most carabinieri traditionally come from Southern Italy
where unemployment is high and joining this military police force is a guarantee
of a regular income, so in a sense, these police officers do belong to an ethnically
marked group.
10. ‘Barracks’ would be a more adequate translation because carabinieri are to all
effects a military force.
11. Interestingly, during such breaks, nowadays coffee is probably drunk as much as
tea!
12. Interestingly, at the turn of the 21st century, Toto’s films are undergoing a pro-
cess of reappraisal both in Europe and the USA – Totò Stars and Stripes, a tour
of 15 of the comedian’s films subtitled by Gordon Poole have been successfully
reviewed not only in Italy but also in the UK and across the USA from New York
to San Francisco .
13. Lecture entitled Translating Audiovisual Irony. On the nature of the audiovisual
text and the semiotic factors of its translation delivered in May 2002 at the De-
partment of Interdisciplinary Studies in Languages, Translation and Cultures,
University of Bologna at Forlì on the occasion of the conclusion of the Depart-
ment’s Postgraduate Course in Multimedia Translation.
14. The presidential address ‘Humour Research’ given by Willibald Ruch at the 14th
International Conference of the International Society of Humour Studies (ISHS)
held in Bertinoro, Italy in July 2002 while describing the state of the art within
the field also contains a clear appeal for a more interdisciplinary approach. Vic-
tor Raskin in his keynote speech preferred the term ‘multidisciplinarity’ to point
out that such a vast area of research be constrained to individual landlocked dis-
ciplines.
15. Questionnaire elaborated by Willibald Ruch and administered to ISHS members
via web in May–June 2002.
Verbally expressed humor and translation 603
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Visual humor
Introduction
Visual humor is, of course, humor, and cartoons are to visual humor what
jokes are to verbal humor: the prototypical case that we should be able to ac-
count for before we venture out to other forms. This chapter1 will outline the
state of the art and open issues in cartoon research. For the orientation of the
reader, we will use a comparative perspective to verbal humor and a focus on
the essential differences and similarities.
Humor, as this primer proves, is a multidisciplinary field. But research-
ers formulate their humor theories most often for verbal humor, in particular,
verbal jokes. Lowis and Nieuwoudt (1995) correctly state that cartoons are
often used in humor research, with an implicit assumption of their full com-
patibility with verbal humor (e.g., Paolillo 1998, Coulson 2001), but that few
researchers have touched on the specific phenomenology of cartoon humor or
motivated their use of cartoons rather than jokes. Redlich, Lewine, and Sohler
(1951) are among the exceptions, in that they explain the dual nature of car-
toon humor: the pictorial representation (“iconic character”) and the symbol-
ic nature, both of which need to be understood in order to “get the joke”. The
question is whether assumptions about verbal humor are simply transferrable
to visual humor. Not many studies focus on cartoons for their specific qual-
ities, but usually rather for the convenience of the material in psychological
studies or for the thematic contents.
That the cartoon as a field of humor has been neglected can also be illus-
trated, for example, by van Alphen’s (1996: 217) reduction of humor to ag-
gression in her statement that it is a verbal weapon. She claims that humor,
jokes, gags, irony, sarcasm and black humor are all expressed through verbal
means, completely ignoring cartoons. For Behrens (1977) as well “visual
wit” is hardly visual at all: Cartoon drawings and comic strips are considered
verbal humor embellished with a picture, and the pictures by themselves as
not humorous. Obviously, these observations, while often true for mixed text-
ual/pictorial humor, clearly overlook purely pictorial cartoons that have no
verbal elements at all.
610 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
One could claim that the trend to focus on verbal humor is fostered by the
linguistic dominance of humor research. But the reality is rather that linguists
do what linguists do, namely, use their well-developed array of theories and
methodologies on texts. This leaves pictorial humor in its peculiarity for
fields that are underdeveloped scientifically, or simply do not care for this
peculiarity of their material, but only for the contents, like the field of cultur-
al studies. Psychologists or sociologists also usually don’t much care if the
humorous material used in their studies was verbal or pictorial (e.g., Ruch
1992; Rothbart and Pien 1977), but – as we will try to show – they probably
should. For example, while Suls (1972) focused on jokes and explicitly on
verbal cartoons, nonverbal cartoons were not integrated in his work and it
remains unclear if they would have changed his results.
Social studies is the application of humor research that tells us something
about the users of humor, while theoretical research is development of humor
theory, telling us about humor itself. Both avenues are necessary and benefit
from each other, but the focus of this chapter is to outline humor theory for
research on visual humor. It is not intended to provide a complete historic-
al overview of cartooning through the ages and cultures, but to provide the
reader with the tools to carry out research, either of the social, historical, cul-
tural kind, or, in the vein of the work that is the focus here, theoretical, cog-
nitive, linguistic, psychological research. Thus, content issues will be largely
ignored. Structurally, what should prove helpful is that the distribution of
the essential humor elements in the stimulus is not as restricted and forcedly
linear as in verbal humor. The interaction of verbal and visual parts in mixed
cartoons provides a good starting point for such research, for example to dis-
tinguish the phases of humor cognition, such as a setup, incongruity detec-
tion, and (partial) resolution. An additional emphasis can be the difference
between cognition (joke recognition) and appreciation (funniness).
The themes and characters of humor are in principle independent of the
semiotic medium, that is, if they are verbalized or (partially) drawn. Content-
related distinctions in verbal humor migrate easily to the domain of visual
humor. Even subgroups like punning are found in both domains (see below).
Thus, as indicated, content issues will be largely ignored.
The visual domain,2 in which symbols necessarily have to resemble that
what they stand for, has relevant peculiarities, as this chapter will show. One
important difference between jokes and cartoons falls outside of our exper-
tise and will only be mentioned briefly here: jokes usually have no authors,
are folkloristic products, while cartoons usually do have an author with a dis-
tinct drawing style and topical preferences who also signs his or her work.3
Visual humor 611
This entails that we should not expect to find spontaneous cartooning in ana-
logy to conversational joking.
Again, we oversimplifyingly claim that cartoons are jokes that convey part
of the necessary information through pictures rather than text. So, for now,
assume that all that you have read in this primer about verbal humor holds
for cartoons as well. This chapter will indicate where different assumptions
are warranted. They are most obvious in the formal domain, where the encod-
ing of humor into purely pictorial – or an interaction of pictorial and verbal
– symbols offers different formal and aesthetic possibilities than in purely
verbal ones. We also assume this stimulus difference to have an effect on cog-
nitive processing. Thus, from our contrastive perspective, there are two main
differences between verbal, linguistic jokes and pictorial, visual cartoons:
The aesthetic (formal) difference and the different loci (and probably modi)
of cognitive processing, both surfacing as formal differences. Aesthetics is,
shall we say, a wide field, and field markers are few and far between. Most
existing work, and consequently the larger part of this chapter, will address
cognitive aspects.
In sum, one can distinguish between the content of the humorous text, its
meaning, and its formal pictorial or verbal representation, the material aspect
of the stimulus. This distinction is artificial, as the processing of a stimulus
and the surface properties of a stimulus determine each other, but it is use-
ful for structuring the discussion. Content elements can be anything that is
available as a script to potential audiences and can be brought into opposition
and overlap in the material stimulus. As this introduction tries to outline, we
won’t focus on content elements of humor, but rather on specific cognitive
aspects of cartoon processing and, to some degree, aesthetic elements of the
material cartoon stimuli. For this, we propose the following categorization of
studies on cartoon humor, in order to then pick groups that have chosen the
same purview:
1. Studies that use cartoons in order to address research questions derived
from humor theories. In such studies, reactions to cartoons (evaluated
funniness, laughter) are dependent variables in tests of humor theories.
Examples are studies by Shultz (1976), Suls (1972), or Hirt and Genshaft
(1982), who investigated the effect of incongruity and complexity on the
perception of humor.
2. Studies that focus on the content of cartoons, such as gender stereotypes
(Herzog 1999, Love and Deckers 1989; Thompson and Zerbinos 1995),
social stereotypes (e.g., Bogardus 1954; Anderson and Jolly 1977), pol-
itical and social aspects (e.g., Abe 1998), or sexual themes in cartoons
612 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
(e.g., Brodzinsky and Rubien 1976; Felker and Hunter 1970, Derks
1992; Herzog and Hager 1998). Giarelli and Tulman (2003) provide use-
ful approaches for methodological issues (sample selection, data collec-
tion and data analysis) to investigate such questions.
3. Studies that use cartoons to address research issues that are not directly
related to humor or humor theories, and, for example, investigate mem-
ory processes (Schmidt and Williams 2001) or neuronal activation pat-
terns evoked by cartoons in which one has to ascribe mental states to
characters (Theory of Mind, e.g., Gallagher et al. 2000; Marjoram et al.
2006), or Theory of Mind and schizophrenia (Corcoran, Cahill and Frith
1997, Marjoram et al. 2006).
4. Research on cartoonists. For example, Fisher and Fisher addressed the
childhood of comedians (1981) and the personality structures of car-
toonists (1983). Pearson (1983) found higher Psychoticism and Neuroti-
cism scores in cartoonists. Samson and Huber (2007) found differences
in the use of formal features in male and female cartoonists.
5. Studies that investigated the influence of formal features on humor ap-
preciation, for example aspects related to the drawing (degree of abstrac-
tion/reality, number of panels). For example, Huber and Leder (1997)
investigated the effects of the number of panels or analyzed effects of
the degree of reality on the humor response (Sheppard 1977, 1983).
6. Finally, studies that explicitly address cartoons and their specificities for
humor. For example, Paolillo (1998) attempted to investigate whether
the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH, Attardo and Raskin 1991)
is applicable to visual humor as well, but did not develop why he con-
siders cartoons different from jokes, while Watson, Matthews and All-
man (2006) investigated differences between language-dependent and
picture-dependent cartoons in cognitive processes and their neural cor-
relates.
Expanding the discussion of the last two types of research that actually ad-
dress cartoons and their peculiarities, the following main part of this chapter
will continue with a brief historical overview, a definition of cartoons, their
general differentiation from verbal humor, an overview of studies on formal
and aesthetic aspects of visual humor, and a closer look at cognitive humor
processes in verbal and visual humor and studies on cognitive aspects of
cartoon processing.
Visual humor 613
Definition of cartoons
On the basis of this brief overview, and before we can set out to outline the
existing research on cartoons, it is helpful to provide a working definition as
a basis of further refinements, as well as to differentiate cartoons from related
forms of visual humor to clarify the purview of this chapter.
Cartoons are understood as a humor-carrying visual/visual-verbal picture,
containing at least one incongruity that is playfully resolvable in order to un-
derstand their punch line. Obviously, we’re starting out with a definition that
would hold for jokes as well, plus the visual elements. Cartoons are jokes
told in a picture (drawing, painting, etc.) comprising one or only a few panels
(Nilsen and Nilsen 2000).
The style of cartoons is most often characterized by simple lines, exagger-
ated features, as well as sketch-like and simplified figures. There are substan-
tial differences between the formal styles of cartoonists, as can be seen from
a comparison of works by different cartoonists: cartoons by Gary Larson, for
example, show his typical rounded shapes, round people with small heads
and white glasses which can be contrasted to the more realistic and detailed
drawing style of Robert Crumb.
In order to clarify what we consider cartoons, it is necessary to distinguish
them from related objects, such as comics or caricatures: Comics – in contrast
to cartoons – are orientated towards stories, their artwork is more detailed,
more often anatomically correct, and the drawing more often closely resem-
bles reality. Whereas a cartoon consists of one or only a few panels, com-
ics, or graphic novels contain more panels, sometimes over several pages. In
cases where a cartoon consists of several panels, the purpose of the earlier
Visual humor 615
panels is to set up the punch line in the very last one (Meilhammer 1989). In
comics, stories with the same characters can be told, whereas in cartoons, the
characters are most often flat and interchangable. In cartoons, a punch line is
always present, commonly with additional incongruities or funny elements.
In comics it is not necessary that there are punch lines or funny elements.
Whereas cartoons are most often published in newspapers, magazines (how-
ever, sometimes also in anthologies or books), comics most often come in
the form of books. Obviously it is often difficult to decide whether a certain
stimulus is a cartoon or a humorous comic.
Cartoons can more easily be distinguished from caricatures, which are in
some way their historical predecessors (see above). A caricature is a picto-
rial representation of an object, usually a politician, exaggerating some of
its features, in order to allow a more distinct characterization (someone with
a big nose gets an even bigger one in the drawing) or metaphorical meanings
(someone with a big belly is voracious in a figurative sense). Cartoons often
incorporate caricatures or exaggeration as general stylistic devices. But some
cartoons also portray a very realistic drawing style. The essential difference to
cartoons is that besides the exaggerations of certain body parts (which some-
times stand for certain personality characteristics) there doesn’t have to be
a punch line. If there is a punch line, we claim that the stimulus is a cartoon.
Attempts at reducing all visual humor to a (specific form of) visual meta-
phor are as unenlightening as attempts to describe humor in general in terms
of metaphor or conceptual blends. In recent years, the concept of ‘picto-
rial metaphor’ was applied to advertising (Forceville 1996) and film (Car-
roll 1996), in addition to cartoons (Morris 1993; El Refaie 2003). Carroll’s
(1996) definition of visual metaphor is exemplary for the often underdefined
and/or overspecific nature of the concepts involved: He assumes that there
is a visual fusion of elements from two separated areas into one spatially
bounded entity.
Visual puns
One distinct subgroup of cartoons, the closer discussion of which can serve as
an introduction to the distinction of visual and verbal humor well, are visual
puns (Lessard 1991; Hempelmann and Samson 2007; Mitchell 2007). Visual
puns have in common that one visual element signifies two meanings simul-
taneously, or in other words, activates two scripts at the same time. As this
single visual component is related to two meanings, visual puns are difficult
616 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
ally accompanied by the word “stop” as well. In effect, these have become
arbitrary graphemes. But while a motivated relationship is the exception for
linguistic symbols, it is the rule for visual ones.
Here, we will finally use the only example of a cartoon, which are always
incredibly hard to get permission for.5 It is an example of a visual pun, which
plays on the similarity of a flower head and its stem to a brain and its spinal
cord. This visual pun might play on the idea of “growing your mind” (see
Figure 1).
With this discussion and after having emphasized the general similarity of
jokes and cartoons so far, we are now in a position to focus on the crucial dif-
ferences between verbal humor and (verbal-)visual humor, such as cartoons.
We will begin this section by briefly summarizing the formal differences,
some of which have already been mentioned above. Here, the first aspect
is that jokes are told in a linear way, although they are not necessarily proc-
essed that way, as we know from research in reading and eyetracking experi-
ments (e.g., Mitchell, Graesser, and Louwerse, in submission). In humor in
particular, the discovery of the incongruity leads to backtracking to parts of
the setup that need to be reinterpreted (cf. Attardo 1991: 140). In the picture
part of a cartoon, on the other hand, usually no clear order of processing is
forced in the way text does, but there are tendencies to follow a general order,
which can crucially be directed by the artist creating entry points and paths
in their picture (see section on aesthetic aspects below). Jokes are disclos-
ing information very judiciously. There is no room for semantic ornament
as the listener is paying close attention to any clue hinting at the expected
incongruities or helping them with their playful resolutions. In cartoons the
artist has more if not unlimited room to place details, which may not be re-
lated to the central elements of the humor at all or provide further non-focus
incongruities. Similarly, it is more of a strain on the suspension of disbelief
to place additional fully backgrounded incongruities into verbal humor than
into cartoons (cf. Hempelmann and Attardo, in press). Characters in cartoons
have faces, so their emotions can be depicted unobtrusively by giving them
expressions, while characters in jokes would have to be explicitly described
as having certain emotions or words used that reflect emotional states. As
mentioned, a general difference is that jokes work on the textual semiotic
level, while cartoons use the iconic visual one, possibly with textual support.
618 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
This leads to the possibility to distribute the key elements of humor differ-
ently in cartoons: the central incongruity can be in the picture and the resolu-
tion trigger in the text, or the picture sets up the humor while the incongruity
holds between picture and text, for example. As mentioned, conversational
cartooning is theoretically possible, but we should assume its rare occur-
rence. Conversational joking, on the other hand, is common and by some
fields, e.g., conversation analysis and discourse analysis, claimed as the most
frequent and important type of verbal humor, not least because canned jokes
don’t fall into their purview. Finally, another enormous formal difference is,
of course, iconicity as discussed in the section on visual puns.
Formal differences
This section will summarize how existing research has addressed formal dif-
ferences so far. Several books and articles on cartooning try to define formal
elements that are characteristics of cartoons. Gerberg (1989), for example,
lists atmosphere, calligraphy, and texture (e.g., washed out, slightly playful,
aggressive, or precise lines), cast, dialogue, gestures, background, compos-
ition and selectivity. He adds differences in silhouetting and shading: the
main character can be made to stand out by contrast and brightness and more
detail than the surroundings, as well as omitted background immediately
around it.
This is one possible attempt of describing essential formal features of
cartoons. Other attempts to enumerate formal features have been published,
but they tend to be unsystematic and are usually not informed by a theory
(e.g., Keener 1992; Maddocks 1982; Whitaker 1994). Formal features of vis-
ual humor might be subsumed into the following groups: formal features of
textual elements, the depicted characters in the cartoon, the verbal and non-
verbal interaction, including the characters’ emotions; the spatial represen-
tation (e.g., of the incongruity), the drawing itself and aspects of humorous
elements (e.g., incongruities or resolution enablers). The last group will be
addressed in the section about cognitive aspects of cartoon processing. The
existing research on formal aspects that relate to drawing styles and place-
ment of elements in a cartoon is the focus of this section.
Ring (1975) shows that the position of speech balloons influences the
recall of information. Information in balloons on the right or left top are re-
called more easily than those positioned below the center. Jones, Fine, and
Brust (1979) tested the proportional effect of the pictorial component and
Visual humor 619
cartoons with facial expressions (and vice versa) and demonstrated that car-
toons with emotional facial expressions are rated as less funny than cartoons
without. Brooks (1977) tested the hypothesis that memory for pictorial ma-
terial is dependent on initial comprehension of the depicted relationships.
Cartoon pictures with and without action lines indicating movement were
presented to children of different age. Only older children (ninth-graders in
contrast to second- and sixth-graders) benefit from action lines as cues to the
interaction between actors. The results are discussed in terms of the action
(interaction) being the basis of comprehension and, consequently, picture
recall. Karabas (1990) analyzed the effect of hair as one formal element in
Turkish cartoons with respect to viewers’ attitude toward the persons and
situations in the cartoons. The amount and shape of hair serve as formal signs
to condition the viewer to expect certain personality traits and/or behavior.
In the studies described so far, formal elements were always used as in-
dependent variables and their effect (e.g., on appreciation) was investigated.
Samson and Huber (2007) had a different approach: They investigated the
effect of the cartoonists’ gender on the use of formal features of cartoons.
They analyzed 21 formal features of cartoons, such as number of panels, text,
number of words, caption, number of (speaking) characters, emotional ex-
pression, instrument (pen, brush, etc.), color, position of the punch line and
type of joke (incongruity-resolution and nonsense cartoons), etc. The main
results show that female cartoonists use more text, have more text in picture,
speech balloons, have more words, and also draw more panels – obviously
they are using a different narrative style in telling jokes in cartoons. Fur-
thermore, women more frequently draw cartoons with incongruity-resolution
humor, whereas men prefer to draw cartoons with nonsense humor. This is
not in line with previous results on humor appreciation in dependence of the
perceiver’s gender regarding the preference for incongruity-resolution and
nonsense humor (e.g., Ruch and Hehl 1998).
Some studies considered drawing style or design elements, for example
exaggeration. Sheppard (1983) compares humorous photographs to redrawn
cartoons. Photographs are judged more humorous than cartoons. This may
suggest that the cognitive frame established by the viewer is different for
cartoons and photographs and replicates previous results by Sheppard (1977)
where photographs were compared to cartoons with the same content. Thus,
caricature-style exaggeration doesn’t seem to be enough to make a picture
funny. But distortion or exaggeration of existing features are not the only
means of cartoon drawings. So from these studies it can not be concluded
that photographs in general are funnier than cartoons which can provide to-
Visual humor 621
tally unreal scenes and situations not to be found in photographs. Dirr and
Katz (1989) show that realistic illustrations were preferred over “cartoons”.
However, cartoons in their study were simple line drawings of situations not
containing a punch line. Therefore, the results are not generalizable for car-
toons in general. The research group of Bonaiuto investigated the effect of
several formal aspects in the picture. Bonaiuto and Giannini (2003), for ex-
ample, show higher humor scores in humorous illustrations in their original,
rounded, caricature shapes, devoid of shadow effects, in contrast to modi-
fied illustrations with angular, more realistic shapes, rich in chiaroscuro (i.e.,
a very realistic and detailed graphic treatment, rich in contrast). Other ex-
periments show that reassuring and playful shapes and colors evoke higher
humorous responses than the same illustrations with alarming and serious
shapes and colors, presumably because playful-reassuring drawing styles fa-
cilitate humor through the avoidance of conflict overloading or excessive
emotional involvement (for more details, see Bonaiuto 2006).
Apart from experiments that investigate funniness or preference ratings on
cartoons and realistic pictures, there are some studies that examine effects of
exaggeration or simplification on recognizability. Ryan and Schwartz (1956)
show that the modes of representation, such as photographs, shaded draw-
ings, line drawings or cartoon, influence speed of perception. Cartoons facili-
tate processing as the visual elements are reduced to the essential information
and were therefore recognized faster than line drawings, shaded drawings,
and photographs. Similarly, Fraisse and Elkin (1963) show “caricatures” of
common objects are recognized faster than photographs. Likewise, redrawn
caricatures of faces are better recognized than the original faces (Mauro and
Kubovy 1992). Rhodes, Brennan, and Carey (1987) demonstrate that compu-
ter-generated caricatures of individuals familiar to the subjects of the experi-
ment were identified more quickly (but not more accurately) than veridical
line drawings. In contrast, Tversky and Baratz (1985) using caricatures of
well-known people failed to demonstrate the hypothesized superior recogniz-
ability of caricatures. Hagen and Perkins (1983) compared caricatures of un-
familiar faces to photographs and showed that photographs are more recog-
nizable. Overall, some studies confirm the “superportrait hypothesis” (a face
is more recognizable after exaggerating distinctive features than a veridical
portrait) where others failed (see Table 1 for an overview).
To summarize, this section provides an overview of research on formal
elements of cartoon, mainly focusing on studies that considered the influence
of formal elements of cartoons on cognitive and affective processing (for an
overview, see Table 2). Although it is impossible to control stimulus material
622 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
Table 1. A selection of studies that investigated the abstraction level of the drawing
style or degree of distortion as the dependent variable and the measured
dependent variables (such as funniness ratings or preference). Further, the
main results are listed
Independent Dependent
Author(s) variable variable Main results
Sheppard Photographs and cartoons Humorous rating Photographs >
(1977) (same content, not identical cartoons
events)
Sheppard Photographs and redrawn Humorous rating Photographs >
(1983) cartoons cartoons
Dirr & Katz Realistic illustrations and
Preference Realistic
(1989) cartoons (same events) illustrations >
cartoons
Ryan & Photographs, shaded line Perception speed Cartoons >
Schwartz drawings, line drawings, (threshold for photographs,
(1956) cartoons (same object) recognition) shaded line
drawings > line
drawings
Fraisse & Photographs, cartoons (same Recognition Cartoons >
Elkin (1963) object) speed photographs
Rhodes et al. Computer generated Identification Caricatures >
(1987) caricatures, veridical line veridical line
drawings drawings
Tversky & Caricatures and photographs Recognition Photographs >
Baratz (1985) of famous people caricatures
Hagen & Caricatures and photographs Recognition Photographs >
Perkins (1983) of unfamiliar faces caricatures
Mauro & Photographs of faces and Recognition Caricatures >
Kubovy (1992) caricatures of same faces faces
Bonaiuto (e.g. Cartoons in simple, Humor response Simple, round >
2006) round drawing style vs. chiaroscuro
cartoons with shadows, in
more realistic style with
chiaroscuro effects
Cartoons with bright, playful Playful, bright >
color > dark, serious colors dark, serious
Note: The main results are listed with < and >, which indicate whether cartoons are preferred
over more realistic drawings or not (e.g., on recognition speed or humor appreciation).
Visual humor 623
Table 2. Overview of the studies that investigated and analyzed formal features of
cartoons
Categories Formal feature(s) Authors
Panels Number of panels Huber & Leder (1997), Samson &
Huber (2007)
Text Text (in picture: Samson & Huber (2007), Ring (1975)
elements indicating text or speech
balloons), caption,
number of words
Text & Proportional effect of Herzog & Larwin (1988), Jones et al.
picture picture and text (1979), McKay & McKay (1982), Carroll
et al. (1992), Watson et al. (2006)
Drawing, Degree of abstraction/ Ryan & Schwartz (1956); Sheppard
picture reality (1977, 1983), Fraisse & Elkin (1963),
Hagen & Perkins (1983), Tversky &
Baratz (1985), Rhodes, Brennan & Carey
(1987), Dirr & Katz (1989), Mauro &
Kubovy (1992)
Degree of Samson & Huber (2007)
partial distortion
(Tendenzselektion,
Woschek 1991)
Characteristics of the Bonaiuto (see 2006), Samson & Huber
drawing style: details, (2007)
color, brightness, style,
lines, background
Localization of the Samson & Huber (2007)
punch line
Visual artwork Herzog & Larwin (1988)
Logical Paolillo (1998), Samson, Zysset & Huber
mechanisms (2008), Tsakona (in press)
Characters, Number of (speaking) Samson & Huber (2007)
Emotions characters
Hair Karabas (1991)
Action-lines Brooks (1977)
Expressed emotions Woschek, (1991), Samson & Huber
(2007)
624 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
Note: Some of the studies mentioned in this table will be discussed in the chapter about cogni-
tive processes on humor as they manipulated formal elements. Although Logical Mechanisms
are strictly speaking not purely formal aspects, studies that analyzed cartoons with respect
to their Logical Mechanisms are listed as well (see section on cognitive aspects of cartoon
processing).
for all those formal elements that might influence humor processing, humor
scholars working with cartoons need to keep them in mind and try to con-
trol as many as possible (e.g., choosing humorous cartoons randomly from
a large pool of stimuli, using only non-verbal cartoons instead of captioned
and non-verbal, controlling the number of pictures or degree of reality).
Some formal features that are mentioned in books on cartooning haven’t
been investigated at all, for example, “composition” or “selectivity”. Further
research might address such elements. It would also be interesting to find the
humorously optimal level of exaggeration or simplification of a drawing or if
the position of the punch line influences the processing of cartoons. For ex-
ample, are cartoons funnier if the punch line is on the right side of the picture,
as Gerberg (1989) proposes. Similarly, Woschek (1991) assumes that eye
movement from left to the right predicts order of processing. He also postu-
lates that in cartoon processing several cognitive schemata are simultaneously
activated, because of the high capacity of visual symbols. Accordingly, we
suppose in pictorial humor there may potentially be more incongruities than
in verbal humor. And, as Samson and Huber (2007) show, there are several
locations for the incongruity: text, picture, or between text and picture. There
are several interesting open research issues here.
Aesthetics aspects
Cognitive aspects
We would like to remark that with respect to full, partial, and no resolution,
we take a different and more careful position: In line with most current humor
theories, we assume resolution to be always partial, as the logic that enables
it is always playful, or faulty. Thus, incongruity-resolution humor should be
considered one extreme, namely one closest to but distinct from full reso-
lution, while nonsense humor takes up the opposite extreme, closest to no
resolution, but at least pretending to having one. This latter position, again,
corresponds closely to that of Rothbart and Pien (1977: 37).
628 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
Shultz (1972), together with Suls (1972) and Jones (1970) another pro-
ponent of the revival of incongruity-resolution in the early 1970s, describes
experiments based on the assumption that there are distinct incongruity
(‑triggering) und resolution(-triggering) elements, which are thus individual-
ly removable (cf. also Shultz and Horibe 1974; Jones 1970). This assumption
is problematic, as Pien and Rothbart (1976) point out. But if those triggers
are discernible, we assume that it may be easier in cartoons with or without
text as there is a distribution over more symbol material and across semiotic
boundaries (text/picture).
On this basis we can now formulate the central issues in terms of gen-
eral humor cognition and specific cartoon cognition that has been addressed
in previous research on humorous cognition in cartoons. After introducing
the extant work, we will be in a position to formulate the remaining central
desiderata for research on the cognition of cartoon humor. In the following,
some exemplary studies on cognitive aspects of cartoon processing shall be
outlined.
Several authors attempted to describe mechanisms that make a visual car-
toon funny, for example homomorphic rhyme, metamorphic rhyme, homo-
morphic pun, radical juxtaposition, displacement, hybridization, paradox,
exaggeration, part/whole substitution, parody, exaggeration, simplification,
simple contrasts bisociation, substitution, etc. (see, for example, Behrens
1977; Gombrich 1978; Woschek 1991; Morris 1993). The question is whether
these mechanisms are specific for visual humor or not. As these attempts are
not theory-driven, we suggest to operationalize underlying mechanisms that
influence cognitive humor processing by means of one of the parameters de-
scribed and defined by the GTVH: the Logical Mechanisms (LMs). LMs de-
scribe the relation of two opposed scripts, or the cognitive rule that has to be
recognized in order to understand the punch line. Attardo, Hempelmann and
DiMaio (2002) described at least 27 LMs such as juxtaposition, substitution,
role reversal, exaggeration, etc. Two studies showed that besides other para-
meters of the GTVH such LMs are applicable to visual humor and therefore
describe the underlying cognitive mechanisms of cartoon humor (Paolillo
1998; Tsakona in press). Although we suggest to use LMs to describe the un-
derlying cognitive rules, further research might compare the above mentioned
intuitive attempts to describe mechanisms in visual humor with the LMs in
order to find out which describe identical and which different mechanisms.
The groundbreaking study by Carroll, Young, and Guertin (1992) already
mentioned above uses eyetracking to investigate processing stages in cartoon
perception. In the 36 captioned single pictures used in this study the text as
Visual humor 629
well as the picture were necessary to get the joke (neither element was suf-
ficient by itself). They were able to distinguish two processing stages: the
exploratory stage (visual analysis of the picture and identification of charac-
ters and objects in the picture, shorter fixation duration, more fixations and
longer saccades) and a search-and-problem-solving stage (deeper process-
ing, incongruity-resolution or problem solving, shorter fixations). During
the search-and-problem-solving mode eye-movements come under control
of top-down processes. This study shows that humor is processed at least
in two stages. In a second experiment Carroll et al. (1992) investigated car-
toons in which the caption did not fit the picture. In this mismatch condition
subjects make more than three additional fixations and stage two processing
is extended.
Interestingly, the authors found some differences in what people look at
first and in what order they view pictures and captions. For example, in the
picture-first condition the picture is first considered, but only preparatorily,
elements get memorized in order to retrieve this information during caption
reading. Then they read the caption where the incongruity-resolution takes
place. The authors state that appreciation is only then possible if both, text
and picture was explored. Because the picture was in the beginning looked at
cursorily, after reading the caption the picture was explored again. In the cap-
tion-first condition the processes happen in reverse order. Woschek (1991)
assumed that this processing pattern occurs only when there is an incongruity
in the text as well as in the picture.
The time how long the picture is examined depends on whether the cap-
tion has been read before the picture is checked or not. The average fixation
duration was significantly longer in the caption-first condition than in the
picture-first condition. The first few fixations are supposed to correspond to
the exploratory stage. After that the average fixation time for the picture-first
condition drops quite dramatically, whereas the caption-first condition, with
all of its integration activity, continues to show the long fixation times (Car-
roll et al. 1992).
It would be most interesting to conduct further studies on cartoon process-
ing and eye movements. We assume, for example, that in pure nonverbal car-
toons fixation times could give information about processing stages and time
course as well.
Brain imaging studies can reveal cognitive processes underlying humor
comprehension and appreciation. The earliest study with functional mag-
netic resonance imaging (fMRI) used strictly verbal materials which were
presented via head phones (Goel and Dolan 2001). However, most of the
630 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
Summary
cognitive process in verbal and visual humor, there are crucial differences in
cognitive as well as aesthetic characteristics, surfacing as formal differences,
which can increase or decrease the affective response towards the cartoon:
Several studies demonstrated that degree of abstraction and drawing style
alter the humor response. Whenever it is impossible to control stimuli for
all of these factors, it should be kept in mind that they can influence humor
appreciation as well as the recognizability of a picture’s intended funniness
(see Bonaiuto 2006).
However, there are many open questions which might be addressed in
further research: As we have shown, the aesthetic components are largely
unexplored when they are not reduced to individual formal features. For ex-
ample, how can the aesthetic dimension of cartoons be captured, how can it
be distinguished from the cognitive component? Furthermore, some of the
formal features are far from having been sufficiently investigated yet: the lo-
calization of the incongrous visual element in the cartoon – are cartoons fun-
nier if the elements are on the right part of the image, as might be suggested
from the reading order? Another research opportunity might be to investigate
whether different locations of essential humor components may lead to eas-
ier detection by removal or alteration of incongruent elements. The method
of eliminating incongruent (funny) visual elements of cartoons was already
used, for example by Mobbs and colleagues (2003).
In this overview we have also shown the fruitful implementation of
methods such as eye tracking or fMRI in research on (non-verbal) cartoons.
In the future, these methods might help to answer further questions on the
semiotic processes involved in cartoon appreciation or on processing pecu-
liarities of purely nonverbal cartoons. Here, we have covered cartoons as
one possible form of visual humor. However, there are other forms of visual
humor that might be (and partly already were) addressed in further theoretic-
al considerations or experimental research, for example funny movies, funny
photographs, but also humor in visual art. The latter provides an interesting
and relatively new field for humor scholars for which most of the consider-
ations presented here are valid.
Notes
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640 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
Ekman, Paul 21–24, 75, 315, 337, 488, Fillmore, Charles 107, 117
490 Fine, Elizabeth C. 203
El Refaie, Elisabeth 615 Fine, Gary A. 361, 366, 374, 618
Elitzur, Avshalom C. 319 Finney, Fail 259
Elkin, E. H. 255, 621–623 Finney, Gail 414
Ellis, Bill 196 Fisher, Rhoda L. 202, 265, 317, 456,
Ellis, Lori 456, 465 612
Ellis, Yvette 121 Fisher, Seymour 202, 265, 456, 612
Elshtain, Jean Bethke 408, 414 Fisher, W. R. 544
Emerson, Joan 374, 374 Fiske, Donald W. 39, 58
Emmons, Robert A. 47 Flashner, Graham 255
Epskamp, Kees P. 311 Fleet, F. R. 545, 545
Erb, Michael 22, 38 Fletcher, Doug 453
Erdman, Manny 172, 172 Fletcher, M. D. 254, 453
Ermida, Isabel 131 Flexner, Stuart Berg 252
Ernst, Gordon E., Jr. 256 Fogel, Alan 24
Ertel, Suitbert 28 Folkman, Susan 482
Esler, Murray D. 482 Foot, Hugh C. 18, 73, 317, 549
Espy, Willard 252 Forabosco, Giovannantonio 25, 27, 53,
Esser, Claudia 43, 62 64, 73–74, 311
Etgen, Mike 310 Forceville, Charles 615
Everts, Elisa 118, 120 Ford, Thomas 171–172, 355, 383
Eysenck, Hans-Jürgen 26, 48, 71, Fortunato, Eleonora Di 589
73 Forward, Susan 307
Fowler, Dorreen 255
Fabrizi, Michael S. 44 Fox Tree, Jean E. 123, 123
Fahnestock, Jeanne 424, 424 Fraisse, P. 621
Falk, Robert 254 France, A. 415–416
Falkenberg, Irina 63 Frank, Mark G. 22, 247, 258, 315
Farb, Peter 252 Frankl, Viktor 251, 286, 455–456
Fay, Allen 455 Franzini, Louis R. 311
Fedo, Michael 255 Frater, J. 416, 417
Fein, O. 122, 433 Fredrickson, Barbara L. 482
Feinberg, Leonard 253, 254 Freedman, Jim 186, 188
Feingold, Alan 45, 484 Freeman, Derek 159, 160
Feldman, Ofer 431 Freiberg, Jackie 474
Feleky, Antoinette 18 Freiberg, Kevin 474
Felible, Roma 466 Freud, Sigmund 29, 38–39, 48, 60,
Felker, Donald W. 612 103–104, 158, 170–171, 175,
Fellbaum, Christiane D. 356 177, 193, 198, 202–203, 222–225,
Ferguson, Mark 383 233, 253, 261, 265, 299, 303–304,
Feyaerts, Kurt 129 309–310, 362–364, 389–390, 410,
Filby, Ivan 374 454, 479, 486, 503, 534, 588
Index of authors 647
Jones, James M. 73, 253, 410, 528, Kiniry, Malcom 419
534, 595, 618, 623, 628 Kirsh, Gillian A. 43, 62
Jordan, G. 197, 418 Klein, Allen 311, 454
Joubert, Laurent 102, 408 Kline, Paul 29, 57
Jung, Wonil Edward 78–79, 250, 560 Klingman, Avigdor 69
Jurich, Marilyn 259 Klinkowitz, Jerome 255
Klions, Herbert L. 503
Kalland, Steve 310 Klosek, Judi 463
Kallen, H. M. 313 Klügel, Kilian 63
Kamei, T. 492 Kobler, James B. 126
Kant, Immanuel 26, 103, 226, 261, 308 Kochman, Thomas 120
Karabas, Seyfi 319, 620, 623 Koestler, Arthur 25, 103, 250, 253, 265
Karasik, V. I. 131 Kolasky, John 159
Kashdan, Todd B. 76 Kolberg, Karen 465
Kasriel, Judith 75 Koller, Marvin 366
Kataria, Madan 479, 481 Koller, Werner 576
Katz, Alice A. 621–623 Koponen, Maarit 127
Katz, Jack 381, 386, 621–623 Koppel, Mark A. 44
Kaufer, David 409, 411, 425 Korotkov, David 55, 499, 501, 505
Kaufman, Gloria 311 Kotthoff, Helga 104, 116, 119–120
Kawahara, Shigeto 106 Kowal, Sabine 117, 117
Kazanevsky, Vladimir 311 Kraepelin, Emil 18
Kazarian, Shahe S. 40, 61, 75 Krantzhoff, Erhard U. 63, 69
Keener, Polly 618 Krikmann, Arvo 129, 159
Kehl, D. G. 243, 260–261, 267 Krinsky, David 300
Keim, Inken 120 Kristeva, Julia 571
Keinan, Giora 319, 503 Kronenberger, Louis 547, 547
Keith-Spiegel, Patricia 24, 27, 307, Kropscott, Laura S. 27
310, 313 Krueger, Robert F. 76, 265
Keller, Dan 256, 455, 474 Kubie, Lawrence 454
Kelly, Fred C. 255, 289, 454 Kubovy, Michael 621–623
Keltner, Dacher 22, 488, 508 Kueneman, Karen 311, 493
Keough, William 257 Kuhlman, Thomas 456
Kercher, Stephen 301 Kuiper, Nicholas A. 43, 62, 316, 387,
Kerkkanen, Paavo 483 482, 483, 500, 501, 502, 504
Kerr, M. E. 257 Kuipers, Giselinde 4, 6, 52, 157, 196,
Kerr, Sarah T. 507 372, 375, 380–381, 383, 385,
Keysar, Boaaz 553 387–388
Kierkegaard, Soren 227–228, 231, 457 Kumano, H. 492
Kiley, Frederick 254, 256 Kunst-Wilson, William R. 624
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie 424, 424 Kunzle, David 613, 613
King, Cynthia M. 212, 255, 290, 423, Kushner, Malcolm 311, 462
555, 558, 586 Kutas, M. 126
Index of authors 651
Pratt, Alan R. 254, 419 Redlich, Frederick C. 59, 609
Preuschoft, Signe 75 Reeves, C. 415, 417
Priego Valverde, Béatrice 117 Reuters News Service 561
Priest, Robert F. 62, 77 Rhodes, Gillian 28, 621–623
Propp, Vladimir 107, 113, 541 Richler, Mordecai 251
Provine, Robert R. 117, 120–121, 260, Riemann, Rainer 76
366, 385 Rim, Yalom 504
Proyer, René T. 47, 53–54, 62, 74 Ring, Erp 618, 623
Pughe, Thomas. 255 Risden, E. L. 316
Puhlik-Doris, Patricia 38, 505, 508, Rishel, Mary Ann 416
511 Rissland, Birgit 63
Pulman, Stephen 125, 340 Ritchie, David 409, 433
Purdie, Susan 121 Ritchie, Graeme 106, 124, 337–338,
Purdy, Jedediah 254, 413, 418 340, 408–409, 433
Pym, Anthony 578 Ritchie, Joy 408
Roberts, Paul 239–240, 423, 426–428
Quintilian 102, 215, 402, 404–405, Robinson, Dawn 365, 367, 374–375
408 Robinson, Vera 453
Rodden, Frank A. 22, 38, 53
Rackl, Lorilyn 479 Roeckelein, Jon E. 20
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 185–186, 364 Rogerson-Revell, Pamela 117
Radday, Yehuda 311 Romero, Eric J. 61
Rader, C. 309 Ronald, Kate 408
Rahman, Jacquelyn 120 Roodenburg, Herman 102–103, 550
Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. 79, 625 Rose, Mike 419
Ramani, S. 311 Rosenberg, Erika L. 22–23, 501
Ramsay, Edward Bannerman 161 Rosen, Leonard J. 423
Rapp, Albert 307, 313 Rosenheim, Eliyahu 319
Rapp, Alexander M. 22, 38 Rosier, Laurence 131
Raskin, Victor 1, 5–7, 11–12, 25, 32, Ross, Alison 121, 417, 425–426
50, 52, 103, 107–109, 115, 121, Ross, Bob 462
123, 127, 170, 178, 250, 303, 305, Ross, Charles 316
308, 310–311, 314, 317–318, Rosso, Paolo 125
336–338, 342, 344–345, 347–349, Rosten, Leo 257
351, 353–355, 363, 372, 425, 427, Rothbart, Mary K. 25, 33, 49, 265,
524, 534–536, 539, 581, 596, 602, 312, 610, 627–628
612, 626 Rotton, James 23, 494, 497
Rath, Sigrid 20, 22, 51–52, 317 Rourke, Constance 257
Raudenbush, Stephen W. 505 Rouzie, Albert 421–422
Raulin, Jules M. 18 Rowland, Robert C. 431
Raz, Tal 494 Royot, Daniel 243, 260, 268
Read, Raymond L. 310 Rubien, Janet 44, 612
Redfern, Walter 252 Rubin, Louis D., Jr. 250, 284, 300
656 Index of authors
Ruch, Willibald 3, 6, 18, 20–24, 26, Schulz, Max F. 254, 289
28–29, 33–34, 36–38, 44, 46–56, Schutz, Charles E. 311
58–60, 62–66, 70, 73–76, 109, Schwartz, Carol B. 621–623
178, 284, 310–311, 315, 317, Schwartz, Shalom H. 73
319, 336–337, 363, 385, 469, 482, Schwarzwald, Joseph 494
484–488, 490, 495, 499, 502, 540, Schwitalla, Johannes 120
598–599, 602, 610, 619–620, 627 Schwoebel, J. 122
Ruiz Moneva, Angeles 130 Scogin, Forrest R. 485
Rusch, Sandra 71 Scott, James 259, 369
Russell, David 167, 251, 287, 416 Scott, John R. 188
Rust, John 75, 507 Scott, Nina M. 316
Ruszkiewicz, John J. 417 Sears, Richard N. 48
Rutter, Jason 120, 284 Seaver, Paul W., Jr. 258
Ryan, Cynthia A. 311 Sechrest, Lee 44
Ryan, T. A. 621–623 Secor, Marie 424
Ryff, Carol D. 502 Seitel, Peter 203
Sacks, Harvey 200 Seligman, Martin E. P. 19, 46–47, 60
Safer, Elaine B. 243, 245, 255, 268 Selzer, Jack 424
Safranek, Roma 485 Semino, Elena 121
Salameh, Waleed A. 53, 309, 311, 456 Shalit, Gene 251
Samson, Andrea C. 5, 21, 49, 612, 615, Shats, Mark 494
620, 623–624, 630 Shelley, Cameron 123–124
Sanborn, Kate 409–410 Shepherd, Jean 255
Sapir, Edward 586 Sheppard, Alice 612, 620, 622–623
Sarmany-Schuller, Ivan 501 Sherman, Lawrence W. 311
Saroglou, Vassilis 40, 43, 61–62 Sher, Phyllis K. 78
Sassenrath, Simone 37, 63–64, 70 Sherwood, Steve 418
Savin, William 306, 309–311, 316 Sherzer, Joel 192
Sayre, Joan 365 Shibles, Warren 299
Scariot, Christel 40, 61 Shiffman, Limor 370, 381
Schaaf, Barbara 256 Shinohara, Kazuko 106
Schank, Roger C. 107 Shloss, Carol 255
Schaub, Thomas H. 255 Shultz, Thomas R. 25, 312, 611, 628
Scheff, Thomas 367, 385–386 Shuttleworth, J. M. 254
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 117 Sifianou, Maria 116–117
Schill, Thomas 485 Sigal, Marcia 311
Schirmer, Otto 18 Simmons, John 540
Schmidt-Hidding, Wolfgang 43, 46, 71 Simon, Jolen M. 501
Schmidt, Stephen R. 612 Simpson, Paul 121
Schmitz, J. R. 127 Siporin, Steve 187
Schmitz, Neil 250 Sirc, Geoffrey 420
Scholl, Peter A. 255 Sjöbergh, Jonas 125
Schopenhauer, Arthur 226, 308, 310 Skowron, Justyna 131
Index of authors 657
Thorson, James A. 59, 75, 311, 485, Van Giffen, Katherine 310
501, 503 van Hoof, Jan A. R. A. M. 77
Tijus, Charles-Albert 124 van de Vijver, Fons 72
Tilton, John W. 254 Vandaele, Jeroen 113, 127, 570, 599
Tinholt, Hans Wim 125, 340 Varma, V. S. R. D. 311
Titze, Michael 53–54, 74 Vasey, George 489
Todt, Dietmar 119, 121 Veale, Tony 129
Tollefson, Donald L. 59 Velker, Barbara 488, 495
Toombs, Sarah Eleanor 256 Verdon, Jean 102
Totten, Mary C. 493 Vermeer, Hans 577
Toury, Gideon 577–578 Vettin, Julia 119, 121
Tower, C. 415, 418 Viana, Amadeu 117
Trachtenberg, Stanley 256, 299 Vickers, Scott B. 259
Tragesser, Sarah 106 Viikberg, Jűri 159
Trédé, Monique 102 Viktoroff, David 303–305
Trembath, David L. 507 Vitanza, Victor 415, 421
Trevor, William 577 Vives, Juan Luis 258, 408
Triezenberg, Katrina E. 4–5, 7, 12, Volpe, Michael 402
129, 355, 537
Trouvain, Jürgen 116, 121 Wagg, Stephen 371, 379
Tsakona, Villy 110, 117, 623, 628, Wagner, Jane 292
631 Waldoks, Moshe 174, 257
Tsur, Reuven 319 Waldorf, V. Ann 507
Tucker, Joan S. 256 Walford, Geoffrey 178
Tulman, Lorraine 612 Walker, Nancy A. 259, 263, 283, 299,
Tümkaya, Songül 40, 61 301, 311, 410–411, 414
Turek, Joy 47, 59 Wallace, Ronald 254, 261
Turner, W. Craig 299 Walle, Alf H. 199, 374
Tversky, B. 621–623 Waltz, William 493
Tyler, Kathryn 286, 296 Walzer, Arthur 409
Wanzer, M. B. 554
Uberoi, J. Singh 165 Wanzer, Melissa Bekelja 554
Uekermann, Jennifer 27 Ward, John 414–415
Ulea, V. 266 Ward, Stephen 370
Ulrych, Margherita 601 Ware, Aaron P. 35, 40, 42–43, 45,
Unger, Lynette S. 311 61–62
Utsumi, Akira 122–123 Warnick, Barbara 412
Warren, Rosalind 299, 311
Vaid, Jyotsna 78, 104, 126–127 Waters, Everett 33, 78
Vaillant, George E. 486 Waters, Janet C. E. 20
Valdimarsdottir, Heiddis 482 Watkins, Mel 120, 258, 284, 301
van Alphen, Ingrid C. 609 Watson, David 499
Van Auken, Philip M. 310 Watson, Karli K. 612, 623, 630
Index of authors 659
618, 620, 621, 627 dozens, 120, 187, 236, 290, 291, 297,
conversation analysis, 116, 125, 618 318, 452, 460, 465, 526
coon caricature, 264 drawing style, 610, 614, 615, 620, 622,
coon songs, 264 623, 625, 626, 632
cooperative principle (CP), 108, 115 driving schools, 466
coping, 39, 40, 55, 60, 61, 65, 68, 70, Duchenne display, 21, 496
73, 195, 289, 316, 454, 482, dyadic tradition, 188
485, 487, 502, 503, 504, 505,
506, 509, 510 economy, 103, 104, 224, 309, 460, 463
coping humor scale (CHS), 40, 60, 70, eiron, 531
485, 502 eironeia, 401
CORHUM, 131, 318 embarrassment, 2, 22, 117, 132, 365,
corpus, 117, 119, 120, 123, 125, 132, 383, 385, 386, 596
426, 597 embodied computational agent (ECA),
cross-cultural perspectives, 71–75 336–337
cross-national perspectives, 71–75 emotion, 19, 39, 51, 77, 78, 160, 161,
cultural differences, 123 213, 224, 233, 235, 236, 237,
culture, 4, 35, 37, 72–74, 131, 159, 165, 307, 336, 385, 386, 389, 405,
175, 183, 190–192, 238, 246, 406, 480, 481, 482, 485, 491,
256–259, 262, 263, 266–268, 493–496, 510, 536, 559, 562,
281–294, 296–301, 311, 335, 630
374, 375, 379, 387, 399, 418, enthymeme, 532
431, 432, 459, 463, 473, 538, environment, 75, 76, 77, 192, 418, 453,
547, 550, 552, 562, 572, 573, 459, 462, 469, 473, 532, 547,
575, 576, 579, 580, 583–587, 549, 550–552, 555, 561, 583,
590, 596–602 596, 625
equivalence, 65, 570, 571, 572,
democracy, 169, 171, 172, 176, 178, 574–580, 582, 589, 592, 593,
286 599, 600
derision, 30, 39, 103, 117, 313, 385 ethos, 400, 402, 403, 404, 405, 417, 431
diction, 536, 538, 539 evolution, 6, 77–79, 229, 237, 307, 308,
disambiguation, 11, 105, 106 310, 318, 432, 537
discourse analysis, 115–118, 119, 123, exclusion, 175, 303, 364, 366, 383, 385
131, 412, 424, 618 eye tracking, 632
disjunctor, 106, 107
disparagement, 29, 30, 31, 39, 103, 307, fabliau, 532
310, 313, 372 facetiae, 402, 406, 408, 409
dissoi logoi, 402, 409, 412, 421 and vir bonus, 404
distancing, 195, 504 Facial Action Coding System (FACS),
distribution, 61, 110, 111, 112, 131, 22–24, 337, 481, 488, 495–496,
282, 284, 610, 628 510
doggerel, 261 factor analytic studies, 48, 51, 54–57,
double entendre, 296, 536 486
664 Subject index
familiarity, 101, 119, 261, 282, 538, 423, 424, 426, 431, 532, 533,
539, 626 540, 550, 558, 559, 572, 573,
fantasy, 232, 250, 253, 254, 259, 289, 613
544, 561, 562 God, 189, 212, 213, 217, 230, 231, 247,
farce, 247, 262, 264, 425, 532, 533, 252, 261, 356
548, 592 grotesque, 250, 253, 260, 377, 531,
film 532, 613
comedy, 267, 284, 292, 293, 294,
300 hahacronym, 124, 339
criticism, 266 heritability, 75
flyting, 532 hierarchy, 109, 187, 262, 341, 363, 365,
folklore, 73, 160, 167, 192, 197, 200, 366, 367, 368, 425
249, 252, 281, 286, 297, 299, Horatian satire, 249
300, 379, 560 hospitals, 69, 240, 318, 319, 365, 449,
studies, 4, 183, 184, 203 452, 453, 454
fool, 212, 213, 248, 290, 307, 527 hostility, 61, 103, 104, 166, 174, 175,
vs. jester, 532 177, 188, 193, 194, 212, 219,
wise, 286–287, 295 238, 239, 246, 249, 307, 313,
formal features, 571, 612, 618, 620, 362, 367, 368, 369, 372, 380,
624, 632 383, 384, 455, 462, 471, 488,
formalism, 8, 334 545, 558, 562
frame, 7, 19, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 52, human–computer interface (HCI), 336,
56, 126, 186, 200, 265, 298, 339
306, 374, 375, 409, 421, 433, humor
546, 576, 620 analysis of
functional magnetic resonance imaging automatic, 374, 569, 589, 600
(fMRI), 627, 629, 630, 631, 632, and
627, 629 aggression, 28, 29, 61, 76, 103,
functionalism, 366, 367 104, 119, 166, 175, 176, 177,
188, 193, 194, 305–309, 313,
gelotophobia, 53, 54 363, 368, 369, 375, 382–384,
gender, 30, 66, 120, 132, 187, 259, 263, 390, 527, 531, 535, 536, 545,
310, 349, 361, 375, 377, 379, 562, 609
381, 399, 424, 425, 430, 465, health advocacy, 3, 451–457,
544, 549, 551, 556, 558, 559, 468–471
560, 562, 611, 620 hierarchy, 109, 187, 262, 341,
issues 561–563 363, 365, 366, 367, 368, 425
genre, 108, 112, 119, 157, 166, 185, hostility, 61, 103, 104, 166, 174,
191–192, 247, 249, 250, 252, 175, 177, 188, 193, 194, 212,
254, 261, 262, 264, 266, 267, 219, 238, 239, 246, 249, 307,
282, 283, 288, 290, 291, 292, 313, 362, 367, 368, 369, 372,
296, 300, 301, 380, 381, 387– 380, 383, 384, 455, 462, 471,
388, 400, 411, 416, 417, 420, 488, 545, 558, 562
Subject index 665
non-seriousness, 373, 374, 378, virtue, 46, 47, 77, 214, 215, 217,
382, 383 218, 401, 561, 579
power, 64, 74, 168, 170, 175, 176, as an
193, 217, 220, 238, 252, 288, ability, 43–46
306, 338, 344, 353, 363, 368, aesthetic perception, 47
369, 370, 375, 384, 409, 411, behavior, 17, 23, 27, 32, 35, 36, 37,
412, 413, 415, 418, 420–429, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46, 52, 55–59,
433, 452, 454, 472, 531, 551, 61, 64, 69, 72, 75, 77, 116, 158,
552, 556 186, 200, 204, 229, 283, 292,
psychology, 3, 6, 17, 18, 19, 23, 303, 305, 312, 313, 316, 355,
44, 46, 57, 69, 73, 77, 108, 177, 377, 401, 405, 407, 409, 415,
185, 220, 228, 240, 265, 298, 422, 454, 456, 467, 485, 526,
299, 315–316, 317, 334, 355, 528, 534, 550, 559, 620
449, 450, 452, 454, 456, 460, Black, see comedy, Black
461, 465, 467, 548, 549 children’s, 65, 184, 246, 311
resistance, 188, 189, 196, 361, comparative, 4, 131, 157–163,
367, 368, 369, 370, 377, 166–168, 172, 174–178, 194,
410–417, 456, 469, 583 197, 202, 203, 301, 362, 364,
social structure, 184, 186, 187, 378, 379, 380, 382, 383, 569,
366 609
appreciation, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, competence, 7, 44, 114–116, 119,
33, 44–48, 51, 52, 55, 56, 59, 335, 355, 356, 410, 418, 483,
64–67, 69, 70, 73–78, 124, 203, 507, 596
227, 228, 239, 251, 261, 282, computational, 5, 123–125, 333–354
298, 310, 312, 315, 372, 381, contexts, 196–203
387, 388, 418, 469, 484, 485, conversational, 375, 384, 387
487, 507, 546, 563, 610, 612, creation of, 36, 52, 56, 335
619, 620, 622, 625, 629, death, 114, 170, 174, 179, 189, 196,
632 217, 230, 249, 252, 261, 449,
as 453, 454, 500, 526, 531, 541,
art, 203–204 551, 562
catharsis, 367, 385 dark side of humor, 42, 46, 382, 383
as a development, 65–68, 389, 610
character strength, 19, 35, 46–47, disaster, 196
76 enhancer, 537, 538
coping mechanism, 39, 73, 506 ethics of, 237, 238, 239, 268
cultural production, 400, 414, event, 9, 11, 20, 22, 36, 113, 119,
430–433 195, 196, 200, 201, 304, 305,
rhetorical device, 400–408, 412, 315, 351, 363, 411, 432, 474,
425, 426, 432, 587, 592 534, 592
social activity, 303–306, 416 failed, 405
temperament, 35, 36, 37, 38, 44, feminist vs. feminine, 413–415
45, 46, 55, 482, 485, 487 gender-based, 263, 558
666 Subject index
473, 479, 481–488, 492, 493, 110, 122, 125, 126, 128, 333,
496–510, 544–547, 550, 552, 334, 339, 363, 377, 611, 612,
559, 562, 563 617, 618, 621, 624, 625, 626,
sick, 48, 193, 196, 367 627, 628, 629, 630, 632
social functions of, 367, 389 release, 103, 104, 211, 221, 222,
styles, 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 53, 55, 223, 224, 233, 264, 304, 309,
61, 62, 73, 74, 379, 381, 483, 310, 313–314, 362, 415, 450,
486, 487, 502, 505, 506, 508, 453, 468
509, 510, 511 relief, 221–225, 233, 235,
support, 117, 119, 374 313–314, 362, 368, 378
taboo, 42, 120, 188, 293, 374, 379 script-based semantic theory
talk show, 283, 296, 297 (SSTH), 7, 25, 107–109,
television, 169, 195, 196, 245, 246, 114–115, 126–128, 310, 314,
257, 266, 281, 283, 284, 285, 338, 339, 341, 342, 343, 347,
290, 292, 293, 294, 296, 299, 353, 537, 541
300, 387, 486, 524, 530, 556, verbal humor, 314
559, 573, 589, 596 superiority, 24, 29, 30, 31, 39, 103,
therapeutic, 306, 309, 311, 319, 449, 211, 212, 214, 215, 220, 221,
452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 479, 225, 228, 229, 233, 234, 246,
481, 482, 483, 503 249, 305, 307, 310, 313, 362,
theory of 363, 368, 381, 383, 384, 389,
audience-based theory of verbal 390, 399, 531
humor, 310, 314–15 verbal, 5, 7, 36, 45, 50, 55, 63,
conflict, 25, 27, 73, 166, 174, 177, 108, 120, 234, 294, 310, 338,
185, 186, 240, 268, 288, 296, 342, 347, 399, 417, 425, 534,
361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 367, 536, 609, 610, 611, 612, 615,
368–373, 377, 378, 380, 383, 617–618, 624, 626, 631, 633
390, 421, 422, 423, 461, 463, verbally expressed (VEH), 569–608
487, 621 visual, 5, 204, 260, 419, 429, 431,
disparagement, 29, 30, 31, 39, 559, 570, 589, 590, 593, 594,
103, 307, 310, 313, 372 596, 600, 601, 609–632
functionalist, 165, 166, 362, HUMOR: International Journal of
364–368, 374, 377, 383 Humor Research, 2, 262, 267,
general theory of verbal humor 268, 298, 316
(GTVH), 7, 50, 104, 108–117, humorlessness, 34, 38, 52–54, 56, 65,
121, 124–131, 310, 314, 338, 215, 218
341, 342, 425, 536, 537, 541, humorology, 6, 316–319
612, 626, 628 humorous
incongruity, 104, 211, 215, 219, characters, 35, 245, 248
221, 225–229, 231, 233–236, genres, 119, 370, 381, 387, 417
240, 311–313, 363, 389, 463 mode, 377, 385
phenomenology, 373, 424, 609 plot, 112
processing, 20, 27, 31, 32, 35, poetry, 261
668 Subject index
Menippean satire, 532 pain tolerance, 316, 479, 482, 493, 494,
message type, 557 495, 496, 509
metaphor, 190, 404, 530, 536, 557, 558, paraprosdokian, 533
578, 615 parody, 250, 254, 255, 262, 263, 388,
methodology, 5, 6, 18, 60, 106, 184, 400, 408, 410, 411, 412, 413,
354, 376, 400, 491 415, 418–420, 423, 424, 427,
Middle Comedy, 525 428, 531, 533, 539, 548, 570,
mime, 533 572, 628
minstrel shows, 290 as social critique, 383, 416–418,
mock, 21, 222, 265, 286, 381, 401, 424, 423, 433
433, 546, 571, 613 pathologies of humor and laughter,
epic, 269, 533 52–54
heroic, 533 performance, 35, 43, 44, 47, 54, 56, 59,
modality, 10, 575 64, 65, 115, 116, 187, 200, 203,
mode adoption, 119 262, 281–285, 290, 291, 292,
mood, 31–38, 43, 52, 55, 56, 60, 61, 62, 294, 334, 335, 340, 341, 355,
63, 64, 70, 188, 304, 454, 469, 381, 420, 485, 504, 531, 561
491, 495, 501–506, 544, 550, personality, 3, 17, 18, 35, 36, 40, 46,
551, 563 47, 48, 54, 57, 59, 61, 62, 63,
morale-boosting, 4, 369, 370 65, 66, 72, 73, 75, 76, 202, 484,
motivational processes, 21, 28–31, 70, 527, 532, 550, 560, 599, 612,
450, 462, 464, 495 615, 620
phenomenology, 373, 376–378, 424,
narrative functions, 107 609
narratology, 106 philosophy, 1, 4, 5, 17, 18, 121, 176,
Native American, 251, 259 213, 215, 227, 229, 232, 237,
literature, 258 240, 263, 362, 400, 407, 450,
trickster tales, 247 458, 463, 548, 549
natural disambiguation mechanism, philosophy of science, 5
11 phonetic distance, 105, 106
natural-language processing (NLP), picaresque novels, 253
333–336, 339, 340, 347–354, play
355, 356 serio-ludic, 422
neural correlates, 612 playfulness, 19, 32, 33, 36, 37, 55, 56,
neurolinguistics, 125–126, 132 63, 64, 68, 70, 71, 218, 232,
non-seriousness, 373, 374, 378, 382, 241, 383, 386, 464, 471, 472,
383 473
pleasure, 41, 42, 43, 48, 214, 218, 221,
Old Comedy, 214, 525, 531 224, 225, 226, 228, 234, 236,
ontological semantics, 7–12, 336, 347– 238, 303, 304, 309, 401, 421,
350, 353, 354 601
ontology, 8, 347, 348, 351, 356 po-faced reaction, 119
oxymoron, 282, 536 poetics, 102, 131, 214, 401, 525
Subject index 671
politeness, 118, 130, 532 539, 557, 563, 614, 615, 620,
popular 621, 623, 624, 627, 628
culture, 4, 190, 191, 246, 257, 258, Purdue University, 318
262, 263, 266, 281–298
theater, 287, 290, 294 radio, 171, 290, 292, 294, 297, 383
power, 166, 168, 170, 175, 176, 188, rationality, 174, 195, 213, 228, 229,
220, 238, 252, 288, 363, 368– 236, 237, 239, 380
370, 375, 384, 409, 411–422, reception, 284, 285, 388, 552
426, 428, 429, 433, 454, 472, recipient/audience, 2, 5, 26, 29, 31,
525, 551, 552, 556, 558 41, 48, 49, 52, 115–119, 200,
black power, 193 215–216, 225, 238, 246, 264,
power differences/divisions, 370, 282, 285, 288–292, 303–315,
375 363, 374, 384, 400–407, 411–
power distance, 74 419, 424, 425, 428, 430–433,
power relations theory, 168 450, 451, 527, 531, 537–539,
therapeutic power, 306, 311 549–554, 559, 561, 573, 575,
pragmatics, 115, 116, 118, 120, 122, 581, 583, 584, 590, 592, 593,
129, 417 600, 601
principle of least disruption, 118 relief, 29, 33, 189, 247, 309–310, 313,
production, 43, 44, 70, 76, 78, 117, 314, 366–367, 369, 385, 452
174, 176, 200–201, 284, 304, repartee, 41, 45, 529, 533
337, 365, 399, 400, 402, 414, repertoire, 116, 201, 372
430–433, 495, 496 repetition, and variation, 105, 245, 315,
pronoun, 340 539, 570, 596
prototypicality, 128 research, ethnographic, 285
psychology, 3, 6, 17, 18, 19, 23, 44, 46, resolution, 25–27, 31, 48–51, 64, 66,
57, 69, 73, 77, 108, 177, 185, 67, 73–74, 78, 103, 106, 108,
220, 228, 240, 265, 298, 299, 121, 126, 129, 130, 228, 233,
317, 334, 355, 449, 450, 452, 234, 246, 294, 295, 312, 345,
454, 456, 460, 461, 465, 467, 541, 610, 618, 620, 626–631
548, 549 anaphora resolution, 341
pun, 105–106, 335, 338, 339, 341–347, Restoration comedy, 533
352, 356, 385, 531, 533, 536, rhetoric, 199, 215, 298, 399–433, 463,
571, 572, 587–589, 591, 548, 554
592–595, 628 ribaldry, 533
cratylistic syllogism, 344–345 riddle, 108, 193, 337, 557, 575, 576,
imperfect, 342–344 580
perfect, 342–343 rogues, and picaros, 248, 253
pseudopunning, 345–346
taxonomy, 106 sacred, 188, 230, 232, 547, 574, 575
visual, 615–617 salience, 27, 29, 49, 128, 433
punch line, 28, 49, 51, 109, 110, 111, sarcasm, 21, 34, 39, 216, 249, 254, 418,
112, 130, 222, 308, 529, 537, 426, 427, 428, 486, 533, 548, 609
672 Subject index
satire, 21, 48, 169, 232, 247, 250, 252, signifying, 120, 258
253, 254, 263, 264, 288, 290, smart allusions, 245
291, 293, 370–371, 400, 408, smile, 17, 21, 22, 24, 32, 41, 46, 55, 218,
413, 415, 418, 431, 486, 525– 247, 305, 315, 366, 459, 461,
529, 532, 533, 548, 570, 572, 613 481, 485, 487, 545
Juvenalian, 249 smiling, 21–23, 24, 38, 51, 75, 77, 78,
social criticism in, 410, 417, 539 79, 184, 240, 249, 254, 315, 385,
stereotypes in, 66, 72, 239, 245, 348, 488, 495, 545
410, 538, 539, 561, 562, 591, 611 social
scalability, 124, 335, 355 cohesion, 366
scatology, 188, 533 control, 188, 364, 365, 383
script, 7, 25, 50, 107–109, 121, 123, sciences, 5, 211, 298, 364, 548
126, 127, 128, 170, 310, 314, sociology, 361–398
338, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, comparative research in, 157, 162,
350–353, 379, 380, 410, 425, 379
531, 534–541, 557, 562, 589, conversation analysis in, 116, 125,
596, 597, 601, 611 618
script opposition, 50, 108, 123, 314, ethnography of, 370
341, 342, 346, 352, 353, 425, experiment in, 29, 30, 418, 459, 587,
535–541 621, 629
good/bad, 11, 351 historical analysis in 306–310
normal/abnormal, 11, 114 interview in, 53, 171, 201, 473
real/unreal, 11, 25 methodology of, 5, 6, 18, 60, 106,
sense of humor, 3, 32, 35–47, 52, 55–71, 184, 354, 376, 400, 491
74–78, 159, 228, 229, 230, 231, survey in, 35, 41, 101, 123, 128, 130,
232, 259, 307, 316, 317, 336, 379, 184, 196, 284, 285, 286, 296,
381, 382, 409, 410, 459, 462, 464, 300, 459, 461, 499, 561
467, 469, 473, 479, 481–488, sophistication, 13, 178, 246, 340, 381,
492, 493, 496–510, 544–547, 389, 404, 410–413, 416, 418,
550, 552, 559, 562, 563 422
measurement, 3, 23, 35, 40, 52, 57, levels of, 12, 249
58, 60, 62, 480, 484, 485, 487, source
577 language (SL), 570, 571, 572, 575,
humor scale (SHS), 63, 36, 40, 47, 576, 578, 584, 592, 594
59–64, 68, 70, 485, 501, 502, text (ST), 169, 216, 217, 226, 256,
508 318, 452, 571, 572, 573, 574,
sex, 7, 12, 25, 29, 49, 50, 64, 76, 170, 575, 576, 577, 578, 579, 581,
178, 179, 186, 195, 201, 202, 582, 583, 584, 588, 593, 601,
203, 222, 282, 287, 293, 351, 602
363, 411, 413, 496, 531, 533, spoonerism, 534
535, 551, 561 squib, 534
signifier, 105, 194, 195 stack, 111
and signified, 260, 345 statistics, 354
Subject index 673
stereotype, 71, 203, 238, 258, 259, 410, multimedia translation, 589–598
427, 538 triumph, 103, 225, 370, 531
strand, 111, 112, 114 trope, 534
stress, 36, 39, 40, 52, 55, 60, 61, 63,
64, 70, 74, 247, 316, 449–454, university presses, 263
458–459, 462–470, 482–483, untranslatability, 571, 580, 582, 588
487, 488, 490, 492, 500,
503–511, 558, 563 validity, 39, 45, 51, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61,
stylistics, 129, 400, 419 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 166, 170, 511
sublimation, 103 vaudeville, 290, 291, 292, 294
superiority, see power verbal
symbol, 193, 194, 421, 616, 628 abuse, 307
symbolic interactionism, 373–376, 390 verbal dueling, 187, 191
taboo, 42, 120, 188, 293, 374, 379 Western Humor and Irony Movement
target (WHIM), 318
language (TL), 570, 571, 573, 575, wit, 28, 42–46, 54, 59, 71, 75, 76, 78,
576, 579, 582, 592, 594, 599, 601 214, 218, 220–221, 224, 227,
text (TT), 571, 572, 574, 575, 576, 232, 245, 246, 249, 253, 254,
577, 578, 579, 581, 582, 583, 267, 306, 308, 366, 370, 371,
584, 589, 601 400–410, 433, 486, 527, 528,
teasing, 39, 54, 185, 291, 307, 465, 473, 534, 543, 547, 548, 582, 587, 609
486, 508, 550, 552 Greek views on, 53, 75, 102, 117,
tension management, 367 212, 213, 215, 216, 231, 247,
text 248, 313, 401, 523–527, 530,
world representation, 110 531, 533, 613
-meaning representation (TMR), 9, Renaissance views on, 102, 103, 405,
11, 348 406, 408, 412, 420, 525, 526, 536
textual studies, 284 Roman views on, 102, 215, 216, 247,
theory of mind, 612, 624, 631 249, 313, 402, 526, 527, 533,
Tom Swifties, 124 575, 600, 613
tragedy, 18, 102, 195, 196, 227, 240, women
261, 404, 525, 527, 546, 547, humor
562, 572 and morality arguments, 413
traits, 19, 32, 35–41, 49, 56, 58, 59, 62, for mixed audiences, 410
66, 72, 73, 76, 77, 231, 255, 336, humorists, 301, 408–415
340, 484, 485, 560, 563, 620 WordNet, 12, 339, 356
transgression, 382–385 wordplay, 160, 249, 333, 336, 345, 346,
translatability, 126–127, 570, 580–582, 379, 418, 571, 577, 591, 595
589, 599 Workshop Library World Humor
translation studies, 569, 574, 599 (WLWH), 317, 318
equivalence, 574–580
sociocultural issues, 582–587 young-adult novel, 247