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Theories of humor

March 15, 2023

There are many theories of humor which attempt to explain what humor is, what social functions it serves, and what would be considered humorous. Among the prevailing types of theories that attempt to account for the existence of humor, there are psychological theories, the vast majority of which consider humor to be very healthy behavior; there are spiritual theories, which consider humor to be an inexplicable mystery, very much like a mystical experience.[1] Although various classical theories of humor and laughter may be found, in contemporary academic literature, three theories of humor appear repeatedly: relief theory, superiority theory, and incongruity theory.[2] Among current humor researchers, there is no consensus about which of these three theories of humor is most viable.[2] Proponents of each one originally claimed their theory to be capable of explaining all cases of humor.[2][3] However, they now acknowledge that although each theory generally covers its own area of focus, many instances of humor can be explained by more than one theory.[2][3][4][5] Similarly, one view holds that theories have a combinative effect; Jeroen Vandaele claims that incongruity and superiority theories describe complementary mechanisms which together create humor.[6]

Relief theory

Relief theory maintains that laughter is a homeostatic mechanism by which psychological tension is reduced.[2][3][7] Humor may thus for example serve to facilitate relief of the tension caused by one's fears.[8] Laughter and mirth, according to relief theory, result from this release of nervous energy.[2] Humor, according to relief theory, is used mainly to overcome sociocultural inhibitions and reveal suppressed desires. It is believed that this is the reason we laugh whilst being tickled, due to a buildup of tension as the tickler "strikes".[2][9] According to Herbert Spencer, laughter is an "economical phenomenon" whose function is to release "psychic energy" that had been wrongly mobilized by incorrect or false expectations. The latter point of view was supported also by Sigmund Freud. Immanuel Kant also emphasized the physiological release in our response to humor.[10] Eddie Tafoya uses the idea of a physical urge tied to a psychological need for release when describing relief theory in his book The Legacy of the Wisecrack: Stand-up Comedy as the Great Literary Form. Tafoya explains, "…that each human being is caught in a tug-of-war: part of us strains to live free as an individual, guided bodily appetites and aggressive urges, while the other side yearns for conformity and acceptance. This results in every normal person’s being continually steeped in psychic tension, mostly due to guilt and lack of fulfillment. This tension can be relieved, albeit temporarily through joking."[11]

Superiority theory

The superiority theory of humor traces back to Plato and Aristotle, and Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. The general idea is that a person laughs about misfortunes of others (so called schadenfreude), because these misfortunes assert the person's superiority on the background of shortcomings of others.[12] Socrates was reported by Plato as saying that the ridiculous was characterized by a display of self-ignorance.[13] For Aristotle, we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals, because we feel a joy at feeling superior to them.[14] The feeling of superiority is typically based either on the inadequacies of group, or a deviation from the norm within society.[15]

While Kant is not usually recognized as a superiority theorist, there are elements of superiority theory in his account. Kant thinks that there is a place for harmless teasing. In addition, philosopher of humor Noël Carroll observes that even the structure of a narrative joke, on Kant's view, requires the joke teller to "take in" or outdo the joke receiver, even if only momentarily. Because such joking is recognized as joking and it is carried out in a playful way, it does not imply that the joker feels or thinks they are actually superior.[16]

Incongruous juxtaposition theory

 
A beer glass made by Camden Town Brewery (London). The physical presence of beer in the glass's lower part, exactly where the inscription is: 'HALF EMPTY', sets a collision between two frames of reference. This incongruity results in a humorous effect at the moment of its realization.

Francis Hutcheson expressed in Thoughts on Laughter (1725) what became a key concept in the evolving theory of the comic: laughter as a response to the perception of incongruity.[17] This can be compared to Aristotle's notion of ugliness,[18] but is much broader.

Hutcheson thus initiated the incongruity theory. It was later developed by others, and now typically states that humor is perceived at the moment of realization of incongruity between a concept involved in a certain situation and the real objects thought to be in some relation to the concept.[12]

A view much like that contemporary sense of the incongruity theory was put forth a half-century after Hutcheson by the Scottish poet James Beattie. Although not widely read today, historically, Beattie's presentation of the incongruity theory has been very influential.[19] He made the theory more universal, and instead of incongruity per se, emphasized its partial appropriateness by the idea of "assemblage." In turn, incongruity has been described as being resolved (i.e., by putting the objects in question into the real relation), and the incongruity theory is often called the incongruity-resolution theory (as well as incongruous juxtaposition).[12] Anthropologist Elliott Oring in fact mentions that Beattie pioneered the appropriate incongruity theory.[citation needed]

A famous version of the incongruity theory is that of Immanuel Kant, due to his renown, who claimed that the comic is "the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing."[20] Kant explained laughter at humor as a response to an "absurdity."[21] We first have an expectation about the world, but that expectation is then disappointed or "disappears into nothing." Our response to humor consists in a "play with thoughts." In section 54 of Critique of Judgment, Kant told three jokes to explain his theory. While Kant is an incongruity theorist, his account also has elements of release theory (emphasizing the physiological and physical aspects). It also evokes superiority theory. He thought that teasing was acceptable as long as it occurred in the right setting and did not harm the person being teased.

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that the perceived incongruity is between a concept and the real object it represents.[citation needed] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel shared almost exactly the same view, but saw the concept as an "appearance" and believed that laughter then totally negates that appearance.[citation needed]

Henri Bergson attempted to perfect incongruity by reducing it to the "living" and "mechanical".[22] In Bergson's many types of combination of the mechanical and the living, there is much similarity with the incongruity theory.

There has been some debate attempting to clarify the roles of juxtaposition and shifting in humor, hence, the discussion in the series Humor Research between John Morreall and Robert Latta.[23] Though Morreall himself endorses a cognitive shift theory,[24] in this particular dialogue he indicated examples of simultaneous contrast, while Latta emphasized the cognitive shift. Humor frequently contains an unexpected, often sudden, shift in perspective, which gets assimilated by the Incongruity Theory. This has been defended by Latta (1998) and by Brian Boyd (2004).[25] Boyd views the shift as from seriousness to play. Nearly anything can be the object of this perspective twist; it is, however, in the areas of human creativity (science and art being the varieties) that the shift results from "structure mapping" (termed "bisociation" by Koestler) to create novel meanings.[26] Arthur Koestler argues that humor results when two different frames of reference are set up and a collision is engineered between them.

Other theories

Script-based semantic theory of humor

The script-based semantic theory of humor (SSTH) was introduced by Victor Raskin in "Semantic Mechanisms of Humor", published 1985.[27] While being a variant on the more general concepts of the Incongruity theory of humor (see above), it is the first theory to identify its approach as exclusively linguistic. As such it concerns itself only with verbal humor: written and spoken words used in narrative or riddle jokes concluding with a punch line.

The linguistic scripts (a.k.a. frames) referenced in the title include, for any given word, a "large chunk of semantic information surrounding the word and evoked by it [...] a cognitive structure internalized by the native speaker".[28] These scripts extend much further than the lexical definition of a word; they contain the speaker's complete knowledge of the concept as it exists in his world. Thus native speakers will have similar but not identical scripts for words they have in common.

To produce the humor of a verbal joke, Raskin posits, the following two conditions must be met:

  • "(i) The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different [semantic] scripts
  • (ii) The two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite [...]. The two scripts with which the text is compatible are said to overlap fully or in part on this text."[29]

Humor is evoked when a trigger at the end of the joke, the punch line, causes the audience to abruptly shift its understanding from the primary (or more obvious) script to the secondary, opposing script.

As an example Raskin uses the following joke:

"Is the doctor at home?" the patient asked in his bronchial whisper. "No," the doctor's young and pretty wife whispered in reply. "Come right in."[30]

For this example, the two scripts contained in the joke are DOCTOR and LOVER; the switch from one to the other is triggered by our understanding of the "whispered" reply of the "young and pretty wife". This reply only makes sense in the script of LOVER, but makes no sense in the script of a bronchial patient going to see the DOCTOR at his (home) office. Raskin expands further on his analysis with more jokes, examining in each how the scripts both overlap and oppose each other in the text.[31]

In order to fulfill the second condition of a joke, Raskin introduces different categories of script opposition. A partial list includes: actual (non-actual), normal (abnormal), possible (impossible), good (bad), life (death), obscene (non-obscene), money (no money), high (low) stature.[32] A complete list of possible script oppositions for jokes is finite and culturally dependent. For example, Soviet political humor does not use the same scripts to be found in Jewish humor.[33] However, for all jokes, in order to generate the humor a connection between the two scripts contained in a given joke must be established. "...one cannot simply juxtapose two incongruous things and call it a joke, but rather one must find a clever way of making them make pseudo-sense together".[34]

General theory of verbal humor

The general theory of verbal humor (GTVH) was proposed by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo in the article "Script theory revis(it)ed: joke similarity and joke representation model".[35] It integrated Raskin's ideas of Script Opposition (SO), developed in his Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor [SSTH], into the GTVH as one of six levels of independent Knowledge Resources (KRs).[36][37] These KRs could be used to model individual verbal jokes as well as analyze the degree of similarity or difference between them. The Knowledge Resources proposed in this theory are:[38]

  1. Script opposition (SO) references the script opposition included in Raskin's SSTH. This includes, among others, themes such as real (unreal), actual (non-actual), normal (abnormal), possible (impossible).
  2. Logical mechanism (LM) refers to the mechanism which connects the different scripts in the joke. These can range from a simple verbal technique like a pun to more complex LMs such as faulty logic or false analogies.
  3. Situation (SI) can include objects, activities, instruments, props needed to tell the story.
  4. Target (TA) identifies the actor(s) who become the "butt" of the joke. This labeling serves to develop and solidify stereotypes of ethnic groups, professions, etc.
  5. Narrative strategy (NS) addresses the narrative format of the joke, as either a simple narrative, a dialogue, or a riddle. It attempts to classify the different genres and subgenres of verbal humor. In a subsequent study Attardo expands the NS to include oral and printed humorous narratives of any length, not just jokes.[39]
  6. Language (LA) "...contains all the information necessary for the verbalization of a text. It is responsible for the exact wording ...and for the placement of the functional elements."[40]

To illustrate their theory, the authors use 7 examples of the light bulb joke, each variant shifted by a single Knowledge Resource.[31] Each one of the KRs, ordered hierarchically above and starting with the Script Opposition, has the ability to "determine the parameters below themselves, and are determined [circumscribed] by those above themselves. 'Determination' is to be intended as limiting or reducing the options available for the instantiation of the parameter; for example, the choice of the SO [script opposition] DUMB/SMART will reduce the options available to the generation in the TA (in North America to Poles, etc.)"[41]

One of the advantages of this theory (GTVH) over Raskin's script-based semantic theory (SSTH) is that through the inclusion of the Narrative Strategy (NS) any and all humorous texts can be categorized. Whereas Raskin's SSTH only deals with jokes, the GTVH considers all humorous text from spontaneous one-liners to funny stories and literature. This theory can also, by identifying how many of the Knowledge Resources are identical for any two humorous pieces, begin to define the degree of similarity between the two.

As to the ordering of the Knowledge Resources, there has been much discussion. Willibald Ruch, a distinguished German psychologist, and humor researcher,[42] wanted to test empirically the ordering of the Knowledge Resources, with only partial success.[43][44] Nevertheless, both the listed Knowledge Resources in the GTVH and their relationship to each other has proven to be fertile ground in the further investigation of what exactly makes humor funny.[45]

Computer model of humor

The computer model of humor was suggested by Suslov in 1992.[46] Investigation of the general scheme of information processing shows the possibility of a specific malfunction, conditioned by the need that a false version should be quickly deleted from consciousness. This specific malfunction can be identified with a humorous effect on psychological grounds: it exactly corresponds to incongruity-resolution theory. However, an essentially new ingredient, the role of timing, is added to the well-known role of ambiguity. In biological systems, a sense of humor inevitably develops in the course of evolution, because its biological function consists of quickening the transmission of the processed information into consciousness and in a more effective use of brain resources. A realization of this algorithm in neural networks[47] justifies naturally Spencer's hypothesis on the mechanism of laughter: deletion of a false version corresponds to zeroing of some part of the neural network and excessive energy of neurons is thrown out to the motor cortex, arousing muscular contractions.

The theory treats on equal footing the humorous effect created by the linguistic means (verbal humor), as well as created visually (caricature, clown performance) or by tickling. The theory explains the natural differences in susceptibility of people to humor, the absence of humorous effect from a trite joke, the role of intonation in telling jokes, nervous laughter, etc. According to this theory, humor has a purely biological origin, while its social functions arose later. This conclusion corresponds to the known fact that monkeys (as pointed out by Charles Darwin) and even rats (as found recently) possess laughter like qualities when playing, drawing conclusions to some potential form of humor.[48]

A practical realization of this algorithm needs extensive databases, whose creation in the automatic regime was suggested recently.[49]

Ontic-epistemic theory of humor

The ontic-epistemic theory of humor (OETC) proposed by P. Marteinson (2006) asserts that laughter is a reaction to a cognitive impasse, a momentary epistemological difficulty, in which the subject perceives that Social Being itself suddenly appears no longer to be real in any factual or normative sense. When this occurs material reality, which is always factually true, is the only percept remaining in the mind at such a moment of comic perception. This theory posits, as in Bergson, that human beings accept as real both normative immaterial percepts, such as social identity, and neological factual percepts, but also that the individual subject normally blends the two together in perception in order to live by the assumption they are equally real. The comic results from the perception that they are not. This same result arises in a number of paradigmatic cases: factual reality can be seen to conflict with and disprove social reality, which Marteinson calls Deculturation; alternatively, social reality can appear to contradict other elements of social reality, which he calls "Relativisation". Laughter, according to Marteinson, serves to reset and re-boot the faculty of social perception, which has been rendered non-functional by the comic situation: it anesthetizes the mind with its euphoria, and permits the forgetting of the comic stimulus, as well as the well-known function of communicating the humorous reaction to other members of society.[50]

Sexual selection

See also: Sexual selection in human evolution

Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller contends that, from an evolutionary perspective, humour would have had no survival value to early humans living in the savannas of Africa. He proposes that human characteristics like humor evolved by sexual selection. He argues that humour emerged as an indicator of other traits that were of survival value, such as human intelligence.[51]

Detection of mistaken reasoning

In 2011, three researchers, Hurley, Dennett and Adams, published a book that reviews previous theories of humor and many specific jokes. They propose the theory that humor evolved because it strengthens the ability of the brain to find mistakes in active belief structures, that is, to detect mistaken reasoning.[52] This is somewhat consistent with the sexual selection theory, because, as stated above, humor would be a reliable indicator of an important survival trait: the ability to detect mistaken reasoning. However, the three researchers argue that humor is fundamentally important because it is the very mechanism that allows the human brain to excel at practical problem solving. Thus, according to them, humor did have survival value even for early humans, because it enhanced the neural circuitry needed to survive.

Misattribution theory

Misattribution is one theory of humor that describes an audience's inability to identify exactly why they find a joke to be funny. The formal theory is attributed to Zillmann & Bryant (1980) in their article, "Misattribution Theory of Tendentious Humor", published in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. They derived the critical concepts of the theory from Sigmund Freud's Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious (note: from a Freudian perspective, wit is separate from humor), originally published in 1905.

Benign violation theory

The benign violation theory (BVT) was developed by researchers A. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren.[53] BVT claims that humor occurs when three conditions are satisfied: (1) something threatens one's sense of how the world "ought to be", (2) the threatening situation seems benign, and (3) a person sees both interpretations at the same time.[54][55]

From an evolutionary perspective, humorous violations likely originated as apparent physical threats, like those present in play fighting and tickling. As humans evolved, the situations that elicit humor likely expanded from physical threats to other violations, including violations of personal dignity (e.g., slapstick, teasing), linguistic norms (e.g., puns, malapropisms), social norms (e.g., strange behaviors, risqué jokes), and even moral norms (e.g., disrespectful behaviors). BVT suggests that anything that threatens one's sense of how the world "ought to be" will be humorous, so long as the threatening situation also seems benign.[54]

There is also more than one way a violation can seem benign. McGraw and Warren tested three contexts in the domain of moral violations. A violation can seem benign if one norm suggests something is wrong but another salient norm suggests it is acceptable. A violation can also seem benign when one is psychologically distant from the violation or is only weakly committed to the violated norm.[56]

For example, McGraw and Warren find that most consumers were disgusted when they read about a church raffling off a Hummer SUV to recruit new members, but many were simultaneously amused. Consistent with BVT, people who attended church were less likely to be amused than people who did not. Churchgoers are more committed to the belief that churches are sacred and consequently were less likely to consider the church's behavior benign.[57]

Humor as defense mechanism

According to George Eman Vaillant's (1977) categorization, humor is level 4 defense mechanism: overt expression of ideas and feelings (especially those that are unpleasant to focus on or too terrible to talk about) that gives pleasure to others. Humor, which explores the absurdity inherent in any event, enables someone to call a spade a spade, while wit is a form of displacement (level 3).[why?] Wit refers to the serious or distressing in a humorous way, rather than disarming it; the thoughts remain distressing, but they are "skirted round" by witticism.

Sense of humor, sense of seriousness

One must have a sense of humor and a sense of seriousness to distinguish what is supposed to be taken literally or not. An even more keen sense is needed when humor is used to make a serious point.[58][59] Psychologists have studied how humor is intended to be taken as having seriousness, as when court jesters used humor to convey serious information. Conversely, when humor is not intended to be taken seriously, bad taste in humor may cross a line after which it is taken seriously, though not intended.[60][61]

Metaphor, metonymy, and allegory

Tony Veale, who takes a more formalised computational approach than Koestler, has written on the role of metaphor and metonymy in humour,[62][63][64] using inspiration from Koestler as well as from Dedre Gentner's theory of structure-mapping, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor, and Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier's theory of conceptual blending.

Mikhail Bakhtin's humor theory is one that is based on "poetic metaphor", or the allegory of the protagonist's logosphere.[65]

O'Shannon model of humor

The O'Shannon model of humor (OMOH) was introduced by Dan O'Shannon in "What Are You Laughing At? A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event", published in 2012.[66] The model integrates all the general branches of comedy into a unified framework. This framework consists of four main sections: context, information, aspects of awareness, and enhancers/inhibitors. Elements of context are in play as reception factors prior to the encounter with comedic information. This information will require a level of cognitive process to interpret, and contain a degree of incongruity (based on predictive likelihood). That degree may be high, or go as low as to be negligible. The information will be seen simultaneously through several aspects of awareness (the comedy's internal reality, its external role as humor, its effect on its context, effect on other receivers, etc.). Any element from any of these sections may trigger enhancers / inhibitors (feelings of superiority, relief, aggression, identification, shock, etc.) which will affect the receiver's ultimate response. The various interactions of the model allow for a wide range of comedy; for example, a joke needn’t rely on high levels of incongruity if it triggers feelings of superiority, aggression, relief, or identification. Also, high incongruity humor may trigger a visceral response, while well-constructed word-play with low incongruity might trigger a more appreciative response. Also included in the book: evolutionary theories that account for visceral and social laughter, and the phenomenon of comedic entropy.

Unnoticed fall-back to former behavior patterns

This model defines laughter as an acoustic signal to make individuals aware of an unnoticed fall-back to former behaviour patterns. To some extent it unifies superiority and incongruity theory. Ticklishness is also considered to have a defined relation to humor via the development of human bipedalism.[67]

Bergson

In Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, French philosopher Henri Bergson, renowned for his philosophical studies on materiality, memory, life and consciousness, tries to determine the laws of the comic and to understand the fundamental causes of comic situations.[68] His method consists in determining the causes of comic instead of analyzing its effects. He also deals with laughter in relation to human life, collective imagination and art, to have a better knowledge of society.[69] One of the theories of the essay is that laughter, as a collective activity, has a social and moral role, in forcing people to eliminate their vices. It is a factor of uniformity of behaviours, as it condemns ludicrous and eccentric behaviours.[70]

In this essay, Bergson also asserts that there is a central cause that all comic situations are derived from: that of mechanism applied to life. The fundamental source of comic is the presence of inflexibility and rigidness in life. For Bergson, the essence of life is movement, elasticity and flexibility, and every comic situation is due to the presence of rigidity and inelasticity in life. Hence, for Bergson the source of the comic is not ugliness but rigidity.[71] All the examples taken by Bergson (such as a man falling in the street, one person's imitation of another, the automatic application of conventions and rules, absent-mindedness, repetitive gestures of a speaker, the resemblance between two faces) are comic situations because they give the impression that life is subject to rigidity, automatism and mechanism.

Bergson closes by noting that most comic situations are not laughable because they are part of collective habits.[72] He defines laughter as an intellectual activity that requires an immediate approach to a comic situation, detached from any form of emotion or sensibility.[73] Bergson finds a situation to be laughable when the attention and the imagination are focused on the resistance and rigidity of the body. Bergson believes that a person is laughable when he or she gives the impression of being a thing or a machine.

See also

References

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  51. ^ 2001, The Mating Mind, by Geoffrey Miller
  52. ^ Hurley, Matthew M., Dennet, Daniel C., and Adams, Reginald B. Jr. (2011). Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind. The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01582-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  53. ^ McGraw, A. P.; Warren, C. (2010). "Benign Violations". Psychological Science. 21 (8): 1141–1149. doi:10.1177/0956797610376073. PMID 20587696. S2CID 1968587.
  54. ^ a b "Benign Violation Theory". leeds-faculty.colorado.edu. Retrieved 15 March 2020.
  55. ^ Warren, Caleb; McGraw, A. Peter (2 February 2015). "Benign Violation Theory". Rochester, NY. SSRN 2559414. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  56. ^ "A brief introduction to the benign violation theory of humor – guest post by Dr Peter McGraw | Psychology of Humor". Retrieved 16 March 2020.
  57. ^ McGraw, A. Peter; Warren, Caleb (2010). "Benign Violations" (PDF). Psychological Science. 21 (8): 1141–1149. doi:10.1177/0956797610376073. PMID 20587696. S2CID 1968587.
  58. ^ Dukore, B. F. (2010). "Seriousness Redeemed by Frivolity: Ayckbourn's Intimate Exchanges". Modern Drama. 53 (4): 447–470. doi:10.1353/mdr.2010.0026.
  59. ^ Yarwood, D. L. (2001). "When Congress makes a joke: Congressional humor as serious and purposeful communication". Humor. 14 (4): 359–394. doi:10.1515/humr.2001.010.
  60. ^ Emerson, J. P. (1969). "Negotiating the Serious Import of Humor". Sociometry. 32 (2): 169–181. doi:10.2307/2786261. JSTOR 2786261.
  61. ^ {{cite thesis|last1=Turner|first1=Michele|title=Theories of Humour and the Place of Humour in Education
  62. ^ Veale, Tony (2003): "Metaphor and Metonymy: The Cognitive Trump-Cards of Linguistic Humor" (Afflatus.uce.ie)
  63. ^ Veale, T.; Feyaerts, K.; Brône, G. (2006). "The cognitive mechanisms of adversarial humor". Humor. 19 (3): 305–339. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.146.5649. doi:10.1515/HUMOR.2006.016. S2CID 1821223.
  64. ^ Veale, T. (2004). "Incongruity in humor: Root cause or epiphenomenon?". Humor. 17 (4): 419–428. doi:10.1515/humr.2004.17.4.419. S2CID 145339075.
  65. ^ Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich (2020) [1981]. "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: VI. The Functions of the Rogue, Clown and Fool in the Novel". In Holquist, Michael (ed.). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Slavic Series, NO. 1. Translated by Emerson, Caryl; Holquist, Michael. Austin, Texas, USA: University of Texas Press. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-292-71534-9. Finally, there is real difficulty with the problem of prosaic allegorization, if you will, the problem of the prosaic metaphor (which of course has nothing in common with the poetic metaphor) that is introduced into literature by the rogue, clown and fool, and for which there is not even an adequate term ('parody,' 'joke,' 'humor,' 'irony,' 'grotesque,' 'whimsy,' etc., are but narrowly restrictive labels for the heterogeneity and subtlety of the idea). Indeed, what matters here is the allegoricized being of the whole man, up to and including his world view, something that in no way coincides with his playing the role of actor (although there is a point of intersection).
  66. ^ O'Shannon, Dan (2012). What Are You Laughing At? A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event.
  67. ^ Dramlitsch, T., 2018: "The Origin of Humor", ISBN 978-1720264637
  68. ^ Henri Bergson, Le Rire, Avant-Propos on Wikisource (in French)
  69. ^ Bergson, Henri. Le Rire, "Préface" on Wikisource (in French)
  70. ^ Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, Chapter I (II) - online version on Project Gutenberg
  71. ^ Bergson, Laughter, Chapter I (III)
  72. ^ Bergson, Laughter, Chapter I (V)
  73. ^ Bergson, Laughter, Chapter I (I)

Further reading

March 15, 2023
theories, humor, there, many, theories, humor, which, attempt, explain, what, humor, what, social, functions, serves, what, would, considered, humorous, among, prevailing, types, theories, that, attempt, account, existence, humor, there, psychological, theorie. There are many theories of humor which attempt to explain what humor is what social functions it serves and what would be considered humorous Among the prevailing types of theories that attempt to account for the existence of humor there are psychological theories the vast majority of which consider humor to be very healthy behavior there are spiritual theories which consider humor to be an inexplicable mystery very much like a mystical experience 1 Although various classical theories of humor and laughter may be found in contemporary academic literature three theories of humor appear repeatedly relief theory superiority theory and incongruity theory 2 Among current humor researchers there is no consensus about which of these three theories of humor is most viable 2 Proponents of each one originally claimed their theory to be capable of explaining all cases of humor 2 3 However they now acknowledge that although each theory generally covers its own area of focus many instances of humor can be explained by more than one theory 2 3 4 5 Similarly one view holds that theories have a combinative effect Jeroen Vandaele claims that incongruity and superiority theories describe complementary mechanisms which together create humor 6 Contents 1 Relief theory 2 Superiority theory 3 Incongruous juxtaposition theory 4 Other theories 4 1 Script based semantic theory of humor 4 2 General theory of verbal humor 4 3 Computer model of humor 4 4 Ontic epistemic theory of humor 4 5 Sexual selection 4 6 Detection of mistaken reasoning 4 7 Misattribution theory 4 8 Benign violation theory 4 9 Humor as defense mechanism 4 10 Sense of humor sense of seriousness 4 11 Metaphor metonymy and allegory 4 12 O Shannon model of humor 4 13 Unnoticed fall back to former behavior patterns 4 14 Bergson 5 See also 6 References 7 Further readingRelief theory EditRelief theory maintains that laughter is a homeostatic mechanism by which psychological tension is reduced 2 3 7 Humor may thus for example serve to facilitate relief of the tension caused by one s fears 8 Laughter and mirth according to relief theory result from this release of nervous energy 2 Humor according to relief theory is used mainly to overcome sociocultural inhibitions and reveal suppressed desires It is believed that this is the reason we laugh whilst being tickled due to a buildup of tension as the tickler strikes 2 9 According to Herbert Spencer laughter is an economical phenomenon whose function is to release psychic energy that had been wrongly mobilized by incorrect or false expectations The latter point of view was supported also by Sigmund Freud Immanuel Kant also emphasized the physiological release in our response to humor 10 Eddie Tafoya uses the idea of a physical urge tied to a psychological need for release when describing relief theory in his book The Legacy of the Wisecrack Stand up Comedy as the Great Literary Form Tafoya explains that each human being is caught in a tug of war part of us strains to live free as an individual guided bodily appetites and aggressive urges while the other side yearns for conformity and acceptance This results in every normal person s being continually steeped in psychic tension mostly due to guilt and lack of fulfillment This tension can be relieved albeit temporarily through joking 11 Superiority theory EditThe superiority theory of humor traces back to Plato and Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes Leviathan The general idea is that a person laughs about misfortunes of others so called schadenfreude because these misfortunes assert the person s superiority on the background of shortcomings of others 12 Socrates was reported by Plato as saying that the ridiculous was characterized by a display of self ignorance 13 For Aristotle we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals because we feel a joy at feeling superior to them 14 The feeling of superiority is typically based either on the inadequacies of group or a deviation from the norm within society 15 While Kant is not usually recognized as a superiority theorist there are elements of superiority theory in his account Kant thinks that there is a place for harmless teasing In addition philosopher of humor Noel Carroll observes that even the structure of a narrative joke on Kant s view requires the joke teller to take in or outdo the joke receiver even if only momentarily Because such joking is recognized as joking and it is carried out in a playful way it does not imply that the joker feels or thinks they are actually superior 16 Incongruous juxtaposition theory Edit A beer glass made by Camden Town Brewery London The physical presence of beer in the glass s lower part exactly where the inscription is HALF EMPTY sets a collision between two frames of reference This incongruity results in a humorous effect at the moment of its realization Francis Hutcheson expressed in Thoughts on Laughter 1725 what became a key concept in the evolving theory of the comic laughter as a response to the perception of incongruity 17 This can be compared to Aristotle s notion of ugliness 18 but is much broader Hutcheson thus initiated the incongruity theory It was later developed by others and now typically states that humor is perceived at the moment of realization of incongruity between a concept involved in a certain situation and the real objects thought to be in some relation to the concept 12 A view much like that contemporary sense of the incongruity theory was put forth a half century after Hutcheson by the Scottish poet James Beattie Although not widely read today historically Beattie s presentation of the incongruity theory has been very influential 19 He made the theory more universal and instead of incongruity per se emphasized its partial appropriateness by the idea of assemblage In turn incongruity has been described as being resolved i e by putting the objects in question into the real relation and the incongruity theory is often called the incongruity resolution theory as well as incongruous juxtaposition 12 Anthropologist Elliott Oring in fact mentions that Beattie pioneered the appropriate incongruity theory citation needed A famous version of the incongruity theory is that of Immanuel Kant due to his renown who claimed that the comic is the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing 20 Kant explained laughter at humor as a response to an absurdity 21 We first have an expectation about the world but that expectation is then disappointed or disappears into nothing Our response to humor consists in a play with thoughts In section 54 of Critique of Judgment Kant told three jokes to explain his theory While Kant is an incongruity theorist his account also has elements of release theory emphasizing the physiological and physical aspects It also evokes superiority theory He thought that teasing was acceptable as long as it occurred in the right setting and did not harm the person being teased Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that the perceived incongruity is between a concept and the real object it represents citation needed Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel shared almost exactly the same view but saw the concept as an appearance and believed that laughter then totally negates that appearance citation needed Henri Bergson attempted to perfect incongruity by reducing it to the living and mechanical 22 In Bergson s many types of combination of the mechanical and the living there is much similarity with the incongruity theory There has been some debate attempting to clarify the roles of juxtaposition and shifting in humor hence the discussion in the series Humor Research between John Morreall and Robert Latta 23 Though Morreall himself endorses a cognitive shift theory 24 in this particular dialogue he indicated examples of simultaneous contrast while Latta emphasized the cognitive shift Humor frequently contains an unexpected often sudden shift in perspective which gets assimilated by the Incongruity Theory This has been defended by Latta 1998 and by Brian Boyd 2004 25 Boyd views the shift as from seriousness to play Nearly anything can be the object of this perspective twist it is however in the areas of human creativity science and art being the varieties that the shift results from structure mapping termed bisociation by Koestler to create novel meanings 26 Arthur Koestler argues that humor results when two different frames of reference are set up and a collision is engineered between them Other theories EditScript based semantic theory of humor Edit The script based semantic theory of humor SSTH was introduced by Victor Raskin in Semantic Mechanisms of Humor published 1985 27 While being a variant on the more general concepts of the Incongruity theory of humor see above it is the first theory to identify its approach as exclusively linguistic As such it concerns itself only with verbal humor written and spoken words used in narrative or riddle jokes concluding with a punch line The linguistic scripts a k a frames referenced in the title include for any given word a large chunk of semantic information surrounding the word and evoked by it a cognitive structure internalized by the native speaker 28 These scripts extend much further than the lexical definition of a word they contain the speaker s complete knowledge of the concept as it exists in his world Thus native speakers will have similar but not identical scripts for words they have in common To produce the humor of a verbal joke Raskin posits the following two conditions must be met i The text is compatible fully or in part with two different semantic scripts ii The two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite The two scripts with which the text is compatible are said to overlap fully or in part on this text 29 Humor is evoked when a trigger at the end of the joke the punch line causes the audience to abruptly shift its understanding from the primary or more obvious script to the secondary opposing script As an example Raskin uses the following joke Is the doctor at home the patient asked in his bronchial whisper No the doctor s young and pretty wife whispered in reply Come right in 30 For this example the two scripts contained in the joke are DOCTOR and LOVER the switch from one to the other is triggered by our understanding of the whispered reply of the young and pretty wife This reply only makes sense in the script of LOVER but makes no sense in the script of a bronchial patient going to see the DOCTOR at his home office Raskin expands further on his analysis with more jokes examining in each how the scripts both overlap and oppose each other in the text 31 In order to fulfill the second condition of a joke Raskin introduces different categories of script opposition A partial list includes actual non actual normal abnormal possible impossible good bad life death obscene non obscene money no money high low stature 32 A complete list of possible script oppositions for jokes is finite and culturally dependent For example Soviet political humor does not use the same scripts to be found in Jewish humor 33 However for all jokes in order to generate the humor a connection between the two scripts contained in a given joke must be established one cannot simply juxtapose two incongruous things and call it a joke but rather one must find a clever way of making them make pseudo sense together 34 General theory of verbal humor Edit The general theory of verbal humor GTVH was proposed by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo in the article Script theory revis it ed joke similarity and joke representation model 35 It integrated Raskin s ideas of Script Opposition SO developed in his Script based Semantic Theory of Humor SSTH into the GTVH as one of six levels of independent Knowledge Resources KRs 36 37 These KRs could be used to model individual verbal jokes as well as analyze the degree of similarity or difference between them The Knowledge Resources proposed in this theory are 38 Script opposition SO references the script opposition included in Raskin s SSTH This includes among others themes such as real unreal actual non actual normal abnormal possible impossible Logical mechanism LM refers to the mechanism which connects the different scripts in the joke These can range from a simple verbal technique like a pun to more complex LMs such as faulty logic or false analogies Situation SI can include objects activities instruments props needed to tell the story Target TA identifies the actor s who become the butt of the joke This labeling serves to develop and solidify stereotypes of ethnic groups professions etc Narrative strategy NS addresses the narrative format of the joke as either a simple narrative a dialogue or a riddle It attempts to classify the different genres and subgenres of verbal humor In a subsequent study Attardo expands the NS to include oral and printed humorous narratives of any length not just jokes 39 Language LA contains all the information necessary for the verbalization of a text It is responsible for the exact wording and for the placement of the functional elements 40 To illustrate their theory the authors use 7 examples of the light bulb joke each variant shifted by a single Knowledge Resource 31 Each one of the KRs ordered hierarchically above and starting with the Script Opposition has the ability to determine the parameters below themselves and are determined circumscribed by those above themselves Determination is to be intended as limiting or reducing the options available for the instantiation of the parameter for example the choice of the SO script opposition DUMB SMART will reduce the options available to the generation in the TA in North America to Poles etc 41 One of the advantages of this theory GTVH over Raskin s script based semantic theory SSTH is that through the inclusion of the Narrative Strategy NS any and all humorous texts can be categorized Whereas Raskin s SSTH only deals with jokes the GTVH considers all humorous text from spontaneous one liners to funny stories and literature This theory can also by identifying how many of the Knowledge Resources are identical for any two humorous pieces begin to define the degree of similarity between the two As to the ordering of the Knowledge Resources there has been much discussion Willibald Ruch a distinguished German psychologist and humor researcher 42 wanted to test empirically the ordering of the Knowledge Resources with only partial success 43 44 Nevertheless both the listed Knowledge Resources in the GTVH and their relationship to each other has proven to be fertile ground in the further investigation of what exactly makes humor funny 45 Computer model of humor Edit The computer model of humor was suggested by Suslov in 1992 46 Investigation of the general scheme of information processing shows the possibility of a specific malfunction conditioned by the need that a false version should be quickly deleted from consciousness This specific malfunction can be identified with a humorous effect on psychological grounds it exactly corresponds to incongruity resolution theory However an essentially new ingredient the role of timing is added to the well known role of ambiguity In biological systems a sense of humor inevitably develops in the course of evolution because its biological function consists of quickening the transmission of the processed information into consciousness and in a more effective use of brain resources A realization of this algorithm in neural networks 47 justifies naturally Spencer s hypothesis on the mechanism of laughter deletion of a false version corresponds to zeroing of some part of the neural network and excessive energy of neurons is thrown out to the motor cortex arousing muscular contractions The theory treats on equal footing the humorous effect created by the linguistic means verbal humor as well as created visually caricature clown performance or by tickling The theory explains the natural differences in susceptibility of people to humor the absence of humorous effect from a trite joke the role of intonation in telling jokes nervous laughter etc According to this theory humor has a purely biological origin while its social functions arose later This conclusion corresponds to the known fact that monkeys as pointed out by Charles Darwin and even rats as found recently possess laughter like qualities when playing drawing conclusions to some potential form of humor 48 A practical realization of this algorithm needs extensive databases whose creation in the automatic regime was suggested recently 49 Ontic epistemic theory of humor Edit The ontic epistemic theory of humor OETC proposed by P Marteinson 2006 asserts that laughter is a reaction to a cognitive impasse a momentary epistemological difficulty in which the subject perceives that Social Being itself suddenly appears no longer to be real in any factual or normative sense When this occurs material reality which is always factually true is the only percept remaining in the mind at such a moment of comic perception This theory posits as in Bergson that human beings accept as real both normative immaterial percepts such as social identity and neological factual percepts but also that the individual subject normally blends the two together in perception in order to live by the assumption they are equally real The comic results from the perception that they are not This same result arises in a number of paradigmatic cases factual reality can be seen to conflict with and disprove social reality which Marteinson calls Deculturation alternatively social reality can appear to contradict other elements of social reality which he calls Relativisation Laughter according to Marteinson serves to reset and re boot the faculty of social perception which has been rendered non functional by the comic situation it anesthetizes the mind with its euphoria and permits the forgetting of the comic stimulus as well as the well known function of communicating the humorous reaction to other members of society 50 Sexual selection Edit See also Sexual selection in human evolution Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller contends that from an evolutionary perspective humour would have had no survival value to early humans living in the savannas of Africa He proposes that human characteristics like humor evolved by sexual selection He argues that humour emerged as an indicator of other traits that were of survival value such as human intelligence 51 Detection of mistaken reasoning Edit In 2011 three researchers Hurley Dennett and Adams published a book that reviews previous theories of humor and many specific jokes They propose the theory that humor evolved because it strengthens the ability of the brain to find mistakes in active belief structures that is to detect mistaken reasoning 52 This is somewhat consistent with the sexual selection theory because as stated above humor would be a reliable indicator of an important survival trait the ability to detect mistaken reasoning However the three researchers argue that humor is fundamentally important because it is the very mechanism that allows the human brain to excel at practical problem solving Thus according to them humor did have survival value even for early humans because it enhanced the neural circuitry needed to survive Misattribution theory Edit Misattribution is one theory of humor that describes an audience s inability to identify exactly why they find a joke to be funny The formal theory is attributed to Zillmann amp Bryant 1980 in their article Misattribution Theory of Tendentious Humor published in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology They derived the critical concepts of the theory from Sigmund Freud s Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious note from a Freudian perspective wit is separate from humor originally published in 1905 Benign violation theory Edit The benign violation theory BVT was developed by researchers A Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren 53 BVT claims that humor occurs when three conditions are satisfied 1 something threatens one s sense of how the world ought to be 2 the threatening situation seems benign and 3 a person sees both interpretations at the same time 54 55 From an evolutionary perspective humorous violations likely originated as apparent physical threats like those present in play fighting and tickling As humans evolved the situations that elicit humor likely expanded from physical threats to other violations including violations of personal dignity e g slapstick teasing linguistic norms e g puns malapropisms social norms e g strange behaviors risque jokes and even moral norms e g disrespectful behaviors BVT suggests that anything that threatens one s sense of how the world ought to be will be humorous so long as the threatening situation also seems benign 54 There is also more than one way a violation can seem benign McGraw and Warren tested three contexts in the domain of moral violations A violation can seem benign if one norm suggests something is wrong but another salient norm suggests it is acceptable A violation can also seem benign when one is psychologically distant from the violation or is only weakly committed to the violated norm 56 For example McGraw and Warren find that most consumers were disgusted when they read about a church raffling off a Hummer SUV to recruit new members but many were simultaneously amused Consistent with BVT people who attended church were less likely to be amused than people who did not Churchgoers are more committed to the belief that churches are sacred and consequently were less likely to consider the church s behavior benign 57 Humor as defense mechanism Edit According to George Eman Vaillant s 1977 categorization humor is level 4 defense mechanism overt expression of ideas and feelings especially those that are unpleasant to focus on or too terrible to talk about that gives pleasure to others Humor which explores the absurdity inherent in any event enables someone to call a spade a spade while wit is a form of displacement level 3 why Wit refers to the serious or distressing in a humorous way rather than disarming it the thoughts remain distressing but they are skirted round by witticism Sense of humor sense of seriousness Edit One must have a sense of humor and a sense of seriousness to distinguish what is supposed to be taken literally or not An even more keen sense is needed when humor is used to make a serious point 58 59 Psychologists have studied how humor is intended to be taken as having seriousness as when court jesters used humor to convey serious information Conversely when humor is not intended to be taken seriously bad taste in humor may cross a line after which it is taken seriously though not intended 60 61 Metaphor metonymy and allegory Edit Tony Veale who takes a more formalised computational approach than Koestler has written on the role of metaphor and metonymy in humour 62 63 64 using inspiration from Koestler as well as from Dedre Gentner s theory of structure mapping George Lakoff and Mark Johnson s theory of conceptual metaphor and Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier s theory of conceptual blending Mikhail Bakhtin s humor theory is one that is based on poetic metaphor or the allegory of the protagonist s logosphere 65 O Shannon model of humor Edit The O Shannon model of humor OMOH was introduced by Dan O Shannon in What Are You Laughing At A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event published in 2012 66 The model integrates all the general branches of comedy into a unified framework This framework consists of four main sections context information aspects of awareness and enhancers inhibitors Elements of context are in play as reception factors prior to the encounter with comedic information This information will require a level of cognitive process to interpret and contain a degree of incongruity based on predictive likelihood That degree may be high or go as low as to be negligible The information will be seen simultaneously through several aspects of awareness the comedy s internal reality its external role as humor its effect on its context effect on other receivers etc Any element from any of these sections may trigger enhancers inhibitors feelings of superiority relief aggression identification shock etc which will affect the receiver s ultimate response The various interactions of the model allow for a wide range of comedy for example a joke needn t rely on high levels of incongruity if it triggers feelings of superiority aggression relief or identification Also high incongruity humor may trigger a visceral response while well constructed word play with low incongruity might trigger a more appreciative response Also included in the book evolutionary theories that account for visceral and social laughter and the phenomenon of comedic entropy Unnoticed fall back to former behavior patterns Edit This model defines laughter as an acoustic signal to make individuals aware of an unnoticed fall back to former behaviour patterns To some extent it unifies superiority and incongruity theory Ticklishness is also considered to have a defined relation to humor via the development of human bipedalism 67 Bergson Edit In Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic French philosopher Henri Bergson renowned for his philosophical studies on materiality memory life and consciousness tries to determine the laws of the comic and to understand the fundamental causes of comic situations 68 His method consists in determining the causes of comic instead of analyzing its effects He also deals with laughter in relation to human life collective imagination and art to have a better knowledge of society 69 One of the theories of the essay is that laughter as a collective activity has a social and moral role in forcing people to eliminate their vices It is a factor of uniformity of behaviours as it condemns ludicrous and eccentric behaviours 70 In this essay Bergson also asserts that there is a central cause that all comic situations are derived from that of mechanism applied to life The fundamental source of comic is the presence of inflexibility and rigidness in life For Bergson the essence of life is movement elasticity and flexibility and every comic situation is due to the presence of rigidity and inelasticity in life Hence for Bergson the source of the comic is not ugliness but rigidity 71 All the examples taken by Bergson such as a man falling in the street one person s imitation of another the automatic application of conventions and rules absent mindedness repetitive gestures of a speaker the resemblance between two faces are comic situations because they give the impression that life is subject to rigidity automatism and mechanism Bergson closes by noting that most comic situations are not laughable because they are part of collective habits 72 He defines laughter as an intellectual activity that requires an immediate approach to a comic situation detached from any form of emotion or sensibility 73 Bergson finds a situation to be laughable when the attention and the imagination are focused on the resistance and rigidity of the body Bergson believes that a person is laughable when he or she gives the impression of being a thing or a machine See also EditHumor stylesReferences Edit Smullyan Raymond 1980 The Planet Without Laughter This Book Needs No Title A Budget of Living Paradoxes Englewood Cliffs New Jersey Prentice Hall ISBN 978 0671628314 a b c d e f g Buijzen M Valkenburg P M 2004 Developing a Typology of Humor in Audiovisual Media Media Psychology Oxfordshire England Taylor amp Francis 6 2 147 167 doi 10 1207 s1532785xmep0602 2 S2CID 96438940 a b c Meyer J C 2000 Humor as a Double Edged Sword Four Functions of Humor in Communication Communication Theory Englewood Cliffs New Jersey Wiley Blackwell 10 3 310 331 doi 10 1111 j 1468 2885 2000 tb00194 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49b ff Poetics 1449a p 34 35 Goldstein Jeffery 1976 Theoretical notes on humor Journal of Communication Oxford University Press 26 3 104 112 doi 10 1111 j 1460 2466 1976 tb01912 x Clewis Robert 2020 Kant s Humorous Writings An Illustrated Guide London England Bloomsbury ISBN 9781350112797 Peter Ludwig Berger Redeeming Laughter The Comic Dimension of Human Experience 1997 p 22 Poetics 1449a J Beattie Essays William Creech Edinburg 1776 Laurie Timothy Hickey Moody Anna 2017 Masculinity and Ridicule Gender Laughter Farmington Hills Michigan Macmillan Reference 216 217 Clewis Robert 2020 Kant s Humorous Writings An Illustrated Guide London England Bloomsbury ISBN 9781350112797 Bergson Henri 1900 Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic Latta Robert L 1999 The Basic Humor Process A Cognitive Shift Theory and the Case against Incongruity Berlin Germany Walter de Gruyter ISBN 3 11 016103 6 Morreal John 1983 Taking Laughter Seriously New York City SUNY Press ISBN 0 87395 642 7 Boyd Brian 2004 Laughter and Literature A Play Theory of Humor Philosophy and Literature Baltimore Maryland Johns Hopkins University 28 1 1 22 doi 10 1353 phl 2004 0002 S2CID 144552197 Koestler Arthur 1964 The Act of Creation Victor Raskin 1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humor 302 pp Dordrecht Boston Lancaster D Reidel Raskin 1985 pg 46 Raskin 1985 pg 99 Raskin 1985 pg 100 a b Krikmann A 2006 Contemporary Linguistic Theories of Humour Folklore Electronic Journal of Folklore 33 27 58 doi 10 7592 FEJF2006 33 kriku Raskin 1985 pp 113 114 Raskin 1985 see Table of Contents Katrina E Triezenberg 2008 Humor in Literature pg 537 In Primer of Humor Research ed Victor Raskin Mouton de Gruyter Berlin New York Attardo S Raskin V 1991 Script theory revis it ed joke similarity and joke representation model Humor 4 3 4 293 347 doi 10 1515 humr 1991 4 3 4 293 S2CID 144593170 Robert Lew 1996 An ambiguity based theory of the linguistic verbal joke in English A Thesis submitted to the faculty of Adam Mickiewicz University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy April 1996 Poznan Poland unpublished thesis The other 5 KRs had been previously identified in Attardo s five level joke representation model See Hofstadter D Gabora L Raskin V Attardo S 1989 Synopsis of the Workshop on Humor and Cognition Humor 2 4 417 440 doi 10 1515 humr 1989 2 4 407 Salvatore Attardo 1994 Linguistic Theories of Humor pp 223 226 Mouton de Gruyter Berlin New York Salvatore Attardo 2001 Humorous Texts A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis Berlin New York Mouton de Gruyter Attardo 1994 pg 223 Attardo 1994 pg 227 de Willibald Ruch Ruch W Attardo S Raskin V 1993 Toward an empirical verification of the General Theory of Verbal Humor PDF Humor 6 2 123 136 doi 10 1515 humr 1993 6 2 123 S2CID 18490185 Both the test structure and the results are described in Krikman 2006 pp 38 39 Tarez Samra Graban 2008 Rhetoric composition and humor studies pg 425 ff In Primer of Humor Research ed Victor Raskin Mouton de Gruyter Berlin New York I M Suslov Computer Model of a Sense of Humour I General Algorithm Biofizika SSSR 37 318 1992 Biophysics 37 242 1992 I M Suslov Computer Model of a Sense of Humour II Realization in Neural Networks Biofizika SSSR 37 325 1992 Biophysics bf 37 249 1992 Panksepp J 2005 Beyond a Joke From Animal Laughter to Human Joy Science 308 5718 62 63 doi 10 1126 science 1112066 PMID 15802592 S2CID 36021257 I M Suslov How to Realize a Sense of Humour in Computers P Marteinson 2006 On the Problem of the Comic Legas Press Ottawa ISBN 978 1 894508 91 9 2001 The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller Hurley Matthew M Dennet Daniel C and Adams Reginald B Jr 2011 Inside Jokes Using Humor to Reverse Engineer the Mind The MIT Press ISBN 978 0 262 01582 0 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link McGraw A P Warren C 2010 Benign Violations Psychological Science 21 8 1141 1149 doi 10 1177 0956797610376073 PMID 20587696 S2CID 1968587 a b Benign Violation Theory leeds faculty colorado edu Retrieved 15 March 2020 Warren Caleb McGraw A Peter 2 February 2015 Benign Violation Theory Rochester NY SSRN 2559414 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help A brief introduction to the benign violation theory of humor guest post by Dr Peter McGraw Psychology of Humor Retrieved 16 March 2020 McGraw A Peter Warren Caleb 2010 Benign Violations PDF Psychological Science 21 8 1141 1149 doi 10 1177 0956797610376073 PMID 20587696 S2CID 1968587 Dukore B F 2010 Seriousness Redeemed by Frivolity Ayckbourn s Intimate Exchanges Modern Drama 53 4 447 470 doi 10 1353 mdr 2010 0026 Yarwood D L 2001 When Congress makes a joke Congressional humor as serious and purposeful communication Humor 14 4 359 394 doi 10 1515 humr 2001 010 Emerson J P 1969 Negotiating the Serious Import of Humor Sociometry 32 2 169 181 doi 10 2307 2786261 JSTOR 2786261 cite thesis last1 Turner first1 Michele title Theories of Humour and the Place of Humour in Education Veale Tony 2003 Metaphor and Metonymy The Cognitive Trump Cards of Linguistic Humor Afflatus uce ie Veale T Feyaerts K Brone G 2006 The cognitive mechanisms of adversarial humor Humor 19 3 305 339 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 146 5649 doi 10 1515 HUMOR 2006 016 S2CID 1821223 Veale T 2004 Incongruity in humor Root cause or epiphenomenon Humor 17 4 419 428 doi 10 1515 humr 2004 17 4 419 S2CID 145339075 Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich 2020 1981 Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel VI The Functions of the Rogue Clown and Fool in the Novel In Holquist Michael ed The Dialogic Imagination Four Essays Slavic Series NO 1 Translated by Emerson Caryl Holquist Michael Austin Texas USA University of Texas Press p 166 ISBN 978 0 292 71534 9 Finally there is real difficulty with the problem of prosaic allegorization if you will the problem of the prosaic metaphor which of course has nothing in common with the poetic metaphor that is introduced into literature by the rogue clown and fool and for which there is not even an adequate term parody joke humor irony grotesque whimsy etc are but narrowly restrictive labels for the heterogeneity and subtlety of the idea Indeed what matters here is the allegoricized being of the whole man up to and including his world view something that in no way coincides with his playing the role of actor although there is a point of intersection O Shannon Dan 2012 What Are You Laughing At A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event Dramlitsch T 2018 The Origin of Humor ISBN 978 1720264637 Henri Bergson Le Rire Avant Propos on Wikisource in French Bergson Henri Le Rire Preface on Wikisource in French Bergson Henri Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic Chapter I II online version on Project Gutenberg Bergson Laughter Chapter I III Bergson Laughter Chapter I V Bergson Laughter Chapter I I Further reading EditClewis Robert Kant s Humorous Writings An Illustrated Guide London Bloomsbury 2020 Weems Scott 2014 Ha The Science of When We Laugh and Why ISBN 978 0465031702 Rod Martin Thomas Ford 2018 The Psychology of Humor An Integrative Approach 2nd Edition ISBN 9780128135099 https www elsevier com books the psychology of humor martin 978 0 12 812143 6 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Theories of humor amp oldid 1143021556, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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