The Primer of Humor Research

The Primer of Humor 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.

앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines 앪 of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The primer of humor research / edited by Victor Raskin. p. cm. ⫺ (Humor research ; 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-018616-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-3-11-018685-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Wit and humor ⫺ History and criticism. I. Raskin, Victor, 1944⫺ PN6147.P76 2008 809.7⫺dc22 2008039782

ISBN 978-3-11-018616-1 hb ISBN 978-3-11-018685-7 pb ISSN 1861-4116 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ” 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 mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Contents Theory of humor and practice of humor research: Editor’s notes and thoughts������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 Victor Raskin Psychology of humor ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 17 Willibald Ruch A primer for the linguistics of humor������������������������������������������������������� 101 Salvatore Attardo Undertaking the comparative study of humor ����������������������������������������� 157 Christie Davies Humor in anthropology and folklore ������������������������������������������������������� 183 Elliott Oring Philosophy and religion ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 211 John Morreall Literature and humor ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 243 Alleen and Don Nilsen Humor and popular culture ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 281 Lawrence E. Mintz Historical views of humor ����������������������������������������������������������������������� 303 Amy Carrell Computational humor: Beyond the pun? ������������������������������������������������� 333 Christian F. Hempelmann The sociology of humor ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 361 Giselinde Kuipers

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Beyond “Wit and Persuasion”: Rhetoric,composition, and humor studies ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 399 Tarez Samra Graban Applications of humor: Health, the workplace, and education����������������� 449 John Morreall Humor and health ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 479 Rod A. Martin Humor in literature ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 523 Katrina E. Triezenberg Communication and humor����������������������������������������������������������������������� 543 Dineh Davis Verbally expressed humor and translation ����������������������������������������������� 569 Delia Chiaro Cartoons: Drawn jokes? ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 609 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson Index of authors ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 641 Index of subjects��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 661

Theory of humor and practice of humor research: Editor’s notes and thoughts Victor Raskin 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. The first-timer pest and the idea of the book 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 knowledge 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 actually – 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 Society of Humor Studies, also billed as the International Conferences on Humor

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(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 multidisciplinary 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 different venue. His idea (does everybody understand that his is my?) was to select the major, leading author in each major discipline contributing to humor research 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 procrastination took its toll, the editor’s as well as, obligingly, some contributors’. 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 It is somewhat odd to organize an interdisciplinary primer by the disciplines but it is really hard to think of a different way of presentation – neither the

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alphabet nor the seniority of the authors sounded more promising. An interesting idea to arrange the chapters by the street numbers of the authors’ residences 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 independently confirmed, and the oddity of French academic affiliations and titles, before the EU attempts to homogenize them into some sort of an Americanlike 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 application 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 writing “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, psychology 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

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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 complemented, in its computational aspect, by Christian Hempelmann. Its imperialist ambitions 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 influence 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 Bergson’s (1899) early entry. Christie Davies, the most prominent sociologist of humor and a supreme authority on ethnic humor, considered this author’s request 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 eventually 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 interesting application of humor research to morale-boosting corporate seminars and workshops. Fully versed in the field, he is one of the very few seminargivers 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 disciplinarily 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 cofounded and maintained for several decades. The younger cohort addresses a number of less well-established subdisciplines 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

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mentioned under Linguistics, talks about computational humor. Triezenberg, also mentioned there, proposes a  new methodology for studying literary humor. Last but not least, Delia Chiaro, who owes this author big for listing her with these youngsters, firmly establishes the fascinating field of humor and translation. Hempelmann also contributed, with Andrea Samson, a chapter on visual humor, the only one in the volume that looks beyond verbal humor. Being naturally lazy and respectful, this author, qua editor, tried not to interfere with the individual authors’ styles, to the point of not trying to correct the literature types’ annoying habit of hiding their references in the footnotes. The rationale for that is to make it comfortable for other literature types to learn about theit discipline’s contribution to humor research in the familiar format. That pertains, to a smaller extent, to other disciplines’ little quirks. The publisher has, of course, insisted on and brought about a minimum of conformity to their sacrosanct style sheet. The remaining sections of this chapter pick up some loose ends and pieces, from the linguistic and philosophy of science perspectives. It also attempts to impose a superego – or at least a Yid – on this constellation of strong academic egos. Things left unsaid or said differently 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 advanced agenda. Theory This author’s main discipline, linguistics, is the most theoretically advanced discipline among the humanities and social sciences, and it can probably beat quite a few natural sciences on this count. Since at the earliest, Noam Chomsky’s (1965) work, linguistics has developed a view of itself that requires an explicit theory. As Nirenburg and Raskin (2004, Ch. 2) demonstrate, this

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t­heory comes complete with a methodology that generates descriptions for the object of linguistics, text. Linguistics has been most successful in developing such theories in the syntactic analysis of sentences, providing methodologies that match natural language sentences with syntactic descriptions that may be represented as trees or as constructions with parentheses. Linguistics extends this approach to humor research by addressing the short verbal jokes and offering a methodology to match the text of the jokes with a description/ explanation (see e.g. Raskin 1985). Such a theoretical approach enables the scholars to justify and/or defend their proposed methodologies against the competing proposals and to rear a generation of scholars trained to ask themselves and to attempt to answer the why-questions: Why are we doing things with language the way we are? Are their better ways? How to compare or to justify them? In many other disciplines, the methodology is a  given and hardly ever questioned, and the evolution of a field can be seen as a succession of fashions/gimmicks, often introduced by a temporarily dominating figure. In fact, for a number of years, after the author’s obligatory appeal to develop the theory of humor, the brazen Giselinde Kuipers immediately challenged him and accused him of linguistic imperialism because, in her areas and quite a few others, an appeal to theory is seen as foreign. In fact, even in the psychology of humor, back in the early 1990s, Willibald Ruch practiced the nullhypotheis in his brilliantly designed experiments because his field associated theory with arbitrary unproven tenets. As Chomsky convincingly claimed in his cited work, especially in his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), no theory means simply unexamined, explicit theory, a point of view energetically furthered in Nirenburg and Raskin (2004). Yet even in such a- and often anti-theoretical disciplines, at any time, there is a large consensus on what constitutes good research. In other words, there exists an implicit theory and a related implicit methodology. One would think that the idea of making all of that explicit would be quite exciting. It has not, however, caught on, and without the ability to coordinate the premises and tenets of an approach, it is hard to amalgamate the various disciplinary approaches to humor into a single field of study that Mahadev Apte named humorology. Most recently, in a kind of a retreat (or is it maturity?), this author started proposing a multi-theoretical basis for humor research, an amalgam of theoretical foundations emanating from the contributing disciplines. In fact, the sermons came with an implicit promise: give those theories for me, and I will blend them. But the holdout areas continue to hold out, and listening to or

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reading a paper in such a discipline, one has to reverse-engineer the underlying premises, and when challenged about them, the authors often sincerely do not understand why they are questioned about something they never explicitly claim. They often fail to see the connection between what they actually say and what they presuppose. Just like people. Ontological Semantics of Humor The author’s original Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor (SSTH – Raskin 1985) was based on the notion of script. The script, frame, schema is a bunch of terms alternately used to denote a structured chunk of information. A serious linguistic semantic study of humor only became possible when, by the mid-1970s, a number of independent scholars, this author included, found a way to transcended the meaning of an individual word or even of an individual sentence and realized that people’s semantic competence was organized in bunches of closely related information. Thus, when we think of a car, we know most of their obvious components, such as wheels, doors, seats, windows, steering wheels, that they take fuel, that they are driven by licensed adults and senior children (except in Wyoming – don’t ask!), that they are used for transportation – and sex initiation and perpetuation, preferably not at the same time, but things happen! – that they are driven on the roads, that they cost a considerable amount of money, and so on and so forth. All this information, appropriately structured and presented, constitutes the script of car. The more advanced version of SSTH, the General Theory of Verbal Humor, developed by Salvatore Attardo and his humble doctoral advisor at the time (Attardo and Raskin 1991; Attardo, in this volume), opened the theory to multidisciplinary input but it left the semantic foundation the same. Over the last two decades, the script-based semantic theory, in linguistics and computational linguistics, outside of humor research, has evolved into a much more powerful, better formulated, and empirically tested ontological semantics (Nirenburg and Raskin 2004), and the time has come to try and put humor research on its basis. The first tentative attempts have been made in Raskin (2002), Raskin and Triezenberg (2005), and Petrenko (2008) – see also Hempelmann 2004, Hempelmann et al. 2006, and Hempelmann, in this volume, Here is an illustration of how ontological semantics works. It uses a few resources and programs to represent, comprehensively, the meaning of each

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sentence and, ultimately, of the entire text in a simple LISP-like formalism to model as closely as possible the human understanding. Its ontology contains around 10,000 concepts, each a set of property slots and fillers, with each of the hundreds of properties being a  concept as well. Most of the 100,000 lexical entries in the lexicon is anchored in a concept, with its properties appropriately constrained. (1) below is a  simplified lexical entry for a sense of the English verb say, while (2) is the concept inform in which it is anchored. (1) say-v1

syn-struc 1 root

2 root

sem-struc 1 2 inform

(2)

; say

cat subj root cat obj root cat say cat v subj root cat comp root agent theme

v $var1 n $var2 n $var1 n $var2

; as in Spencer said a word

; as in Spencer said  that it ; rained

; both syntactic structures have ^$var1 ; the same semantic structure, ^$var2 ; agent ^$var1, where ‘^’ is read ; as ‘the meaning of,’ and theme ; ^$var2 – the variables provide ; mappings between syntactic ; and semantic structures

inform definition “the event of asserting something to provide information to another person or set of persons” is-a assertive-act agent human theme event instrument communication-device beneficiary human

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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 simplified 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

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source value Japan destination value USA time time-begin (> inform.time-end ) (< expend-1.begin-time) time-end unknown 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 theme value time time-begin time-end

unknown manufacture-1.theme (> inform.time-end ) (< manufacture-1.begin-time) 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

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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 internalized 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 native 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).

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It is probably somewhat premature yet to attempt a full-fledged ontological semantic analysis of jokes because some elements, especially the semantic analyzer, or OntoParser, are still in rapid development. One should probably expect a collective volume on the subject within the next 3–5 years. But it seemed timely to warn the humor research community that linguistic imperialism is continuing unabated, and even more complex and unreadable formalisms are coming! Sophistication in humor My interest in sophistication started with humor: I realized that there were levels of sophistication in jokes (Raskin 1990; Raskin and Triezenberg 2003 – cf. Raskin 2005, 2008)). I knew that it was so – except that I did not ­really know what sophistication was. A book can be sophisticated, but so can a meal be, and a car, and sex, and politics – and all in rather different ways: thus, for instance, really sophisticated sex cannot be really had in the most sophisticated cars (why does this topic keep coming back?). Perusing corpora, thesauri, Wordnet, and the Internet in general, one runs into a lot of synonyms and near-synonyms for the English word sophisticated – it looks like its ­usages vary a great deal: – rare – expensive – not easily available – not well known – complex – non-naive, knowledgeable, experience-related – subtle, refined – non-obvious – prestigious – enviable – desirable – unexpected – oblique (not straightforward) This is quite confusing: all of these adjectives characterize a different kind of sophistication, it appears, and quite a few of those do not seem to have any linguistic significance. Thus, what do I care that caviar is considered sophis-

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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: (1) He was a man of letters, He worked at the Post Office. (0) (2) I am very unhappy, I have two girlfriends, and both are cheating on me. (2) (3) . . . . (3–9) (4) What’s the difference between the sparrow? No difference whatsoever. Both halves are identical, especially the left one. (10) 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! Sophistication can be also measured in psychological experiments: fewer and fewer people “get” the jokes as sophistication increases. Very few people appreciate (4), probably one of the most sophisticated jokes this author has ever heard or told. Its path runs something like (7): (7)

– Difference between the Sparrow and ??: no bail-out → have to make your own two out of one → divide the one you have into two → halves – “Identical halves”: no work – “Especially the left”: no possible interpretation → absurd → funny

Perhaps sophistication correlates with the number of missing links in inferencing like in (6–7) above, and not just in humor. My own sophistication about sophistication is still growing: it is a work in progress.

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References Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin 1991 Script Theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model. Humor 4 (3/4): 293–347. Chomsky, Noam 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hempelmann, Christian F. 2004 An ynperfect pun selector for computational humor. In: Damir Cavar and Paul Rodriguez (eds.), Proceedings of the First Annual Midwest Colloquium in Computational Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University. Hempelmann, Christian F., Victor Raskin, and Katrina E. Triezenberg 2006 Computer, tell me a joke ... but please make it funny: Computational humor with ontological semantics. In: Ingrid Russell and Zdravko Markov (eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society, 746–751. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press. Nirenburg, Sergei, and Victor Raskin 2004 Ontological Semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Petrenko, Maxim S. 2008 Narrative joke: Conceptual structure and linguistic manifestation. Ph.D. disseration, Program in Linguistics, Purdue University. Raskin, Victor 1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. 1987 Linguistic heuristics of humor: A script-based semantic approach. In: Mahadev L. Apte (ed.), Language and Humor, special issue of The International Journal in the Sociology of Language 65 (3). 1990 Sophistication in humor and beyond, In: M. Glazer (ed.), Abstracts of the Eighth International Conference on Humor. Sheffield: University of Sheffield. 2002 Computational humor and ontological semantics. In: Oliviero Stock, Carlo Strapparava, and Anton Nijholt (eds.), The April Fools’ Day Workshop on Computational Humor. TWLT 20: Twente Workshop on Language Technology, An Initiative of HAHAcronym, European Project IST-2000-30039, ITC-irst, Trento, Italy. 2005 The threshold of triviality in telling tales: Is it inherent in inferences? In: Salvatore Attardo and Lorene Birden (eds.), Abstracts of ISHS 2005, the 17th Annual Conference of the International Society of Humor Studies, Youngstown, Ohio: Youngstown State University. 2008 Computational Linguistics is the field linguistics of today, and other thoughts. In: Olga Fedorova and Olga Krivnova (eds.), Fonetika i Ne

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Fonetika/Phonetics and Non-Phonetics. A  70th Birthday Festschrift for Sandro Kodzasov. Moscow (forthcoming). Raskin, Victor, and Katrina E. Triezenberg 2003 Getting sophisticated about sophistication: Inference at the service of humor. In: Abstracts of ISHS 2003: Annual Meeting of the International Society for Humor Studies. Chicago: Northeastern Illinois University. 2005 Ontological semantics of humor: Pre-conference tutorial. ISHS-05: The 17th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Humor Studies, Youngstown, Ohio: Youngstown State University.

Psychology of humor Willibald Ruch Introduction Psychology is about people. Hence the psychology of humor refers to the study of humor and people, not humor of humorous material only. We don’t consider psy­chology to be the science of the psyche or soul, as those latter terms are rather vague. Definitions these days typically refer to psychology as being the science of the behavior of living organisms, its causes and consequences. Behavior refers to activities and processes that can be objectively assessed and recorded. They may be visible externally (like walking, or talking), or via a recording device (such as the action of a particular muscle). Behavior may also refer to internal processes and what the mind does, like sensations, perceptions, memories, thoughts, dreams, motives, emotional feelings, and other subjective experiences. Causes of behavior may be internal (like personality) or external (like the social situation), and so may be the consequences. Psychology wants to describe (e.g., how is it?), explain (e.g., why do we do it?), predict (e.g., who will do it?) and control (e.g., can we change it?) behavior. For a psychology of humor then we need to be precise in describing the behav­iors and phenomena involved, like the cognitive processes involved in the creation of a funny remark, or the many levels of the emotional response to a brilliant joke. When explaining humor behavior we ideally want to arrive at laws, such as “per­ceived funniness of a joke varies in an inverted u‑form as a function of the degree of incongruity”, and when we study whether extraverted individuals smile more at a clowning experimenter than introverts we predict humor. When we ultimately are able to make humorless people funny entertainers, or turn sarcastic types into be­nevolent whimsical jesters, we have ultimate proof that we control humor behavior. Psychology has its roots in both philosophy and physiology and intersects with, or is informed by many other academic disciplines. Not surprisingly, early psy­chological studies were in the tradition of either two. Following the early accounts of laughter by Darwin (1872) and Spencer (1860), the empirical study of various physiological components of laughter, like respiration,

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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; Meunier 1909; von Bechterew 1894). The influence of philosophy was most visible and lasting through its subfield 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 questions through the systematic collection and logical analy­sis of objectively observable data. An empirical study typically utilizes a sophisti­cated methodology, 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 psychology 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 progressed 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 journal 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,

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it should be consid­ered that excellent research on humor is done outside of the humor research com­munity from people using other umbrella terms, like amusement, facial expression etc. However, the times of humor research being on the edge of psychology might change drastically as positive psychology (see Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2000) has discovered humor (and playfulness) as one of the core character strengths (Peterson and Seligman 2004) contributing to the good life. The focus on positive traits led to a classification of character strength and virtues. The Values in Action (VIA) Classification of Strengths is intended to be psychology’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM, American Psychiatric Association 1994). It is aimed at achieving a  similar goal to what the DSM does for psychiatry (i.e., understanding, treating, and preventing psychological disorders), but only for positive traits. It will provide an international frame of reference for the definition of character and its assessment across the lifespan. It also forms the basis for designing and evaluating interventions that bring about individual character strength. This has been the research agenda for humor already for a while, and thus humor research forms a solid column of positive psychology, and humor research will also profit from looking at progress achieved in other areas of positive psychology. Nevertheless, all subfields of psychology seem to contribute to the understanding of humor and laughter. In fact, humor can be studied in relation to cognition, moti­vation, and emotion. There are individual differences in humor that maybe habitual or transient, and there is a development across the life span. Changes in humor may be brought experimentally and by systematic training. There are genetic and envi­ronmental factors. Humor contributes to emotional health, and is important in learning and social relationships. Thus, humor is an important domain of human functioning and gets attention from both basic research as well as the applied fields. Literature review The following review will group the literature around some basic issues relating 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

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if needed. For a fuller account of the literature the reader is referred to other sources (e.g., Martin 2007a; Roeckelein 2002). The “this is funny” perception The core of the experience of humor is the perception that something is “funny,” and indeed ratings of degree of funniness are the most frequently used assessment tool in experimental research on humor. Although the perception that something is funny (i.e., the “humor response”, an expression coined by McGhee 1971) is a  unique experiential quality, it is not a  primary quality of one single stimulus that we perceive directly (like warmth) but it involves a comparison. Typically we experience an incongruity between objects, between elements of an object, or between an event and an expectation. Perceiving such stimuli properties may cause us to engage in playful processing of incongruity and we feel the “lightness” involved in amusement (Lyman and Waters 1986). How­ever, the second meanings of the terms (e.g., funny, comical) are also referring to the unusual (e.g. peculiar, strange, or odd) as well as to the suspicious (“There was something funny about these extra charges”) reminding us that not all incongruities are perceived as non-serious or not consequential. In humor the information we perceive is not really important and does not require an immediate and appropriate response: we know this is play, a play with ideas. There is no need to upgrade our knowledge system as the information we received only has an “as if ”-truth; it is playing with sense and nonsense (Ruch 2001). The nature and intensity of the subjective experience is most frequently measured via a 7-point Likert scale ranging from not at all funny (= 1) to extremely funny (= 7). Studies show that positive responses of different qualities (humorous, witty, amusing) do overlap, but they are independent of negative evaluations (Ruch and Rath 1993). It should be mentioned that “funniness” ratings typically are prone to produce skewed distributions. Most individuals do find a given stimulus not funny, and typically there are always individuals finding the poorest joke maximally funny (Ruch and Hehl 2007). However, the analysis of the “funny” and its relation to related qualities is also one of the most neglected aspects of psychological humor research. In research we commonly assume that there is only one experiential quality that humor evokes, namely funniness, albeit to a different degree. This position does neglect the fact that in most languages we do have different terms to refer to humorous stimuli and events, such as witty, humorous, comical,

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hilarious, or droll. Humor also seems to have different “flavors”, such as bitter, 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 analysis 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, touching) 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 Smiling is the most frequent response to jokes. A review of studies reveals that in experiments smiling occurs roughly five times more often than laughter (Ruch 1990). However, “smiling” is a misleading category as there might be about 20 types of smiles that can be distinguished on an anatomical basis (Bänninger-Huber 1996; Ekman 1985). For example, there are five facial muscles that are able to create an upward move of the lip corners (i.e., the zygomatic major, zygomatic minor, levator anguli oris, buccinator, and risorius muscles) but only one of them, the zygomatic major muscle, is involved in the smile of enjoyment. When individuals genuinely enjoy humor they show the facial configuration named (Ekman, Davidson, and Friesen 1990) the Duchenne display (to honor Duchenne who first described how this pattern distinguished enjoyment smiles from other kinds of smiling). The Duchenne display refers to the joint contraction of the zygomatic major and orbicularis oculi muscles (pulling the lip corners backwards and upwards and raising the cheeks causing eye wrinkles, respectively). Typically there is a harmonic time course in the action of both muscles across onset, apex, and offset, and the contraction is symmetric and is in the time span between one half and 4 to 5 seconds

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(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 smiling in­volved in blends of emotions (e.g., when enjoying a disgusting or frightening film), smiles masking negative emotions (e.g., pretending enjoyment when actually sad­ness or anger is felt), miserable, flirting, sadistic, embarrassment, compliance, coordination, contempt, and phony etc. smiles (see Ekman 1985; Bänninger-Huber 1996). In humor experiments unilateral contractions 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 experiments 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 significance (e.g., Ekman and Rosenberg 2005; Keltner 2005). When the experimenter 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 importantly, 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 describes 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 actions, 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 therefore allows for a  comprehensive assessment of all facial events related to humor. Learning FACS takes approximately 100 hours or one week of inten-

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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 occasionally 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 without humor (e.g., social, em­barrassed, or nervous laughter) and enjoyment of humor not always involves laughter (McGhee 1979), especially in experiments, 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; Rotton 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 laughter, 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 during 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 example, hearty and derisive laughter, or between a guffaw, chuckle or chortle, the separa­tion is not done at an objective (e.g., physiological, muscular,

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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 remarkably 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; Szameitat 2007). He addressed the important issues. Thus, he noted that “... [t]he sound of laughter is produced by a deep inspiration followed by short, interrupted, 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 Numerous theories have been proposed to explain the perceived funniness of hu­mor, with cognitive approaches being the most prominent together with arousal and superiority theories (for a review of theories, see Keith-Spiegel 1972; Martin 2007a). Recently, cognitive theories have also been applied to the study of individ­ual differences in humor but also neuropsychological processes. Cognitive theories typically analyze the structural properties of humorous stimuli or the way they are processed; sometimes these two levels are also mixed up. Per­haps beginning with Aristotle, incongruity was considered to

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be a necessary condi­tion for humor (Deckers 1993). From this perspective, humor involves the bringing together of two normally disparate ideas, concepts, or situations in a surprising or unexpected manner. Koestler’s (1964) term “bisociation” refers to the juxtaposition of two normally incongruous frames of reference, or the discovery of various simi­larities or analogies implicit in concepts normally considered remote from each other. Despite some critics (e.g., Ferroluzzi-Eichinger 1997; Latta 1999), there is widespread agreement that incongruity is a necessary condition for humor. How­ever, it was occasionally argued that it is not a sufficient one. Sheer incongruity may also lead to puzzlement and even to aversive reactions (see Forabosco 1992). Therefore, such variables as the resolution of the incongruity (Suls 1972), appropri­ateness of the incongruity (Oring 1992, 2003), the acceptance of unresolvable incongruity, or the “safeness” of the context in which the incongruity is processed (Rothbart 1976) have been proposed. Rothbart and Pien (1977) emphasized the importance of the distinction between possible and impossible incongruities and between complete and incomplete resolutions. This is important, as only possible incongruities can be resolved completely while for an impossible incongruity only a partial resolution is possible, and a residue of incongruity is left. The definitions of incongruity (“… a conflict between what is expected and what actually occurs in the joke”) and resolution (“… second, more subtle aspect of jokes which renders incongruity meaningful or appropriate by resolving or explaining it” Shultz 1976, pp. 12–13) refer to the process already, and less to the material. Linguists provide a precise description of what makes a text funny. Raskin (1985) presented in detail the first formal semantic theory of jokes, which – due to its reliance on the concept of “script” (a  structured chunk of information about lexemes and/or parts of the world) – became known as the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH). The SSTH can be summarized as two necessary and sufficient conditions. A text is funny if and only if both of the two conditions ob­tain: (i) the text is compatible, fully or in part, with two distinct scripts; and (ii) the two distinct scripts are opposite (i.e., the negation of each other, if only for the purpose of a given text), following a list of basic oppositions, such as real/unreal, possi­ble/impossible, etc. For example, Raskin’s prototypical 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.”) is compatible with the two scripts “doctor” and “lover” and the scripts are opposite on the sex vs. non-sex ba­sis (for an elaborated interpretation see Raskin 1985).

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How are jokes cognitively processed? Perhaps we need to distinguish three stages. Historically, often two stage models were described, however, referring to two distinct albeit different stages or recursive processes. For Kant (1790) laughter was “... an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expecta­tion into nothing”. In other words, that which is originally perceived in one (often serious) sense is suddenly viewed from a totally different (usually implausible or ludicrous) perspective. Eysenck (1942) goes beyond disconfirmation of an expec­tation by positing that the incongruity needs to be reintegrated. For him (Eysenck 1942: 307) “… laughter results from the sudden, insightful integration of contra­dictory or incongruous ideas, attitudes, or sentiments which are experienced objec­tively.” Suls (1972) introduced the perhaps best-known two-stage model. Accord­ing to this model, the perceiver must proceed through two stages to find a joke or cartoon funny. In the first stage, “... the perceiver finds his expectation about the text disconfirmed by the ending of the joke ... In other words, the recipient en­counters an incongruity – the punchline. In the second stage, the perceiver en­gages in a form of problem solving to find a cognitive rule which makes the punchline follow from the main part of the joke and reconciles the incongruous parts.” (p. 82). In the doctor’s wife joke above, the ending (“come right in”) is incongruous, as it does not readily follow the prior “no” (especially as it is not supplemented by a statement to the patient that he was welcome to wait for the doctor‘s return). Thus, it does not make sense for the doctor’s wife to invite the apparent patient in. Here­with ends the incongruity stage. However, the hints young and pretty help the re­cipient to reinterpret the text along the lines that not the doctors’ patient, but his wife’s lover is knocking on the door, and suddenly the ending (including the wife’s unexplained whispering) makes sense and follows from the joke body. These proc­esses are part of the “resolution”stage. According to Suls’s model there are two possible outcomes of the second stage, namely laughter (if the rule is found) or puzzlement (if the rule is not found). While the latter is plausible, the former has been doubted. Why should the resolution immediately lead to laugher? It was argued (Ruch 2001) that having borrowed the flow chart of a problem-solving computer program, this model could not go much beyond seeing humor as being a problem-solving activity. While the model de­scribed the comprehension part well, it does not explain appreciation (McGhee and Goldstein 1972). It is likely that the cognitive processes continue after resolving the incongruity. Unlike after real problem solving, the recipient is aware that the fit of the solution is a pseudoor “as if ”-fit.

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This idea is part of a different two-stage model. Lipps noted already in 1898 that what makes sense for a moment is subsequently abandoned as not really making sense. Thus, the two stages he spoke about came later in the processing of humor (its is sense and no sense). At a meta-level we experience that we have been fooled; our ability to make sense, to solve problems, has been misused. Thus, in particular for the impossible incongruities and their partial resolution, the two-step (i.e., step I: detection of incongruity or violation of a build-up expectation; step II: resolution of incongruity) model needs to be expanded to include a third stage of detecting that what makes sense is actually nonsense. This third stage then allows distinguishing between joke processing and mere problem solving. If the processes indeed ended with the resolution of the incongruity, we would not be able to distin­guish whether we just resolved a problem (as in riddles) or whether we processed humor. We would believe in the outcome of the problem-solving activity and as­sume that it has truth-value. In humor we do realize that the resolution only makes sense in the playful context. Thus, while Suls’s incongruity-resolution model covers stages one and two, Lipps’s distinction refers to stages two and three. Some authors postulated even further oscillations between the two interpretations of the text or two perspectives involved; like playing with sense and nonsense (for conflict or ambivalence theories, see Keith-Spiegel 1972). One can argue that the problem-solving aspect in humor appreciation is periph­eral. Indeed, Derks, Staley, and Haselton (2007) rightfully raised the question whether joke comprehension is so challenging that it has a ­problem-solving quality. Based on their results Derks at al. (2007) suggest that perceiving humor is more an automated expert-like behavior. Likewise, individual differences in humor appre­ciation do relate more strongly to cognitive style than to ability measures. However, fluid intelligence does predict finding nonsense humor funny, and also the “mas­tery” studies show inverted-u functions between children’s development, complex­ity of jokes and appreciation (McGhee 1979). However, recent results indicate a negative (rather than an inverted-u) relation between funniness and difficulty (Cun­ningham and Derks 2005; Derks et al. 2007; Herzog, Harris, Kropscott, and Fuller 2006). The importance of incongruity and resolution is underscored by experiments; for example, different versions of a joke are generated that do allow for incongruity or not, or for meaningful resolution or not. This was tested in children but also neu­rological patients (see reviews by Forabosco 1992, 2007; Suls 1983; Uekermann, Channon, and Daum 2007). However, the variation of the key ingredients (e.g., degree of incongruity, resolution, salience of contents) cannot be varied independ­ently of each other by manipulating

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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 possibility is the use of artificial humor stimuli. This may take, for exam­ple, the form of sequences of words deviating from proper grammatical sequences (Ehrenstein 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 sudden manifestation of the incongruous, while in humorous stories there might be a gradual realization of the incongruous. Thus, also the perception of funniness 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., pantomime), 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 sympathy 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

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humor. Ac­cording to Freud (1905), repressed impulses find relief in a disguised form in jokes as well as in dreams. The basic idea is that the Id is a pool for desires and drives. As society and parental influence (represented in the super ego) do not allow the direct expression of sexual and hostile impulses, gratification can only be achieved in an indirect way. Therefore, individuals repressing their sexuality or aggression should show a preference for sexual and aggressive jokes, respectively. Likewise, the actualization of sexual or aggressive drive (e.g., by presenting photos address­ing the respective motive prior to presentation of humor) should increase funniness of jokes of the same content to follow. Further hypotheses deducible from Freudian theory are discussed by Kline (1977). However, an alternative model was provided by the salience theory (Goldstein, Suls, and Anthony 1972). Their experiment showed that experimentally established salience of certain themes (in their case aggression, but also automobiles and mu­sic) leads to enhanced attention to these themes, to a better availability of the in­formation necessary to understand the joke and finally to enhanced funniness of jokes with these themes. Salience theory was also extended to the study of individ­ual differences in appreciation of sexual humor (Ruch and Hehl 1987, 1988). It was hypothesized that sexual topics are habitually more salient for individuals with positive attitudes towards sex, with more sexual experience and a  higher degree of satisfaction, and therefore a positive correlation was expected between sexual expe­rience and libido and appreciation of sexual humor on the other. Thus, in case of individual differences the salience theory and the Freudian theory predict opposite results. It was also argued to distinguish between positive and negative salience (Ruch and Hehl 1987). Results do favor a salience rather a Freudian interpretation (see section in this chapter), however, this can only be confirmed when the variance due to appreciation of the structure is controlled for. Disparagement/superiority theory also does explain liking of aggressive content and preferred targets in humor (McGhee and Duffey 1983; Zillmann 1983). In short, according to the theory, funniness of a joke depends on the identification of the recipient with the person (or group) that is being disparaging and with the victim of the disparagement. The theory proposes that “... humor appreciation varies inversely with the favorableness of the disposition toward the agent or the entity being dis­paraged, and varies directly with the favorableness of the disposition toward the agent or the entity disparaging it”. (Zillmann and Cantor 1976: 100–101). This theory is in the tradition of a line of thinking that can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle reasoned that laughter arises in response to

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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 infirmity 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 ridicule, 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 inappropriately 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 negatively 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-Americans vs. Canadians, professors vs. students, employers vs. employees) typically 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 particular 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 victimized. 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 superior disparaged his subordinate, whereas the ratings of the professionals revealed the opposite relation­ship. These theories have been quite successful in ­predicting appreciation of racial, ethnic, political, and gender forms of

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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 demonstration of the relevance of dispar­agement in differential humor appreciation 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 correlations 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 nondisparaging 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 incongruity relating to some misfortune befalling a victim, and this incongruity can only be recognized or resolved (and therefore found funny) if one has a negative or unsympathetic atti­tude toward the victim. Mood and other states Humor may be facilitated or impaired by certain types of mood, frame of mind, and other states. In everyday language phrases like to be in good humor, in the mood for laughing, out of humor, ill-humored, in a serious/

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playful mood or frame of mind, etc. refer to such states of enhanced or lowered 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 experimenting) we do seem to have to distinguish among the components of trait, state/mood, and behavior/acts. Traits are relatively stable over time and consistent 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 processing 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 element 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 paratelic. 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

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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 annulment of seriousness; for Sroufe and Waters (1976) and Wilson (1979) if follows 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 engage in humorous inter­actions differs over time, the empirical research conducted 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, sadness 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 global category of elation (Ruch 1990, 1995). This effect and the fact that negative 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 induction 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 positive 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 enjoyment. It turned out that most interventions to increase appreciation of humor

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Table 1.  The definitional components of the state concepts Facets of State cheerfulness cheerful mood

Short description

hilarity

Presence of a cheerful mood state (more tranquil, composed) Presence of a merry mood state (more shallow, outward)

State seriousness earnestness pensiveness soberness

Presence of an earnest mental attitude, task-oriented style Presence of a pensive or thoughtful mood state Presence of a sober or dispassionate frame of mind

State bad mood sadness/melancholy ill-humor

Presence of a sad or melancholy mood state Presence of an ill-humored (grumpy or grouchy) mood state

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 serious 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 mockery, irony, cynicism, and sarcasm (see Dworkin and Efran 1967; Ruch and Köhler 2007). The state part of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory (STCIS, 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-

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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 characteristics stable over time and consistent across situations. A trait or personality 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, questionnaires, 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 (typical 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 differences 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 ascribed 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 systematizing 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 review of the historical and current accounts as well as a survey of instruments

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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). Humor as a personality trait McGhee (1999) presented a  multi-faceted concept of the sense of humor. McGhee (1979) understands humor as a form of play – the play with ideas. Without a playful frame of mind, the same event is perceived as interesting, puzzling, annoying, frightening, etc., but not as funny. Therefore, playfulness and its counterpart, seriousness, were assigned core roles in McGhee’s model of sense of humor (playfulness and seriousness are considered to be somehow antagonistic but form separate components of the model). While people might be very good at spotting the incongruities, absurdities, and ironies of life, only the mentally playful will find humor in them while those with a serious attitude or frame of mind will not treat them humorously. Therefore, playfulness is seen as the foundation or the motor of the sense of humor. While playfulness forms the basis for the sense of humor, it is not a quality specific to humor. Six other facets represent more genuine humor skills and humor behavior and relate to individual differences in the fields of enjoyment of humor, laughter, verbal humor, finding humor in everyday life, laughing at yourself, and humor under stress. McGhee postulates that while children inherit playfulness, influences of socialization counteract it and may cause a shift into seriousness making individuals lose their ability to be playful. Again, the rediscovery of a playful attitude or outlook is a key element for change; its activation triggers the components specific to sense of humor. There is empirical support for the structural part of this model. A study with the American and German versions of McGhee’s sense of humor scale indeed confirmed that the six components (and only those) form a homogeneous factor that is separate from the good vs. bad mood and seriousness vs. playful factors (Ruch and Carrell 1998). However, the heterogeneity of the components “seriousness and negative mood” and “playfulness and positive mood” was apparent, and factor analysis of the items of the two scales clarified that it is better to reconceptualize them as “playfulness vs. seriousness” and “positive mood/optimism vs. negative mood/pessimism.”

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The dynamic part of the model is not yet substantiated. There is no empirical study yet aimed at examining whether a shift in seriousness vs. playfulness indeed enhances the sense of humor; i.e., that playfulness (and low seriousness) 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 associated with the so-called humor theory of temperament and humoral-pathology) 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 quality, 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 perspective than McGhee but yield a rather similar outcome. Their temperament approach to humor is based on the premise that the affective and mental foundations 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 factors 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 consisting of five to six facets was generated and tested in several (German, American, English) samples. For example, trait cheerfulness (i.e., the disposition

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for being in good humor) was considered to be composed of a prevalence of cheerful mood, a low threshold for smiling and laughter, a composed view of adverse life circumstances, a responsiveness to a broad range of elicitors of amusement and smiling/laughter, and a generally cheerful and humorous interaction style. Factor analyses as well as a  facet-sorting task confirmed that those components indeed go do together and form a broad factor of trait cheerfulness (i.e., the disposition for ”being in good humor”). Trait cheerfulness and the sense of humor according to McGhee correlate to the extent of .85; i.e., they are practically interchangeable (Ruch and Carrell 1998). Similarly, the postulated facet models for trait seriousness (a quality of the frame of mind relating to humorlessness) and bad mood (i.e., the disposition for ”being in bad humor” composed primarily of melancholy and grumpiness) found empirical confirmation. The relationships between the three concepts were outlined and tested and it was found that cheerfulness is negatively correlated with both seriousness and bad mood (with the coefficients being smaller for the former and higher for the latter). Seriousness and bad mood are slightly positively correlated. The same pattern of relationship also emerged for the three concepts as states. Furthermore, the testing of the structural assumptions also involved as joint factor analysis of state and trait items that confirmed that while homologous states and traits form distinguishable factors they are positively intercorrelated (Ruch et al. 1997). Several studies show that these three components of the humorous temperament can predict a variety of humor behaviors (see Ruch and Köhler 2007). Pilot studies investigating the neural bases of trait cheerfulness are underway (Rapp, Erb, Rodden, Ruch, Grodd, and Wild 2008). Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, and Weir (2003) adopted a combined rational and empirical approach in their search for potentially adaptive and maladaptive styles of humor. They started by examining the past theoretical literature for forms, uses, or styles of humor that have been described as adaptive and beneficial versus maladaptive and malignant (e.g., Allport 1961; Freud 1928). Based on this review, they concluded that adaptive and maladaptive humor should each be further divided into two separate components, one involving humor that is interpersonal (i.e., directed towards others), and the other being intrapersonal (i.e., focused more on the self). This led them to hypothesize four distinct dimensions of humor, namely affiliative, selfenhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humor, each postulated to be composed of a set of definitional components. Affiliative humor involves the tendency to say funny things, to tell jokes, and to engage in spontaneous witty banter to amuse others, to put others at

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ease, to facilitate relationships, and to reduce interpersonal tensions. According to the authors this adaptive interpersonal humor style may also include self-deprecating humor (i.e., the tendency to say funny things about oneself, while maintaining a sense of self-acceptance) and is a non-hostile, tolerant sort of humor that is affirming of self and others. Self-enhancing humor involves a  generally humorous outlook on life, a  tendency to be frequently amused by the incongruities of life, and to maintain a humorous perspective even in the face of stress or adversity. The authors hypothesize that self-enhancing humor relates to perspective-taking humor, the use of humor as an emotion regulation or coping mechanism, and that this adaptive intrapsychic humor style is consistent with the Freudian definition of humor. Aggressive humor involves sarcasm, teasing, ridicule, derision, “putdown,” or disparagement humor (as referred to by the “superiority” theories of humor). Furthermore, this maladaptive interpersonal styles also was thought to involve humor that is used to manipulate others by means of an implied threat of ridicule, the tendency to express humor without regard for its potential impact on others (e.g., sexist or racist humor), and compulsive expressions of humor in which one finds it difficult to resist the impulse to say funny things that are likely to hurt or alienate others. Finally, self-defeating humor involves excessively self-disparaging humor, attempts to amuse others by doing or saying funny things at one’s own expense as a means of ingratiating oneself or gaining approval, allowing oneself to be the “butt” of others’ humor, and laughing along with others when being ridiculed or disparaged. This maladaptive self-directed humor dimension is also hypothesized to involve the use of humor as a form of defensive denial, or the tendency to engage in humorous behavior as a means of hiding one’s underlying negative feelings, or avoiding dealing constructively with problems. Individuals who are high on this humor dimension may be seen as quite witty or amusing (e.g., “class clowns”), but there may also be an element of emotional neediness, avoidance, and low self-esteem underlying their use of humor. Martin et al. (2003) used several samples to carefully examine what the best set of items is to represent those concepts in the final version of the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ). Also they tried to keep the intercorrelations among the scales low. In order to achieve this some components that correlate on two or more scales needed to be dropped. Martin et al. (2003) used peer-evaluation on a single representative item to provide initial evidence for convergent and discriminant validity (Campbell and Fiske 1959) of the four concepts. The validity is also supported by the fact that there are plausible correlations with other humor scales. For

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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 successfully 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-defeating 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 empirically 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 statements 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 target 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 humorous 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,

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when aggregated, styles of humorous conduct, and the application of the Q-sort technique to the assessment of humor rather than using conventional questionnaires. Craik et al. (1996) generated the set of 100 non-redundant statements from a  survey of the theoretical and empirical psychological research literature on humor and from observations of everyday social life. For each of Table 2.  The 10 styles of humorous conduct sensu Craik et al. (1996) I+. Socially warm humorous style Maintains group morale through humor. Has a good sense of humor. Uses good-natured jests to put others at ease. Relative to other traits, displays a noteworthy sense of humor. II+. Reflective humorous style Is more responsive to spontaneous humor than to jokes. Uses humor to express the contradictory aspects of everyday events. Takes pleasure in bemused reflections on self and others. Appreciates the humorous potential of persons and situations.

I–. Socially cold humorous style Smiles grudgingly. Responds with a quick, but short-lived smile. Is a ready audience but infrequent contributor of humorous anecdotes. Has a bland, deadpan sense of humor. II–. Boorish humorous style Imitates the humorous style of professional comedians. Recounts familiar, stale jokes. Tells funny stories to impress people. Is competitively humorous, attempts to 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 Has a reputation for indulging in coarse or vulgar humor. Delights in parodies which others might find blasphemous or obscene.

IV–. Repressed humorous style Does not respond to a range of humor due to moralistic constraints. Is squeamish about “sick jokes.”

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Table 2. (cont.) IV+. Earthy humorous style Relishes scatological anecdotes (bathroom humor).

IV–. Repressed humorous style Enjoys hearing jokes but rarely remembers them.

V+. Benign humorous style Finds intellectual word play enjoyable.

V–. Mean-spirited humorous style Occasionally makes humorous remarks betraying a streak of cruelty. Needles others, intending it to be just kidding. Is scornful; laughs “at” others, rather than “with” them. Jokes about others’ imperfections.

Enjoys witticisms which are intellectually challenging. Enjoys limericks and nonsense rhymes. Enjoys exchanging topical jokes and keeps up to date on them.

Note: Table adapted from Craik and Ware (2007)

the statements they determined the degree of social desirability. Based on a principal components analysis of self-descriptive HBQD portraits by 456 university students they arrived at a tentative, and as yet not replicated, set of 10 humor styles that are grouped along five bipolar factors. Table 2 presents illustrative statements characterizing each of these 10 styles. What is the nature of those styles? The Socially Warm versus Cold Humorous Style, at its positive pole, reflects a tendency to use humor to promote good will and social interaction, and, at its negative pole, an avoidance or aloofness regarding mirthful behavior. The Reflective versus Boorish Humorous Style describes a knack for discerning the spontaneous humor found in the doings of oneself and other persons and in everyday occurrences, at the positive pole, and an uninsightful, insensitive and competitive use of humor, at the negative pole. The Competent versus Inept Humorous Style suggests an active wit and capacity to convey humorous anecdotes effectively, at its positive pole, and a lack of skill and confidence in dealing with humor, at the negative pole. The Earthy versus Repressed Humorous Style captures a raucous delight in joking about taboo topics, at the positive pole, and an inhibition regarding macabre, sexual, and scatological modes of humor, at the negative pole. Finally, the Benign versus Mean-spirited Humorous Style, at its positive pole, points to pleasure in humor-related activities that are mentally stimulating and innocuous and, at its negative pole, focuses on the dark side of humor, in its use to attack and belittle others. Craik et al. (1996) show that the ”sense of humor” primarily covers two styles, the socially warm and the competent humorous styles. However, the

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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 indicators. 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 assessed by different measurements approaches as well. For example, earthy humor could be compared with the typical joke test of funniness of sick, sexual or bathroom humor, and competent humor might be related to performance tests of being witty. Humor as an ability The etymology of the term wit involves knowledge, mind and reasoning capacity 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 character 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 predominant 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 between contrasting or disparate words or ideas to create a  clever humorous

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effect. Thus, it is appropriate to conceptualize this aspect of humor as ability, rather than style. The instructions would ask the test taker to deliver his or her maximal behavior – to do the best. The outcome can be judged for its quality (i.e., degree of funniness or originality), suggesting we are talking about divergent intelligence (not convergent, as in the case of right or wrong answers), or creativity. The crucial point here is though that the person is creating a  humorous effect (not retelling or performing something created by someone else); i.e., is confronted with something not inherently funny but manages to bring it into a funny context. In contrast to this performance or ability approach to humor production, some psychologists also pursued a  temperament or competence approach. Here we are not so much interested in the ability to actually create humor, but in the stylistic aspects (e.g., skills, motivation) of delivery. We all know people who love to entertain others using prefabricated material (stories, jokes) who can’t come up with any funny line themselves. Also, those who love to entertain others differ in how well they actually are performing. Babad (1974) distinguished between humor production and reproduction, and showed that the two are uncorrelated in individuals. So there are additional factors involved beyond the ability to create humor, and for a fuller description and prediction of humor performance behavior there is indeed room for other, non-cognitive, concepts. It should be noted that in a similar manner appreciation of humor might involve ability too. Jokes differ in complexity and some are “hard to get”. This has been discussed especially in the developmental psychology literature where an optimal fit between the child’s cognitive ability and the difficulty level of jokes was expected to result in maximal funniness (McGhee 1974; Zigler et al. 1966). However, as mentioned above, Derks et al. (2007; see also Cunningham and Derks 2005) argued that appreciation of humor should be discussed in terms of expertise rather than intelligence. Initial studies of wit tried to separate humor creation from humor appreciation (and they indeed turn out to be largely independent), and intended to show its strong relationship to creativity and a weaker one to intelligence (Babad 1974; Brodzinsky and Rubien 1976; Fabrizi and Pollio 1987; ­Koppel and Sechrest 1970; Köhler and Ruch 1996). Wit typically was assessed by presenting a  set of cartoons with captions removed, and testees were instructed to make up humorous captions, which were subsequently rated for funniness by trained judges. In other studies they were asked to comment on films in a funny way or to write a funny presidential campaign slogan. Unfortunately, we don’t have studies using several such tests at once (of dif-

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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 Mazzella (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. According to them wittiness is composed of the three dimensions of humor motivation, humor cognition, and humor communication. This model of wittiness 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 motivation and communication humor are related to social and temperamental variables. The authors developed measures of each facet of the model, which were generally found to correlate with each other. Feingold and Mazzella (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 specific (e.g., Craik and Ware 2007; Svebak 1974; Ziv 1984), although they rely on questionnaire approach. Svebak (1974) suggested that individual differences in sense of humor involve variations in the three dimensions of meta-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, seeing 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 effectively (compared to the Inept Humorous Style, referring to a  lack of skill

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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). Humor as a virtue/character strength Wit as an ability to produce a comic effect may be used to hurt or to cheer someone up who is low; i.e., it can be benevolent or malevolent. If someone does a mistake, one may poke fun at the weaknesses of this person or one may portray human weaknesses in general in a benevolent way, so that no-one is excluded and the person who was befallen by a mishap share the amusement. By the end of the 17th century the influence of humanism brought about a gradual shift in dispositions from humor as a sheer ability (a talent of ridicule, wit, or humor) to make others laugh to a virtue of sense of humor. People had become weary of “put-down” witticisms and it was argued that people should not be laughed at because of peculiarities of temperament, since they were not responsible for them. Rather one should smile kindly at an imperfect world and human nature. Moralists tried to distinguish between “true” and “false” wit, as they did between “good” and “bad” humor. The term “humor” acquired its positive, versus formerly neutral, meaning. At this time virtuous use of humor was started and elements like being able to laugh at one’s misfortunes or liking to laugh at one’s own expense were valued. According to Schmidt-Hidding (1963) in the 19th century humor became a specific English cardinal virtue, joining others such as common sense, tolerance, and compromise. The idea of humor as a virtue still prevails in our thinking about humor as we do tend to associate humor with positive phenomena only. Also questionnaires of sense of humor are typically blind to the dark side of humor. Nevertheless, the idea of humor as a virtue was never explicitly transformed into a modern personality concept and there is no instrument specifically measuring virtuous humor behavior. In this sense, humor as virtuous behavior still needs to be rediscovered. However, recently, the positive psychology movement rediscovered the potential of humor as a contributor to the good life. Peterson and Seligman (2004) see humor as part of the “good character.” Their model of character distinguishes between virtues, character strength and situational themes. Six core virtues that are considered to be universal: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Humor is located at the level

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of character strength, i.e., the psychological mechanisms and processes that define the virtues. There are 24 such strengths and humor is seen to define the virtue of transcendence. Other strengths in that cluster are appreciation of beauty and excellence (i.e., noticing and appreciating beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life), gratitude (i.e., being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen), hope (i.e., expecting the best and working to achieve it) and spirituality (i.e., having coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of life). Those components of transcendence are seen as strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and provide meaning. However, empirically this cluster proved not to be very ­homogenous. The inventory of strengths based on that classification (i.e., the VIA-IS) is a 240 items self-report questionnaire measuring the 24 strengths with 10 items each. Indeed, studies in Austria, Germany, Japan, the USA, and Switzerland confirm that that the VIA-IS humor scale is a good predictor of satisfaction with life (Peterson, Ruch, Beermann, Park, and Seligman 2007; Ruch, Huber, Beermann, and Proyer 2007), as measured by the SWLS (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin 1985). Thus, humor is one component enabling the good life. An analysis of the items of the VIA-IS together with 11 other humor scales shows that all six virtues were present in the item contents (Beermann and Ruch 2008). While overall the items primarily reflected the virtues of humanity and wisdom, the VIA-IS items were assigned to the virtues of humanity and transcendence. Humor as an aesthetic perception From the beginning of testing of sense of humor psychologists were interested in the individual’s “taste” in humor (for a review of scales see Ruch 2007b). What sort of humor does the person find hilarious and which ones are considered to be dull? Does this preference tell something about his or her personality (that conventional personality questionnaires can’t reveal)? Such tests typically consist of a set of jokes, cartoons and/or limericks that are to be rated for degree of funniness. Some tests yield only one total score, but others are multidimensional and represent a classification of humor, that was derived either intuitively, theoretically, or empirically. The Antioch Sense of Humor Test (Mindess, Miller, Turek, Bender, and Corbin 1985) may be regarded as an example for an intuitive classification. It allows to assess a variety of humor categories, such as nonsense, philosoph-

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ical, sexual, scatological, social satire, hostile, demeaning to men, demeaning to women, ethnic, and sick humor. While intuitive and theory based classifications provide plausible categories, they may have difficulties to empirically demonstrate that the scales are indeed homogenous and distinguishable from each other. Factor analysis was used to empirically explore the stimulus and response dimensions. There is some agreement across studies; for example sexual humor always emerges as one separate factor, but jokes pre-classified as “aggressive” rarely end up in the same factor. Also, beginning with the first factorial study by Eysenck (1942), structural factors, like complexity/simplicity showed to be of importance. However, unlike in general research on personality, humor studies do not use each other’s items (i.e., the best markers of factors) and hence comparability of findings is often limited. Also, there have been few systematic attempts at building taxonomy and many “one shot”studies. Also, different research strategies may account for discrepant outcomes. For example, Catelli and coworkers advised participants to keep the number of funny and dull jokes about equal (thereby keeping their average level of humor appreciation equal). This probably eliminated the major factors and so he extracted 12 presumably minor ones that are difficult to replicate (for reviews of all approaches, see Martin 2007b; Ruch 1992). What aspects are then reflected in individual differences in the perception of humor? Humor theorists have long acknowledged that, in humor, content and structure (or: joke work vs. tendency (Freud 1905); thematic vs. schematic (Sears 1934); cogni­tive vs. arctic factors (Eysenck 1942)) have to be distinguished as two different sources of pleasure, and factor analytic studies confirm that both are potent variance-producing factors. While intuitive and rational taxonomies typically distinguish only between content classes, factor analytic studies show that structural properties of jokes and cartoons are at least as important as their content, with two factors consistently appearing: namely, incongruity-resolution (INC-RES) humor and nonsense (NON) humor. Jokes and cartoons of these factors have different contents (e.g., themes, targets) but are similar with respect to structural properties and the way they are processed. In short, jokes and cartoons of the INC-RES humor category are characterized by punch lines in which the surprising incongruity can be completely resolved. The common element in this type of humor is that the recipient first discovers an incongruity which is then fully resolvable upon consideration of information available elsewhere in the joke or cartoon. There is a certain projective element in these jokes as essential things are not spelled out and have

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to be supplemented by the recipient; often resolving the incongruity requires attributing motives and traits (e.g., stingy, mean, stupid, absent-minded) to the characters depicted in the jokes. Although individuals might differ with respect to how they perceive and/or resolve the incongruity, they have the sense of having “gotten the point” or understood the joke once resolution information has been identified. At the time this factor was first extracted, it seemed that the two-stage structure in the process of perceiving and understanding humor described by Suls (1972) is a model that fits well to these jokes and cartoons, and hence incongruity-resolution humor was considered to be an appropriate label for that factor. Nonsense humor also has a surprising or incongruous punch line, however, “... the punch line may (1) provide no resolution at all, (2) provide a partial resolution (leaving an essential part of the incongruity unresolved), or (3) actually create new absurdities or incongruities” (McGhee, Ruch, and Hehl 1990: 124). In nonsense humor the resolution information gives the appearance of making sense out of incongruities without actually doing so. The recipient’s ability to make sense or to solve problems is exploited; after detecting the incongruity he is misled to resolve it, only to later discover that what made sense for a moment is not really making sense. Rothbart and Pien’s (1977) impossible incongruities that allow only for partial resolutions are characteristic of the nonsense factor, while their possible incongruities allowing for complete resolutions are more prevalent in INC-RES humor. There is evidence for different neural bases of INC-RES and NON humor. Samson, Hempelmann, Zysset, and Huber (in press) presented 30 cartoons of each humor type to 17 subjects and found that in the superior frontal gyrus bilaterally, right medial frontal gyrus and the temporo-parietal junction bilaterally there is more activity for incongruity-resolution humor in contrast to nonsense humor. The third factor, sexual (SEX) humor, may have either structure, but is homoge­neous with respect to sexual content. All jokes and cartoons with a sexual theme (and exclusively those) load on this factor. While the sexual humor category was initially the easiest to identify, it had to be considered that sex jokes and cartoons typically have two loadings: one on the sexual humor factor and a second on one of the two structure factors. The size of this second loading seems to depend on the degree of the theme’s salience. Thus, one has to distinguish between a factor of sexual humor, which is composed of the content variance of the sexual jokes and cartoons only (bereft of the structure variance), and the sexual humor category (as used in humor tests), in which both content and structure are involved. Whereas a sexual humor

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Table 3.  The 3 WD categories distinguished by (original and derived) GTVH­parameters GTVH-parameters INC-RES

NON

SEX

Degree of incongru­ity Degree of residual incongruity Degree of resolution Script opposition

medium

high

medium

high

very simple to complex diverse

very simple to very complex actual/not actual less often; possible/ impossible more often diverse diverse

medium (high for NON SEX) low (high for NON SEX) –

SO antonymy Logical mechanism

diverse diverse

Narrative Strategy

Text, cartoons with 1 panel

Pornotopia

does not apply

Target

involves targets frequently

diverse

sex/non sex prevails False analogies (especially in INCRES and PURE) Cartoons with Text, cartoons with a higher number of 1 panel (NON SEX panels with more panels) does not apply prevails in PURE SEX involves targets rarely involves targets frequently (NON SEX rarely a target)

Note: Adapted from Hempelmann and Ruch (2005)

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  GTVHanalysis 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-

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ically are asked how funny they find the joke at the moment and not in general, 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 representative samples of humor from the respective country. Carretero-Dios, Perez, and Buela-Casal (in press) were able to separate factors of incongruity-resolution and nonsense in Spain; however, they did not use the 3 WD to confirm 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 interpretation 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). Maximal appreciation of jokes and cartoons consists of high funniness and low aversiveness; while minimal appreciation occurs if the joke is not considered 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 original 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

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the experiential level, behavior, and physiology (Ruch 1993). Factor analysis also suggested that negative ratings might be further split into two separate 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). Humorlessness and “pathologies” of humor and laughter The different approaches discussed above can be scrutinized how they treat “absence of humor” and whether or not they see forms of humor as disrespectable 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 humorless, 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 question 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

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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 variety of ways. One can see the habitual inability to get a joke as a form of lacking 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 damages 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 “humorphobia” 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 physical 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 , 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 unidimensional. Most importantly, the group of gelotophobes (identified via a clinical interview) scored highest on this dimension. Ruch and Proyer (2008b) proposed 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

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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. Nevertheless, 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 discriminating 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 gelotophobes 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 introversion 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. Factor analytic studies of humor tests The above-mentioned approaches coexist and might be useful or different for different purposes. There is no single model that claims to cover all ­aspects of humor. Some are intentionally narrow and focus on one or a few aspects. Others are quite comprehensive. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that they make

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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 comprehensive model when we jointly look at all conceptual approaches simultaneously? 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 composedness, 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 components (i.e., enjoyment of humor, laughter, verbal humor, finding humor in everyday life, laughing at yourself, and humor under stress) marked this factor equally well as the facets of cheerfulness did. Thus, the affect-based temperament 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 (Martin 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) factor, 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

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scales involving mentality or attitudes were additionally loaded negatively by seriousness and thus located in the cheerfulness/low seriousness quadrant. In the second study the seriousness factor was bipolar due to the use of McGhee’s component of playfulness. Thus, a variety of humor concepts can be represented on these two dimensions of cheerfulness and seriousness/ playfulness. The third factor in study two was mainly composed of the bad mood facets and the negative mood scale of the McGhee scale. Obviously, the relevance of trait seriousness and bad mood for the sense of humor can only be demonstrated if the inventories sampled also cover humorlessness. Thus, traditional humor scales seem primarily to tap into a two-dimensional system of affect (good vs. bad humor) and mentality (serious vs. playful frame of mind). Taking into account that the HBQD humor measures five styles of humorous conduct one can assume that at least three dimensions are unaccounted for by the traditional sense of humor scales. Thus, future research will need to study whether those additional factors are replicable and what their nature is. Also, the aggressive and self-defeating constructs of the HSQ (Martin et al. 2003) go well beyond the scope of the conventional sense of humor scales. Replication of the factors in the domain of self-report is not the only criterion. A  confirmation in other domains such as peer-reports, behavior observation, or performance tests should be required. For example, aggressive, earthy, or mean-spirited humor may be reflected also in ratings of best friends or in the liking of humorous material of such content. Likewise, selfreports of being witty or competent in humor would gain in validity if they correlate to a reasonable extent with behavioral tests of wittiness, or humor creation. A pilot study of self-report and performance measures of appreciation and creation of humor, however, did not yield high correlations across assessment approaches suggesting the presence of method variance and low convergent validity for the measures (Köhler and Ruch 1996). Such studies might look like statistical exercises to some. Nevertheless, they are essential if humor research wants to make a significant step forward. In order to be able to accumulate research findings we need to have a common taxonomy or classification of humor traits and states. How else can we compare findings from different laboratories all over the world? This problem is not unique to humor. Also in other disciplines progress was mainly made once a common frame of references was established (e.g., the periodic system in chemistry; diagnostic manuals in psychiatry). Serious humor researchers should primarily work on establishing such a framework. While we had an enhanced activity to construct humor scales during the last 25 years, too little

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effort was spent on comparing the approaches and working on a more general model transcending the different domains. Humor instruments Within psychology the branch of psychometrics was developed which provides knowledge about how to construct tests and evaluate their quality (Kline 2000). There are several ways to construct a  scale, several test theories to choose from, recommendations on how to write items etc. In psychological assessment different measures for both, personality and mental abilities are available. In both cases a broad variety of strategies exists. For example, in personality assessment most commonly questionnaires (self-reports) are used. However, (semi‑) projective tests, (structured) interviews, or (structured) behavior observations (ratings of behavior) are available as well. A psychological test should fulfill several criteria that show its usefulness. Objectivity, reliability, and validity are the most important ones. A test that fulfills the objectivity-condition is a test for which everyone who scores the test follows the same scoring rules and gets the same report from the scoring procedure. Thus, it is aimed at diminishing the influence of subjective evaluations of a test score. The reliability of a test is a criterion that defines the degree to which the score of a test is not biased by a random measurement error (i.e. a not expected influence on the score). A high reliability of a test ensures that the results are reproducible and stable over time. It is possible to compute the so-called “standard error of measurement” which allows an estimation of a persons’ true score in the test (the true score is not biased by measurement errors). For each test a reliability coefficient ranging from 0 (lowest) to 1 (highest; i.e., no measurement error) can be computed. The coefficient may mainly be interpreted in terms of alternate-forms reliability (correlation of two test forms), parallel-forms reliability (correlation of two parallel forms of a test), split-half reliability (the test is split into two halves – e.g., by taking the even and odd-numbered items – and the correlation between the two halves is computed), test-retest reliability (“temporal stability”, administering a test at two independent occasions and computing the correlation between the two scores), and in terms of internal consistency (“coefficient alpha”, “Cronbach’s alpha”). The latter provides information on the consistency of a  person’s scores in the test and is one of the most commonly used statistic for showing the reliability of a test. A commonly used rule of thumb is that a test should not be used (at least for important

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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 special domain) or predictive validity (the degree to which a test predicts a specific 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 validity 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 objectivity, 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, behavioral observations, experimental tasks or interviews and informal surveys were used. In self-report trait measures of humor the testee reacts to statements or answers 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 quantity/frequency of a certain behavior. As humor is a desirable trait a few individuals might overestimate their humor. Using a Q-sort technique, in which

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the frequency for each step of the answer scale is set, may prevent such tendencies. 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 complementary non-redundant information about the humor of the target person, as the target and acquaintances do have access to different information. Typically, 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., Multidimensional 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 performance (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 Cattell 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 individual 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.

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Is humor research equipped with appropriate measuring instruments? While probably more than 70 humor measurement tools may have been constructed meanwhile, the state of the art is not really satisfactory. Many of the methods were ad hoc measures constructed and used in only one single study. The construction did not always use the state of the art methodology. Also, they were not very explicit about the concept that was being measured. While most often these scales were simply labeled ”sense of humor” tests, the contents were quite diverse (suggesting a lack of convergent validity), and none of those scales measured actually the sense of humor as described in the classic literature (e.g., as a world view). Also, often there was not much empirical work done on the meaning of the concept prior to the construction of the own questionnaire. Therefore most instruments are not representing any existing theory or offering a new model. A special issue on the measurement of the sense of humor (Ruch 1996) documented the progress that has been made in the 90-ies of the last century, and some new instruments were constructed. In the following a few prototypical current instruments are described (see Ruch 2007b for a comprehensive list of tools, and Martin 2003 and Peterson and Seligman 2004 for reviews of humor instruments). The Coping Humor Scale (CHS; Martin and Lefcourt 1983) is a  seven items self-report questionnaire reflecting the degree to which individuals report using humor to cope with stress which respondents rate in terms of endorsement on a four-point scale. The internal reliability (alpha coefficient) of the CHS ranges from .60 to .70, and the test-rest reliability (12-week period) is .80. There is considerable construct validity support for the CHS (summarized in Lefcourt and Martin 1986; Martin 1996, 2007). For example, high scores in the CHS were correlated with peer ratings of individuals’ tendency to use humor to cope with stress (r = .50) and to not take themselves too seriously (r’s = .58 to .78). Also, the CHS was significantly correlated with the rated funniness of participants’ humorous monologues created while watching a stressful film (r = .50). Finally, the CHS scale moderates the effects of life stress on mood disturbance (Martin 1996). The CHS probably does not measure what Freud (1928) understood by humor as a mature defense mechanism. Führ (2002) developed a coping humor scale for use with children. The Situational Humor Response Questionnaire (SHRQ; Martin and Lefcourt 1984) is a  self-report questionnaire of sense of humor composed of 21 items measuring the frequency with which a  person smiles and laughs in a  wide variety of life situations. These situations may be aversive but also pleasant. The testee rates the items in terms of intensity of response on

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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 studies 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 correlated 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-report questionnaire composed of 32 items in a  seven point-answer format measuring four styles of humor, namely self-enhancing, aggressive, affiliative, 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 correlations 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 correlating the HSQ with a variety of indicators of psychological health, well-being, mood, and personality. The scales of social and self-enhancing humor correlate 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-defeating 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, international 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 technique 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 humorous conduct of persons in three levels: (1) at the individual level of descriptive statements, by analyzing its 100 items separately; (2) at the overall pattern level, by incorrelating individual or composited HBQD descriptions; and

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(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, except 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 correlations 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 correlations with several personality scales were studied, among them the California 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, Beermann, 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 respondents 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.

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State and trait cheerfulness predicts amount of laughter in a variety of experimental settings, and predicts ease of induction of cheerful mood and robustness of mood when facing adversity. The STCI-T cheerfulness scale correlates about .57 with the SHRQ and CHS, and .30 to .74 with various other humor scales (e.g., Köhler and Ruch 1996; Martin et al. 2003). The STCI has been validated in a variety of settings, including the study of the humor of teachers (Rissland 2002), the study of humorous interactions among pupils (Bönsch-Kauke 2003), as well as its relation to personality (Ruch and Köhler 2007; Wrench and McCroskey 2001), emotional intelligence (Yip and Martin 2006), and well-being (Maas 2003). The state part with special instruction was used to evaluate the effects in humor intervention studies in samples of healthy adults (Sassenrath 2001), depressed elderly (Krantzhoff and Hirsch 2001; Hirsch and Krantzhoff 2004), COPD patients (Brutsche et al. 2008), and schizophrenic patients (Falkenberg, Klügel, Bartels, and Wild 2007), but also to examine the effects of experimental interventions (Ruch and Stevens 1995; Thompson, Ruch, and Hasenoehrl 2004). (For more information on the construct validity see Hilscher 2005; Köhler and Ruch 1996; Ruch 1997; Ruch and Carrell 1998; Ruch and Köhler 1999, 2007). Finally, a scale should be mentioned that was not designed for use in research but as a source of personal feedback for individuals` participating in a program for the improvement of the sense of humor. As the effectiveness of this program (McGhee 1996) is best tested when this scale is included as well, one needs to know more about its psychometric properties and hence it needs discussion. The sense of humor scale (SHS; McGhee 1996) is a rationally developed scale utilizing 40 items in a four-point answer format (1 = strongly disagree; 4 = strongly agree) and is aimed at measuring the sense of humor and its eight components, namely enjoyment of humor (SHS‑1), seriousness and negative mood (SHS‑2), playfulness and positive mood (SHS‑3), laughter (SHS‑4), verbal humor (SHS‑5), finding humor in everyday life (SHS‑6), laughing at yourself (SHS‑7), and humor under stress (SHS‑8). The SHS can be scored for the eight subscales by adding the five items per subscale. Furthermore, a “humor quotient” can be derived by adding the eight subscales giving laughing at yourself and humor under stress higher weights (1.5 and 2, respectively). This was based on the untested assumption that the latter two skills are more difficult to develop than the others. A  first psychometric analysis with American and German participants (Ruch and Carrell 1998) yielded reliability coefficients of .92 and .90 for the total scores in the US and German sample, respectively. The reliabilities of the subscales (with 5 items each) yielded coefficients between .56 and 78 with

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a median of .71. As .60 is typically seen as the lower bound of acceptable reliability for research purposes, the subscale “laughter” could not be recommended for use. Furthermore, it seemed that the SHS scales are best seen as representing three different factors. The new version of the SHS is a 40 iteminstrument in a 7 point-format (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree) measuring the three domains of playful vs. serious attitude (8 items), positive vs. negative mood (8 items), and sense of humor (24 items). While there are only four items per scale the answer format increased to seven points. There are no psychometric data available for this scale yet. Beermann, Gander, Hiltebrand, Wyss, and Ruch (in press) provide preliminary evidence that the “laughing at yourself ”-subscale of the first version of the SHS is indeed predictive of the homologous behavior in an experimental setting. Also, for the total score there is a satisfactory self-peer correlation (r = .44). The coefficients for the individual scales ranged from .21 (humor under stress) to .57 (Playfulness and Positive Mood) with a median of .35. The SHS scales showed a high convergent validity with the STCI scales (Ruch and Carrell 1998). The fact that the training of the sense of humor (containing elements that cover the contents of the scale) yielded an increase in the SHS scales supports its validity (Sassenrath 2001). The 3 WD (3 Witz-Dimensionen) test of humor appreciation (Ruch 1992) is a performance test measuring funniness and aversiveness of incongruityresolution humor, nonsense humor and sexual humor in which 35 jokes and cartoons are rated on two seven-point scales (e.g., 0 = not at all funny; 6 = very funny). The first five items are used for “warming up” and are not scored. The jokes and cartoons are presented in a test booklet with two or three items on a  page. The instructions are typed on the separate answer sheet, which also contains the two sets of rating scales. Usually, six scores may be derived, three for funniness and three for aversiveness of incongruityresolution (INC-RES), nonsense (NON), and sexual (SEX) humor. Furthermore, several indices have been derived and validated (Ruch 1992, Ruch and Hehl 1988; Ruch et al. 1990). Scores of total funniness and total aversiveness (computed by adding the ratings of the three categories) served as indicators of the subject’s overall positive and negative responses to humor, respectively. A structure preference index (SPI; obtained by subtracting INC-RES from NON) allows assessing the relative preference for resolution in humor over unresolvable or residual incongruities and vice versa. Likewise, when hypotheses relate to the content of sexual humor, indices of appreciation of sexual content (see Forabosco and Ruch 1994) are used to increase the power of the test.

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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 construction of parallel versions allowed the estimation of the reliability based on equivalence of tests, which yielded high coefficients too (.82 to .93). Construct validity was assessed by correlations with other humor instruments. The 3 WD scales are uncorrelated from affect-based sense of humor measures, 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 simplicity-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). Development of humor over life span The development of humor appreciation during childhood received much attention in the 1970s and 1980s of the last century (see Bariaud 1983; Bergen 2007; McGhee 1979, 1983; McGhee and Chapman 1980 and McGhee, Ruch, and Hehl 1990; for reviews). Later, attention was drawn on development during the entire life span (Nahemov, McCluskey-Fawcett, and McGhee 1986) but comparatively few studies followed. The results often stem from applying tests of sense of humor to samples of a broader age range. More recent studies of children’s humor expand the scope of components studied to humor in real life interactions (Bönsch-Kauke 2003) and the use of humor as a coping device (Führ 2002). While philosophers and psychologists have advanced numerous theories of humor, theoretical models of humor development have been rare. Primary attention has been given in these models to the development of incongruitybased humor and to the role of cognitive development in determining general developmental changes. McGhee (1979) reviews the existing theories of humor development and puts forward a four stage-model of humor development during childhood. McGhee viewed humor as a form of intellectual play and argued that the level of humor a child is capable of understanding and producing at any given point in development depends primarily on the level of cognitive functioning achieved. Drawing primarily from a Piagetian theoretical framework, this cognitive-stage theory suggests that each new major cognitive acquisition leads to the appearance of a qualitatively different form

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of humor. McGhee et al. (1990) advance a personality-based model of humor development extending from late adolescence until about age 60 which is subsequently tested (Ruch et al. 1990). This model builds upon the earlier taxonomic studies of humor appreciation which document the importance of two principal humor-appreciation factors (nonsense and incongruity plus resolution), and from a broad range of data demonstrating age-related changes in personality measures closely associated with these two factors (Ruch 1992). Methodologically we do need to separate different questions. There might be differences between generations or cohorts; i.e., today’s 20 year olds might find one type of humor funnier that the 20 year-old-ones 50 years ago. Those changes in humor appreciation might be predictable by social and societal changes (e.g., the changing role of men and women and the appreciation of gender stereotypes; or the role of media transporting different forms of humor) or by the sheer fact that some joke contents are topical and do not mean much to people 50 years later. There also might be genuine developmental changes; i.e., humor is different for the same people at different stages in their life. For example, one might expect that the use of philosophical humor increases with age. This requires longitudinal studies where the same individuals are tested repeatedly (i.e., two or more times) years apart. At best with parallel tests that don’t get outdated. So far humor research can only draw on results from cross-sectional studies. Most often these data come from studies where sense of humor instruments are applied to a sample with a wider age range. One such cross-sectional study investigates the age differences in traits considered to be the temperamental basis of humor. In a  study of six age groups from late adolescence to people older than 60 years there were no major trends in trait cheerfulness across age (Ruch et al. 1996; Ruch and Zweyer 2001). A  later analysis with approximately 2000 individuals confirmed this result, however, there was a peculiar drop of trait cheerfulness for the age group between 30 and 40 years. This drop is similar to the ones found for satisfaction with life (Myers and Diener 1993). For trait seriousness, there was no difference among the groups below the age of 40. However, from thereon it significantly increased among all adjacent age groups. A similar increase was observed for cheerful composure, a measure akin to humor in the traditional sense (Ruch et al. 1996). More is known about humor appreciation. McGhee (1979) discusses the results for early development in humor appreciation. Ruch, McGhee and Hehl (1990) tested their model of the development of incongruity-resolution and nonsense humor during adulthood in a sample of 4.292 14- to 66-year-

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INC-RESf

28

Total scores

26 24

NON-f

22 20 NONa

18 16 14

INC-RESa 15

20

25

30

35 40 45 Age (in years)

50

55

60

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 incongruityresolution humor) (Drawn from data presented in Ruch et al. 1990).

old Germans. Twenty jokes and cartoons representing structure-based humor categories of incongruity-resolution and nonsense were rated for funniness and aversiveness. The results generally confirmed the hypotheses. Incongruity-resolution humor increased in funniness and nonsense humor decreased in funniness among progressively older subjects after the late teens. Aversiveness of both forms of humor generally decreased over the ages sampled (see Figure 1). Age differences in humor appreciation were strongly correlated with age differences in conservatism. An especially strong parallel was found between age differences in funniness of incongruity-resolution humor and age differences in conservatism, the major predictor of appreciation of incongruityresolution humor. In other words, appreciation of resolvable types of humor changes when degree of conservatism (i.e., the need for closure and stability) changes with age too. Nothing much is known about changes past the age of 60 years. Also we do not know whether those changes depicted above are mere cross-sectional differences or genuine developments. There might be a  generation gap in

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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 constructors 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 differences might be expected in subsequent short-term longitudinal s­ tudies. Factors that support or impede humor Speakers of most languages know expressions referring to somebody losing or cultivating his/her sense of humor. However, most research regarding environmental influences on humor has looked at the effects of current physical and social factors on current perceived funniness of, or amount of laughter to humor (e.g., Chapman 1983) and only rarely have examined the longer lasting effects on humor as an individual differences variable. Nevertheless, some research exists regarding the proximal and distal antecedents of humor. Basically, these factors either posit that humor is a natural extension of one’s emotionality or playfulness, or developed as a means of coping with life’s less pleasant circumstances. Given the current lack of knowledge on the importance of nature and nurture in humor one can only speculate about the relative importance of those factors. As regards facilitating factors, the existence and cultivation of ”joking relationships” could be crucial. That is, peers that encourage unrestricted indulgence in all forms of humor, where funny ideas can be exchanged and humor skills developed; where people can freely ”regress” and even be silly and childish. If humor is modeled, then besides parents, teachers and peers also the media will have to be considered. Nowadays humor is offered in abundance in form of books, funnies in newspapers, films, TV, on stage, etc. so that there are plenty of occasions to learn how to be funny, either by sheer reproduction or by learning the rules and generating ones own humor on the spot. Obviously, with all those factors a bidirectional relationship can be assumed (e.g., humorous people might be more likely to engage in joking relationships, and engaging in joking relationships might increase one’s humor) and hence a design allowing for a causal analysis is necessary.

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Intervention programs As mentioned in the beginning, psychology is not only interested in describing, explaining and predicting behavior, but also in controlling it. Being able to change behavior is a proof for controlling it. So can we change humor? Does it make sense to try so? So far behavioral genetic studies show only a  medium size contribution of genetic factors to individual differences in sense of humor and most studies show no genetic contribution to appreciation of cartoon humor. Thus, there is plenty of room for environmental factors and for learning in the etiology of humor. Therefore knowledge of the factors that bring about humor might be used to deliberately change people’s sense of humor – if they wish. As humor is a highly regarded personal resource many might be interested in raising their humor skills. Likewise, some forms of humor are not considered to be socially appropriate, and thus there might be the need for a retraining of humor as well. Psychologists have a longstanding interest in developing and evaluating intervention programs aimed in fostering desirable and reducing undesirable behavior. How can such changes be brought about? According to Nevo, Aharonson and Klingman (2007) theoretically two opposing approaches to improving humor can be distinguished. Adopting a  psychoanalytic perspective one can predict that improvements in sense of humor will emerge indirectly as a result of therapy or maturation. A general inner change into a more healthy direction will bring about improvements in humor. An application of techniques directed at the humor itself is not needed; nor will they be of any effect. Alternatively, one can adopt a cognitive behavioral approach and predict that the direct learning of deficient behaviors, reinforcement, and cognitive restructuring will activate and improve humor. Before such a program can be recommended and routinely applied it needs to be evaluated empirically. This requires instruments that are sensitive to change (for pre-post comparisons) and the utilization of groups getting the humor training (at best over many weeks) but also control groups that merely meet as often (but do not get a humor training) or just fill in the scales in same time ­intervals. Several programs aimed at the improvement of the sense of humor exist and they are applied, for example, in hospital, educational and counseling settings (see Nevo et al. 2007). They most often are based on the assumption that humor is a set of skills those typically are taught in group-settings during approximately 5 to 10 meetings. Few such programs underwent an evaluated though, and those who did yielded mixed results (Krantzhoff and

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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 significant 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 effectiveness 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. Results 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 compared 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 theoretically founded. The program is based on the assumption that playfulness forms the basis for the sense of humor, and the rediscovery of a playful attitude 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 difficulty from simple (e.g., enjoying humor in everyday life) to difficult (e.g., laughing at yourself) to acquire. Earlier steps need to be successfully mastered 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 Sassenrath (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 increases 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

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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 sample 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 nurtured 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 transcendence, 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. Cross-national and cross-cultural perspectives Already for a long time, people characterize their own group and their neighbors 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; Nicholson 1946; Schmidt-Hidding 1963). Rarely, a country disliked by someone 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

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such scales, and many people in both countries seem to believe in those stereotypes (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. Differences 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 highly appreciated in the other. Regional, cross-national or cross-cultural studies must take a different venue then, namely to study the humor of fairly representative (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 structure of the scales is compared to see whether the scale is indeed applicable to the other country. This approach, however, has drawn extensive criticism, because raw scores obtained in different cultures, often from instruments in different languages, may not be directly comparable. Critics (e.g., Van de Vijver and Leung 1997) have pointed to a number of potential problems: Translations 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 constructs are accounts, descriptions, and analyses expressed in terms of the conceptual schemes and categories that are regarded as meaningful and appropriate 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 understandings 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-

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cise, logical, comprehensive, replicable, falsifiable, and observer independent). The validation of etic knowledge thus becomes a matter of logical and empirical analysis – in particular, the logical analysis of whether the construct meets the standards of falsifiability, comprehensiveness, and logical consistency, and then the empirical analysis of whether or not the concept has been falsified and/or replicated. Obviously humor research will profit from the acquisition of both emic and etic knowledge. Emic knowledge is essential for an intuitive and empathic understanding of the humor of a culture. Furthermore, emic knowledge is often a valuable source of inspiration for etic hypotheses. Etic knowledge is essential for cross-cultural comparison, because such comparison necessarily demands standard units and categories. Studies in folklore and anthropology, but also psychology have delivered emic and etic knowledge on humor (e.g., Apte 1985; Eysenck 1944–1945; Ferroluzzi-Eichinger 1997; Jones and Liverpool 1976; Ruch and Forabosco 1996). There is a long-standing interest in comparing humor around the world (Davies 1990, 2007; Davis 2006; Ziv 1988). Actually, the First International Conference on Humour and Laughter in Cardiff, Wales, already had a symposium on cross-cultural aspects (see Chapman and Foot 1977). However, most of the research done involved emic description of national styles of humor, or comparing jokes found in folklore archives of different parts of the world. So far no comprehensive research program compared humor as an individual difference variable across several countries simultaneously. Ideally, the factor structure of a humor instrument would be examined for being universal across countries or not. Then means of the items that are comparable across countries would be used to derive mean profiles for the countries involved in the study. The differences in mean levels of humor then can be compared to other peculiarities of the country (again at the mean level), e.g., Hofstede’s (2001) dimensions of culture, mean level of happiness (Diener and Suh 2000), personality dimensions (McCrae and Allik 2002), values (Schwartz 1992), or other information about the countries involved. For example, countries that are more conservative should show higher appreciation of incongruity-resolution humor; the countries’ permissiveness might show a relationship with appreciation of sexual humor; or the level of conflict might relate to the use of humor as a coping mechanism. Not only the factor structure of humor tests might be compared across countries, also the typical personality correlates. For example, one might study whether the same personality traits that predict appreciation of sexual humor in Australia also are predictive in Scotland?

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Indices describing differences among cultures exist. For example, Hofstede (2001) provided scores for five dimensions of culture: power distance (acceptance of status differences), uncertainty avoidance (preference for rules and routines to reduce stress), individualism (emphasis of self over family or group), masculinity (egoistic vs. social work goals), and long-term orientation (orientation towards future rewards). As cultures with high power distance appear to have members who are serious, traditional, task-minded workers, this dimension might be predictive of lower scores in some components of sense of humor. A small-scale cross-cultural project was conducted for humor appreciation using the 3 WD humor test (Ruch 1992). The jokes and cartoons of the 3 WD were translated into different languages and typically administered to undergraduate student samples. Pair-wise comparisons between German data and the data from other countries (e.g., Austria, Canada, England, Germany, France, Italy, Israel Turkey, and USA) were undertaken and the factor structure turned out to be highly comparable (see Ruch, Accoce, Ott, and Bariaud 1991; Ruch and Forabosco 1996; Ruch and Hehl 2007). Likewise, funniness of nonsense is predicted by sensation seeking in Italy and Spain as it was in Germany, and the French conservatives enjoyed incongruity-resolution humor just like their German (and Italian, Turkish etc.) counterparts did (Carreteros-Dios and Ruch in press; Ruch et al. 1991; Ruch and Forabosco 1996). Comparison of means sometimes yielded surprising results; e.g., German students did appreciate nonsense humor more than the English sample did (although nonsense humor historically emerged in England first). This first pilot study was more aimed at estimating whether the factor structure would be comparable across countries and it is. Future studies should do a simultaneous comparison of the mean levels and compare those scores to other indices of the countries. More recently, the fear of being laughed at was studied in different countries (Proyer et al. 2005). It turned out that this fear existed in each of the countries studied. Also the instrument (i.e., the GELOPH; Ruch and Proyer 2008a; Ruch and Proyer 2008b; Ruch and Titze 1998) appeared to be reliable irrespective of cultural variations. As there were systematic differences between the countries studied the project was subsequently expanded to include app. 80 nations filling in translations of the instrument into about 40 languages. Furthermore, also different scales of sense of humor or humor styles (e.g., CHS, GELOPH, SHRQ, MSHS, HBQD, STCI-T) have been translated into other languages for use in research projects, and some byproducts of the

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adaptation allow being interpreted. Typically, the factor structure, internal consistency and main correlates of those questionnaires were retained (e.g., Martin 1996; Chen and Martin 2007; Kazarian and Martin 2006; Thorson, Brdar, and Powell 1997), suggesting that also the questionnaire measures of humor may be comparable across nations. It might be of interest to do a more comprehensive comparison of humor across countries. However, studies of personality have shown that country does not account for more than 10 % of the variance in test scores; i.e. typically there is much more variation within countries than between them. 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 effort 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 differences 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 laughter 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 influence 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,

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familial and peer influences determine what we consider to be funny. This is noteworthy, as a finding of no genetic basis for a personality trait is the rare exception these days. Furthermore, the contents of humor (aggression, sex) and major predictors of humor appreciation (extraversion, conservatism, ­sensation seeking) are known to have a genetic basis. However, it would be premature to conclude that humor appreciation is exclusively determined by environmental factors. We need further studies based on psychometrically sound tests of humor appreciation that utilize larger samples and more comprehensive humor scales. The study by Cherkas et al. (2000), for example, used only five cartoons. This is exactly the number of cartoons that seems to be affected by a “warm-up-effect”, contains state variance, and therefore are excluded from scoring in tests of humor appreciation (Ruch 1992). In a twin study of humor appreciation Weber, Ruch, Riemann, Spinath, and Angleitner (2008) administered the 3WD test to 135 monozygotic (MZ) and 60 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. The typical pattern emerged for the regular scores for funniness of nonsense and of sexual humor: there were contributions of shared and non-shared environment but no genetic effect. However, the separation of content and structure of funniness of sexual humor did yield a small genetic effect for appreciation of sexual content in humor. Questionnaire studies of the frequency with which children use specific humor behaviors with their mothers, siblings, and friends (Manke 2007) and of a sense of humor rating (Loehlin and Nichols 1976) yield familiar results. There is a genetic influence of a moderate size and an effect of unique environment but no effect of shared (familial) environment. Non-adopted siblings were more similar in their humor use than adopted siblings (Manke 2007) and monozygotic twins rated their sense of humor more similar than dizygotic twins did. The hereditability estimate was lower than for other personality traits but this might be due to the lower reliability of the scales. However, a more recent study of humor as character strength yielded no genetic effect (Steger, Hicks, Kashdan, Krueger, and Bouchard 2007). No study exists for humor production or wit, or for more sophisticated and less behavioral forms of humor (e.g., a humorous outlook on life, not taking oneself too seriously, or what has been called philosophical humor). These more elusive forms of humor were often considered a to be sign of human maturity, an attitude akin to wisdom, and developed on prior suffering, pain, and exposure to an imperfect world and insight into the human nature. This would obviously allow expecting (non-shared) environmental effects. In any case, the etiology of the sense of humor will have to take both genetic and environmental factors into account.

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If we find that the affect-based and behavioral forms (e.g., laughter, cheerfulness, 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). Evolution of humor and laughter Evolutionary psychology asks the question of how traits have evolved over species. Psychologists and ethologists asked the question of what is the reproductive significance of humor? Knowing the origins of humor and laughter would help understanding their present status; i.e., facilitate deriving hypotheses about people’s current behavior and make predictions in current studies more successful. However, vice versa, speculation about evolutionary 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 mostly 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 expressions, the status of the emotion of amusement (or mirth, hilarity) is less clear. Van Hoof (1972) demonstrated that smiling and laughter have a different phylogenetic development. However, Darwin proposed that laughter preceded smiling. While it seems likely that all humans are capable of the perception 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

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humor and nonsense humor at least in several Western cultures. However, the Cherkas et al. (2000) twin study of Gary Larson humor (a good marker of nonsense humor) does not yield any genetic effect and also the study by Wilson et al. (1977) seems to suggest only the involvement of environmental ­factors. Surely, jokes and cartoons do not exist long enough to be of evolutionary relevance, but it is reasonable to assume that humans were able to appreciate humor (in whatever precursor) long before jokes and cartoons emerged. Therefore, it seems to make sense that humor appreciation (as a form of aesthetic experience) was included in speculations about evolutionary origins as well. Definitely, humor creation, or wit, would be a good candidate for evolutionary speculation, but no genetic study has been conducted yet and we know less about production of humor than about appreciation of humor. Wit and appreciation of nonsense humor are indeed correlated to intelligence, which may be seen as an indicator of fitness. The use of humor and the sense of humor (as assessed by self-reports) have been demonstrated to have some genetic basis. Studies of humor in apes show reactions that are very similar to laughter and smiling in humans (Darwin 1872; van Hoof 1972). Apes do not only show smiling and laughter and positive emotion in response to tickling and social play (McGhee 1979), they also seem to be able to recognize incongruities when using objects (Gamble 2001). Recently, it has been discovered that rats show play- and tickle-induced ultrasonic vocational patterns inaudible for humans that resembles primitive human laughter neurally and that are functionally homologous (Panksepp 2007; Panksepp and Burgdorf 2003). In humans, laughter emerges early in life. Not only do infants begin to laugh in response to social stimuli as early as at the age of about four month (Sroufe and Waters 1976), but also children born blind and deaf laugh normally (Goodenough 1932). As shown by gelastic epilepsy in newborns, mechanisms of laughter seem to be present at birth already (Sher and Brown 1976). Such evidence points towards the evolutionary basis of laughter and humor. However, the question is, why human beings developed their ability to humor. What was the reproductive significance of humor, amusement and laughter? Several ideas about their adaptive value have been proposed (for reviews, see Caron 2002; Gervais and Wilson 2005; Jung 2003; Vaid 1999). While some were more particularistic and restricted in scope, others proposed unitary explanation of the function of humor that would explain laughter at tickling and other forms of social play, at pratfalls and other forms

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of physical humor, and at verbal and nonverbal witticisms (Alexander 1986, Weisfeld 1993). For example, humor has been seen as a friend or foe system (Hewitt 2002), or laughter as an aggressive activity of several group members with which they threaten a common enemy (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989). The evolutionary origins of humor and laughter have been explained with ‘the inner eye theory of laughter’ (Jung 2003), the mind reading hypothesis (Howe 2002) or as evolved as a mode of communication distinct from the serious mode (Mulkay 1988). Humor is seen as ‘social stimulation’ (Weisfeld 1993, 2006), as a ‘status manipulation’ (Alexander 1986) or a disabling mechanism (Chafe 1987, 2007). Other approaches are the false alarm theory (Ramachandran 1998), a  rediscovery of Hayworth (1928), or the ‘selfish-gene’ account of smiling and laughter (Owren and Bachorowski 2001). Finally, humor is seen as a vocal grooming (Dunbar 1996), a ‘fitness indicator’ signaling ‘good genes’ (Miller 2000), and as sexually specifically selected based on male’s and female’s different preferences during humorous interaction (Bressler, Martin and Balshine 2006). Gervais and Wilson (2005) present an integrative approach stretching the significance of the distinction between Duchenne and non-Duchenne laughter for the explanation of the evolutionary origins of laughter and humor. 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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Stolz, Heidi, Sandra Rusch 2008 Evaluation of a program aimed at improving the sense of humor. Paper delivered in the Personality and Assessment Research Colloquium, University of Zurich. Suls, Jerry M. 1972 A two-stage model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons. In: Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee (eds.), 81–100. 1977 Cognitive and disparagement theories of humor: A theoretical and empirical synthesis. In: Anthony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot (eds.), 41–45. 1983 Cognitive processes in humor appreciation. In: Paul E. McGhee and Jeffrey H. Goldstein (eds.), 39–57. Svebak, Sven 1974 A theory of sense of humor. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 15: 99–107. Svebak, Sven, and Michael J. Apter 1987 Laughter: An empirical test of some reversal theory hypotheses. Scandi­navian Journal of Psychology 28: 189–198. Szameitat, Diana P. 2007 Perzeption und akustische Eigenschaften von Emotionen in mensch­ lichem Lachen. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tübingen, Tübingen. Titze, Michael 1996 The Pinocchio Complex: Overcoming the fear of laughter. Humor & Health Journal 5: 1–11. In press Gelotophobia:The fear of being laughed at. In Willibald Ruch (ed). Thompson, Richard, Willibald Ruch, and Ruediger U. Hasenoehrl 2004 Enhanced cognitive performance and cheerful mood by standardized extracts of Piper methysticum (Kava-kava). Human psychopharmacology: clinical and experimental 19 (4): 243–250. Thorson, James A., Ingrid Brdar, and Falvey C. Powell 1997 Factor-analytic study of humor in Croatia and USA. Psychological Reports 81: 971–977. Thorson, James A., and Falvey C. Powell 1993 Development and validation of a  multidimensional sense of humor scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology 49: 13–23. Tümkaya, Songül 2007 Burnout and humor relationship among university lecturers. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 20 (1): 73–92. Uekermann, Jennifer, Shelley Channon, and Irene Daum 2007 Towards a  cognitive and social neuroscience of humour processing. Social Cognition 25 (3): 428–447.

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A primer for the linguistics of humor Salvatore Attardo Introduction This paper seeks to introduce the field of the linguistics of humor for the nonspecialist. It assumes a certain degree of familiarity with linguistic terminology, but should be readable by the general educated public. Conversely, it assumes no prior familiarity with humor research, besides what can be gathered 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 overlooked, 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 linguistically-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, especially 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 I have dedicated a preponderant part of Attardo (1994) to the review of the literature of the linguistics of humor, so this section will consist largely of a summary of the central issues that I found in the field, but with two advantages over the 1994 text: over ten years of hindsight and the fact that I will be able to assume that the reader can check many details in the 1994 text. A good overview of humor research, overlooked in 1994, is Ceccarelli (1988), which is well worth careful study.

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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 historical linguists saw themselves as working in the historical sciences. Nonetheless, philosophers and literary theorists deal with humor and in doing so deal with its linguistic aspects. For example, Aristotle, in the Rhetorics, anticipates the incongruity theories in a discussion of metaphors and puns (Attardo 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 extensive treatment of humor, we can say that there is a coherent body of thinking 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, nothing 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 poetics. In this essay he emphasizes the surprise aspect of humor, somewhat neglected 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

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(1649) and of course later on in Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Renaissance humor theory is very much concerned with the discussion of the literary character of humor, especially in plays. On the Renaissance theories of humor, see also Ménager (1995), as well as the relevant passages of Bremmer and Roodenburg (1997) and Minois (2000). After the Renaissance, we witness a specialization of humor theories: we begin to see psychological, philosophical, etc. theories of humor, rather than “global” theories such as those of the classics. Still, linguistics is not a player in the field (witness the monumental – and linguistics-free – collection on French humor in the 18th century in Andries (ed.) 2000). However, the three great families of theories of humor are forming, and linguistics will borrow heavily from them. There are many classifications of the theories of humor. We will adopt Raskin’s (1985: 31–36) tripartite classification into incongruity theories, hostility theories and release theories. There are many synonyms for these classifications, as per a chart in Attardo (1994: 47), here reproduced: Incongruity

Hostility

Release

Contrast Incongruity/resolution

Aggression Superiority Triumph Derision Disparagement

Sublimation Liberation Economy

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, Shopenhauer’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 target. Release theories claim that humor “releases” some form of psychic energy 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

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completely discredited. On the liberating aspects of humor, see Fry (1963) and Mindess (1971). Freud’s theory deserves special mention because he paid a lot of attention to the linguistic mechanisms of humor: the first part of his book on humor is dedicated to these mechanisms. However, subsequent research has shown that none of the mechanisms located by Freud were unique to humor, but that in fact he had rediscovered some of the mechanisms present in any linguistic form (Attardo 1994: 55). Freud distinguishes between innocent and tendentious jokes (i.e., jokes that do not show aggressive aspects and those that do, respectively), a distinction that the aggression theories seek to undermine. Significantly, Freud’s theory falls under the release theories (the “economy of psychic energy” theory) but has been shown to be equivalent to an incongruity theory (Attardo 1994: 56). The significance of this fact lies in the fact that Freud is the unacknowledged source of some of the structuralist accounts, and specifically of Greimas’s isotopy model (see below). An interesting source on Freud and on his German precursors, is Hill (1993). On German humor research, see also Kotthoff (1996), Müller (2003a, 2003b, 2003c), and references therein. Because the incongruity theories are essentialist (i.e., the attempt to pinpoint what makes humor funny), linguistics has tended to side (largely unwittingly) with this kind of theory. However linguists have show some interest for hostility theories (see for example the concept of “target” in the GTVH, below) and liberation theories. For example, the idea of defunctionalization (Guiraud 1976) of language in puns fits in very nicely with the liberation approach, since it frees the speaker from the constraints of the linguistic code. Similarly, the idea of retractability in discourse of humor and irony frees the speaker from the consequences of his/her actions. These connections with humor theory have not been pursued in any systematic fashion. Other less common theories include attempts to see an evolutionary advantage to humor. The most developed linguistic approach along these lines is Chafe’s (1987) disabling theory. He sees humor as evolutionarily advantageous in disabling the speaker when he/she begins to pursue lines of thought that lead to absurdities, contradictions, etc. The disabling theory is expanded in a full-fledged theory of humor and laughter in Chafe (2007), see below. On the evolutionary theories of humor, including Chafe’s, see Vaid (1999, 2002) and Porteous (1988). A different, non-linguistically aware, approach is to be found in Gervais and Wilson (2005). Developmental studies (e.g., Johnson and Mervis 1997) with an eye to linguistic development are related, but will not be considered in this review.

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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, homography, 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 language, 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 unconcerned by the surface structure of the forms he/she is uttering. –– Puns involve the presence of (minimally) two senses, but need not involve 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 morphological, 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 opposed 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

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meanings/interpretations. Hence puns exist only as a byproduct of disambiguation and therefore only in context. –– Once two meanings have been brought together, the two senses may either coexist, or one of the two may win out. There are attested cases in which the meaning accessed first subsists, and cases in which the meaning accessed second subsists. –– The (usually lexical) unit that allows the two senses to coexist is called a connector, while the unit that forces the presence of the second sense is called a disjunctor. Connector and disjunctor may be distinct (i.e., be manifested in the text as two separate entities) or they may be non-distinct (i.e., be manifested as one entity). –– The incongruity aspect of puns is fairly obvious (a string having two incompatible senses). In Attardo (1994: ch. 4), I proposed the controversial hypothesis that the resolution aspect of the humor of puns was provided by a folk-theory of language as a motivated sign (in which sounds correspond to meaning by some reason). In other words, speakers assume that same (or similar) sounds should carry the same meanings and that therefore, if two strings sound the same, it is legitimate to bring together their two meanings, as puns do. Strangely, no challenge of this claim has been advanced, at least in print. Recent work on puns include Hempelmann (2003; 2004), which consists of an application of optimality theory to the question of phonetic distance and Guidi’s (Forth) which applies the same methodology across language families and argues for the universality of the phenomena involved. Kawahara and Shinohara (2007) find similar results in Japanese. Ritchie (2004) has some discussion of pun taxonomy which is of interest. Lippman and Dunn (2000), Lippman et al. (2001; 2002), and Lippman and Tragesser (2005) show that contextual relevance enhances the perception of humorousness in puns. 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 incongruity-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

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–– narrative functions, introduced into humor research by Violette Morin, but which originated with Propp’s analysis of Russian fairy tales. The isotopy–disjunction model (IDM) conceptualizes humor as a disjunction (switch, passage) from one isotopy (sense) to another. As we can see, it is essentially a rewording of the incongruity model into a more specific linguistic terminology. Unfortunately, the concept of isotopy proved both very popular but also just as hard to pinpoint. In Attardo (1994), a long section details the various changes in definition, which eventually led to the conclusion that an isotopy is essentially a sense or an interpretation of a text. These problems considerably cast doubt on the approach, since little is gained by a mere terminological substitution. The analysis in narrative functions raised similarly interesting prospects only to result in disappointing conclusions, once it was shown that the threepart analysis proposed by Morin was in fact common to all narratives, and therefore had little specific interest for the study of humor. Nonetheless, the IDM remains significant because it introduced the distinction between disjunctor and connector and opened the way to the possibility of investigating their positions within the text. The results showed that most disjunctors occur in the final part of the text (the last phrase of the last sentence) and that those that do not are predominantly followed by semantically empty material. These studies, summed up in Attardo (1994), were based on large corpora of jokes (in one case, 2000 texts). Recent work (Bucaria 2004) has provided an interesting addition to the typology of connector/disjunctor configurations. Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH) Raskin’s (1985) Semantic-Script Theory of Humor (SSTH) was a radical departure from the traditionally taxonomic approach of most linguistic studies of puns and humor. It argued that the central aspect of humor was semantic/ pragmatic and moreover presented an articulated theory of semantics to implement this claim. Raskin’s theory of semantics is based on scripts (a.k.a., frames) along the lines of, but with significant differences (in degree of formalization) from, the Schank and Abelson (1977), Minsky (1981), Fillmore (1985) approach later to be co-opted by cognitive linguistics in the nineties. Significantly, Raskin claimed that no operational boundary could be identified between the strictly semantic (lexical) and the pragmatic (encyclopedic) information, thus pre-empting claims that the SSTH was a purely semantic

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theory. The SSTH does in fact incorporate a very significant pragmatic component, 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 leading psychological model of humor). Under this view (Attardo 1997), the opposition requirement is essentially a case of incongruity, but with better formalization 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. General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) In 1991, Attardo and Raskin presented a revision/extension of the SSTH, under the name of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). The GTVH differs from the SSTH in that it has six knowledge resources (KRs), as follows: 1. SO: the Script Opposition of the SSTH (cf, also Attardo 1997); 2. Logical Mechanism (LM): corresponds to the resolution phase of the incongruity/resolution models, essentially it is the mechanism whereby the incongruity of the SO is playfully and/or partially explained away (cf. Attardo et al. 2002.); 3. Situation (SI): refers to the “props” of the joke, the textual materials evoked by the scripts of the joke that are not funny (so, in a joke about a dog in a pub, the background knowledge about pubs, such that they serve beer, etc. is part of the SI); 4. Target (TA): what is known as the butt of the joke; 5. Narrative Strategy (NS): the “genre” of the joke, such as riddle, 1–2-3 structure, question and answer, etc.; 6. Language (LA): the actual lexical, syntactic, phonological, etc. choices at the linguistic level that instantiate all the other choices.

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As the description of the model implies, a strong hierarchical dependence across the KRs was postulated and justified at length in Attardo and Raskin (1991). This hierarchy, which matches the order of presentation above, was empirically tested and found to be fundamentally correct in Ruch et al. (1993). Let us analyze a sample joke, to exemplify: (1) What do you get when you cross a mafioso with a postmodern theorist? 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 overlap 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 notoriously 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” situation, 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. Longer humorous texts The GTVH broadened the SSTH to include all linguistic levels, including an interest for social and narratological issues absent in the SSTH. However, 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 research 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.

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Needless to say, because of space constraints, it is impossible to presented in detail the approach, so I will limit myself to stating the main tenets of the approach, leaving the interested reader to the original source for justification, references, examples, and the likes. In particular, I  will say nothing about the significant effort expended in aligning the theory with research in the psycholinguistics of text processing. Thus, for example, the theory assumes that the reader of a text will elaborate a Text World Representation (similar to a mental space or a possible world) which will include and organize all the information about the events in the text and serve as a starting point for inferences, bridgings, and the likes. The main aspects of the application of the GTVH to longer texts are: –– the analysis of the text as a vector, with each humorous instance coded as per the GTVH; –– the distinction between jab lines and punch lines; –– the importance accorded to the relative distribution of the lines in the text; –– a taxonomy and analysis of humorous plots 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 semantically 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 examples, 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 emeralds, 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.

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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 affords 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. The connections among lines lead to the identification of thematic or formal connections among the lines. For example, all lines targeting a given individual are obviously related. These related lines are said to form a strand. Strands may be based on the contents of any of the six KRs and/or combinations thereof. This may give rise to subtle and interesting strands. For example, a strand that shares a targeted individual (e.g., Lord Arthur Savile) and a logical mechanism (such as reasoning from false premises) is found in Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime. It is symptomatic of Lord Arthur Savile’s character to be associated frequently with improper reasoning. Strands may have connections along the same lines with other strands. A strand of strands is called a stack. These are common in large corpora (e.g., all the episodes of a sitcom). As far as the patterns of occurrence of the lines, some interesting configurations have begun to emerge. The two most obvious ones have been named, somewhat colorfully, bridges and combs. A bridge is the occurrence of two related lines far from each other. A comb is the occurrence of several lines in close proximity. Perhaps more significantly, the overall distribution of the lines, regardless of strands, in the text has also begun to be available for investigation. Here we face the null hypothesis that the distribution of the lines is random, and a next-to-null, that it is uniform. If the occurrence of the humor in the text is random, there should be no reason for the jab/punch lines to cluster together, beyond what a random distribution of the lines would predict. If the occurrence of the humor were uniform, then all sections of the text should have the same amount of humor. This latter distribution, however strange it may seem, actually is close to occurring in an obscure picaresque text, by Peacham, analyzed in Attardo (2001a). As far as Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime goes, the

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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 denied (Palmer 1987). According to Palmer, all humorous stories are essentially serious plots, with humor attached to it. This is indeed the case in many instances, 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 “Serious Plot, with jab lines” There are however, cases of genuinely humorous plots. These include: –– Humorous plot, with punch line 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 reinterpretation 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). –– Humorous plot, with metanarrative disruption This is a text that contains one or more disruptions of the narrative conventions of its genre and these disruptions have a humorous nature (mere disruption 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). –– Humorous plot, with humorous central complication This is the most interesting category of humorous plots. It consists of texts in which the central complication of the story is itself humorous. An example is Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, another better know is Eugène Labiche’s Un cha-

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peau de paille d’italie. Unfortunately, this last category is problematic, due to the lack of formal definition of “central complication” of the plot. Intuitively, we know that each story that is not a picaresque story has a central defining event in the plot (Mme. Bovary’s adultery, Raskolnikoff’s homicide, Lolita’s seduction, etc.) that “sets the wheels in motion.” In Campbell’s hero narrative, it is the departure of the hero. In Propp’s folktales it is both a departure and the violation of the interdiction to the hero (functions 1–3). At this point, it is impossible to determine in a non-intuitive fashion what the central narrative complication of a narrative happens to be. Incidentally, it may be significant to correct a misapprehension of the claim made in Attardo (2001a). No claim is made that the above are all the possible cases of humorous plots. Merely that they exist, contra Palmer’s claim of nonexistence. Thus Asimakoulas and Vandaele’s (2002: 433) claim that “mixed” narratives, such as Free Indirect Discourse, somehow refute the examples above seems strangely misguided: at best, humorous FID would simply add another category to the list above, thus strengthening the claim in the text. 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 conscious of the fact that he had no right to marry until he had committed the murder.  (Attardo 2001a: 177)

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His reasoning goes as follows: since he believes Podgers’s prediction that he will commit a murder and if he committed a murder his wife would be involved in the negative attention, he concludes that he must commit it before the marriage. Hence, he sets out to commit a crime out of his sense of duty to his fiancée. This is the central narrative complication of Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime: the entire text depends on this fact for its development and it is itself humorous (the self-reflexiveness of the forecast triggers several contradictions: for example, if Podgers, the cheiromantist, foretells his own death, why does he not decline to alert Lord Savile to this fact, thereby saving himself?) This jab line is driven home by a comb-strand which consists of 15 jab lines which share the same SO. Remarkably, all this happens in a 372 words text passage; this gives us a ratio of slightly over one jab per 25 words of text. A GTVH analysis of the line would include: SO = normal/abnormal, murder/no murder, duty/no duty LM = reasoning from false premises, TA = Lord Savile SI = the context of the story NS = narrative LA = the linguistic choices of the text, irrelevant to the humor, in this case A few words of explanation may be in order: the SO include a high-level, very abstract SO (normal/abnormal), which is instantiated in the text in the lowlevel (concrete) SO duty/no duty and murder/no murder (with the slight complication that duty implies murder). The LM is fairly self-explanatory: it does indeed follow that if one is honor-bound to performing some sort of duty before marrying one’s fiancée one should postpone one’s marriage until such time as the duty has been discharged. However, the premise, that if one fate is to murder someone, one should do so, is absurd (murder is not a duty). That the TA is Lord Savile seems obvious. The SI does not seem to have special identifying features, besides what is known from the text. The NS is straightforward narration and the LA simply whatever verbal choices the author selected. Humor in context: discursive approaches to humor 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

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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 concerns, 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 As we saw, the SSTH incorporates a pragmatic aspect both in its “semantics” (it claims that the two cannot be separated) and in a more direct way, by claiming that humor violates Grice’s “cooperative principle” (CP; Grice 1989). While some have objected to the characterization of humor as a “violation,” by and large, the consensus is that this position is correct. I have reviewed the literature on this subject in Attardo (1994, ch. 9, 1996). Raskin (1985), in a much-quoted passage, goes so far as providing a set of maxims for “joke telling.” However, few readers seem to have noticed that Raskin’s discussion actually dismissed the joke telling maxims as trivial. Attardo (1990, 1993) has argued that the violation of the CP is actual and not pretended or mentioned, as some have claimed. The most significant conclusions reached in this area seem to be that a) humor is non-cooperative, although b) this violation of the CP may be used for communicative purposes. Recently, some criticisms of the SSTH have been voiced within the Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986) framework claiming that no semantics of humor is necessary and that a purely pragmatic approach, based on relevance theory is sufficient but no alternative account of humor has emerged from this discussion (see Yus Ramos 2003, for a review). Further discussion of relevance-theoretic approaches to humor will be found below. Discourse analysis of humor An audience-side theory of humor (or of humor performance, in the Saussurian sense, not limited to the “stage” sense of performance) needs to be

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grounded in the social, anthropological, interactional, etc., determinants of action that the idealization of performance into competence removed. To put it differently, we need to ask ourselves what is the repertoire of choices that Ss have and what significance is attached to each of them (and/or its absence). For example, laughter after a  joke expresses, on H’s part, some degree of agreement with S that the occasion was appropriate for joking (among other things, of course). Withholding laughter may therefore be seen as rejection of this implicit claim and therefore as disapproving (once more, among other options which include failure of noticing and/or understanding the humor). Interestingly, generalizations over classes of behavior (cf. “repertoire”) introduce an aspect of competence in the heart of performance. This is an interesting methodological issue which would take us too far afield, but see Attardo (2008). There are now several surveys of the discourse analysis of humor: Norrick (1993: 139–164), Attardo (1994: 293–331, 2001a: 61–69), Kotthoff (1996) and several papers in a special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics (2003) on humor. Work in the discourse analysis of humor is characterized by a focus on actual, naturalistic data, in which the research consists in analyzing a transcription of a recording of the data. Early work in discourse analysis/conversation analysis focused on laughter (see Attardo [1994: ch. 10] for a review of the scholarship, and now Chafe [2007] and Trouvain and Campbell (eds.) [2007]) and on an analysis of humor as part of an adjacency pair with laughter: “joking and laughter are linked as two parts of an adjacency pair” (Norrick 1993: 23). Norrick makes a similar argument in the context of puns: “punning (…) always represents a reaction to a previous turn (…)” (65). Antonopoulou and Sifianou (2004) have presented counterexamples of the latter claim. Partington (2006) concludes that his data refute the claim of disruptiveness. We know that laughter does not always follow jokes: laughter far from being exclusively a reaction to humor is used by speakers to signal their humorous intention (which obviously implies that laughter is not exclusively a reaction to some stimulus). For example, Jefferson (1979) is focused on how speakers may “invite” laughter from the hearer, using a “post-utterance completion laugh particle” or, in other words, laughter at the end of what they say. By showing that laughter is an appropriate response to what he/she has just said, the speaker implicitly validates that response. Another technique involves “within speech laughter,” which is the delivery of an utterance interspersed with laughter. Recently, these results have come under criticism, witness the claim that “most laughter is not a response to jokes or other formal

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attempts at humor” (Provine 2000: 42) but his objections, based on an exclusive 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 nonhumorous 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 laughter: 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 summaries of the functions documented by the research can be found in the surveys 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 exceptions (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 research, 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 Attardo (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 support 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.

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Much humor is co-constructed (i.e., both participants jointly produce and elaborate the joking exchange), as had already been pointed out in Davies (1984), although of course not all humor is co-constructed, and in fact some humor is aggressive and disruptive (Priego-Valverde 2003), and hence very much of a single-player production, as well as the fact that some humor fails (hence a fortiori it is not taken up by its hearer/audience), cf. Hay (1996) and work in progress by Nancy Bell. Along the same lines, much humor, presumably among friends and in other intimate contexts, takes the form of elaborate multi-turn sequences in which the speakers play upon one-anothers’ jokes to realize long stretches of humorous conversation. However, once more, much humor also consists of single-turn humorous utterances that are not taken up or even acknowledged by the audience. Eisterhold et al. (2006) have shown that this fact is usefully seen in the context of a wider theory of pragmatics and that presumably it is the different degrees of intimacy in the situations that account, at least in part, for the differences between long and short stretches of humor. One may wonder if the mere existence of long stretches of humorous banter do not falsify the claim that there exists a “principle of least disruption” (Eisterhold et al. 2006) which enjoins the speakers to return to as serious mode as soon as possible. This is not the case, as can be seen by the requirement that long sequences of humor be continuously signaled as such (hence underscoring the marked nature of the humorous sequences). For all the work on the functions of humor, an important conclusion that has been reached (see e.g., Holmes 2000) concerns the multifunctionality and indeterminate nature of humor and irony. Incidentally, this should bring pause to those focus on the positive aspects of humor: what is indeterminate will be inevitably interpreted differently by various speakers. The relationship between humor and politeness is also a significant issue. Holmes (2000) Holmes et al. (2001), for example, find that humor is used for politeness (cf. the mediation function of humor). Tannen (1984) introduced the idea that speakers’ had different “styles” of humor which affected the way their contribution to the conversation was weighed, i.e., the way their persona was perceived. This idea was further expanded to include “family” styles (Everts 2003). One can expand this line of thinking to any sorts of situation where speakers know one another (i.e., interact repeatedly enough to establish a  persona), including most notably workplace situations (Holmes 1998, 2000, 2006, Holmes et al. 2001, Holmes and Marra 2002). This is what Mullany (2004) does, using the “community of practice” approach.

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Attention to the joke-situation A recent development of the discourse analysis of humor is the emphasis on the complete situation of the humorous event. A joke occurs in context, be it impoverished, as when a canned joke is collected in an anthology of jokes, or as rich as an ongoing conversation among people with a shared history. The attention to the situation in which humor occurs has manifested itself primarily in studies that focus on the functions of humor (see above), and in studies that consider the reactions of the audience. One particular kind of reaction is humor support, mentioned above, but several studies have shown a variety of reactions. Already Drew (1987) had emphasized that often speakers react seriously (what he called “po-faced”) to humorous turns. Since his corpus consisted of teases, one could have surmised that this kind of reaction was peculiar to this particular humorous genre. On the contrary, studies by Hay (1994) on playful insults and by Gibbs (2000), Kotthoff (2003), and Eisterhold et al. (2006) on irony, show significant percentages of speakers reacting seriously to a  humorous turn. Attardo (2001b) has proposed the term “mode adoption” for the choice to respond with humor to humor, irony to irony, etc. It is a  matter of contention exactly how frequent mode adoption is: Gibbs’s data show a relatively high percentage, whereas Eisterhold’s show strikingly low levels. It is probable that contextual factors such as familiarity and aggression act as determinants. Haakana (2002 and references therein), Vettin and Todt (2004) show that laughter is most frequently not followed by laughter, i.e., that speakers “mostly laugh alone” (incidentally further proof that laughter is not necessarily the second element of an adjacency pair laughable-­laughter). Sociolinguistics of humor As Gasquet-Cyrus (2004) rightly argues, the relationship between sociolinguistics and humor research can be characterized as “having mutually missed the boat.” It is only very recently that research aware of the advances of humor research has begun to appear and that competence (in the Chomskian sense) theorists have begun to take notice of ethnomethodological and sociolinguistic work. In fact, one could argue that before Norrick (1993) and Attardo (1994: ch. 10) the interplay had been virtually nonexistent (with the obvious exceptions of anthropological work, e.g., Basso 1979, Beeman 1981a,

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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 results 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 investigated 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. Issues in the field 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;

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­ 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 intentional 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 preponderant “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 linguistics, 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 offender, Ross (1998), which however is targeted at high school students.

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Irony It is impossible to give a  summary of all the theories of irony that have been proposed. Such surveys can be found in various articles, such as Giora (1998), Haiman (1998 ch. 1–3), Attardo (2000a, 2000b, 2001b, 2002a), Utsumi (2000), Gibbs and Colston (eds., 2007)and in many of the current contributions to the field. It is more interesting to try to disentangle some trends in the research and to briefly address the thorny issue of the connections between humor and irony. Irony is commonly analyzed as a sextuple, S, H, C, u, p, p’ (Speaker, Hearer, Context, utterance, proposition conveyed by u, and another proposition p’ ≠ p). A central point of contention has been the issue surrounding the processing of irony. Traditionally, the understanding of irony has been seen as a two stage process, in which the “literal” sense of the utterance is “discarded” in favor of a second (often opposed) implied meaning, namely the ironical meaning. As the scare quotes in the previous sentence reveal, debate has surrounded both the existence and nature of a “literal” meaning and its fate: is it abandoned or retained for contrast with the second meaning retrieved? The latter solution is advocated by several recent works, e.g., Giora (2003). Sperber and Wilson (1981) and Gibbs (1994) have presented, the former authors in the context of pragmatics, the latter in the context of psycholinguistic studies, one stage approaches, which deny that a literal meaning is addressed first and successively replaced. Gibbs has supported this claim with experiments that purport to show that speakers do not process irony slower than literal sentences, which we would expect them to do if the two stage process were correct. However, recent studies have contradicted Gibbs’s results (e.g., ­McDonald 1992; ­McDonald and Pearce 1996; Giora 1997; Giora and Fein 1999; Dews and Winner 1999; Schwoebel et al. 2000) and two stage theories have appeared in the Relevance Theoretic camp and the original mention theory of irony has been reinterpreted as being compatible with two stages approaches (see Yus 2003, for discussion). The idea that irony is echoic, which is part of the Sperber and Wilson account, has been challenged by data in Partington (2006). A second issue revolves around the idea of “contrast” or “incongruity” between the actual situation and the expectations and/or utterance of S. For example, Colston and O’Brien (2000: 1563) identify as the central component of irony contrast between the “literal” and the figurative meaning, or “between assertion and reality.” Significantly, they use the general term “incongruity” to cover all the various formulations which they gather under the “contrast” heading “incongruity between a remark’s assertion and real-

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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 ironical 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, Shelley 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. Computational and formal approaches to humor The following is a cursory treatment, given Hempelmann (this volume). In Raskin and Attardo (1994), we surveyed the (then nearly non-existent) field of the computational treatment of humor, only to see it blossom a few years later (cf. Hulstijn and Nijholt 1996). For a  more recent survey, see

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Ritchie (2001). First, a number of researchers started implementing programs that generated specific subsets of types of jokes: Lessard and Levinson in a series of papers (1992, 1993, 1995, 1997, forth.) focused on riddles and other genres of humor: e.g., Tom Swifties, as did Binsted and Ritchie (1994, 1997, 2001) whose JAPE program generates riddles, and Shelley et al. 1996, whose program generates humorous analogies. These programs are based on more-or-less blind combinatories of elements. While the authors themselves have been guarded about the evaluation of the degree of creativity and “intelligence” of their programs, speculation has been rampant e.g., Boden (1998), in part fueled by studies such as Binsted et al. (1997) which in comparing the level of appreciation of computer-generated and human-generated riddles seems to imply that the computer program is as creative as the humans, while JAPE’s output is screened by humans and only the best results of what is essentially a blind combinatorial process are then compared to human output. This is the biggest problem that most of these studies share: they produce toy systems, i.e., limited programs that generate a very small set of jokes, puns, etc. and have no possibility of scalability, i.e., to be applied to other kinds of jokes/humor. One could question the usefulness of these studies, given the paucity of results. However, two considerations need to be kept in mind: –– first, the practical applications of the field may be significant (Stock 1996/2003), –– second, some work seems to be progressing from the simplistic, toy-system approaches, for example, Mihalcea’s and Taylor’s work (see below) toward humor recognition (rather than generation) is an important step toward real-world applications. Similarly, Nijholt (2007) discusses the very significant issue of generating humor that is contextually appropriate . –– third, even partial computational implementation of aspects of (a  theory of humor) are bound to shift the attention of researchers towards the formalization of their theories, witness the criticisms of Ritchie (1998, 1999, 2004) towards the GTVH (and see Attardo 2006b for a response). 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 humorous acronyms), Taylor and Mazlack, (2004a, 2004b, 2005), Taylor et al. 2007, Mihalcea and Strapparava (2005, 2006), Binsted et al. (2006), Mihal-

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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 filtering” 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 In general, the study of humor using corpora is difficult because corpora have not been annotated for the purposes of humor research. Thus, as Chafe (2007) remarks, the indication [laughter] is uninformative if one is researching the type of laughter occurrence. Despite these problems, a few studies have begun appearing that are based on corpora. Günther (2003) is based on the British national corpus and on a corpus of teenage conversations. Partington (2006) is based on several corpora, including White House press conferences. Chafe (2007) is based on the Santa Barbara corpus. It should be noted that early conversation analysis (Tannen 1984) was also based on a conversational corpus (however small), as was Hay’s work (see above) and that the work by Holmes and her associates is also based on a corpus of workplace conversations. It is early to determine whether corpus analysis will develop into a major contributor to humor research, but some of the results mentioned in the discussion of conversation analysis and sociolinguistic analyses are quite sgnificant. Neurolinguistics of humor Recent work in neurolinguistics has begun the overwhelmingly difficult (at least presently) task of mapping the underlying neurological loci of activity during the processing of humor. Despite the tentativeness of all results in this field, some of them are extremely interesting and promising. For example, Goel and Dolan (2001) have shown, using MRIs, that different areas are involved in the processing of verbal and referential jokes (semantic and phonological jokes in their terminology; all humor is semantic, needless to say, so their terminology may be confusing). They also distinguish between

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areas involved in the processing of the semantic and phonological material of the texts (for example, puns activate Broca’s area) and the “affective” components of humor (i.e., the perception of funniness). Derks et al. (1997) show that a “negative-going cortical activity at 400 milliseconds” (N400) is associated with what humor theory has described as the incongruity of humor. Derks et al. describe the N400 as “occurring when categorization, usually semantic, is relatively unsuccessful and a search is initiated for better alternatives” (287). Coulson and Kutas (1998, 2001), Coulson (2001) also find evidence for the N400 response, but also for the second phase of the joke processing process, i.e., the resolution of the incongruity (i.e., the activation of a new frame/script). Other studies of neural activity that are consistent with the incongruity/resolution include Ozawa et al. (2000), Iwase et al. (2002), Mobbs et al. (2003), and Moran et al. (2004). There exists considerable (highly technical) discussion of the lateralization of humor processing, which seems to show that the right hemisphere of the brain is crucial to humor processing. Derks et al (1997), Coulson and Kutas (1998, 2001), Goel and Dolan (2001), Coulson and Williams (2005), and Coulson and Wu (2005) all show that this approach may be in need of some revision. There exists some literature on the neuro-anatomy of laughter, which is outside the scope of this discussion, but see Vaid and Kobler (2000). Overall it is fair to say that the studies in the neurology and anatomy of humor are supporting the cognitive (incongruity/resolution) theories of humor. In fact, the Coulson and Kutas results can be interpreted as directly supporting the SSTH, since they show psychological evidence of script switching (a.k.a., frame shifting). More generally, all the available evidence on humor processing points at a two-stage processing model, since jokes require systematically longer processing times (Giora 2003). A good synthesis of the neuropsychology of humor and irony can be found in Cutica (2007). 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-

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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 translation (see also Jaskanen 2001). Attardo (2002c) presents an application of the GTVH to the theory of translation of jokes. Antonopoulou (2002; 2004) applies this approach to the translation of Raymond Chandler and so does Koponen (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. Humor and language learning In Attardo (1994: 211–213), I reviewed some applications of humor to language learning, especially in the ESL situation. Recently, Cook (2000) has presented the first book length treatment of language play and language learning/teaching. In it, he discusses briefly humorous language play (70–84). Despite discussing Raskin’s SSTH, Cook seems to be unaware of the existence of a considerable body of research in the field, as is Crystal (1998) who also deals with language play, but not with the learning aspect in any detail. Deneire (1995) and Schmitz (2002) are focused on language teaching and humor. There exists a veritable cottage industry of advice books/articles on how (and why) to use humor in the classroom. Very few controlled studies have shown that humor improves learning, although it seems that some kinds of humor improve the perception of the teacher. A comprehensive study of the use of humor in the language classroom has yet to be produced (but see Nelms 2001). Vaid (2000) is an interesting study of the interpretation of humor in bilinguals. Morain (1991) describes a study contrasting ESL students’ and American students’ ratings of New Yorker’s cartoons and underscores the necessity to possess a given cultural script to be able to understand the humor, let alone appreciate it. Lucas (2005) shows that focusing on form improves L2 students’ comprehension of puns. Recently, significant work on

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non-native speakers’ use and adaptation to humor, especially in relation to native speakers, has appeared: Davies (2003), Poveda (2005), and Bell (2005; 2006; 2007a, 2007b, 2007c). New approaches to the linguistics of humor 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 informativeness” requirement (i.e., the fact that texts will introduce less informative 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 papers (e.g., Weiner 1997), have presented a similar approach, in part based on the SSTH and enriched with cognitive linguistics ideas such as prototypicality 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. Cognitive linguistics and humor Cognitive linguistics has increasingly been a significant force in the study of language. It has started to generate some studies relevant to humor research. Panels on humor were held at major cognitive linguistics conference, e.g., at ICLC in 2003 (Logroño) and in 2007 (Krakow). Blending, a recent development of cognitive linguistics (see Coulson and Oakley 2001), has been used to analyze humor (Coulson 1996, 2001, in press). It is clear that blending, i.e., the creation of a new “mental space” (domain, idea) out of existing, and not necessarily related, other mental spaces, can account for some aspects of some types of humor (insofar as it corresponds to the script overlapping aspect of the SSTH). However, it is not clear that it can provide a general account of

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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 neither 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 dissertation (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 approaches 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 Theoretic accounts of humor Relevance Theory (RT, Sperber and Wilson 1986) has produced some interesting 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 inviolability principle. Since most analyses of humor see it as a violation of cooperation, 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)

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model formulated in RT terms. In her terminology, the hearer entertains a “key assumption” (essentially a  proposition consistent with the first interpretation of the text) and subsequently a “target assumption” (a proposition consistent with the second interpretation of the text). The target assumption is “weakly manifest,” i.e., accessible but not activated by the hearer. Curcò’s original idea is that by causing the shift from one assumption to the other “the speaker is implicitly expressing his attitude of disengagement from the target assumption” (1996b: 61). Probably the most elaborate work on humor within RT is Yus Ramos’s (1995a, 1995b, 1995–1996, 1997, 1998a, 1998b, 2000). Yus Ramos’s theory is also an incongruity-resolution model, which acknowledges the non-cooperative aspect of humor. He distinguishes between a manifest and a covert assumption, the latter being revealed by the punch line. Yus Ramos notes that the violations of cooperation do not happen randomly: he finds a  correlation between social status and (non-necessarily humorous) maxim violation: for example, politeness is violated systematically by “proletarian” characters (Yus Ramos 1995a: 121–126; 1995b: 71–83). Let us note, finally, that, as one would expect, all RT accounts place more emphasis on the process of interpretation than on the text itself. It is too early to pass judgement on the contribution of relevance theoretic approaches to humor research (see Yus Ramos 2003 for a survey and critical assessments). Also worth mentioning, Muschard (1999), Galiñanes (2000) and Ruiz Moneva (2001). It is fair to note, however, that these approaches have failed to attract the attention of humor researchers. 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, nonetheless, here goes. Where is the linguistics of humor headed? Recently, several publications have begun exploring new and shockingly under-examined domains. It seems desirable, if not necessarily likely, that this

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trend continue. Among these diverse sources we can quote Gajda and Brzozowska (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 comparison 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 publishes 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 systematically 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 continues. 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 distribution 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 Association 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 quantitative 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 connection with humor. Several important papers have appeared recently, as we saw,

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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 predominantly 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 gender 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 provided 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 undiminished. Needless to say, the opinions expressed in the article are only mine.

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Streeck, Juergen, 1988 Seniorinnengelächter. In: Helga Kotthoff (ed.), Das Gelächter der Geschlechter. Humor und Macht in Gesprächen von Männern und Frauen, 54–77. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch. Suls, Jerry 1972 A  two-stage model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons. In: Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee (eds.), The Psychology of Humor, 81–100. New York: Academic Press. Tannen, Deborah 1984 Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Taylor, Julia M., and Lawrence Mazlack 2004a Computationally recognizing wordplay in jokes. In Proceedings of CogSci 2004, Chicago. 2004b Humorous word play recognition. International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics Proceedings, 3306–3311. The Hague, October 10–13. 2005 Toward computational recognition of humorous intent. Cognitive Science Conference Proceedings (CogSci 2005), 2166–2171. Stresa, July 2005. Taylor, Julia M., Pavel Klinov, and Lawrence J. Mazlack, 2007 A description logic based approach to computational humor. In Popa and Attardo (eds.), 167–179. Tijus, Charles-Albert, and Francis Moulin 1997 L’assignation de signification etudiée à partir de textes d’histoires drôles. L’année psychologique 97: 33–75. Tinholt, Hans Wim, and Anton Nijholt 2007 Computational humour: Utilizing cross-reference ambiguity for conversational jokes. In: Francesco Masulli, Sushimita Mitra, and Gabriella Pasi (eds.), Applications of Fuzzy Sets Theory: 7th International Workshop on Fuzzy Logic and Applications, WILF 2007, 477–483, Camogli, Italy, July 7–10, 2007. Trédé, Monique, and Philippe Hoffmann (eds.). 1998 Le rire des anciens. Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure. Triezenberg, Katrina 2004 Humor enhancers in the study of humorous literature. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 17 (4): 411–418. Trouvain, Jürgen 2001 Phonetic aspects of “speech-laughs.” Proceedings of the Conference on Orality and Gestuality (ORAGE) 2001, 634–639, Aix-en-Provence. 2003 Segmenting phonetic units in laughter. Proceedings of the15th. International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), 2793–2796. Barcelona.

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Undertaking the comparative study of humor Christie Davies

The comparative study of humor involves making systematic comparisons between the humor and in particular the jokes associated with different nations, ethnic and regional groups, religious traditions, social classes, occupations, genders and any other social or cultural entities. I say ‘in particular the jokes’ because jokes are easier to work with than other forms of humor. Jokes are numerous and do not have authors; they are invented by, improved by and circulated among large aggregates and networks of individuals. Jokes are a true spontaneous product of the imaginations of and a good reflection of the tastes of ordinary people. It is for example more revealing to study comparatively the jokes of the Czechs and the Irish than to compare the humor of, say, Jaroslav Hašek (Davies 2000) with that of Oscar Wilde (Attardo 2001), if we wish to gain an insight into the everyday social world of these two peoples. Jokes are also easier to work with because they are simpler, even though their inventors and tellers can display remarkable ingenuity and creativity. Jokes are short, compact units which in most cases can be quickly understood and enjoyed by the broad masses of the workers, peasants and petit-bourgeoisie alike. Indeed it is for this reason that they are scorned by the mopped up, over-educated upper middle class of the Netherlands who see them as not involving the kinds of rarified sensibilities that they feel distinguish their own humor but this finding too is a product of comparative research (Kuipers 2001). Likewise I have deliberately used the vague phrase jokes ‘associated with’ a group. ‘Associated with’ can refer either to the distinctive jokes told within a group or to those told about the group by outsiders. Given the ease with which jokes are transmitted from one group to another, there is often a considerable overlap between the two sets of jokes, which in itself provides interesting research possibilities. However, it is also vital to recognize that many jokes fail to cross social and cultural boundaries even though it would be easy for them to do so and the absence of a genre of jokes in a group under these conditions is an important social fact that calls for an explanation. Comparisons can be made not merely across social boundaries but also over time. It is possible, though often with difficulty, to compare the jokes

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told in the same society at different points in its history. One of the difficulties 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 circulation 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 constrained 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 creates 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

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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 socialist 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 (Davies 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 difficulties 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 reincarnated 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 provide 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 different 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 Margaret 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

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humorous – the jokes are less likely to be a humorous distortion of humor! Even so they may be bowdlerized and some jokes may be withheld from an outsider. Just as Margaret Mead was deceived into thinking there was no rape in Samoa (which had a far higher incidence of that crime than most other societies (Freeman 1983: 347–9) ), so too it would be foolish to conclude that jokes about rape among feminists or about homosexuals in Qazvin in Iran are absent simply because they are not forthcoming, even on prompting. It may simply mean that one’s informers are reticent or fearful or one’s interpreter is unwilling to reveal this aspect of his or her own people’s pattern of jokes. Obviously jokes suffer in translation, particularly if they depend on wordplay but this is less of a problem than might be thought. Most good joketellers do not memorize jokes. They simply remember the punch-line, the theme of the joke and possibly a particularly good jab line and then reinvent the story each time it is told. There is thus no standard text to be meticulously recorded. In any case it is always possible to ask for clarification even when one has understood the joke perfectly well. It is actually easier for an outsider to do this because he or she may reasonably be expected to be ignorant of local, taken for granted, aspects of a joke and this forces the joke-tellers to make these things explicit in a way that they would not normally do within the group. It is particularly revealing if they then proceed to disagree strongly among themselves. It is difficult for someone collecting material for a comparative study of jokes to have these kinds of direct encounters with people from a sufficiently large number of societies but fortunately the work has often already been done by others, notably folklorists and anthropologists and is available either in published form or in their notebooks or in folklore archives (Davies 1990, 1998, 2002; Davies and Abe 2003). The latter are an excellent source of comparative material drawn from many countries and sub-cultures. Often the collectors also add details about the individual who told the joke and how it was told and what that person thought and felt about the joke that has been recorded. It is also worth noting, though, the limits to what the folklorists can and do collect. From the folklore archives it is possible to derive the texts of jokes from a large number of cultures that can then be compared. What is missing are the very varied contexts in which and tone with which each of these jokes may be told and it is these that provide the purpose and feeling that are attached to a particular telling. It is impossible to infer anything about purpose, function or emotion from the mere text of a joke. Context is all but contexts are so complex, fluid, ambiguous and varied that it is extraordinarily different

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to undertake any kind of comparative analysis of them. It is of course relatively easy to observe joke telling in individual situations involving everyday human interaction but the problems of aggregating the observations together in order to analyze them on a comparative basis are very great. More to the point it is quite impossible to work backwards from these interactions and to pin qualities of emotion, purpose, tendenz on a particular joke. They are not qualities of the joke but of the situation and interaction that has been observed. An identically worded joke can work with quite different implications in many different situations and be used in many different ways. Finally there are the stocks of jokes held in jokebooks, audio and video tapes, CDs and DVDs and computers that can be put to use in comparative work. The jokebooks of earlier times sometimes contain comments on each joke or derive some kind of moral from them [for example Ramsay 1874 (1858)], so that it is possible to learn something of the social background to the jokes. Just as written sources are not devoid of background information, so too it is possible to glean far more about the jokes on an internet site than just the jokes themselves, particularly if you take the trouble to email those who set up the site (Oring 2003). The gathering of the jokes, the researcher’s basic information, should take two forms both of which are necessary. First, there are simple fishing trips in which the researcher records or finds, listens to or reads several hundred jokes from different sources and kinds of sources. Second, there are planned searches in which he or she is looking for particular sets of jokes or the absence of a particular set of jokes in order to test a hypothesis based on his or her own or on other people’s research. It is necessary to use both methods. Fishing trips on their own tend to lead to mere descriptive work, to the forcing of unrepresentative sets of jokes to fit an existing theory or ideology based grid in an arbitrary way and to sheer muddle. Hypothesis testing is not simple but as often carried out becomes simplistic. The pompous use of terms, such as ‘dependent and independent variable’, ‘research design’ etc. may look fine in a document designed to screw money out of government committees dedicated to wasting tax-payers’ money, but if taken too seriously it will lead the researcher to ignore the full richness and difficulty of the material with which he or she is working. A successful academic colleague once told me that he had found the best way to get money out of the government was to ask them to finance a project which was nearly completed anyway because he could give a rational and apparently a priori account of it and knew that the final report and publications would match his proposal. He next used the money to finish off the old project and then went on a fishing trip in a related area in order to develop new

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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 complete a proposal for a new research grant to carry out the second project, apparently from scratch but with a pseudo-logical design and guaranteed results. In this way a productive dialectical process was set up and could be maintained 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 underlying 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 comparative research into humor involves. That is how it is done. The comparative researcher can use his or her data in many ways to advance 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.

How many Poles does it take to change a light bulb? Six. One to hold the bulb and five to turn him round and round. (This was the very earliest of the numerous light bulb series of jokes).



Why did the Polack lose his job as an elevator operator? He couldn’t learn the route (Dundes 1987 (1971): 134].



Do you know why they don’t give Poles a coffee break? It takes too long to retrain them (Dundes 1987 (1971): 135)



What is stamped at the bottom of Coca Cola bottles in Poland? Please open at the other end (Dundes 1987 (1971): 135).

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

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that they had thought of that and that they were going to land him at night (Dundes 1987 (1971): 134).

How did the Polack get 35 holes in his head? Trying to learn to eat with a fork (Dundes 1987 (1971): 135).

“Le ‘Newfie’ pensait que les crayons à mine (AMIN) venaient de l’Ouganda” (Allard 1976: 69). Untranslateable play on words “Je suis allé dans un magasin ‘Newfie’ et j’ai demandé une robe de chambre... le ‘Newfie’ m’a demandé: ‘Quelle grandeur la chambre?’ (Allard 1976). Untranslateable play on words. Jokes of this kind are to be found in a large number of different countries as shown in Table One below; jokes from each country were gathered from a variety of kinds of sources. The method of finding the jokes was first fishing trips and then later systematic searches. The uncovering of similar (though by no means identical) types of jokes in several countries as different as the United States, Britain, Greece and India led to a systematic search for such jokes from as many other countries as possible and enabled Table 1 to be constructed. In each case the jokes were invented and circulated among the (mainly national) groups listed in the first column of Table 1; the groups, about whom they were told whether national, regional, or about the citizens of a particular town are listed in the second column. The table is interesting in and of itself in that it shows that people in so many different countries like the same kind of joke which they both invent for themselves and adapt from similar jokes in international circulation. There are clearly widespread and shared social circumstances (Davies 1990, 1998) that have led to the popularity of such jokes, for in any one of the countries listed hundreds of such jokes will exist. However, this is only the first stage of the application of the comparative method to the study of these jokes. The second stage is to ask ‘What are the common factors that characterize the relationship between each pair of jokers and persons joked about?’ What are the main common factors that link the groups in the first and second columns? What is clear throughout is that the two groups in the first and second column respectively are very similar in each case. The groups joked about are not in any sense strange or alien to the joketellers who make them the butts of their jokes. In each of the cases listed those joked about are either an

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Table 1.  The stupid Country where jokes about the “stupid” are told United States Canada (East ) Canada (West) Mexico Brazil Guatemala Colombia England Wales Scotland Ireland France Netherlands Greece Austria Germany Italy Switzerland Russia Sweden Spain Finland Denmark Turkey Iraq India Pakistan Iran Syria Egypt South Africa Australia New Zealand

Identity of “stupid” group in jokes Poles (and others locally, e.g., Italians, Portuguese) Newfies (Newfoundlanders) Ukrainians Yucatecos from Yucatan, Gallegos from Galicia in Spain Portuguese Guitecos ( people of Guite) Pastusos from Pasto in Nariño Irish Irish Irish Kerrymen Belgians, French Swiss Belgians, Limburghers Pontians (Black Sea Greeks) Carinthians, Burgenlanders Ostfrieslanders, Saxons Southern Italians Fribourgers/Freiburgers Ukrainians, Chukchees Finns, Norwegians Gallegos from Galicia, Leperos, the people of Lepe in Andalucia Karelians People of Aarhus Laz Kurds Sardarjis (Sikhs) Sardarjis (Sikhs) Rashtis from Rasht, Turks People of Homs and Hama Sa’idis Afrikaners (van der Merwe) Irish, Tasmanians Irish, Maoris (in the North Island), West Coasters (in the South Island)

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i­mmediately neighboring people or a group of long established and accepted immigrants, who in either case share much of the culture of the group telling the jokes. However, this leads to a second point, namely that the relationship between them is asymmetrical. Those in the second column live on the geographical, economic, cultural or linguistic periphery of the peoples in the first column. The relationship can not be reversed, for Kerry is on the edge of Ireland, Belgium on the edge of France and of the Netherlands, Rasht on the edge of Iran, Newfoundland on the edge of Canada, the Laz live on the edge of Turkey, the Pastusos live on the edge of Columbia, Polish-Americans are merely a part of America and it CANNOT be the other way round. Indeed it would be absurd to try and reverse these statements. It would be a mere rhetorical gesture quite contrary to known and obvious patterns of economic and cultural dominance. In the case of India, an intensely religious society, it is equally clear that Sikhism exists on the edge of Hinduism and not the other way round. The Sikhs aimed to create a new and pure religion and to distance themselves from the Hindus but they can not entirely escape the Hindu influence on their origins and their customs (Uberoi 1967). Polish-Americans must know English and will be able to recite a litany of good, great and successful Americans from Benedict Arnold to Alger Hiss. By contrast Americans in general can afford to be crassly ignorant of the language of Poland and of the very significant achievements of individual Poles such as Kopernic, Korzeniowski or Skladowska who are household names in Europe. French speakers in Brussels buy books teaching them how to speak Parisian French (Hanse 1971) whereas the converse is unknown and the Dublin upper-upper-middle classes shun the brogue of the Kerryman and sound like West Britons. The Laz seek work on the constructions sites of Turkish cities as do Newfoundlanders in Ontario but there is no migration in the other direction. These are additional social facts that are known from sources other than and outside of the texts of the jokes It is not possible to make any sense of the social, historical or psychological significance of jokes without employing variables based on quite different kinds of data from the jokes themselves. To do anything else would be circular, as indeed many studies of humor are, for they infer the social background to the jokes from their content and then use this arbitrary, invented social context to explain why the jokes exist. Most feminist, functionalist and psychoanalytic studies of jokes and humor are of this kind. They are based on arbitrarily applied theories filled with a strange vocabulary and implode when brought into contact with reality.

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The factual information about similarity and asymmetry given above exists 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 aggression, 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 various 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 amicable 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 arguments 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 stupidity jokes could destroy their social order in the way that other and more powerful 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

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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 formulated. 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 economically peripheral. In 1996, when the late Professor W. M. S. Russell, the distinguished 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 conservative 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 particular 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 exchanged 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 Europe, 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.

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It is important to note that the prediction is specifically made about those occupying leading economic or cultural positions i.e. areas of life that are subject to some degree of open competition. If a group occupies a dominant military and political position without being noted for cultural or economic achievements, then it may well be the butt of stupidity jokes, as can be seen from the case of the Afrikaners (van der Merwe) in Table One. The Afrikaners ruled South Africa because they controlled the franchise, the government and the army and police (Moodie 1975). However, they were in a position of backwardness in economic and cultural terms relative to the English speaking Europeans. Hence they were the butt of stupidity jokes in much the same way as other groups in such a location, such as the ruling political elite, the apparatchiks and the militia in the former socialist countries of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This further comparison also enables us to refute the thesis that power relations theory can be applied to these jokes, for the question of whether the jokers or their butts are the more powerful depends entirely on the nature of the power being exercised. If the power exercised by the jokers is subject to competition as with economic success or cultural predominance, then the jokes will be about the less powerful group (at least on these dimensions). However, if a group exercises power in the form of a political or military monopoly then jokes about its stupidity will be told by the less powerful about their rulers, rulers whose legitimacy is dubious. Power relations theory, and its subvarieties such as class analysis, feminism, gay theory etc are anyway not true theories producing testable and falsifiable propositions but aspects of a crude ideological perspective and bundle of prejudices which we may term ‘underdoggery’. Here we may introduce a second way of using the comparative method in studying jokes – the search for jokes that could have been invented or coopted but which do not exist. During the Soviet socialist period certainly hundreds, probably thousands of jokes circulated in Russian and Eastern Europe about the stupidity of the political elite, the apparatchiks and the militia, and these were not just stupidity jokes about individuals and groups but often jokes about the stupidity of the entire system. These political jokes were exchanged on a daily basis among ordinary people in Russia and Eastern Europe and were far more popular than any kind of official humor (Banc and Dundes 1986; Davies 1998, 2007; Yurchak 1997). The citizens of western democratic countries knew that these jokes were being told and they too found them extremely funny. Why then did the westerners not adapt the jokes for local use and tell them about their own leaders, officials, police and political system? Why is there in general an absence of such jokes in the West?

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In Britain, for example, a group of people seen exchanging jokes in the years since 1997 will not be or have been telling jokes of any kind about Tony Blair, the oleaginous British ‘New’ Labour Prime Minister 1997–2007 or John Prescott, Blair’s uncouth side-kick or Blair’s unprepossessing Caledonian successor Gordon Brown, There does exist a Tony Blair joke book (Dale and Simmonds 2002) but most of the jokes in it have been clumsily switched and adapted from other sources by the compilers and are inauthentic; those who collected jokes about Stalin, Khruschev and Brezhnev did not need to scrabble and adapt in this way since the ordinary people were inventing new, well targeted jokes all the time. Both Blair and Prescott were relentlessly and regularly lampooned on television by Britain’s leading mimic Rory Bremner, in the esteemed satirical organ Private Eye where Blair was the Reverend A. R. P. Blair MA (Oxon), the absurd and hysterical Vicar of St. Albion’s (Hislop 2003) and in Chairman Blair’s Little Red Book (Bell and Homer 2001) in which Blair’s proletarian side-kick John Prescott was depicted as J. Dog Du on The Long Walkies, but there are no popular jokes about them invented by ordinary people. They were not telling Blair jokes on the Clapham or even the Clapham Common omnibus. When Blair resigned to allow Brown to become Prime Minister in 2007 there was no wave of jokes about Brown but in Private Eye a new feature, Prime Ministerial Decree, From the Desk of the Supreme Leader mocked Brown’s authoritarianism and a cartoon strip The Broon-ites his Scottish speech. The same point may be made about the other western democratic countries such as Australia or Germany or the USA, where strong satire co-exists with an absence of jokes. Even the verbal infelicities of a George Bush or Dan Quayle are mainly funny to pointy jawed intellectuals; most ordinary Americans do not talk with any greater degree of precision. Likewise, the habit of telling political jokes faded in Eastern and Central Europe with the collapse of socialism and the coming of democracy. Once again we can see the significance of an absence of jokes and the vital necessity of always searching for nothing as well as something. However, it is not the presence (or absence) of published or broadcast mockery of the political elite or system that inhibits political joking. There had not been a popular tradition of telling stupidity jokes about political leaders in the time of the British Prime Ministers Macdonald, Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill, Attlee or Eden or come to that in the time of Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy in America, when the generally accepted and rather deferential norms of publishing and broadcasting inhibited open satirical portrayal of the great in much the same way that the press did not reveal details of their sex lives. Historical comparisons then show that

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the example set by the media, which may be exuberant as in present day Britain 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 forbidden modes of speech, a sly evasion of the rules. The jokes were even enjoyed 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 reported 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 circumscribed 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 according 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 joking evades externally imposed restraints on speech. Those who listen and laugh know what to expect, even though each joke comes as a surprise. Padded 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, blasphemous, 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

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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 multiply 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 joking 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 officials 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 stupidity 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.

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It ­confirms yet again the key importance of legitimacy through competition, for in a democracy it is those politicians who lack this quality become the butts of stupidity jokes. The particular comparative method employed above has often been used in other fields notably in Union Democracy by S. M. Lipset et al [1956]. The German scholar Robert. Michels [2001 (1915)]] had long ago noted that political parties and indeed labor unions, though possessed of formally democratic constitutions, were in practice inevitably oligarchic. Lipset et al sought to clarify the nature of that oligarchy by studying the one American union, The International Typographical Union, that stood apart from the others by having truly contested elections with serious alternative candidates who might well push the existing leadership out of office. This was found to be related to the high levels of education, literacy and pay of the ordinary members relative to that of union officers enjoyed by the printers at the time. This in turn indicated the reasons for union oligarchy elsewhere not just in America but in other democratic countries. The study of the exception provides the basis for an understanding of what is generally the case. Likewise the study of those few political leaders, and notably Gerald Ford, who are the butt of stupidity jokes in a democracy indicates why in general political leaders are exempt from the jokes told about their counterparts in authoritarian societies. There are many politicians in.democratic countries who really are stupid, i.e. they have limited intellectual capacity, but they are not the subject of popular jokes, merely of witty put downs by their intimates. When Estelle Morris, one of Mr Blair’s Ministers of Education for England, resigned in 2002 saying that she felt she was not up to the job (she was certainly right about that), there were no jokes about her being stupid, even though she had admitted to being so. The study of jokes that could but do not exist can be taken a stage further by comparing the jokes told in the English and French speaking countries that make the butts of stupidity jokes out to be dirty as well as stupid. Such jokes were very common in America, in both English and French speaking Canada and in Switzerland in the period 1960–1995 but were absent in Britain, France and Ireland (Davies 1998). A determined attempt was made to introduce American jokes about dirty Poles into Britain as Irish jokes by Peter Hornby, who transfered American jokes from Pat Macklin and Manny Erdman’s jokebook Polish Jokes published in America (Macklin and Erdman 1976) directly into his best selling British jokebook about the Irish published in Britain (Hornby 1978) by changing dirty ‘Polack’ to dirty ‘Paddy’ but otherwise not changing the jokes in any way. However, these jokes about dirty Paddies did not go into general circulation and have never reappeared.

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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 British 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 existence 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, Kerrymen and Belgians are in this unemotive sense cleaner than the Poles, Italians, Newfies and Fribourgers is a reasonable and testable, though problematic, 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 sensitivies even to suggest it. There can be no bigoted presumption of equality. Table 2. Tellers of Stupidity Jokes

Butts of Stupidity Jokes

Americans Anglophone Canadians Québecois Swiss

Poles, Italians Newfoundlanders Newfoundlanders, Italians People of Fribourg/ Freiburg

British Irish French

Irish Kerrymen Belgians

Are the butts Filthy as well as Stupid in the jokes Section A Yes Yes Yes Yes Section B No No No

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At this point let us consider what the members of the conflict and hostility 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 difference exists. No clear relationship of this kind in any direction can be discerned 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 product 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 attainable 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 exceed 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

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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 procedures 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 twentieth 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 persecution 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 (Mardiganian 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

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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 political and military power were and are great jokers. Comparative analysis forces us rather to ask first ‘what factors or historical 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 produced a proliferation of self conscious jokes exploring their own peculiarities. 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 factors such as intellectual and commercial acumen, self awareness and disputaciousness are held constant, it is this outwardly directed aggression in Jewish

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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 interaction 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 advances 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 surpressed wish on the son’s part to kill his father and obtain undivided and sexual possession of the mother. Malinowski [1927] studied a matrilineal society, 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 descendent 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 phenomenon. 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.

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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 contradict 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 characteristic of the best early work of S. M. Lipset and his colleagues, including 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 results 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, Davies, 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

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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 politicians 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. Bibliography Adams, Bruce 2005 Tiny Revolutions in Russia, Twentieth Century Soviet and Russian History in Anecdotes. New York: Routledge Curzon. Allard, Louis-Paul, 1976 Le Coin du Newfie. Montrėal: Hėritage. Attardo, Salvatore 2001 Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Andrew, Christopher, and Vasili Mitrokhin 2000, 2005  The Mitrokhin Archive, 2 volumes. London: Penguin. Banc, C., and Alan Dundes 1986 First Prize Fifteen Years: An Annotated Collection of Romanian Political Jokes. Cranbury, NJ: Associate University Presses/Fairleigh: Dicken­son University Press. Beckmann, Petr 1969 Whispered Anecdotes, Humor from Behind the Iron Curtain. Boulder: Golem. 1980 Hammer and Tickle, Clandestine Laughter in the Soviet Union. Boulder: Golem. Bell, Steve, and Brian Homer 2001 Chairman Blair’s Little Red Book. London: Methuen. Ben-Amos, Dan 1973 The myth of Jewish humor, Western Folklore 32 (2): 112–131.

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Brunvald, Jan Harold 1973 Don’t shoot comrades: A survey of the submerged folklore of eastern Europe”, North Carolina Folklore Journal 21: 181–188. Bryant, Chad 2006 The language of resistance: Czech jokes and joke-telling under Nazi occupation, 1943–1945. Journal of Contemporary History 41 (1): 133–151. Cochran, Robert 1989 “What Courage!”: Romanian “our leader” jokes. The Journal of American Folklore 142 (405): 259–279. Dale Iain, and John Simmons 2000 The Tony Blair New New Labour Joke Book. London: Robson. Davies, Christie 1972 Asians of East Africa. Quest, July–August, 33–39. 1990 Ethnic Humor around the World: A Comparative Analysis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1998a Jokes and their Relation to Society. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 1998b The dog that didn’t bark in the night: A new sociological approach to the cross cultural study of humor in Willibald Ruch (ed.), The Sense of Humor, 293–306. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 2000 The savage style of Jaroslav Hasek: The Good Soldier Svejk as a Politically Incorrect Masterpiece, Stylistyka IX, [Stylistyka ­czeska] 301–315. 2002 The Mirth of Nations. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction. 2007 Humour and Protest: Jokes under Communism, International Review of Social History 52: 291–305. Davies, Christie, and Goh Abe 2003 Esuniku Joku. Tokyo: Kodansha. Davies, Sarah 1997 Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deriabin, Peter, and Frank Gibney 1960 The Secret War. London: Arthur Barker. Drozdzynski, Alexander 1977 Der politische Witz im Ostblok. Munich: DTV. Dundes, Alan 1984 Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Portrait of German Culture through Folklore. New York: Columbia University Press. Dundes, Alan 1987 Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles and Stereotypes. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.

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Durkheim, Emile 1964 [1897] Suicide, a Study in Sociology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Freeman, Derek 1983 Margaret Mead and Samoa, The Making and Unmaking of an ­Anthropological Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Freud, Sigmund 1960 [1905] Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. London: ­Hogarth. Grotjahn, Martin 1970 Jewish jokes and their relation to masochism. In Werner M. Mendel (ed.), A Celebration of Laughter. Los Angeles: Mara. Hanse, Joseph et al 1971 Chasse aux Belgicisms. Brussels: Charles Plisnier. Hislop, Ian (ed.) 2003 St Albion Parish News. London: Private Eye. Hornby, Peter 1978 The Official Irish Jokebook No 3 (Book 2 to follow). London: Futura. Kolasky, John 1972 Look Comrade – The People are laughing: Underground wit, satire and humour from behind the Iron Curtain. Toronto: Peter Martin. Krikmann, Arvo 2004 Netinalju Stalinist. Tartu: Estonian Literary Museum. 2006 Jokes in Soviet Estonia, (Paper presented at the 18th ISHS conference at the Danish University of Education Copenhagen, July 2006). Kuipers, Giselinde, and Marije Maniouschka 2001 Goede humor, slechte smaak: Nederlanders over moppen. Amsterdam: Boom. Legman, Gershon 1982 No Laughing Matter: An Analysis of Sexual Jokes. 2 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lipset, Seymour Martin 1950 Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lipset, Seymour Martin, Martin A. Trow, and James S. Coleman 1956 Union Democracy, the Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union. Glencoe: Free Press. Macklin, Pat, and Manny Erdman 1976 Polish Jokes. New York: Patman. Malinowski, Bronislaw 1927 Sex and Repression in Savage Society. London: Routledge. Mardiganian, Aurora 1918 The Auction of Souls. London: Odhams. Mead, Margaret 1928 Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: Morrow.

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Martin, David 1978 A General Theory of Secularization. Oxford: Blackwell. Michels, Robert 2001 [1915] Political Parties, a Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracies. Kitchener, Ont.: Batoche. Mill, John Stuart 1930 [1843] A System of Logic, Ratiocination and Induction, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. London: Longman Green. Obrdlik, Antonin J. 1942 Gallows humor: a sociological phenomenon. American Journal of Sociology 47, 709–716. Oring, Elliott 1992 Jokes and their Relations. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 2003 Engaging Humor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2004 Risky business: Political jokes under repressive regimes. Western Folklore 63 (3): 209–236. Pickering, W. S., and Geoffrey Walford 2000 Durkheim’s Suicide, a Century of Research and Debate. London: Routledge. Ramsay, Edward Bannerman 1874 [1858] Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character. Edinburgh: Gall and Inglis. Raskin, Victor 1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Skrobocki, Eugeninez 1992 1001 Dowcipow Sowieckich. Białystock: Versus. Uberoi, J. Singh 1967 On being unshorn: Sikhism and Indian society. Transactions of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Vol 4, 89–100. Simla: Rashtrapati Nivas Viikberg, Jűri 1997 Anecdotes about Soviet Power and their Leaders, Collected from Estonia 1960–1986. Talinn: Punkt and Koma. Weber, Max 1930 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Unwin. Wells, H. G. 1928 The History of Mr Polly. In A Quartette of Comedies. London: Ernest Benn. Yurchak, Alexei 1997 The cynical realism of late socialism: Power, pretence and the anekdot. Public Culture 9: 161–188.

Humor in anthropology and folklore Elliott Oring Introduction As disciplines, anthropology and folklore emerge at pretty much the same time. Both began in the nineteenth century with the effort to understand the intellectual and spiritual development of mankind. Anthropology would focus on the concept of culture whereas folklore would emphasize the notion of tradition. The great impetus to anthropological studies was European imperialism and the rule over a range of societies with different languages, religions, and customs. Anthropology turned to these exotic cultures in an effort to understand their nature and their relationship to the societies of civilized Europe. Folklore studies, however, were largely a product of the forces of nationalism, and it was to the traditions of the nation – first and foremost their own – that folklorists turned in the effort to glimpse its character and spirit. Humor has never been a central concern for either anthropologists or folklorists. Anthropologists were forced to confront humor because it was embedded in certain social and religious practices whose significance they could not ignore. Folklorists would confront humor because a number of the traditions they studied – tales, songs, proverbs – were humorous. Indeed, jokes and other forms of humorous expression would come to be recognized as the preeminent forms of folkloric expression in contemporary urban society. Although anthropologists would largely remain concerned with exotic societies while folklorists focused on their own (there are of course exceptions to these generalizations), theoretical developments brought them closer together. At one time or another, both disciplines employed evolutionary, historic-geographic, functional, structural, interpretive, and postmodern theoretical frameworks – although the time and energy invested in each by the disciplines were different. Ultimately, the concord between these disciplines in their perspective toward humor arises from their mutual concern with recording and interpreting humor in the context of its expression in the life of society. Both are committed to fieldwork – the first-hand observation of humor in the flow of social life – and the documenting of humorous expression for analysis and interpretation.

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Previous literature reviews The indispensable reference on the anthropological approach is Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach by Mahadev Apte (1985). The book is a comprehensive survey of anthropological approaches to humor and includes extensive bibliographical references. The book is divided into three major sections. The first is “Humor and Social Structure” which is concerned with joking relationships, sexual inequality, children’s humor, and ethnicity. The second is “Cultural Expressions of Humor” and concerns religion, language, and tricksters. The third, “Behavioral Responses to Humor,” concerns laughing and smiling. The first two sections are about equal in length and comprise the great majority of the book. The book is comprehensive in its scope and accurately represents the directions of anthropological studies of humor. It should be noted that Apte’s sense of an anthropological approach is broad, and he cites not only the works of anthropologists, but folklorists, linguists, sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers as well. By an “anthropological approach,” he means an approach that focuses on humor rooted in social relations and cultural understandings and does not merely intend a disciplinary outlook. Consequently, he does not limit his survey only to researchers who might be strictly defined as anthropologists. “Folklore Methodology and American Humor Research,” (Oring 1988) explores some of the identifying characteristics of folkloristic methodologies and their impact on humor research. It discusses collecting, indexing, and contextualization as three major concerns of folklore studies over the past century and a half and relates these concerns to the folkloristic engagement with humor. It is accompanied by a bibliographic survey relating the discussion to particular examples in the published literature. The essay, however, is focused on methodology, not theory, and it is limited to a discussion of American humor. Even then, it does not attempt to be comprehensive. Issues Anthropologists and folklorists recognize that humorous expressions occur in a wide variety of forms, in a diversity of cultures, and under a great range of circumstances. Consequently neither discipline has attempted to articulate a single theory to be tested against a range of humorous stimuli and expressions. Anthropologists and folklorists encounter humor in day-to-day interaction, and their job is to document and explain the humor produced and

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consumed in those circumstances. The single question that these disciplines repeatedly engage is why does this humor occur when and where it does. This question, however, entails two subsidiary questions: how does the humor function and what does the humor mean? Anthropologists and folklorists have contributed to a range of discussions in linguistics, sociology, and psychology and not all of these can be characterized in this brief chapter. Only the signal concerns of anthropologists and folklorists are discussed: joking relationships, ritual humor, folk genre, jokes and joke cycles, the contexts of humor, and art. Joking relationships “Joking relationship” was the term employed by anthropologists to characterize behaviors they had witnessed in different societies in very distant parts of the globe. These relationships were characterized by the license people had to assault, insult, steal or destroy the property of, throw excrement at, or play pranks upon certain categories of kin. These behaviors were not voluntary but, in some sense, mandatory, and the behaviors had to be received with equanimity by those kin who were the victims of the joking. The term was later extended to characterize more voluntary forms of teasing that occur between friends and workmates even in our own society. In the latter cases, the joking is most often directed at specified individuals rather than categories of individuals. Anthropologists studied this odd behavioral pattern because they felt it could illuminate the organization of relationships in society. They did not see joking relationships as a problem in humor per se. Consequently, anthropologists concentrated on describing and analyzing the relationship between the joking groups, while usually failing to report in any detail the nature of the joking behaviors that were observed or the native explanations of the ­custom. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown theorized these relationships of formalized joking occurred when two groups of kin simultaneously exhibited “both attachment and separation, both social conjunction and social disjunction” (1940: 197). The disjunction refers to the divergence of interests of the groups while the conjunction reflects the common interests that necessitate the prevention of conflict. Radcliffe-Brown held that there were only two ways of accommodating such contradictory tendencies: extreme respect with social avoidance on the one hand, or abusive joking on the other. The abuse and assault ­relieved

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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 unilineal 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 cooperative 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 observed among cross-cousins in traditional societies, it was observed in a Glasgow print works, that it was the sexually impossible relationships – those between old men and very young women or old women and much younger men – that were governed by licensed obscene joking. The sexually possible relationships between men and women of the same age group were marked by modesty and restraint (Sykes 1966). Clearly, in traditional and modern societies, joking transmits an important statement about social relationships, although 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) attempted to generalize the relation of joking to social structure. She saw jok-

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ing as offering a symbolic representation of underlying social arrangements. Indeed, she maintained that if there were no joke in the social structure, no joke could appear. Jokes, she maintained, were anti-rites that subverted the normative social order – the order regularly validated and maintained by religious and civic rituals. Jokes assert uncontrol against patterns of control. Consequently, joking promotes community over hierarchy and reveals ambiguities in the fabric of society. Folklorists have given less attention to joking relationships than to verbal dueling, practical joking, and dyadic traditions. All of these, nevertheless, bear some similarity to joking relationships. Verbal dueling refers to ritualized insult exchanges that take place between adolescent boys and sometimes between grown men. Folklorists studying the obscenities of the “dozens” among black youth of the inner city (Abrahams 1964; Labov 1972), between Turkish boys (Dundes, Leach, and Özkök 1970; Glazer 1976; Hickman 1979), and the more prosaic routines of lower-class whites (Bronner 1978; Leary 1980) give close attention to the texts of the insults exchanged as well as to the character of the performance. Dueling among Turkish boys is expressed in terms that feminize and subordinate an opponent by portraying him as a submissive female to be sexually penetrated. Alan Dundes (1997) has attempted to reinterpret an entire range of male competitive activities – from games to war – as stemming from similar motivations. Dundes believes that these aggressive activities are compensation for the confused sense of gender identity experienced by males reared in female-dominated environments. He amasses interesting evidence to support his hypothesis but does not entertain the idea that penetration and feminization may be the language of competition and combat rather than the motivations for it. Folklorists have recorded pranks and practical jokes, both as events and stories, for over a century, but serious attention to them has only developed in the past several decades. Tallman (1974a) has outlined a classificatory schema for pranking and practical joking in terms of the jokers, the victims, the actions, the intentions, and the results. Bauman (1986: 33–53) has outlined the structure of certain practical joke stories. Some practical jokes are so traditional (the snipe hunt, the farm animal in the classroom, animating the corpse) that they have served as motifs in popular films (e.g., Straw Dogs; Animal House; Weekend at Bernie’s). Pranking and practical joking are particularly prevalent at certain times of year – April Fools Day and Halloween (Dundes 1989[1988]; McEntire 2002; Siporin 1994); certain events – initiations, weddings, and wakes (Honeyman 1959; Morrison 1974; Narváez 2003); and in certain kinds of groups – students, all male occupations, and

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summer camps (Bronner 1990; Scott 1974; Posen 1974). They have been regarded 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 employed 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. Sometimes these outlandish behaviors were the actions of the multitude, sometimes the province of a designated specialist – a ceremonial clown or buffoon. These clowns were sometimes identified with mythological figures, and they undertook healing, disciplinary, fertility-enhancing, and priestly functions 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).

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Humor in the context of ritual behaviors has also been regarded as political, an act of resistance. With French colonialism, the Hauka spirit movement 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 Europeans 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 ideological 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 serious, 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, compassion, 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 between 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.

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Uproarious, macabre, and indecent, their antics not only serve as local political critique, but in the context of the festival they offer a kaleidoscopic commentary on human mortality in general and the miseries of Haiti in particular (Cosentino 2003). Folklorists and anthropologists, even when they do not study the carnivalesque, 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 commentary 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 alluded to the increasing penetration of Catholic practices – such as the use of frankincense – into what she perceived to be plain Lutheran styles of worship. The comment meant to suggest that there were people in the congregation 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 Orthodox Jews with profane references and tunes from American popular culture. 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 analyzed to reveal a crisis in identity in the modern orthodox community. They

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explored the contradiction faced by those committed to orthodox religious observance who also participated in the national and popular culture. The songs appeared just at the time that this contradiction had become most acute due to shifts in the political and ideological structure of the American Jewish community (Oring 1992 [1988]: 67–80). Folk genre Bronislaw Malinowski urged anthropologists to pay close attention to the native point of view (Malinowski 1961[1922]: 22–23). He noted that while the differences between liliu, libwogwo, and kukwanebu in the Trobriand Islands resembled distinctions between myths, legends, and folktales in the West (Malinowski 1954: 101–108), the similarities obscured important differences. The category of libwogwo conflated historical accounts witnessed by the narrator, legends lacking a chain of testimony, and hearsay based on events falling outside the experience of the present-day population. Furthermore, unlike in the West, the telling of these types of narrative involved different beliefs and demanded different behaviors. Kukwanebu could be told only during certain seasons of the year, were thought to enhance crop growth, and were individually owned. They could not be told without their owner’s permission. Libwogwo, however, might be told by anybody at any time (104–106). In some cultures, even the distinction employed in the Trobriand Islands between true and false narratives, held no place. The northern Ojibwa, for example, possessed no category of fictional literature; all tales were thought to be true (Hallowell 1947: 547). Subsequent to Malinowski’s injunctions and observations, folklorists and anthropologists became attentive to the terms employed and the characteristics that defined oral genres in various cultures and subcultures. Among the Western Apache, banagozdíʔ are distinguished from other humorous speech because the targets of these jokes are likened to inanimate things, are put in social categories to which they do not belong, or the jokers themselves assume roles and behaviors that are not properly theirs (Basso 1979: 38–40). For the Tzotzil-speaking Mayan community of Chamula, Gary Gossen (1971) articulated an elaborate taxonomy of verbal genres. What is termed ʔištol k’op or “frivolous language” is a subcategory of puru k’op or “pure speech,” not loʔil k’op or “ordinary language.” “Frivolous language” subsumes “lies”, which are prose jokes; “genuine frivolous talk,” i.e., sexual banter or verbal dueling; “obscure words,” which are circumlocutions; “riddles”; and “buried

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words,” which are like riddles but are tailored to specific situations of behavioral 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 genres 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 anecdotes 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 underground. 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 contours 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 comprehend 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 expressions of another. It can also lead to critical reflections on the categories and terminologies that scholars themselves employ. Jokes and joke cycles Anthropologists have played less of a role in the description and analysis of jokes and contemporary joke cycles than folklorists (see, however, Sherzer 1985, 2002; Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi 1992). The Brothers Grimm included comic tales in their famous collection of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales). Jokes and anecdotes comprised approximately a third of the tale types in Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson’s index The Types of the Folktale (1962), and humorous motifs permeate Stith Thompson’s multi-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955–58). Comic stories were printed in the Journal of American Folklore from its earliest decades. As folklorists were first and foremost documenters of traditions, they often recorded jokes, anecdotes, and other humorous materials without attending

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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 contraception and eventually abortion from the 1960s through the 1980s – when the joke cycle ended – made people anxious and guilty about their complicity 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 relieve themselves of their anxieties. This follows Sigmund Freud’s theory that jokes “make possible the expression of an instinct (whether lustful or hostile) 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 elephant 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. Unlike 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 hostility 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

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outlet for aggression and the means for feeling superior (Dundes 1987[1971]: 115–138) – presumably because explicit anti-black jokes were no longer acceptable 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 campuses throughout America. The Civil Rights Movement was just one part of a larger counter-cultural movement in the United States that sought to overthrow 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 stupidity 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 provincials, 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. Rather, 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 circulated 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

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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, calculation, 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 – primarily 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 television 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 anchormen 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

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the media. In that way, the resistance of a public to the media-defined situation could not be co-opted. This hypothesis would go a long way to explaining 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,” parodying 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 declining. 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 contribution 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 metasearch 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-

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ual context and comparative context. Cultural context refers to the cultural knowledge, concepts, values, and attitudes necessary to understand a humorous expression. The following Israeli joke is from the early 1950s: After the conquest of Eilat, Ben-Gurion arrived in the Aravah and surveyed 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. BenGurion 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:

Long ago they say (a man off to one side): “Which of you dreamed something last night?”

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Another said, “I don’t know.” Another said, “I don’t know” “I dreamed last night,” another one said. “Last night I dreamed I was sitting on [hatching] four little birds, and three weren’t mine; “Only one was mine,” he said. 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 Relation 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 pinetree,” 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 context 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-

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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. Furthermore, endogamous Jewish marriage was held responsible for the creation and perpetuation of these defects in Jewish body and soul. Given these antiSemitic 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 dispassionate scientific analysis (Oring 2003: 116–128). Only the awareness of the jokes’ cultural context would suggest that it probably resonated quite differently 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 signaled 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 customer 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 indexed 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

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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 having to entertain or reject explicit sexual overtures. Thus joking in the social context of the bar rush was a coded communication about intimacy and sexual 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 communications are not to be taken simply for their referential content, and that speakers are to be evaluated not merely for the substance of their communications 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, therefore, 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. Performance may be keyed by special codes and formulas, paralinguistic features, appeals 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 martini”); 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 performance can prove an arduous social accomplishment (Sacks 1974). The keying of joke performance through disclaimer has been discussed by Edwards (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 spontaneously 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

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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: A newlywed couple agrees to refer to sexual intercourse as “doing the wash.” One night the man turns to his wife in bed and suggests they “do the wash.” The wife refuses. Later she reconsiders and consents to “do the wash,” whereupon the husband replies: “Oh, it’s all right. It was a small load and I did it by hand.” 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 request 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 activity and claimed that he never engaged in it. His former girlfriend, however, maintained that he was often unable to achieve climax when they had intercourse, 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 informant showered and changed his towels and underwear several times a day. He

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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 masturbation. 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 comparable 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 reported 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, economic 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 investigation. 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 JewishAmerican Princess (J.A.P.) jokes that were told in the United States in the

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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 concerned 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 comparative 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 developed 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 features – 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 ideologies 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 aesthetics (see Freud 1960: 9–11, 95–96), they have never attended to its performance. 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

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the aesthetics of particular performers and performances has been initiated: timing in joke delivery (Norrick 2001); visual imagery (Tallman 1974b); narrative persona (Mullen 1976; Bauman 1986); and the aesthetic preferences of accomplished joke tellers (Oring n.d.). Greater ethnographic and analytic attention need to be directed to the poetic qualities of humorous performances in everyday life. As art, humor remains to be taken seriously. Conclusion There is no single perspective that underlies anthropological and folkloristic approaches to humor. The problem that anthropologists and folklorists jointly share is the effort to document, analyze, and interpret the great diversity of humorous speech and behavior that exists in societies around the world. Their focus on humor in real social situations in different cultures often keeps their interpretations local and rooted in the life and lore of particular groups and particular societies. This attention to the diversity of humorous expression is perhaps the greatest contribution of these disciplines. Humor researchers need to confront the range of phenomena they are called to analyze and explain. They must determine whether they truly understand what others are laughing at. They must make explicit the knowledge needed to comprehend the humor – the domestic as well as the exotic. Theories must account for an extraordinary variety of data spread across a great range of peoples and historical periods. Theories will not stand that do not address the array of humorous expression – whether from Kiriwina or the island of Manhattan References Aarne, Antti, and Stith Thompson 1962 The Types of the Folktale. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Abrahams, Roger 1964 Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia. Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates. Apte, Mahadev 1985 Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Babcock-Abrahams, Barbara 1974 The novel and the carnival world: An essay in memory of Joe Doherty. Modern Language Notes 89: 911–937.

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Sherzer, Joel 1985 Puns and jokes. In: Teun A. van Dijk (ed.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis, 213–221. London: Academic Press. 2002 Speech Play and Verbal Art. Austin: University of Texas Press. Siporin, Steve 1994 Halloween pranks: “Just a little inconvenience.” In Jack Santino (ed.), Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life, 45–61. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Stoller, Paul 1984 Horrific comedy: Cultural resistance and the Hauka movement in Niger, Ethos 12: 165–188. Sykes, A. J. M. 1966 Joking relationships in an industrial setting. American Anthropologist 66: 188–193. Tallman, Richard S. 1974a A generic approach to the practical joke. Southern Folklore Quarterly 38: 259–274. 1974b “You can almost picture it”: The aesthetic of a Nova Scotia storyteller. Folklore Forum 7: 121–130. Tavarelli, Paola 1987–88 Dyadic traditions in mixed couples. Folklore and Mythology Studies 11–12: 67–79. Tedlock, Dennis 1971 On the translation of style in oral narrative. Journal of American Folklore 84: 114–133. Thompson, Stith 1955–58 Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. Rev. ed. 6 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Toelken. Barre 2003 The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West. Logan: Utah State University Press. Walle, Alf H. 1976 Getting picked up without being put down: Jokes and the bar rush. Journal of the Folklore Institute 13: 201–217. Welsch, Roger L. 1967 American numbskull tales: The Polack joke. Western Folklore 26: 183–186. Zucker, Wolfgang 1969 The clown as the Lord of Disorder. In: M. Conrad Hyers (ed.), Holy Laughter, 75–89. New York: Seabury.

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 philosophers and religious thinkers wrote about was usually laughter, with occasional references to comedy. Lacking the concept of humor, it is not surprising 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 something 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 colleagues in the behavioral and social sciences to study the valuable aspects of humor. Literature review Today it is common to distinguish theories of laughter and humor into three main groups: Superiority Theories, Incongruity Theories, and Relief (or Release from Restraint) Theories. But, as we said, for the first two thousand years there was only one developed theory – the Superiority Theory.

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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:

The Lord who sits in heaven laughs [the kings of the earth] to scorn; then he rebukes them in anger, he threatens them in his wrath.

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 traitors . . . 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 irresponsible 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, Abraham, 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 inability 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:

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Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of countenance the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. For like the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools (Ecclesiastes 7: 3–6). 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 foolish 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 grinding 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 religion to ancient philosophy, the assessment of humor remains mostly negative, 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-

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sents men of worth as overpowered by laughter,” he protested, “we must not accept it, much less if gods.” There was a second objection to laughter in Plato. What we laugh at, he said in his dialogue Philebus, is a kind of vice in other people, namely their ignorance about themselves. We laugh, that is, at people who think of themselves as wealthier, better-­looking, more virtuous, or wiser than they really are. While laughter feels good, our pleasure is based on malice, a “pain in the soul,” Plato called it. And so laughter is inherently antisocial or even cruel. Lastly, Plato was concerned with the possibility that as we laugh at people’s vices in comedy, those vices might rub off on us. Comedy is filled with liars, hypocrites, drunks, lechers, and adulterers. Could we spend any time at all reading and watching comedy and expect to keep our own virtue intact? Given all these objections, it is not surprising that when Plato imagined his ideal state in the Republic and in Laws, he imagined it as banning most comedy. Aristotle, Plato’s student, agreed that laughter and humor are based on feelings of superiority. Even wit, he said, is “educated insolence.” But he had a more positive attitude toward laughter and humor, perhaps because the New Comedy of his time was less vulgar and obscene than the Old Comedy which disgusted Plato. Aristotle treated what we now call “humor” under the heading of amusement or play. “Life includes rest as well as activity,” he wrote in the Nicomachean Ethics, “and in this is included leisure and amusement.” We need leisure and amusement because we cannot devote ourselves to work and serious activity all the time. For Aristotle the value of humor and other kinds of play was in their refreshing us to return to serious activity; he did not think of them as valuable in themselves. Still, in light of the uniformly negative assessments of laughter in the ancient world, he was revolutionary in finding any value at all in humor and play. In his Poetics Aristotle had some introductory comments on comedy, the art based on laughter and humor. There he mentioned a  book on comedy which was part of the Poetics, but that book is now lost. In his comments on comedy which we have, he connected it with human shortcomings, as Plato had, but he did not find therein a reason to condemn it: 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)

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Similarly, when Aristotle considered the morality of amusement in his Nicomachean Ethics, he acknowledged its potential for vice, but did not condemn laughter as Plato had. Aristotle counted overindulgence in humor as a vice, but he also counted the inability or refusal to engage in humor as a vice. The ideal, he said, is a mean between excessive humor and humorlessness. 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 movements 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, Aristotle 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

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nature of humor, though many had tried. In On the Orator Cicero examined the use of humor in public speaking, discussing such techniques as exaggeration, sarcasm, and punning. Extending Aristotle’s comment about the unexpected 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 speakers 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 Platonism 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 immoderately.”

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The strongest condemnations of laughter came from monastic leaders. The Essenes, an early Jewish monastic group, had imposed a  penance of thirty days for those who “guffawed foolishly.” The oldest Christian monastic rule, of Pachom in Egypt in the fourth century, forbade joking. The Syrian Ephraem advised his monks that 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 boisterous 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 William 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 dissolute 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 century. 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 objections 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-

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tle.” His view mirrored Aristotle’s: humans are creatures who need to rest from serious activity occasionally, and humor and other forms of play provide that rest. As bodily tiredness is eased by resting the body, so psychological tiredness is eased by resting the soul. As we have explained in discussing the feelings, pleasure is rest for the soul. And therefore the remedy for weariness of soul lies in slackening the tension of mental study and taking some pleasure. In Cassian’s Conferences it is related of blessed John the Evangelist that when people were scandalized at finding him at play with his disciples, he requested one of his questioners who carried a bow to shoot an arrow. When this had been done several times, the man, on being asked whether he could keep on doing so continuously, replied that the bow would break. Whereupon the blessed John pointed the moral that so, too, would the human spirit snap were it never unbent.   Those words and deeds in which nothing is sought beyond the soul’s pleasure are called playful or humorous, and it is necessary to make use of them at times for solace of soul. This is what Aristotle says, that in the social intercourse of this life a kind of rest is enjoyed in playing.

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 reason 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, impudent, shameful, or obscene.” The next is that we should take care not to lose

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our poise. Ambrose says that “we should beware when we relax lest we dissolve 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 circumstances, for instance when giving oneself over to play is mistimed or misplaced 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 century: Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Thomas Hobbes. Descartes’s comments are found in his book The Passions of the Soul. He offered a physiological 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 wonder 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.”

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Spinoza, Descartes’s contemporary, said simply, “A man hates what he laughs at.” Thomas Hobbes’s analysis of scorn as the source of laughter became the classic expression of the Superiority Theory. For Hobbes, human beings are by nature egocentric, and in their natural state they are in constant struggle with one another for power. In this struggle, they watch for signs that they are doing better than other people, or, what is equivalent, that others are failing. Laughter is nothing but an expression of people’s “sudden glory” when they realize that they are superior to someone else in some way. Hobbes acknowledged that some writers have linked laughter to wit and to joking, but he said that there is no necessary connection here, for “men laugh at mischances and indecencies, wherein there lies no wit nor jest at all.” What is essential to laughter is not wit or joking, but simply a feeling of superiority which comes upon us quickly. “Laughter proceeds from a sudden conception of some ability in himself that laughs.” Wit and jokes, according to Hobbes, evoke laughter by boosting people’s estimate of themselves. When we laugh as jokes, “the wit whereof always consists in the elegant discovering and conveying to our minds some absurdity of another” person by contrast with which we feel good about ourselves. Hobbes did acknowledge that we sometimes laugh at ourselves, but then, he said, we are laughing at our former selves, which for the moment we see as a different person. We do not laugh at some action or attribute of ourselves if it brings us “present dishonor.” Because Hobbes saw laughter as something anti-­social and often cruel, he had moral misgivings about it. “It is no wonder,” he wrote, “that men take heinously to be laughed at or derided, that is, triumphed over.” The people who laugh the most, he said, are least confident of themselves, or as we might say today, who have the lowest self-­esteem. They are forced to maintain the little self-­esteem they have by constantly watching for the mistakes and imperfections of other people. “Therefore much laughter at the defects of others, is a  sign of pusillanimity. For of great minds, one of the proper works is, to help and free others from scorn; and compare themselves only with the most able.” Once Hobbes and other early modern philosophers had presented the Superiority Theory in this clear and radical form, other philosophers began to criticize it. A century after Hobbes, Francis Hutcheson published Reflections upon Laughter, which presented counterexamples to the Hobbesian theory and advanced new views about laughter based on the 18th-­century psychology of the association of ideas. In the first part of the book, Hutcheson argued from examples that there is no essential connection between laughing or being amused, and having feelings of superiority. We sometimes laugh

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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 consists in the ability to evoke ideas of greatness, novelty, and beauty in the reader 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) Theory and the Incongruity Theory. We can consider these one at a time. The Relief Theory 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 funniness. 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.

To understand Shaftesbury here, we need to know something about 18th­century physiology, in which our nerves were thought to be tiny tubes carrying not electro-­chemical impulses but spirits, that is, fluids. The spirits flowing through the nerves to the muscles were though to cause our bodies to move. When we are not allowed to do what we want to do, according to this view, spirits are summoned in our nerves, but then they are constrained from moving our muscles to carry out the desired action. As a result the pressure of the spirits against the walls of the nerves increases and so the spirits have

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a tendency to vent themselves by moving our muscles in other ways, such as “burlesque, mimicry, or buffoonery.” Today these would be called displacement activities. In Shaftesbury’s account, the spirits do not simply find just any way to vent themselves. Rather they find a way to “be revenged on their constrainers,” that is, to move the body in such as way as to mock the persons or the institutions which forbade the action we wanted to perform! As medical research refined the understanding of the nervous system in the 19th century, talk of “spirits” gave way to talk of nervous energy, but the ideas of constraint and excess pressure continued in explanations of laughter. The theory that laughter is a venting of pressure in the nervous system was worked out in more detail by Herbert Spencer in the mid-­19th century, and then by Sigmund Freud in the early 20th century. In different versions of the Relief Theory, there are two scenarios. First, the laughter may release some pre-­existing nervous energy, or second, the humorous stimulus may itself cause the build up of the nervous energy and then relieve it. As an example of the first kind of laughter, consider any prohibition which blocks desires. When rambunctious children are forced to sit still and keep quiet, for instance, their pent-­up nervous energy shows in their muscle tension and fidgeting. When they get the chance, that nervous energy may be released in horseplay, buffoonery, and laughter. According to Freud, there are two main sources of constrained or repressed nervous energy – the energy of sexual desire and the energy associated with the desire for violent action. Society has rules prohibiting many forms of both sex and violence, and so nervous energy builds up. That energy can be released in laughter, which is why, according to Freud, the two major kinds of jokes are about sex and violence. In the second scenario mentioned above, the energy released in laughter is energy which the humorous stimulus – say a joke or cartoon – has built up itself. As we listen to the “set-­up” of a joke, for example, we may feel emotions for the characters in the story. But then at the punch line, as the story takes an unexpected turn, we suddenly realize that the emotions we had been summoning are inappropriate. The now superfluous nervous energy of those emotions are vented in laughter. Consider the following poem by Harry ­Graham:

I had written to Aunt Maud Who was on a trip abroad When I heard she’d died of cramp, Just too late to save the stamp.

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In reading the first three lines, the Relief Theory would say, we experience feelings of sympathy for this dutiful nephew whose aunt has died unexpectedly. 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 sympathetic. 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 instance, 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 muscular 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 inappropriate. 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. Something 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 hardly 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

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emotional arousal to low emotional arousal. The excess nervous energy is discharged in laughter. Sigmund Freud’s theory of laughter, the second classic Relief Theory, requires careful reading, for it uses not only terms from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory but also familiar terms with meanings not standard today. Freud distinguishes between jokes, humor and the comic, for example, while most theorists today categorize jokes as a kind of humor. Freud presented his ideas in two works, the 1905 book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious and the 1928 essay “Humor.” He distinguished three kinds of laughter situations: joking or wit (der Witz), the comic, and humor. In each, mental energy is summoned for a psychological purpose but then is seen not to be needed for that purpose. The superfluous energy is discharged in laughter. We can describe each kind of laughter separately. In joking, Freud said, we indulge hostile or sexual feelings which we would usually repress. Telling jokes is like dreaming, a way to let repressed feelings into the conscious mind. Because we express our hostile or sexual feelings rather than repress them, we “save” the mental energy we would have expended to repress those feelings. That saved energy is vented in laughter. Freud’s second laughter situation is the comic. Here the “saved” mental energy is energy of thinking. We are presented with an initially puzzling phenomenon which we summon the mental energy to understand. But then we realize that no solution is really called for, and so we vent the mental energy in laughter. An example of something comic would be one of Rube Goldberg’s drawings of a fantastically complicated device to do some simple task, such as watering a plant. On first seeing the drawing, Freud would say, we summon the mental energy to understand how each part of the machine moves the next part, but then in acknowledging that this drawing is just a cartoon, we relax and stop trying to figure out how the machine works. The mental energy we have summoned for thinking is now superfluous, and is discharged in laughter. Freud’s third laughter situation is humor. Here the energy saved is the energy of emotion. Humor arises “if there is a situation in which, according to our usual habits, we should be tempted to release a distressing affect and if motives then operate upon us which suppress that affect in statu nascendi [as it is being born]. . . The pleasure of humor . . . comes about . . . at the cost of a release of affect that does not occur: it arise from an economy in the expenditure of affect.” (Morreall 1983: 35). As an example, Freud told Mark Twain’s story about the time his brother was working on a road-­building project. An explosive charge went off prematurely, blowing him into the sky so that he

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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 emotions. 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 deriving pleasure from intellectual activity. Obviously, what is fine about it is the triumph of narcissism, the ego’s victorious assertion of its own invulnerability. It refuses to be hurt by the arrows of reality or to be compelled to suffer.  (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 circumstances.” Freud also notes that “it is not everyone who is capable of the humorous 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 presented to them by others.” (ibid. 116) The Incongruity Theory The second theory that arose in the 18th century to compete with the Superiority 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

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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 Beattie, 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: In everything that is to excite a lively convulsive laugh there must be something absurd (in which the understanding, therefore, can find no satisfaction). Laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing. This transformation, which is certainly not enjoyable to the understanding, yet indirectly gives it very active enjoyment for a moment. Therefore its cause must consist in the influence of the representation upon the body, and the reflex effect of this upon the mind.  (Morreall 1989b: 249)

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 Chihuahua 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 incongruity of sensuous and abstract knowledge. . . . The cause of laughter in every case is simpy the perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity.  (Morreall 1987: 51–52)

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

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them, he discussed the cognitive processes in the creation and appreciation of humor. But he also contrasted humorous amusement as a response to incongruity with other responses to incongruity, such as fear and sadness. 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 sympathy with real and necessary distress; as we burst into laughter from want of sympathy with that which is unreasonable and unnecessary, the absurdity 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 approach 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 Concluding Unscientific Postscript he discussed the nature and value of the comical. 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 contradiction 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.

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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, especially Christians, need to have a sense of humor to live with the incongruities 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 attendant 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 delight 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 process 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, however, 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

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as well as philosophy. Bergson’s account of humor grew out of his metaphysics and his ethics, especially his opposition to the materialism and mechanism popular in his day. His own metaphysical theory of “Creative Evolution” posited a non-­material “vital force” (elan vital) which drives biological and social evolution. When we are motivated by this vital force, we have a creative attitude which is open to the uniqueness of each thing and experience, and so to the opportunities which each moment brings. We know this force in ourselves intuitively, even though conceptual, logical thinking has no place for it. When we suppress this vital force and manage our lives with logic, we act in rigid, mechanical ways, treating new experiences merely as repetitions of previous ones. We thus miss opportunities which a creative person would not. Fortunately, human beings have evolved a way of correcting mechanical behavior, and that is laughter. For Bergson, laughter is a social gesture of mockery toward those who are not thinking and acting in a flexible, context-­sensitive way. Its function is to humiliate mechanical people into seeing their inadequacy and returning to flexible, well-­adapted ways of thinking and acting. The object of laughter, Bergson says, is “the mechanical encrusted on the living.” Bergson’s Theory is not a straightforward version of either the Superiority Theory or the Incongruity Theory, but it has elements of both. The essence of laughter is ridicule and its purpose is to humiliate, as in the Superiority Theory. But, as in the Incongruity Theory, the object of laughter is a discrepancy between the way something is and the way it is supposed to be, in this case, human thought and behavior failing to be human. Issues In exploring the history of thinking about humor, we have already presented several of the issues which arise in philosophy and religious studies. Here we will discuss five of them: (1) Is having a religious world view compatible with having a sense of humor? (2) Is there a theory of humor which provides necessary and sufficient conditions for humor? (3) How is humor related to emotions? (4) How is humor related to rationality? (5) In what ways might humor be ethically blameworthy or praiseworthy? 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,

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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 beliefs, 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 toward 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 sacred figure – would be sacrilegious. In the history of humor, however, making fun of religious leaders, scriptures, and even the gods is commonplace. Irreverence has been a central feature 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 enjoyment. 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,

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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, mirthful 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, according 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 addressed 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 refreshes us for more serious activity. Some religious thinkers have even seen religious value in humor. Kierkegaard thought that Christianity, with its illogical mysteries, was the most humorous religion of all. The two best contemporary 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

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of Buddhism is to get people not to be blindly committed, not to be attached, as Buddhists say, to anything, including Buddhism itself. Thus Zen does not have a sacred as other religions do, and so it is more open to the playfulness of humor. Indeed, one of the ways Zen tries to break people’s attachments is with incongruities in the form of koans, such as the question “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Even the figure of the Buddha is not sacred, as shown in the response of the Buddhist master who answered the question “What is the Buddha?” with “A wiping stick of dried shit.” A classic tale recounts how another Buddhist master, on visiting a monastery in winter which had run out of firewood, went to the altar, took down a wooden statue of the Buddha, smashed it into pieces and started a fire with it. According to Hyers, such examples show how humor enhances the central insights on which Zen Buddhism is based. As Hyers surveys Western religious literature, he finds the same negative attitude toward laughter and humor which we have surveyed. But he argues that this attitude misses several important humorous elements in the Bible. The story of Jonah, for example, Hyers reads as a satire on a reluctant prophet. In many stories about Jesus, too, he finds wit, imagination, and an openness to people characteristic of someone with a sense of humor. Harvey Cox does not say much about humor per se, but he does argue for the importance of “festivity and fantasy” in Christianity, and these have many comic elements. He analyses festivity in terms of conscious excess, celebrative affirmation, and juxtaposition. Overly solemn and prudish Christians, he says, have largely eliminated these from contemporary religion, but they should be restored. Indeed, Cox closes his book by asking Christians to think of Christ as a harlequin! 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 essential 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

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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 Hutcheson 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 feeling 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 system. 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 complicated 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 necessary 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 incongruity. 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

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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 incongruity 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 explanation. 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 neither necessary nor sufficient for amusement, why was the Superiority Theory the only theory of laughter and humor for two millennia? To answer this question, we should note that most of the incongruities we laugh at, especially in comedy, are human shortcomings – ignorance, stupidity, awkwardness, mistakes, misunderstandings, and moral vices. The Incongruity Theory would say simply that it is the unexpectedness, the out-­of-­placeness of these shortcomings 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 shortcomings. 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 constitute 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 example, 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.

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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 century, and the vast majority writing after that, have thought of laughter as either expressing some emotion(s) or in the Relief Theory releasing emotional energy. 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 emotions as fear, sympathy, and sadness, but even then, amusement was still classified as an emotion. Recently, Robert Sharpe has gone beyond simply assuming that amusement is an emotion by giving seven similarities between it and standard emotions such as fear and love (Morreall 1987: 208–­211). Both amusement and standard emotions, he says, have “intentional objects” – they are about something. 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 emotions or humor which unite them. Furthermore, using a standard account of the nature of emotion, I have shown several dissimilarities between amusement and standard emotions. According to a standard theory of emotion, an emotion is a state of physiological 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 hitting 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

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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 displaying 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 irrational. From Plato on, humor was classified as an emotion, and emotions were usually thought to be irrational. Once the Incongruity Theory was established, 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 difficult 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

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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 threatening, 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 respond 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 reflection 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 ego­centered perspective, and that is the essence of rationality. Many have described the value of humor as its giving us emotional distance from the problems in life. Indeed, some psychiatrists and other therapists 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 ancient 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 objections to certain kinds of humor, especially in cases of racial and sexual discrimination and sexual harrassment. Among the traditional charges against laughter and humor, nine stand out:

1.  Humor is hostile. 2.  Humor diminishes self-­control. 3.  Humor is irresponsible.

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4.  Humor is insincere. 5.  Humor is idle. 6.  Humor is hedonistic. 7.  Humor fosters sexual license. 8.  Humor fosters anarchy. 9.  Humor is foolish.

Today we seldom hear most of these charges, largely because our culture is long past Puritan objections to idleness and pleasure. American entertainment 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, writing comic songs, staging comic plays, etc.) based on the supposed shortcomings of the less powerful groups. Many have claimed that such humor reinforces 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 Joke­as-­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 – usually 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 shortcoming. De Sousa illustrates with a joke about Margaret Trudeau, the former

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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 complains that she has been gang-­raped. Wishful thinking.  (Morreall 1987: 239)

According to de Sousa, this joke has certain assumptions. One is that Margaret 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 hypothetically 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  target. 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 someone 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 generally be told because of the likelihood that they will reinforce people’s hostility 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

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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 objectively 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 getting people to see their mistakes objectively rather than defensively. To continue 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 represent: 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 disengagement vs. engagement, willingness to change one’s mind vs. stubbornness,

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pragmatism vs. idealism, getting a second chance vs. finality, celebration of vs. denigration of the body, and playfulness vs. seriousness. Socially, the comic and tragic visions represent: anti-­heroism vs. heroism, pacifism vs. militarism, forgiveness vs. vengeance, social equality vs. inequality, questioning vs. acceptance of authority and tradition, situation ethics vs. duty ethics, and social integration vs. social isolation. With these features in mind, I  have examined traditional Eastern and Western religions, as well as recently emerged religions like Wicca. While no religion embodies the comic vision or the tragic vision in a pure form, several lean heavily toward one or the other. The most comic vision among traditional religions is in Zen Buddhism and Taoism, the most tragic vision in certain forms of Judaism and Calvinist Christianity. Virtually all the New Religions of the past fifty years have embraced the comic vision. References Aristotle 1941 Berger, Peter 1969 1997

Poetics. In: Richard McKeon (ed.), The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House. Christian Faith and the Social Comedy. In: M. Conrad Hyers (ed.), Holy Laughter: Essays on Religion in the Comic Perspective. New York: Seabury Press. Redeeming Laughter: An Essay on the Experience of the Comic. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Bergson, Henri 1956 Laughter. Trans. by Cloudesley Brereton and Kenneth Rothwell. In Wylie Sypher (ed.), Comedy. Garden City: Doubleday Anchor. Blyth, R. H. 1969 Zen humour. In: M. Conrad Hyers (ed.), Holy Laughter: Essays on Religion in the Comic Perspective. New York: Seabury Press. Buckley, George Wright 1901 The Wit and Wisdom of Jesus. Battle Creek, MI: Ellis, Cox, Harvey 1969 The Feast of Fools. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Croissan, Dominic 1976 Raid on the Articulate: Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges. New York: Harper and Row. Freud, Sigmund 1959 Humor. In: Collected Papers. Vol. 5. New York: Basic Books.

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Hobbes, Thomas 1994 Leviathan. Ed. by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett. 1999 Human Nature and De Corpore Politico. Ed. by J. C. A. Gaskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hyers, M. Conrad 1987 And God Created Laughter: The Bible as Divine Comedy. Atlanta: John Knox Press 1991 The Laughing Buddha: Zen and the Comic Spirit. Durango, Colorado: Longwood Academic. 1996 The Spirituality of Comedy: Comic Heroism in a Tragic World. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, Hyers, M. Conrad (ed.) 1969 Holy Laughter: Essays on Religion in the Comic Perspective. New York: Seabury Press, Kerr, Walter 1967 Tragedy and Comedy. New York: Simon and Schuster. Kierkegaard, Soren 1970 Journals and Papers. Ed. and trans. by Howard Hong and Edna Hong. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Lauter, Paul (ed.) 1969 Theories of Comedy. New York: Doubleday Anchor. Morreall, John 1983 Taking Laughter Seriously. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1987 Funny ha-­ha, funny strange, and other reactions to incongruity. In: John Morreall (ed.), 188–207. 1989a Enjoying incongruity. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (1): 1–18. 1989b The rejection of humor in Western thought. Philosophy East and West 39: 243–265. 1999 Comedy, Tragedy, and Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press. Morreall, John (ed.) 1987 The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sousa, Ronald de 1987a When is it wrong to laugh?’. In: J. Morreall (ed.), 226–249. 1987b The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Trublood, Elton 1964 The Humor of Christ. New York: Harper and Row, Willeford, William 1969 The Fool and His Sceptre: A Study in Clowns and Jesters and Their Audience. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Literature and humor Alleen and Don Nilsen Note: Because literary humor is such a broad field, we asked nine contemporary 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 gratefully 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 “Critical Works Cited” at the end of this chapter where there are also brief statements describing them and their work. A matter of analysis Even though highly respected creators of humorous literature have expressed serious doubts about the analysis of humor, most literary scholars are involved in some aspect of that endeavor. The best known argument against analysis was made by E. B. and Katherine White in the preface to their 1941 A Subtreasury of American Humor in which they wrote “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.” They went on to say that humor “won’t stand much blowing up, and it won’t stand much poking. It has a  certain fragility, and evasiveness, which one had best respect. Essentially it is a complete mystery.” White later compared interpreting humor to “explaining a spider’s web in terms of geometry.” D. G. Kehl sent us a  similar statement from George Bernard Shaw: “There is no more dangerous literary symptom than a  temptation to write about wit and humor. It indicates a total loss of both.” But then Kehl went on to say “Those of us who are constantly beset by this deadly temptation – and often yield, it is hoped without the accompanying loss – find consolation in Jane Austen’s observation that in the novel are to be found ‘the liveliest effusions of wit and humour ... conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.’”

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While there is no clear definition of what constitutes literary humor, there are characteristics generally ascribed to the term literary or literature, which can also be applied to humor. In recent years, some critics have started to use the term Belles-Lettres almost sarcastically as a  way of characterizing pretentious or “artificial” writing, but C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon explain in their A Handbook to Literature that in its earlier sense the term referred to imaginative and artistic writing. To illustrate the point, they cite Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as a  good example of Belles-Lettres, while the writing about mathematics done by the same man under his birth name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson does not qualify. The obvious difference between the two types of writing is what amuses people when they hear the story (which may be apocryphal) of Queen Victoria sending Dodgson a message after the success of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass giving him permission to dedicate his next book to her. He complied by honoring her with a mathematical treatise. Holman and Harmon also explain that a requisite for literature is that it has been carefully constructed. For example, they define a literary ballad as one “composed by an author, as opposed to an anonymous folk ballad.” In a similar way, those of us who work with children’s literature, make a distinction between literary fairytales and common folktales. We say that Rudyard Kipling and Hans Christian Andersen wrote literary fairytales because much of their charm comes from the exactness of the wording. Kipling, for example, took the plots of his stories from the folktales told by native women in India who cared for the children of British colonists. However, he devised his own wording as when he began “The Elephant’s Child” with “In the high and Far-Off times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk.” In a similar way, Hans Christian Andersen did not begin “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” with the traditional “Once upon a time. . . ,” but instead with “There were once five and twenty tin soldiers, all brothers, for they were the offspring of the same old tin spoon.” Because of such exact wording, literary fairytales are more likely to be read to children while more common folktales will be told to children. But even common folktales, those that have been told for hundreds of years, include carefully constructed literary elements. For example, the plots of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “The Three Little Pigs,” and “Jack and the Beanstalk” are simple enough that storytellers can choose their own wording as they go along. However, the stories contain literary, i.e. carefully constructed, parts that are repeated so often that they can be remembered and recited by both listeners and tellers as with “Somebody’s been (sitting in my chair... sleeping

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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 discourse 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 literary 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 Magazine. 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 sophisticated 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 “toughlove” camp for juvenile delinquents. When he first arrives, the guard warns

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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 Attorney 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 literature 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, incongruity 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 literary works that were not necessarily created for the purpose of arousing laughter, 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 Comedy. Literary comedies typically begin with a disruption of life as it is expected 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 historical (“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-

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ical Cartoons and Comics” by Kalman Goldstein), others by ethnicity (“African American Comedians” by Frank J. Miles and “Native American Trickster Tales” by Arnold Krupat), while still others are defined by country of origin (“Spanish Comedy” by Nina Gerassi-Navarro and Raquel Medina-Bañón and “Irish Comedy” by James M. Cahalan) or by the major techniques of the creators (“Satire” by Harry Keyishian” and “Farce” by Norman R. Shapiro). Romantic comedies, like today’s situation comedies, may – but do not have to – include love stories. The first romances came into English from speakers of the romance languages: Italian, Spanish, and French. These romantic stories were exaggerated with the good parts resembling daydreams while the bad parts resembled nightmares. Many of them told about young heroes embarking on quests in which their success would be rewarded by the love of a beautiful young princess, hence the association of the term romance with sexual liaisons. And because male–female relationships are fraught with emotional complications, which to outsiders often seem funny, the “love” part of romantic comedies has moved up from a secondary to a primary focus in the genre. A Bildungsroman is a romance containing what the Germans refer to as Sturm und Drang, storm and stress. They are also called apprenticeship novels or in today’s library circles, young adult novels. They tell the story of a young person traveling the road to adulthood. Even such serious books as J. D. Salinger’s prototypical Catcher in the Rye have humorous moments that serve as comic relief, while others are primarily humorous but written in a sympathetic tone that allows young readers to smile in recognition. Examples of such humorous books include Louis Sachar’s 1998 Holes, Judy Blume’s 1970 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Gary Paulsen’s 1993 Harris and Me, and Sue Townsend’s 1982 The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾. Comedies of manners frequently stress the superior intellectual and moral values of middle class characters as compared to the established aristocracy. For readers or viewers this is a  satisfying theme because middle-class or common people far outnumber aristocrats. The history of the genre can be traced to Classical Greek and Roman times. It reached its fullest development in France during the seventeenth Century under the pen of Moliere, and in England under the pens of Thomas Shadwell and William Congreve. Later examples include Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal and The Rivals, and Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro. Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest provides a good illustration when Jack responds affirmatively to Lady Bracknell’s question of whether he smokes and she ­answers, “I am glad to hear it. A man should have an occupation of some

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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 approve anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate 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 eccentrics 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, ludicrous, 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 romantic 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 Grahame’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 getting 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 regional 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

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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, Anthony 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 concerned 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 characters, 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 hostility, 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

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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 McCartney’s wealth. Other examples of fantasies where the humor is tinged with satire 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 Beckett’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 role of reviewers and critics 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 scholars 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 Literature, E. Galligan’s 1984 Comic Vision in Literature, Victor Raskin’s 1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Lawrence E. Mintz’s 1988 Humor in America: 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

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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. Russell 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 rejected 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, anthologies, and textbooks on various aspects of literary humor. With the noted dialectologist, Raven I. McDavid Jr., he edited The Mirth of a Nation: America’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

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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 Ammons 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 Folklore, 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 Improper, 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 visited 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 “delightfully off each other.” Robert W. Corrigan’s 1981 Comedy: Meaning and Form is a good collection of modern writing about the genre of comedy from such critics as Christopher Fry, W. H. Auden, Susanne Langer, Northrop Frye, Benjamin

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Lehmann, Arthur Koestler, Sigmund Freud, Eric Bentley, Al Capp, and L. C. Knight. The final chapter includes excerpts from four “classics” of comic theory including Molière’s preface to Tartuffe and essays by Charles Baudelaire, George Meredith, and Henri Bergson. Holman and Harmon describe the characteristics of the picaresque novel, and in so doing, allow readers to recognize the similarity in opportunities for humor surrounding picaros, who can be either alazons or eirons (depending on the situation), in such novels as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Miguel Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and John M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World. While not all of the following characteristics hold true 100% of the time, they are true enough to lend insights about the possibilities for humor. 1. The first person account tells a part or the whole life of a rogue or picaro. 2. Rogues and picaros are drawn from a lower social level, are of loose character, and if employed, do menial labor and live by their wit and playful language. 3. Picaresque novels are episodic in nature. 4. Picaresque characters do not mature or develop. 5. The story is realistic. The language is plain (vernacular) and is filled with vivid detail. 6. Picaresque characters serve other higher class characters and learn their foibles and frailties; thus providing opportunities to satirize social castes, national types, and/or racial peculiarities. 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 related 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 particular 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

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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 exaggeration. Feinberg says that what is exaggerated “is the bad, the foolish, the hypocritical,” while “the good, the sensible, the honest” are minimized. Another good book on satire is Mary Ellen Snodgrass’s the Encyclopedia of Satirical 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 references, 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 Strategies 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 American 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: Critical 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,

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Dwight MacDonald’s 1960 Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm – And After, and Robert Wechsler’s 1993 Columbus à la Mode: Parodies of Contemporary American Writers. Works focusing more directly on theory and criticism include Linda Hutcheon’s 1985 A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms and Gao Yan’s 1996 The Art of Parody: Maxine Hong Kingston’s Use of Chinese Sources. Occasionally, books will be put together by scholars who think that a particular author is not receiving his or her fair share of attention. Examples include Tim Page’s 1994 Dawn Powell at Her Best and Maxwell Geismar’s 1972 Ring Lardner and the Portrait of Folly, but for the most part books are written about authors in the public eye. For example, both Carol Shloss and Ruthann Knechel Johansen have written books on the work of Flannery O’Connor, while Peter Scholl, Michael Fedo, and Judith Yaross Lee have each written books on Garrison Keillor’s storytelling. Theodore Khapertian and Thomas Schaub have written books on Thomas Pynchon; Fred C. Kelly, A. L. Lazarus, and Jean Shepherd have treated the works of George Ade, while Graham Flashner, Maurice Yacowar, and Annette Wernblad have each done books on Woody Allen. Thomas Pughe compared the works of Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, and Philip Roth, while Elaine Safer has compared the novels of John Barth, William Gaddis, Ken Kesey, and Thomas Pynchon. In her most recent book, Mocking the Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth, Elaine Safer shows how Roth combines Jewish American humor with postmodern experimentation in his 2001 The Dying Animal, his 2000 The Human Stain, his 1998 I Married a Communist, and his 1997 American Pastoral. She discusses his playful use of details from his own life and ethnic background and how he complains about being accused of writing fiction when he is writing autobiography and of writing autobiography when he is, in fact, writing fiction. Roth has enraged Jewish readers with his hyperbolic portrayals of such offensive traits as materialism, sexual preoccupation, vitriolic quarreling, and scandalous philandering, but at the same time the Jewish Book Council of America presented him with the Daroff Award. Safer argues that this dual view of Roth by his own people is “an example of comic irony involving a novelist who can be seen as a combination of Kafka and Woody Allen.” A different kind of writing about humor consists of bibliographic work in which editors bring together and organize the work and the criticism of many other scholars. As with books already mentioned, the focus might be on a single author as with Doreen Fowler and Ann J. Abadie’s 1976 Faulkner and Humor, Jerome Klinkowitz and Donald Lawler’s 1977 Vonnegut in

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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 excerpts 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 photos and/or drawings. Several of the authors who wrote the essays regularly 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 General 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 described 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 entries, 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

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guide, Humor in American Literature: A Selected Annotated Bibliography, followed by similar books on Irish and British literature, his biggest headaches came from trying to get permission for quoting more than 300 words from critics. To his surprise, charges were usually higher for books that were out of print and for the words of deceased critics whose literary rights were owned by descendants. Today computers and the internet make bibliographic research easier, but at the same time, scholars and publishers are discouraged from devoting their efforts to such projects because interested people can usually find some information, although it may not be reliable, on virtually any published author. Humor from different perspectives 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. Rowling, 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 scholars usually look at the whole spectrum of the popular culture, humorous literature is included, especially in historical studies, because literature is what has been written down and is therefore what can be found for study. Constance 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 Biblical Times to the Modern Age and his 1985 Joys of Jewish Humor, and William 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

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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 Literary 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 Hispanic 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. edited 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 designed to tease missionaries on the Sioux reservation. One of Deloria’s observations 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 LodgeFire and Indian Old-Man Stories: More Sparks from War Eagle’s Lodge-Fire,

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both published in 1996. Scott B. Vickers published Native American Identities: From Stereotype to Archetype in Art and Literature in 1998. The stereotype that has been attacked with the most vigor is the old idea that women have no sense of humor. Regina Barreca has spent the last twenty years arguing against the idea that the creation and enjoyment of humor are masculine privileges. “Women’s lives have always been filled with humor,” she says. It emerged “as a tool for survival in the social and professional jungles” and works as a “weapon against the absurdities of injustice.” She goes on to say that “Women did not suddenly get funny in the 1990s any more than women suddenly got ambitious in the 1970s or sexually aware in the 1960s or intelligent in the 1980s.” She cites the perfectly aimed irony that Jane Austen used to make fun of what was viewed as congenital ignorance and adds to it Erma Bombeck’s assertion, “A lot of people think I write humor . . . As an observer of the human condition all I do is question it. I rarely find it funny.” Bombeck’s statement fits with what Pulitzer-prize winner Wendy Wasserstein said, “When I speak up, it’s not because I have any particular answers; rather, I have a desire to puncture the pretentiousness of those who seem so certain they do.” Besides Barreca’s books listed at the end of the chapter, several other writers have explored questions about gender and humor. Nancy Walker and Zita Dresner in 1988 wrote a landmark book Redressing the Balance: American Women’s Literary Humor from Colonial Times to the 1980s. Walker has also written The Tradition of Women’s Humor in America (1984), A Very Serious Thing: Women’s Humor and American Culture (1988), Feminist Alternatives: Irony and Fantasy in the Contemporary Novel by Women (1990), The Disobedient Writer: Women and Narrative Tradition (1995, and What’s So Funny? Humor in American Culture (1998). Marilyn Jurich wrote Scheherazade’s Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature (1998), Gail Finney edited Look Who’s Laughing: Gender and Comedy (1994), and Barbara Bennett wrote Comic Visions, Female Voices: Contemporary Women Novelists and Southern Humor (1998). In her 2006 Wrangling Women: Humor and Gender in the American West, Kristin M. McAndrews illustrates how contemporary women working not only with cattle and horses, but also with “dude-ranch” tourists, are creating their own kinds of western “tall tales.” Paul H. Grawe and his wife, Robin Jaeckle Grawe, have devised a Humor Quotient Test (the HQT) in an attempt to measure what George Meredith called “Humor of the Mind.” Meredith suggests at least three humor structures: Gotcha humor, in which someone thinks he or she is talented but when

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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 characteristics, 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 archetypal personalities as Crusader, Advocate, Bridge-builder, Consoler, Reconciler, 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 inspired 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 different 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

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more interested in effects than in psychogenesis, he holds that a familiarity with masks and voices is a major factor in the appreciation of humorous discourse. Issues and challenges in the analysis of humor Practically any theory of humor can be tested and/or illustrated through literature. 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 explain 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. Wherever 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 interpreted 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 talent” for humor. She could make “an intentionally humorous episode pathetic

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and an intentionally pathetic one funny.” Because of the intensity of poetry, it makes a good target for parody. Parodists usually keep enough of the original rhyme scheme and the rhythm to be recognizable, but then they change the semantics so that the meaning clashes humorously with the original, which readers already have in their minds. In another example, Jessica Milner Davis points out that drama has its own hierarchy of comedy and that “farce, or knockabout, physical comedy, has always been at the bottom,” and as such has been “a neglected area of comment and critical attention.” Although it is getting a little easier now that oral traditions are receiving acceptance as part of the humanities, when in the 1970s she set out to study European farce, she found it difficult to obtain scripts and performance histories. This was true even for periods in which history shows farce flourishing both in theaters and in the work of traveling troupes. Related to the general suspicion of humor studies as a “serious” academic endeavor is a shortage of publication opportunities. In an attempt to help out the matter, the American Humor Studies Association was founded in 1975 and according to its long-time executive secretary, David E. E. Sloane, is dedicated to the study of American humor in all its forms, including books, comics, movies, popular culture, and “higher” forms of literature and graphic arts. The group sponsors an annual journal, Studies in American Humor, which publishes articles on subjects ranging from Will Rogers to Southwestern humor in the nineteenth century, and from colonial humor to the humor of immigrants and native Indian trickster stories, and from the films of Woody Allen to the writings of Mark Twain and other regional and genre writers. Meetings are held in conjunction with the Modern Language Association and the American Literature Association conferences, where the group sponsors special sessions. It also produces a semi-annual newsletter To Wit, which provides members and others with information about new publications, upcoming events, and on-going subjects of historical study. Since 1988, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research has appeared four times a  year. It is sponsored by the International Society for Humor Studies, which also sponsors annual conferences alternating between North America and foreign countries. At least one-third of the conference presentations as well as journal articles relate to literature. As interest in the formal study of humor has increased, so has the interest of scholarly publishers. Wayne State University Press in Detroit has a Humor in Life and Letters series under the editorship of Sarah Blacher Cohen. Among the dozen books currently in print are such literature studies as David M. Craig’s 1997 Tilting at Mortality: Narrative Strategies in Joseph Heller’s

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Fiction, Morton Gurewitch’s 1994 The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination, and Cohen’s 1992 Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary American Literature. Gordon and Breach Publishers have a Studies in Humor and Gender series edited by Regina Barreca and Nancy Walker, which includes books on both literature and popular culture, for example, Barbara Levy’s 1997 Ladies 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 University of Mississippi Press relate to humor. Gregg Camfield’s 1994 Sentimental Twain, Samuel Clemens in the Maze of Moral Philosophy was published 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 Remember 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, scholars 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 disseminating it. While taxpayers grow nervous when they find professors talking about controversial writings in class, David E. E. Sloane has shown how censorship also works to encourage serious scholarship. He teaches at the University 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 studying Jewish, Irish, and various other immigrant groups of the 1800 and 1900s. Following the colloquium, Sloane compiled a set of classroom-oriented materials 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 Adventures 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

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“‘I  Want a  Real Coon’: Mark Twain and Late-Nineteenth-Century Ethnic Caricature.” This latter piece is about Twain’s working in the highly ambiguous realm between the minstrel show and “coon caricature” in the 1870–1910 period. Sloane says that when we look at such historical documents as “coon songs” and at George Augustas Sala’s 1883 America Revisited, and the writings of Petroleum V. Nasby and others, “the question of what comic portraiture actually means becomes murkier, not clearer.” He thus predicts that many Twain specialists and American humor scholars will continue to devote significant attention to ethnic and racial humor and caricature. In her studies of farce, Jessica Milner Davis has looked at censorship from a different perspective. She says that “whether it be English, medieval Dutch, Spanish, French, Viennese, Russian, improvised commedia dell’arte, or even Japanese kyògen of the classical nò theatre,” farce is “both the most violent and physically shocking of dramatic forms of comedy,” and so she set out to see why it is not censored. She found that at the same time that it is the most violent, it is also the most innocent in that unlike satire or burlesque it does not offend either individuals or society. “Equally paradoxically, it is not particularly fantastic or unrealistic: indeed in terms of acting-style, actors assert that the truthfulness-to-life of their character is absolutely essential for the release of laughter by the audience.” But the violence is highly stylized with “precision of timing and intonation notoriously difficult to achieve.” She named a handful of archetypal patterns, which she says answer the question of how farce “gets away” with its outrages, without invoking either censorship or constraint. The historical cases in which a  so-called farce actually provoked formal censorship were helpful in defining the boundaries of the genre. The need for interdisciplinary scholarship Davis’s research convinced her that the psychological aspects of violence as entertainment need to be annexed to the literary and that the greatest insights into the nature and operations of humor are likely to be produced by combining insights from her own traditional academic discipline of drama with the methods of research and the insights gained from other “seemingly unrelated areas and their methodologies.” This is similar to what Paul Lewis found when he wrote his 1989 Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Humor in Literature. In his dissertation written in the mid 1970s, he studied the role of mystery in gothic nar-

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ratives, stories in which characters are forced to deal with mind-boggling events. Although at the time such critics of the fantastic as Tzvetan Todorov and Eric S. Rabkin were insisting that the response to mystery is necessarily characterized by a 180° shift away from normalcy (Rabkin) or intellectual hesitation (Todorov), Lewis was struck by the range of possible responses including puzzlement, fear, and humor and by the relation between these responses and gothic sub-genres including didactic gothic, speculative or ambiguous gothic, and mock-gothic. He found himself arguing that “the eruption of fearful mysteries in a narrative is an essential generic element of the gothic,” and that the treatment of mystery must determine the kind of gothic story being told. He began by reading social science humor research and the theoretical studies by Freud, Bergson, and Koestler. Particularly useful was psychologist Mary K. Rothbart’s study of how children cope with sudden or discrepant stimulation. He also found that sociological studies of humor used within and between groups could illuminate people’s understanding of comedy, while studies of humor and child development would provide theoretical models for reading stories about young people growing up. After reading Seymour and Rhoda L. Fisher’s Pretend the World Is Funny and Forever: A Psychological Analysis of Comedians, Clowns, and Actors, he looked at Edgar Allan Poe in a new way and explored connections between humor and fear as responses to the incongruous that resonate throughout Poe’s horror fiction. Then in the early 1990s, following the rise of New Historicism, he began to think more about the cultural significance of joke clusters and cycles as related to popular killing jokes of the 1980s featuring Freddy Krueger, Joe Camel, Ronald Reagan, Blanche Knott, and The Joker. In hindsight, he says that with his “emphasis on the importance of humor research in psychology and sociology, my first forays into humor criticism paid too little attention to historical context.” Steven H. Gale tells how he had to cross disciplines when he prepared his 1987 S. J. Perelman: A Critical Study. He started with the typical literary approach of doing a word-by-word explication de texte to explain how Perelman achieved humor in his short stories. But when he came to the screenwriting, he had to abandon this approach. Perleman scripted the third and the fourth Marx Brothers films (Monkey Business and Horse Feathers) and also Around the World in Eighty Days, for which he won the New York Film Critics Award and an Oscar. In addition to doing historical research on Hollywood, the Marx Brothers, Jules Verne, and screenwriting, Gale did a frame-by-frame analysis of the films. He found that, “Timing is extremely important in humor, yet

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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 almost 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 interdisciplinary 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. A note on chapter contributors Regina Barreca is professor of English at the University of Connecticut. Ever since she surprised her dissertation committee by studying the humor of such writers as Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austin, she has focused critical attention on the creation and use of humor by women. Her books and articles appeal both to general and academic audiences. Her most popular book is They Used to Call Me Snow White. . . But I Drifted (Penguin, 1992), while her most scholarly is Last Laughs: Perspectives on Women and Comedy (Gordon

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and Breach, 1988). More recent books include “Don’t Tell Mama!” The Penguin 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 Department 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 Faculty 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 [email protected]. 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 Harris, Ronald Harwood, Henry Livings, David Marmet, H. L. Mencken, Harold 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 Process was chosen as a 2003 Choice magazine “Outstanding Academic Title.” Contact him at [email protected] Paul H. Grawe is Professor emeritus of English at Winona State University 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 empirical research to explore the humor textures of American film comedy. Contact him at [email protected]. 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 addition to the articles listed in the chapter bibliography, he has written “Thalia Meets Tithonus: Gerontological Wit and Humor in Literature” (The Gerontologist, Fall, 1985: 539–544), “All Gall Is Divided into Three Parts: American Literary Humor of Francophilophobia” (Thalia: Studies in American

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Humor, Summer, 2000: 67–79), and “Humor in the Novels of Gish Jen:  From Confliction to Connection,” MELUS:  Journal of the Society of the MultiEthnic 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 [email protected]. 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 Conflict (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 Magazine. 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 University 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 [email protected]. Daniel Royot is Professor Emeritus of American Literature and Civilization at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. His co-authored book Histoire et Civilization 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 [email protected]. 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

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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 Imagination in Recent Jewish American Fiction. Contact her at [email protected]. David E. E. Sloane is professor of English and education at the University 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. Several more recent books are listed at the end of the chapter. He was the Executive Director of the American Humor Studies Association from 1989 to 2002. Contact him at [email protected]. Critical works cited Ammons, Elizabeth, and Annette White-Park 1994 Tricksterism in Turn-of-the Century American Literature. Hanover, NH: Tufts University Press of New England. Baker, Russell 1993 Russell Baker’s Book of American Humor. New York: W. W. Norton. Barreca, Regina 1991 They Used to Call Me Snow White, But I  Drifted. New York: ­Viking. 1993 Perfect Husbands: And Other Fairy Tales. New York: Harmony Books. 1994 Untamed and Unabashed: Essays on Women and Humor in British Literature. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. 1996 The Penguin Book of Women’s Humor. New York: Penguin. Barreca, Regina (ed.) 1988 Last Laughs: Perspectives on Women and Comedy. New York: Gordon and Breach. 1992 New Perspectives on Women and Comedy. Philadelphia, PA: Gordon and Breach. Baumgartner, Jody C., and Jonathan S. Morris (eds.) 2008 Laughing Matters: Humor and American Politics in the Media Age. New York: Routledge.

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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: LincolnHerndon 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. Minneapolis: 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 Nineteenth­century American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press. 1994 Sentimental Twain, Samuel Clemens in the Maze of Moral Philosophy. 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.

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Charney, Maurice (ed.) 2005 Comedy: A Geographic and Historical Guide, Vols. 1 and 2. Westport, CT: Praeger. Cohen, Sarah Blacher 1978 Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary American Literature. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 1987 Jewish Wry: Essays on Jewish Humor. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Corrigan, Robert W. (ed.) 1965 Comedy: Meaning and Form. San Francisco, CA: Chandler Publishing. Craig, David M. 1997 Tilting at Morality: Narrative Strategies in Joseph Heller’s Fiction. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Crosbie, John S. 1980 Dictionary of Riddles. New York: Harmony Books. Culler, Jonathan (ed.) 1988 On Puns: The Foundation of Letters. New York: Blackwell. Davis, Jessica Milner 1978 Farce. London: Methuen. (Repr. with new introduction 2005, New Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers.) 2001 Farce: Rebellion, Revenge and Realpolitik. Piscataway, NJ: Trans­ action Books. Davis, Jessica Milner, with Marguerite Wells 2001 Kyògen as comic relief: The structure, style and comic typology of classical Kyògen plays from the Isumi and Òkura Schools. Australian Journal of Comedy 7 (1). Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1988 Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Drennan, Robert E. (ed.) 1983 The Algonquin Wits: A  Crackling Collection of Bon Mots, Wise­ cracks, Epigrams, and Gags. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press. Ernst, Gordon E. Jr. (ed.) 1995 Robert Benchley: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Espy, Willard 1975 An Almanac of Words at Play. New York: Potter. 1980 Another Almanac of Words at Play. New York: Potter. 1981 Have a Word on Me. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1977 The Life and Works of Mr. Anonymous. New York: Hawthorne. 1978 O Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun. New York: Potter. 1980 Say It My Way. New York: Doubleday.

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Falk, Robert 1955 Farb, Peter 1973

American Literature in Parody: A Collection of Parody, Satire, and Literary Burlesque of American Writers Past and Present. New York: Twayne. 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. Feinberg, Leonard 1967 Introduction to Satire. Ames: The Iowa State University Press. 2nd ed. 2008, Santa Fe, NM: Pilgrims Process. 1964 The Satirist. Ames: The Iowa State University Press. Finney, Fail (ed.) 1994 Look Who’s Laughing: Gender and Comedy. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach. 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 PostModern 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. Fowler, Dorreen, and Ann J. Abadie (eds.) 1986 Faulkner and Humor. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Friedman, Bruce J. (ed.) 1965 Black Humor. New York: Bantam. Frye, Northrop 1957 Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gale, Steven H. 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.

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Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter’s Screenplays and the Artistic Process. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

The Comic Vision in Literature. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Galloway, David. 1981 The Absurd Hero in American Fiction: Updike, Styron, Bellow, Sallinger. 2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas Press. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1988 The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press. Geismar, Maxwell 1972 Ring Lardner and the Portrait of Folly. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. 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: NelsonHall. Gurewitch, Morton 1994 The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination. The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Hall, Rich 1984 Sniglets (Snig’lit) – Any Word That Doesn’t Appear in the Dictionary, but Should. New York: Collier Books. Harper, Donna A. S. 1995 Not So Simple: The “Simple” Stories by Langston Hughes. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Harris, Charles B. 1971 Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd. New Haven, CT: College and University Press. Hauptman, Don 1991 Cruel and Unusual Puns. New York: Bantam, Doubleday, Dell. Hayden, Bradley 1983 In Memoriam humor: Julia Moore and the Western Michigan poets. English Journal 72 (5): 22–28. Hogan, Walter 2005 Humor in Young Adult Literature: A Time to Laugh. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Holman, C. Hugh, and William Harmon 1992 A Handbook to Literature. 6th ed. New York: Macmillan.

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Hutcheon, Linda 1985 A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-century Art Forms. New York: Methuen. Hynes, William J., and William G. Doty (eds.) 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: Greenwood Press. 1994 Perspectives on American Culture: Essays on Humor, Literature, and the Popular Arts. Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill Press. Johansen, Ruthann Knechel 1994 The Narrative Secret of Flannery O’Connor: The Trickster as Interpreter. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame. Jurich, Marilyn 1998 Scheherazade’s Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Kehl, D. G. 1983 Thalia pops her girdle: Humor in the novels of Peter De Vries. Studies in American Humor February: 184–189. 1989 Humor of the new Southwest in the fiction of Larry McMurtry. Southwestern American Literature, Spring: 20–32. 2000 Varieties of risible experience: Grades of laughter and their function in modern American Literature. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 13 (4): 379–394. 2003 Thalia does the Charleston: Humor in the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In: Jackson R. Bryer, Ruth Prigozy, and Milton R. Stern (eds.), F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Twenty-first Century, 202–222. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Kelly, Fred C. 1947 George Ade: Warmhearted Satirist. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merriall. Keough, William 1966 Punchlines: The Violence of American Humor. New York: Paragon House. Kharpertian, Theodore D. 1990 A Hand to Turn the Time: The Menippean Satires of Thomas Pynchon. London: Associated University Press. Kiley, Frederick, and J. M. Shuttleworth (eds.) 1971 Satire: From Aesop to Buchwald. New York: Odyssey/Bobbs-Merrill.

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Kiley, Frederick, and Walter McDonald 1973 A Catch-22 Casebook. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. Klinkowitz, Jerome, and Donald Lawler (eds.) 1977 Vonnegut in America. New York: Delta. Koestler, Arthur 1966 The Act of Creation. New York: Dell. Lazarus, A. L. (ed.) 1985 The Best of George Ade. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Leacock, Stephen (ed.) 1936 The Greatest Pages of American Humor. New York: Doubleday. 1938 Humor and Humanity. New York: Henry Holt. Lee, Judith Yaross 1991 Garrison Keillor: A Voice of America. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. LeMaster, J. R., and James D. Wilson (eds.) 1993 The Mark Twain Encyclopedia. New York: Garland. Levy, Barbara 1997 Ladies Laughing: Wit as Control in Contemporary American Women. New York: Gordon and Breach. Lewis, Paul 1989 Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Humor in Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1997 The killing jokes of the American Eighties. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (3): 251–183. 1981 Mysterious laughter: Humor and fear in Gothic fiction. Genre 14: 309–327. 1989 Poe’s humor: A psychological analysis. Studies in Short Fiction 27: 531–546. Lincoln, Kenneth 1993 Indi’n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native America. New York: ­Oxford University Press. Linderman, Frank B. 1996 Indian Old-Man Stories: More Sparks from War Eagle’s Lodge-Fire. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1996 Indian Why Stories: Sparks from War Eagle’s Lodge-Fire. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Lynn, Kenneth (ed.) 1968 The Comic Tradition in America: An Anthology of American Humor. New York: Norton. MacDonald, Dwight (ed.) 1960 Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm – And After. New York: Random House.

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McAndrews, Kristin M. 2006 Wrangling Women: Humor and Gender in the American West. Reno: University of Nevada Press. McDowell, John Holmes 1979 Children’s Riddling. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Meredith, George 1956 An essay on comedy. In: Wylie Sypher (ed.), Comedy, 3–60. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Mintz, Lawrence E. (ed.) 1988 Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Muir, Frank 1990 Oxford Book of Humorous Prose: From William Caxton to P. G. Wode­house, a Conducted Tour by Frank Muir. New York: Oxford University Press. Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen 2000 Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood. 2007 Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Nilsen, Don L. F. 1992 Humor in American Literature: A Selected Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland. 1997 Humor in British Literature, from the Middle Ages to the Restoration: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood. 1998 Humor in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century British Literature: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood. 1996 Humor in Irish Literature: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood. 2000 Humor in Twentieth-century British Literature: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood. 1993 Humor Scholarship: A Research Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Novak, William, and Moshe Waldoks (eds.) 1981 The Big Book of Jewish Humor. New York: Harper and Row. 1990 The Big Book of New American Humor: The Best of the Past 25 Years. New York: Harper Perennial. Olsen, Lance 1990 Circus of the Mind in Motion: Postmodernism and the Comic Vision. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Page, Tim (ed.) 1994 Dawn Powell at Her Best. New York: Steerforth.

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Pinsker, Sanford 1972 The graying of black humor. Studies in the 20th Century 9: 15–33. Pollard, Arthur 1970 Satire. London: Methuen. Praeger, Charles 1978 20th-century Humor. New York: Viking Press. Pratt, Alan R. (ed.) 1993 Black Humor: Critical Essays. New York: Garland. Provine, Robert R. 2000 Laughter: A Scientific Investigation. New York: Viking. Pughe, Thomas. 1994 Comic Sense: Reading Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, Philip Roth. Basel: BirkhauserVerlag. Raskin, Victor 1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Redfern, Walter 1984 Puns. New York: Blackwell. Richler, Mordecai (ed.) 1983 The Best of Modern Humor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Rosten, Leo 1968 The Joys of Yiddish. New York: McGraw-Hill. Rourke, Constance 1931 American Humor: A Study of the National Character. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press. Royot, Daniel 1980 L’Humour américain: Des Puritains aux Yankees. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. Rubin, Louis D., Jr. (ed.) 1983 The Comic Imagination in American Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Safer, Elaine B. 1988 The Contemporary American Comic Epic: The Novels of Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, and Kesey. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Schaaf, Barbara (ed.) 1988 Mr. Dooley: Finley Peter Dunne. Springfield, IL: Lincoln-Herndon. Schaub, Thomas H. 1981 Pynchon: The Voice of Ambiguity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Schmitz, Neil 1983 Of Huck and Alice: Humorous Writing in American Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Scholl, Peter A. 1993 Garrison Keillor. New York: Twayne. Seaver, Paul W. Jr. (ed.) 1999 Selected Proceedings of the First International Conference on Hispanic Humor. Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica. Shalit, Gene 1987 Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor. New York: Doubleday. Schulz, Max F. 1973 Black Humor Fiction of the Sixties. Athens: Ohio University Press. Shepherd, Jean (ed.) 1961 The America of George Ade. New York: G. P. Putnam’s. Shloss, Carol 1980 Flannery O’Connor’s Dark Comedies. Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press. Sloane, David E. E. 1988 “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”: American Comic Vision. Boston, MA: G. K. Hall. 1983 The Literary Humor of the Urban Northeast, 1830–1890. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1979 Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press. 1993 Mark Twain’s Humor: Critical Essays. Hamden, CT: Garland. 1998 New Directions in American Humor. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 2001 A Student’s Companion to Mark Twain. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Snodgrass, Mary Ellen 1996 The Encyclopedia of Satirical Literature. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. Sonnichsen, C. L. 1988 The Laughing West: Humorous Western Fiction, Past and Present. Athens: Ohio University Press. Sontag, Susan 1982 Notes on Camp. In: A  Susan Sontag Reader. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Spalding, Henry D. 1969 Encyclopedia of Jewish Humor: From Biblical Times to the Modern Age. New York: Jonathan David. 1985 Joys of Jewish Humor. New York: Jonathan David. Tilton, John W. 1977 Cosmic Satire in the Contemporary Novel. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.

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Toombs, Sarah Eleanor 1987 James Thurber: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticsm. New York: Garland. Trachtenberg, Stanley (ed.) 1982 Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 11: American Humorists, 1800–1950, Part 1: A–L and Part 2: M–Z. Detroit: Bruccoli Clark/ Gale Research. Ulea, V. 2002 A Concept of Dramatic Genre and the Comedy of New Type: Chess, Literature, and the Film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Vickers, Scott B. 1998 Native American Identities: From Stereotype to Archetype in Art and Literature. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Wagner, Jane 1986 Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. New York: Harper & Row. Walker, Nancy A. 1995 The Disobedient Writer: Women and Narrative Tradition. Austin: University of Texas Press. Walker, Nancy, and Zita Dresner 1988 Redressing the Balance: American Women’s Literary Humor from Colonial Times to the 1980s. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Wallace, Ronald 1979 No Harm in Smiling: Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Watkins, Mel 1994 On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying. New York: Simon and Schuster. Weisenberger, Steven 1995 Fables of Subversion/Satire and the American Novel 1930–1980. Athens, University of Georgia Press. Wernblad, Annette 1992 Brooklyn Is Not Expanding: Woody Allen’s Comic Universe. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses. Wechsler, Robert 1993 Columbus à la Mode: Parodies of Contemporary American Writers. North Haven, CT: Catbird Press. White, E. B., and Katherine S. White 1941 A Subtreasury of American Humor. New York: Coward-McCann. Wiget, Andrew (ed.) 1994 Dictionary of Native American Literature. New York: Garland.

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Winston, Mathew 1972 “Humour noir” and “Black humor”. In: Harry Levin (ed.), Veins of Humor, 269–284. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Withers, Carl 1948 A Rocket in My Pocket: The Rhymes and Chants of Young Americans (illustr. by Susanne Suba). New York: Henry Holt. Wonham, Harry 2000 “I want a real coon”: Mark Twain and late-nineteenth-century ethnic caricature. American Literature 72 (1): 117–152. Wood, James 2004 The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Yacowar, Maurice 1982 Loser Take All: The Comic Art of Woody Allen. New York: Frederick Ungar. Yan, Gao 1996 The Art of Parody: Maxine Hong Kingston’s Use of Chinese Sources. New York: Peter Lang. Ziv, Avner (ed.) 1986 Jewish Humor. Tel Aviv: Papyrus.

Humor and popular culture Lawrence E. Mintz

Humor is a central feature of popular culture and everyday life in virtually every society in the world, past, present, and no doubt future. While it differs significantly from culture to culture, of course, there are some common features and frequent phenomena that are both interesting and significant. The first and biggest problem faced in writing an overview of humor and popular culture is trying to define it. Broad definitions, favored by many European social and cultural historians, see popular culture as an umbrella term for just about all aspects of everyday experience, including commonplace material culture such as food-ways, vernacular architecture, industrial design of familiar products, clothing styles, toys and games, personal grooming, and just about anything else that people use as they go about their lives. Narrower definitions often found in American studies and in popular culture studies in various disciplines in academic circles in the United States often tend to limit the definition to the popular arts and entertainments, such as popular literature, journalism, graphic arts, performance, and the mass media. The other areas that might be included as popular culture are left for folklore/folk life studies, material culture studies, and social history per se. This essay will employ the narrower definition, though humor can certainly be studied in every aspect of everyday life. There will be more than enough to deal with discussing humor in the popular arts and entertainments. Moreover there will be only a few references to pre-American and non-American popular culture. This is by no means intended to slight the popular culture produced elsewhere. This writer just does not know enough about it to include it in the essay. Quite a bit of American popular culture is significant worldwide anyway. American comedy films for instance, can be found wherever cinema is available, and many of our television situation comedies are familiar to audiences around the world. The comic strip, usually considered to be an American invention, at least in its newspaper feature format, will be relevant to readers interested in popular culture and humor abroad, even if some of the specific strips are unfamiliar. In any case, it is to be hoped that the examples from American popular culture will be interesting and instructive for purposes of comparison and contrasting.

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Another definitional issue offers a problem that must be addressed if not resolved. In one sense of the definition of terms, popular culture is a contradiction, an oxymoron. If we define culture in the old-fashioned sense of the term – as ‘cultivated’ or refined products of civilization, as say Matthew Arnold and other defenders of sophisticated and elite expression have done – most of what we include in our study of popular culture simply does not qualify. The need for the term popular culture arises from a  perceived necessity to distinguish “high” or elite cultural expression from the “low” or commonplace. Indeed a very familiar classification system goes one step further, attempting to distinguish among “high, “low,” and ”middle,” sometimes termed “highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow.” Trying to pin down just what is meant by these designations is the first, and perhaps the funniest, exercise in popular culture humor! “High” culture is defined sometimes extrinsically according to its exclusive production, distribution, and consumption by elites, the wealthy and/or the educated classes. Often it is tagged with an intrinsic burden as well, supposedly more complex, sophisticated, difficult to produce and appreciate, and sometimes with a high moral or social purpose as well. “Low” culture is said to belong to “the masses (whomever they might be), and to be “mere entertainment,” i.e. devoid of meaningful social value (to paraphrase a legal distinction used for a now-defunct definition of pornography), “Low” culture is tarred as carrying all sorts of negative functions from provided harmful perspectives on sex and violence, to encouraging voyeurism and a spectator culture, to retarding cultural progress, to upholding the status quo and popular opinion, to diverting its audiences from understanding, and rising up against its dismal condition, to – shudder – making a profit for those who make and sell it. “Middle” culture is seen as pretending to “high” culture status but not quite making it, either for intrinsic limitations in the text or performance itself or for extrinsic reasons such as familiarity, ease of access and appreciation (thus a ballet such as “The Nutcracker” might have a claim to being high culture because of its genre, ballet, and its classical music, but it must be taken down a notch because it is performed widely as a part of the Christmas season entertainment rituals, and therefore it is familiar, accessible and beloved by all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons). There are so many problems, complications, contradictions, and inadequacies connected with this classification scheme that it would take the rest of this essay to address them all. The system simply does not work. The body of elite culture product and experience often fails to meet so many of the criteria defining it as such as to render the concept meaningless. There is no mass audience, except for perhaps the televised Super Bowl football game, in

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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 simply 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 accepted 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 academic 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 television studies can sometimes sneak into a communications department’s curriculum. 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 Jeffrey 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 American Humor (1987), Nancy Walker’s What’s So Funny?: Humor in American Culture (1998), and Joe Boskin’s The Humor Prism in 20th Century America (1997) are invaluable, addressing comics, standup comedy, film and tele­ vision humor as well as the more frequently visited territory.

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There is also, of course, a very large literature devoted to the particular sub-topics that will be addressed in this essay. Studies of humor in American literature, such as Louis Rubin, Jr.’s edited collection, The Comic Imagination in American Literature and Sarah Blacher Cohen’s Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary American Literature (1978) include discussions of popular writing, though they emphasize belles letters. There are a few survey books devoted to film comedy, most notably by Raymond Durgnat and by Gerald Mast, books on comic strips and cartoons, and even a few devoted to studying television comedy. There are many books that examine particular sub-topics in all of these genres, for instance the many books by Wes ­Gehring that explore the film comedy of such figures as Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, W.  C. Fields, et al. Books such as Mel Watkins’s On the Real Side take on humor in popular culture as a  part of a  differently focused study, in his case, African–American humor. A point of entry is the bibliographic collection I  edited in 1988 for Greenwood Press, Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics. While this volume, still in print amazingly, is obviously not up-to-date, useful chapters on literary, comic strip, periodical, film, broadcast, standup, women’s, racial and ethnic, political, and folk humor cannot be overlooked. As for the enormous article and book chapter literature on specific topics, figures, and issues pertinent to the study of humor in popular culture, it is better to check the reasonably, relatively current bibliographic work compiled by Jason Rutter and by Willi Ruch, available on line, and Don Nilsen’s Encyclopedia and up-dated handouts so graciously made available on request. Any attempt here at singling out particular works would be dangerously, misleadingly eccentric and limited. My answer to requests that I get several times a week for bibliographic suggestions on topics in popular culture humor is always “check the bibliographies, both for humor studies and in the particular genres or subject areas you wish to research.” The overwhelming issue for the study of humor in popular culture is the relative weight of textual studies versus those investigating the circumstances of production and distribution and the actualities of reception or consumption. By far most research in the field is devoted to discussion of texts, be they print sources, graphic arts, performances, or media productions. There is some work in communications studies that deals with the people who create popular culture humor, and at least as importantly, with the people who are responsible for its production and distribution. One can find some biographies of and interviews with artists and authors, and a very few examinations of the industries that support or more accurately that allow the creation

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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 sections, cartoon and comic strip pages, producers and managers of performance opportunities, and the powers-that-be for film and television humor. Who decides 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 important, 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. Recently I directed a Ph.D. dissertation, by David Zurawik, that studied the appearance 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 willing 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 researchers 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. Communications 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 research. 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

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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 genres and topics, and one or two for discussion as an example of where examining 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 “native” American character or identity and through it, the viability of democracy itself. Almanacs, newspapers, and early magazines were loaded with brief anecdotes, humorous proverbs and sayings, character sketches, and witticisms comprising a sort of pseudo-folklore introducing the common man as citizen. 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 politically 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 influenced 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 unintelligent 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

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Jack wanders into the state legislature (“Jack Goes to Portland”) his misunderstanding 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 observations 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 mid19th 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 defection 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 staple of our national popular humor. On the western frontier, wise fools, con men, and tricksters like Johnson J. Hooper’s Simon Suggs and George Washington Harris’s Sut Lovingood were employed to portray the rough and unsophisticated 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 meaning 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, particularly the issues surrounding the civil war, and they fed the popular theater,

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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 persona 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 allegorical connection between the bird’s dogged but misguided labor and capitalism, 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 newspaper 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 cartoons. 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 rather 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 defense is napping as often as he can, eating everything in sight, knocking down

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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 significance. Kelly’s swamp fables were allegorical “swamps” themselves, loaded with social and political commentary lurking behind the antics and interactions 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 popularity 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 “dogness” 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

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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 comics. 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 entertainments 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 movies, 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

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featured a  relaxed, informal style and more developed anecdotes, stories, or multi-joke commentary built around particular themes. A comedian like Shelly Berman, Bob Newhart or a team like Mike Nicholls and Elaine May might work a particular theme such as dealing with telephone hassles for several minutes as opposed to moving from one unrelated joke to another. There are two common mistakes concerning “new wave” comedy. For one thing, it was not unprecedented. It has analogues in the comic “lectures” as far back as Mark Twain and Artemus Ward, among others, in the 19th century and traditional stand up comics sometimes were able to work concert venues in a manner not at all different from the “new wave” comedians. Buddy Hackett, for instance, a pure pro of the traditional school, worked concert venues mixing in reading his romantic poetry and talking about his experiences in show business, with jokes and comic “shtick” involving working with the audience in teasing banter. “New Wave” comedians are reputed to be more topical, satiric, and pertinent than the traditional pros, and often they were. Mort Sahl, to cite the best example, worked from the daily newspaper, and his sarcastic political observations were a fine example of how the genre might be used for serious, significant satire. The famed Lenny Bruce was not as overtly political as Sahl, but his comments on race and religion, at the height of his career, were indeed more “relevant” than the sort of stuff one might expect of the nightclub professionals. Other “new wave” comics, often connected with improvisational comedy troupes like Second City, The Committee, and others also served up a product that might be more “edgy” in its social commentary. But fond memory tends to exaggerate the pertinence of “new wave” comedy. More often than not, it was aimed at entertaining the audience by provoking laughter rather than enlightening it with socially constructive ridicule and observation. One thing it surely did was open up the genre to many new comedians. Comedy clubs such as Budd Friedman’s Improv, coffee houses and night clubs such as The Bitter End and The Hungry I and a growing circuit of college auditoriums and other concert venues made it possible for a tour of comedians comparable to the vaudeville circuit decades earlier to bring stand up comedy to a large and enthusiastic audience. Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, Bill Cosby, Robin Williams, George Carlin, and literally dozens of other excellent stand up comedians made the genre prominent and significant for the entire second half of the twentieth century. The growth of stand up also fed a related genre of “performance comedy.” The line between performance comedy and stand up is almost impossible to draw precisely, but the former is more theatrical, more scripted, more elaborate, and more fully

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developed. Performers such as John Leguizamo, Danny Hoch, Rob Becker, Bill Irwin, Whoopie Goldberg, and shows such as “Greater Tuna” have one foot in stand up comedy performance and another in comedy drama. Perhaps the best example of this genre is Lily Tomlin’s one-woman show, “The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe.” This show, written primarily by Jane Wagner, can be considered to be a play, but it is also in a sense a very fully developed set of comedy routines built around a premise and a central character, Trudy the Bag Lady, and her consulting gig for extra-terrestrials bent on understanding human behavior on our very weird planet. Venues for performance comedy in our major cities, like New York’s P.S. 128 (P.S. now standing for “performance space” instead of the “public school” housed originally in the building) offer highly sophisticated, intellectually challenging, but at the same time very funny and entertaining stand up and performance comedy. The heart of modern popular culture is, of course, the mass media. Film, radio, and television comedy reach the largest audiences and are at the center of American humor. The earliest motion pictures included very simple comic sight gags. When the medium became more technically advanced, comedians from vaudeville, burlesque, and the comic theater were employed to do physical comedy. Filmmakers learned how to use the properties of the camera to enhance the pratfalls, and to construct more elaborate sets and devices that allowed the comedy to go beyond what it could achieve in live performance. Comedies of the Mack Sennett-Keystone Cops school concentrated on generating big laughs, but a school of comedians, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd and of course the brilliant Charlie Chaplin emerged to take film comedy to a different, more admirable level. Keaton, Langdon, Lloyd, and Chaplin were masters of physical comedy, and their films contain sight gags both overt and covert that amuse and delight. But they also constructed personas that audiences could relate to and sympathize with, and their films had story lines that provided structural comedy to go along with the comic “shtick.” At its best, Chaplin’s features like “City Lights,” “The Kid,” and “Modern Times” for instance, silent film comedy was arguably as filled with meaning, insight, and comic satisfaction as any form of comedy ever ­created. Even before the sound era, film comedy was developing in another direction as well. In order to get a wider audience – i.e. to add women and to appeal to an audience beyond the urban, blue-collar crown that formed the core audience for earlier cinema – romantic comedy was serving up a different fare. When the comic business that typified the orientation of the early come-

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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 Depression 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, creator 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 (“Desperately 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 humorous takes on oral sex, defying a public taboo on mentioning that controversial 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 untenable 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

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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 verbal 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 contentious, growing worse as misunderstanding is added to their obvious differences. But in the end, they commit to marriage and family, and their bicoastal 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 contemporary 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 everywhere 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 crucial 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 Brothers proving that the format was resilient long after the theater comedy that established it was forgotten. The variety show also strongly influenced madefor-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 comedy. Sit-com started in radio, but it starred on television as early as the late1940s and early 1950s adapting the ethnic comedy of Molly Goldberg and

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“Amos and Andy.” Sit com uses comedy and humor in many ways to generate 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. Regardless 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, success, achievement, and mobility. This version of the Dream, closer to Jefferson’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 accommodated. 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 literature 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, always respect the basic structure, and rarely if ever seek uniqueness. In addition to the premises, the plots of particular episodes can also carry messages 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,” hardly 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

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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 commentary. 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, sexism, and just about every other social and cultural concern. Humor was injected 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 tendencies 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-

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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 subscribers, and that is surely a spillover. Nevertheless, we will leave them for another chapter. Bumper stickers, tee shirts with humorous messages, comical 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, commercial 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 “Darwin” 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 considered 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 Sciences (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 magazines. Others like FuckedCompany.com are devoted to a particular topic, in this case referentially to dot.coms that have crashed. Still others are maintained 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 simply 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

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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? American humor: Suggestions for further study The study of humor and comedy is at least as old as Plato and Aristotle. Modern scholarship includes the perspectives of the social sciences – anthropology, 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 international conferences, journals and newsletters, and numerous publications, both books and scholarly articles, devoted to humor studies. These suggestions 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 scholarship 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 periodical literature strain at serving their intended, original function. Computer databases for humor studies are attempting to address this problem by providing 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 Research 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 Association), and two newsletters, one published in Humor and the other, edited by Cameron Nickels, separately published and available with a subscription to

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Studies in American Humor. A basic volume of bibliographic essays covering American humor (literature, film, television, stand up comedy, comic strips, magazines, women, racial and ethnic humor, folklore, and political humor) is Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics, edited by Lawrence E. Mintz, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. There are at least two encyclopedias of American humor, confined principally to literature, one published in the Dictionary of Literary Biography series, a two volume set edited by Stanley Trachtenberg, American Humorists: 1800–1950. Detroit: Gale Press, 1982, and the other, Encyclopedia of American Humorists, edited by Steven Gale for Garland Press, 1988. Alleen Nilsen and Don Nilsen have published their useful Encylopedia of 20th Century American Humor in 2000. There is a plethora of books dealing with humor theory, the majority of which are based in linguistics and/or psychology. Most of them, e.g. the books of John Morreall, Warren Shibles, and Jerry Palmer, begin with useful summaries of humor theory from Aristotle through Bergson and Hobbes to Freud and contemporary theorists. Perhaps the best place to begin looking at what humor is and how it has been studied is to use the two volume Handbook of Humor Research edited by Paul McGhee and Jeffrey Goldstein, published by Springer Verlag (New York) in 1983. There have been several books of humor theory published since the McGhee–Goldstein project, but none of them are really groundbreaking or revolutionary. The best overview of American humor is Hamlin Hill and Walter Blair’s America’s Humor: from Poor Richard to Doonesbury, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. One might also want to review Jesse Bier’s The Rise and Fall of American Humor. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968 and the essays collected by Arthur Dudden in American Humor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Another useful collection is by William Bedford Clark and W. Craig Turner, Critical Essays on American Humor. Boston, G. K. Hall, 1984. A good bibliographic essay is M. Thomas Inge’s “One Universal Priceless Trait: American Humor,” published in American Studies International, 25: 1 (1987), 28–45. A  very useful collection of essays on American humor, What’s So Funny?: Humor in American Culture is edited by Nancy Walker and published by SRI Press, 1997. Also see David E. E. Sloane, ed., New Directions in American Humor U. of Alabama, 1998, and Joe Boskin, The Humor Prism in 20th Century America, 1998. Humor in American literature is discussed thoroughly in all of the overviews, and, for that matter, in most studies of American literature itself. Don L. F. Nilsen’s bibliography, Humor in American Literature, New York: ­Garland Press, 1992, is indispensable. An excellent source is edited by Louis

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Rubin, Jr., The Comic Imagination in American Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1983, and another is Sarah Blacher Cohen, ed., Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary American Literature. Urbana: U. of Illinois Press, 1978. Humor in American periodicals and magazines is chronicled by David E. E. Sloane in American Humor Magazines and Comic Periodicals, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987. The best scholarship on American comedy in film is by Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Also of interest is Raymond Durgnat, The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and the American Image. New York: Dell, 1972, and the collection of comedy film reviews edited by Stuart Byron and Elizabeth Weiss, Movie Comedy, New York: Penguin, 1977. Wes D. Gehring has given us a library shelf of books on film comedy, including a fine study of screwball comedy films and individual books on Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and several other important figures in the genre (published by Greenwood Press and Ball State University for the most part). There have been a number of encyclopedias and coffee table collections on the American comic strip, but the foremost American scholar who has written on the subject is M. Thomas Inge, in Comics as Culture, Oxford, Ms., and U. of Mississippi Press, 1990. There are, unfortunately, few books of value dealing with stand-up comedy. A few popular encyclopedias and biographical sketches are available, but the only book-length study of the art form is the limited and out of date (even in its updated edition) The Last Laugh by Phil Berger. New York: Limelight, 1977. John Limon, Stand-up Comedy in Theory, or Abjection in America. Also see Laurie Stone’s Laughing in the Dark, 1997. For television scholarship, a  popular survey history by Rick Mitz, The Great TV Sitcom Book, (New York: Perigee Books, 1983) is helpful, and a remarkable aid is Joel Eisner and David Krinsky, eds., Television Comedy Series: An Episode Guide to 153 TV Sitcoms in Syndication, Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 1984. David Marc’s two books on television comedy, Demographic Vistas (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania, 1984) and Comic Visions (Boston: Unwin and Hyman, 1989) are worth reading. Lots of new stuff out in articles. Folklore and Jokelore is the domain of several collections by Alan Dundes, see among others Cracking Jokes. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1987 and the collections of folk humor from the “paperwork empire.” Elliott Oring has produced several good studies of humor in folklore, including Jokes and Their Relations, Lexington, University of Kentucky, 1992.

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Topical approaches to American humor include several important studies of women humorists including an anthology edited by Nancy Walker and Zita Dresner, Redressing the Balance: American Women’s Literary Humor from Colonial Times to the 1980s, Oxford, Ms., U. of Mississippi Press, 1988, Nancy Walker’s The Tradition of Women’s Humor in America, Huntington Beach, CA., American Studies Publishing Co., 1984, and A  Very Serious Thing: Women’s Humor and American Culture, Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1988. Also interesting are books by Regina Barreca including her edited collection, Last Laughs: Perspectives on Women and Comedy, New York: Gordon and Breach, 1988 and her They Used to Call Me Snow White but I Drifted, New York: Viking, 1991. A recent bibliographic study is Linda Morris, American Women Humorists: Critical Essays, published in New York by Garland in 1994. On ethnic humor see the invaluable checklist and bibliographic essay by John Lowe, Theories of Ethnic Humor: How to enter Laughing, in American Quarterly, 38: 3, 1986 and Christie Davies’s book, Ethnic Humor Around the World: A Comparative Analysis, Bloomington, U. of ­Indiana Press, 1990. The best historical study of African American humor is by Mel Watkins, On the Real Side, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994. Joseph Boskin’s Humor and Social Change in Twentieth Century America, Boston: Trustees of the Boston Public Library, 1979, is an important work, and Arthur Dudden has contributed an important book on political humor, Pardon Us Mr. President: American Humor on Politics, New York: A. S. Barnes, 1988; Stephen Kercher, Revel With a Cause, 2008. Since the first international humor conference in 1976, a community of scholars studying humor from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, topical approaches, and genre examinations has flourished. The International Society for Humor Studies sponsors conferences every year, generally in the U.S. during odd years and abroad during the even years. Many of the conferences publish abstract volumes and maintain websites with program information. There is a bulletin board for members of the society to discuss research questions, and the above-mentioned web site with its links to its journal, and the American Humor Studies Association. Humor is being taken very ­seriously indeed!

Historical views of humor Amy Carrell

Throughout history, from the ancient philosophers and the Bible, from the earliest scribes to contemporary writers, from folk medicine to modern medicine, 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, highlighting 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. Humor as a social activity As a social activity, humor has been examined by a number of theorists including, among others, Raskin, Apte, Freud, Greig, Viktoroff, Bergson, and Fry. Raskin, a linguist, acknowledges that “the scope and degree of mutual understanding in humor varies directly with the degree to which the participants share their social backgrounds” (1985: 16). Mahadev L. Apte, an anthropologist, discusses “joking relationships” (1985: 29–66), which he calls “patterned playful behavior that occurs between two individuals who recognize special kinship or other types of social bonds between them” (30–31). Apte’s description of the joke teller and the audience is much more interactional than Raskin’s as Apte’s emphasis is on “joking relationships.” According to Apte, “joking relationships [can] mark group identity and signal the inclusion or exclusion of a new individual” (1985: 56), and, consequently, that “joking relationships ... manifest a consciousness of group identity or solidarity” (1985: 66). Clearly, for Apte, then, it is upon recognition and

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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 joking 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 activity 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 everyand 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 happen 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 successful 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.

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Viktoroff’s assertion of laughter, and therefore humor, as a communal, social event underscores the notion that humor is a  social activity, a  social phenomenon. Viktoroff seemingly views laughter as the end result of the humor event, proof positive that humor has been elicited in the audience, presumably by a joke or jokes put forth by a teller. So why, then, does he claim that laughing alone, or solitary laughter, is an impossibility? Certainly the joke teller can be part of the audience and frequently is the only or the original audience for a joke, as has been demonstrated above. Perhaps for Viktoroff, group membership supersedes humor. Henri Bergson dourly calls laughter and, therefore, humor a social “corrective...intended to humiliate” (1899: 187); directed against someone, laughter or humor “would fail ... if it bore the stamp of sympathy or kindness” (188). Thus, Bergson’s view of humor is very narrow and puritanical and falls squarely within the group of humor theories that view humor as based on aggression or malice, as we will see shortly. There is no interaction for Bergson; humor is one-sided: those who laugh and those who are laughed at, and it must be assumed that, for Bergson, those who are laughed at constitute the joke. In this way, Bergson is describing in-groups deriding someone or group outside that in-group. In this discussion, Bergson does not consider the relationship of the joke teller, he or she who has first noticed and noted the defect that needs to be corrected in the object of the laughter, to the others who find humor in the laughed at. Presumably, however, those who laugh – together at the object of the laughter – must share some sort of “social bonds,” to use Apte’s term, or “social backgrounds,” to use Raskin’s term, or be part of a “particular social group,” to use Viktoroff’s term, in order to laugh together at whom the humor is directed. William F. Fry has surveyed some of the views on the relationships between and among people involved in humor and touches upon several of these views: It has been suggested that humor embodies an attack by one individual on another. Laughter is then variously explained as resulting from feelings of superiority in attack or ... as representing a compensatory reaction to feelings of inferiority in battle. ... Some state that people can only smile and laugh together if they are feeling a deep love or affection for each other. Humor then seems to become a reaffirmation of “warm,” “positive” emotions. It is also presented that persons mutually involved in humor are covertly indulging in some illicit, forbidden behavior. This behavior is usually represented as being of a sexual nature. And there are other ideas about this interpersonal relationship, none of which have been demonstrated to be conclusive.  (1963: 31)

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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 anthropological 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. Historical views of humor Humor is a universal human phenomenon, bearing upon all aspects of human life, relationships, and interactions. But humor, as a term, is not easy to define. Harvey Mindess calls humor “a frame of mind, a manner of perceiving and experiencing life...a kind of outlook, a peculiar point of view, and one which has great therapeutic power” (1971: 21). Fry, a psychiatrist and humor researcher as well as a firm believer in the therapeutic power of humor (Fry and Savin 1988), calls humor “play” (1963: 138). While the definitions of humor abound and circle, like a wagon train, around the term, there is still no precise agreement on exactly what is meant by humor, and there may well never be. For some, humor is its physical manifestation, laughter; for others, humor is the comic, the funny, or the ludicrous. For still others, humor is synonymous with wit or comedy. And so the terminological fog abounds. Yet in spite of this lack of a precise definition, humor research has become serious business, attracting a diverse and growing corps of researchers and scholars who are nevertheless certain of the phenomenon which they investigate, the phenomenon of humor. So how has humor been perceived through the ages? Plato held that people laugh at others’ misfortunes (1975 [-4th], 45–49), and Aristotle, who used the term comedy, said that humor was “an imitation of men worse than the average; worse ... as regards ... the Ridiculous [“a mistake or deformity”], which is a  species of the Ugly” (1954 [-4th], 229). In addition, Aristotle called “people like satirists and writers of comedy ... a kind of evil speakers and tell-tales” (1975 [-4th], 109). Cicero concurred, restricting humor to the “unseemly or ugly” (1942 [-55], 373). Thomas Hobbes followed in these ancient footsteps by claiming, 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

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of themselves past, when they come suddenly to remembrance, except they bring with them any present dishonour.  (1650: 46, emphasis in original; see also Hobbes, 1651: 45)

Nineteenth-century scholars and theorists were no less dour in their views of humor. Georg W. F. Hegel, for instance, called laughter “an expression of self-satisfied shrewdness” (1920 [1835], 302), and Alexander Bain held that “... in everything where a man can achieve a stroke of superiority, in surpassing or discomifiting a rival, is the disposition to laughter apparent” (1859: 153). Moreover, added Bain, “the occasion of the ludicrous is the degradation of some person or interest possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion” (1859: 248). Bergson also falls easily into this collection of humor theorists and theories, noting that “it is the trifling faults of our fellow-men that make us laugh” (1899: 149). In the twentieth century, this view of humor as rooted in disparagement, aggression, and malice has continued to thrive with William Hazlitt’s assertion that “[w]e laugh at absurdity ... at deformity... at mischief ... at what we do not believe ... to show our satisfaction with ourselves, or our contempt for those about us, or to conceal our envy or our ignorance. We laugh at fools, and at those who pretend to be wise – at extreme simplicity, awkwardness, hypocrisy, and affectation” (1903: 8–9), in other words, Cicero’s “unseemly or ugly.” Anthony M. Ludovici put forth an evolutionist’s claim that “all laughter is the expression of superior adaptation” (1932: 74). Commenting on Ludovici, Patricia Keith-Spiegel observes that for Ludovici, “[t]he greater the dignity of the victim, the greater the resulting amusement” (1972: 7). Albert Rapp (1951), also following in an evolutionary vein, posited a theory, based on hostility, of the evolution of humor. Dolf Zillmann and Joanne R. Cantor summarize this view of humor well when they assert, “[a]ppreciation [or humor] should be maximal when our friends humiliate our enemies and minimal when our enemies manage to get the upper hand over our friends” (1976: 100–101). Today, the Ancients’ grim views of humor and laughter can be seen in teasing. Verbal attacks, even if punctuated with “I was just joking” or “Can’t you take a  joke?” still deride, still hurt. According to psychologist Susan Forward, humor can frequently be used as a mask for verbal abuse, and if the abused, the audience, “complains, the abuser invariably accuses him or her of lacking a sense of humor. ‘She knows I’m only kidding,’ he’ll say, as if the victim of his abuse were a co-conspirator” (1989: 97).

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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 evolution of that which had been described by the Ancients. Not everyone throughout history viewed humor and laughter so negatively. 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 incongruity. 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 explained, 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 incongruous 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 between 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 incongruity ... [and] must bring about an abrupt cognitive reorganization in the listener” (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,

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laughter [or humor] arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in complex object or assemblage, or as acquiring a sort of mutual relation from the peculiar manner in which the mind takes notice of them.  (1776: 602)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, humor and laughter began to be seen as a  form of release or relief. Freud spoke of “the release of comic pleasure” (1976 [1905], 282) and believed that it was the release and the relief as well as the pleasure derived from them that were characteristic of and characterized all humor. Freud even went so far as to classify, or categorize, humor based on the particular kind of relief it elicited: “The pleasure in jokes has seemed...to arise from an economy in expenditure upon inhibition, the pleasure in the comic from an economy in expenditure upon ideation...and the pleasure of humor from an economy of expenditure upon feeling” (1976 [1905], 302, emphasis in original). For J. C. Gregory, writing two decades after Freud, relief was at the core of all humor: Relief...is written on the physical act of laughing and on the physiological accompaniments. It is written on the occasions of laughter and, more or less, plainly, on each of its varieties. A laughter of sheer relief may be the original source of all other laughters, which have spread from it like a sheaf. ... Relief is not the whole of laughter, though it is its root and fundamental plan. The discovery of sudden interruption through relaxation of effort merely begins the inquiry into laughter. But it does begin it, and no discussion of laughter that ignores relief or makes it of little account can hope to prosper.  (1924: 40)

A half-century after Freud, Martin Grotjahn, in the introduction to his book, Beyond Laughter (1957), asserts that laughter and, therefore, humor ... can be used to express an unending variety of emotions. It is based on guilt-free release of aggression, and any release makes us perhaps a little better and more capable of understanding one another, ourselves, and life. What is learned with laughter is learned well. Laughter gives freedom, and freedom gives laughter.  (1957, viii–ix)

Following in these footsteps is any discussion of the healthful and/or healing effects of humor, that is, therapeutic humor. Perhaps the most notable, and certainly one of the more prolific, proponents of the therapeutic uses of humor is Fry (1990; Fry and Stoft 1971; Fry and Allen 1975; Fry and Rader 1977; Fry and Salameh 1987; Fry and Savin 1988), who notes that accompa-

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nying what he calls “mirthful laughter” are “increases in arterial blood pressure” 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 circulatory efficiency” (1988: 49). Humor research and major theories Having looked at historical perspectives of humor, it becomes easy to see that while theories of humor date back to the Ancients, including, as we have seen, Plato and Aristotle, and have been posited, examined, and developed throughout the intervening centuries (by, among others, Hobbes 1650, 1651; Schopenhauer 1819; Bain 1859; Bergson 1899; Freud 1905; Apte 1985, 1988; and Raskin 1985), humor theories and humor research have generally fallen into three main categories or classes of theories: cognitive/ perceptual or incongruity, social/ behavioral or disparagement, and psychoanalytical or release/relief. Keith-Spiegel lists eight categories – biological, instinct, and evolution; superiority; incongruity; surprise; ambivalence; release and relief; configurational; and psychoanalytic (1972: 4–13) – and includes an excellent, albeit brief, historical bibliography of humor research and theories, but her categories essentially conflate to these three major groups. Neutral to these theories and groups of theories are a  number of relatively recent theories: Raskin’s script-based semantic theory of humor (1985), Salvatore Attardo’s five-level model for the analysis of joke texts (1989), Attardo and Raskin’s General Theory of Verbal Humor (1991), Ruch, Attardo, and Raskin’s empirical support of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (1993), and my own Audience-Based Theory of Verbal Humor (1993; 1997a; 1997b). There are, of course, other types of research into humor which cannot be as easily taxonomized. Some of the more notable ventures include the empirical research into the physiological and psychological responses to humor (see, for instance, Ruch 1993b, a guest-edited special issue of HUMOR devoted to psychological humor research, and see below). Still other areas of humor research include examinations of gender differences in the appreciation of humor (see, for example, McGhee 1976b; Brodzinsky, Barnet, and Aiello 1981; Mundorf et al., 1988; Cox, Read, and Van Auken 1990; Van Giffen 1990; Lundell 1993; Derks, Kalland, and Etgen 1995; Ehrenberg 1995), humor in the workplace (see, for instance, Duncan 1982; Consalvo

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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 Camarena 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 Incongruity-based theories, which virtually dominate contemporary psychological research into humor (Raskin 1985: 32–33), envision humor as the “linking of disparates” (Monro 1951: 248), “incorporating into one situation what belongs to another” (Monro 1951: 45). For Oring, “[h]umor depends upon the discernment of an appropriate incongruity” (1989: 349). According to John Morreall, the enjoyment of incongruity is uniquely human and sets human beings apart from other animals, who process incongruities as potential threats, which is, in Morreall’s words, “cognitively limiting” (1989: 12). Morreall claims that because human beings can both perceive and enjoy incongruity, humans have been able to view the world in “nonpractical ways” and therefore have been able to develop not only science but art (1989: 12). Perceiving and enjoying incongruity thus have facilitated, according to Morreall, the development of rational thinking, objectivity, and humor. Apte, whose approach to humor is, again, anthropological, anchors humor to culture, asserting that humor “is primarily the result of cultural perceptions, both individual and collective, of incongruity, exaggeration, distortion, and any unusual combinations of the cultural elements in external events” (1985: 16).

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Also included in incongruity-based theories of humor can be some of the theories about play, which Fry defines as “behavior which depends on the mutual recognition ... that that behavior (play) does not mean the same thing as does that behavior (fighting, etc.) which play represents” (1963: 125–126). Part of the incongruity in play, then, is that the behavior that play represents, as Fry points out, is clearly not the same behavior as that in which the participants are engaged; rather, it is simply an image of that particular behavior. Thomas R. Shultz (1976) claims two stages of incongruity: perception and resolution. Shultz’s stages constitute a traditional view of incongruity, for it is only after the incongruity is perceived by an observer that it can be resolved, and it is in the resolution of the incongruity that the perceiver, according to those who, like Shultz, subscribe to incongruity-based theories, finds the humor. For Shultz, then, humor is inherent in the incongruity – or, at least, in the resolution of the incongruity. Mary K. Rothbart and Diana Pien put forth the results of combining what they call “two categories of incongruity and two categories of resolution” (1977: 37). What can happen, they claim, are impossible or possible incongruity and complete or incomplete resolution. Given this taxonomy, Rothbart and Pien assert, cognitive aspects of humour would be seen as a function of (a) the number of resolved incongruous elements, (b) the number of incongruity elements remaining unresolved, (c) the degree of incongruity of each element, (d) the difficulty of resolution, and (e) the degree of resolution. Increases in the first three factors should lead to increases in humor appreciation, while the difficulty of resolution may be … related to humour (McGhee 1974).  (Rothbart and Pien, 1977: 38)

Incongruity-based theories thus concern themselves with the stimulus, that which the joke text is about. Essentially, incongruity-based theories of humor and those researchers, theorists, and scholars who espouse them locate the humor in the incongruity itself and then leave it to the audience to identify, perceive, and resolve the incongruity and find, as a result, the humor inherent in the incongruity. For the proponents of incongruity-based theories of humor, humor exists, irrespective of an audience, and failed joke texts, then, must be failures on the part of the audience to “get” the joke, to find the humor which must, according to these theories and those who espouse them, exist in the incongruity. This view of humor clearly places the burden of humor very definitely on the text of a joke. The audience exists only to identify, perceive, and resolve the incongruity that is already present in the text of the joke.

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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 frequently 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 observation 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 superiority-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 contemptuous 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 nevertheless remain. Release/relief theories The third group of humor theories is comprised of the release/relief theories which perceive humor and laughter as a release of the tensions and inhibitions generated by societal constraints. Mindess, for instance, finds humor liberating and a source of vicarious living (1971: 38). Clearly, the text of the joke has to bear the burden of being the catalyst for the release and/or relief. Humor, then, must again be inherent in the text of the joke and thus presented to the audience. If the audience experiences any release or relief, the joke has been successful. If not, the joke has failed to fire.

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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. Script-based semantic theory of humor Neutral to these conceptualizations of humor is Raskin’s script-based semantic theory of humor (1985), which was the first linguistic-based theory of humor. Raskin’s theory posits that 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)

General theory of verbal humor In the revision of Raskin’s script-based semantic theory of humor, Attardo and Raskin collaborate to put forth a “General Theory of Verbal Humor” (GTVH) based on six knowledge resources, or KRs, “which inform the joke”: script opposition, logical mechanism, situation (which includes the audience), target, narrative strategy, and language. According to Attardo and Raskin, “each KR is a list or set of lists from which choices need to be made [by the joke teller] for use in the joke” (1991: 313). This new theory “incorporates, subsumes, and revises” (329) Raskin’s script-based semantic theory and Attardo’s five-level model but still concentrates virtually exclusively on the text of the joke. Audience-based theory of verbal humor The Audience-Based Theory of Verbal Humor is my own (1993) and posits, in short, that humor resides with the audience; and thus, nothing is inherently humorous, or funny. Some joke texts will succeed for one audience and fail

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to fire for another. Humor does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, it has four necessary constituents which make up the humor event: the joke teller, the joke text, and the audience all existing within a particular situation which contributes 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. Psychological inquiry into humor Humor has also been approached empirically by psychologists and physiologists, among others, through its physical manifestations. Willibald Ruch (1990) has verified smiling as the most frequent facial response to humor, and Mark Frank and Paul Ekman have empirically examined Ruch’s finding in terms of what they call enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles by looking at a number of “markers of the enjoyment smile” (1993: 22). Mark Winkel (1993) has looked at humor through changes in pupil diameter, skin conductance, and heart rate, while Lambert Deckers, falling clearly in the incongruity camp, has developed a weight-judging paradigm (WJP) “to investigate the conditions necessary for incongruity, degree of incongruity, ... and detection of incongruity” (1993: 43). Peter Derks and Sanjay Arora have looked at the effect of the sequencing of cartoons in the perception of humor; that is, following the results of a study by Jeffrey Goldstein, Jerry Suls, and Susan Anthony (1972) who, according to Ruch, “demonstrated that the repetition of a joke theme makes this theme salient and that subsequent jokes are found funnier when the same theme is continued rather than alternated” (Ruch 1993a: 4), Derks and Arora have mixed what they have identified as sexual and innocent cartoons and have hypothesized that “by priming ­participants [in their study] with certain kinds of humor, it should be possible to pit various theories of humor appreciation against each other” (1993: 58).

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In Israel, Ofra Nevo and her colleagues have examined the relationship between 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 humorous 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 suggests, “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, Martin and his colleagues confirm their hypothesis that humor does help to reduce 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). Humorology, international conferences, the International Society for Humor Studies, and humor as big business In the lead article of the first issue of the only academic journal devoted entirely to humor scholarship, HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research), 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 modalities” that the study of humor must be and is a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, 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

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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 measure 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 scholars, 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-anthropologist-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 researchers 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 Chapman and Hugh Foot. Three years later, Mindess hosted the Second International 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 Conferences on Humor were held in Tel Aviv, Israel (1984, Avner Ziv), Cork, Ireland

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(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 inception of the organization, annual ISHS conferences have been held in Sheffield, England (1990), St. Catharines, Ontario (1991), Paris (1992, in conjunction 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, government 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 produced 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 frivolous 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. Membership in the ISHS is growing, and its conferences are well attended by

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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, forays 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 Commonwealth of Independent States (for example, Zelvys 1990) to Israel (for instance, 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 articles 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 devoting 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.

Works cited Alves, Julio 1997

The thin end of the wedge: Jokes and the political socialization of children. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (3): 301–331. Apte, Mahadev L. 1985 Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach. ­Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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Apte, Mahadev L. 1988 Disciplinary boundaries in humorology: An anthropologist’s ruminations. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 1 (1): 5–25. Aristotle 4th c. De arte poetica. English translation: “Poetics.” In: Aristotle, Rhetoric. Poetics. New York: Random House, 1954, 219–266. Attardo, Salvatore 1989 A multiple-level analysis of jokes. Contributed section in Newsletter, HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (4): 438–439. 1991 From linguistics to humor research and back: Applications of linguistics to humor and their implications for linguistic theory and methodology. Ph.D. dissertation, Purdue University. Attardo, Salvatore, and Jean-Charles Chabanne (eds.) 1992 Humor research east of the Atlantic. Special issue of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 5 (1/2). Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin 1991 Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (3/4): 293–347. Bain, Alexander 1859 The Emotions and the Will. London: J. W. Parker. Barreca, Regina (ed.) 1988 Last Laughs: Perspectives on Women and Comedy. New York: Gordon and Breach. Barreca, Regina 1991 They Used to Call Me Snow White ... But I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor. New York: Viking Penguin. Barrett, Tracy 1991 Cecco Angiolieri: A  medieval Italian humorist. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (3/4): 349–358. Batts, John S. 1992 Amis abroad: American occasions for English humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 5 (3): 251–266. Beattie James 1776 An essay on laughter, and ludicrous composition. In his Essays, 583–​705. Edinburgh: William Creech. Reprinted: New York: Garland, 1971. Bergson, Henri 1899 Le rire: Essai sur la signification du comique. Revue de Paris, February 1, February 15, and March 1 issues. English translation: “Laughter,” in: Wylie Sypher (ed.), Comedy, 59–190. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956.

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Bermant, Chaim 1986 What’s the Joke: A Study of Jewish Humor Through the Ages. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Bier, Jesse 1988 The problem of the Polish joke in derogatory American humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 1 (2): 135–​141. Brodzinsky, D. M., K. Barnet, and J. R. Aiello 1981 Sex of subject and gender identity as factors in humor appreciation. Sex Roles 7: 561–573. Carpenter, R. 1922 Laughter, a  glory in sanity. American Journal of Psychology 33: 419–422. Carrell, Amy Thomas 1993 Audience/community, situation, and language: A linguistic/rhetorical theory of verbal humor. Ph.D. dissertation, Purdue University. 1997a Humor communities. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (1): 11–24. 1997b Joke competence and humor competence. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (2): 173–185. Cicero 1942 De Oratore. English translation: On the Orator, Vol. 1, by E. W. Sutton & H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Books I & II. Consalvo, Carmine 1989 Humor in management: No laughing matter. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (3): 285–297. Cousins, Norman 1979 Anatomy of an Illness. New York: Norton. 1989 Proving the power of laughter. Psychology Today 23: 22–25. Cox, Joe A., Raymond L. Read, and Philip M. Van Auken 1990 Male-female differences in communicating job-related humor: An exploratory study. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (3): 287–295. Craik, Kenneth H., Martin D. Lampert, and Arvalea J. Nelson 1996 Sense of humor and styles of everyday humorous conduct. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 9 (3/4): 273–302. Crile, J. W. 1916 Man an Adaptive Mechanism. New York: Macmillan. Davies, Christie 1990 Ethnic Humor Around the World: A Comparative Analysis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1990b An explanation of Jewish jokes about Jewish women. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (4): 363–378.

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Davies, Christie 1997 The Newfoundland joke: A Canadian phenomenon viewed in a comparative international perspective. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (2): 137–164. Deckers, Lambert 1993 On the validity of a weight-judging paradigm for the study of humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (1): 43–56. Deren, Veronica 1989 Funny to some, not to others. An analysis of some adolescent responses to Australian humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (1): 55–72. Derks, Peter, and Sanjay Arora 1993 Sex and salience in the appreciation of cartoon humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (1): 57–69. Derks, Peter, Lynn S. Gillikin, Debbie S. Bartholome-Rull, and Edward H. Bogart 1997 Laughter and electroencephalographic activity. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (3): 285–300. Derks, Peter, Steve Kalland, and Mike Etgen 1995 The effect of joke type and audience response on the reaction to a joker: Replication and extension. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 8 (4): 327–227. Draitser, Emil 1994 Sociological aspects of the Russian Jewish jokes of the exodus. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 7 (3): 245–268. Duncan, Jack W. 1982 Humor in management: Prospects for administrative practice and research. Academy of Management Review 7: 136–142. Ehrenberg, Tamar 1995 Female differences in creation of humor relating to work. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 8 (4): 349–362. Elitzur, Avshalom C. 1990a Humor, play, and neurosis: The paradoxical power of confinement. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (1): 17–35. 1990b Biomemesis: Humor, play, and neurosis as life mimicries. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (2): 159–175. Epskamp, Kees P. 1993 The political exploitation of the clown figure in traditional and popular theater in Asia. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (3): 271–284. Fisher, Rhoda L. 1995 Leonardo da Vinci: Comic and practical joker. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 8 (1): 29–37.

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Forward, Susan 1989 Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life. New York: Bantam Books. Frank, Mark G., and Paul Ekman 1993 Not all smiles are created equal: The differences between enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (1): 9–26. Franzini, Louis R., and Susan Haggerty 1994 Humor assessment of corporate managers and humor seminar and personality students. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 7 (4): 341–350. Freud, Sigmund 1905 Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten. Leipzig/Vienna: Dueticke. English translation: Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. New York: Penguin Books, 1976. Fry, William F., Jr. 1963 Sweet Madness: A Study of Humor. Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books. 1990 The anatomy of mirth. Presented at “The Medicinal Muses,” conference sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, and the Research Center for Arts and Humanities. University of Maryland. April 23–24. 1997 Spanish humor: A  hypotheory, a  report on initiation of research. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (2): 165–172. Fry, William F., Jr., and M. Allen 1975 Make ’Em Laugh. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books. Fry, William F., Jr., and C. Rader 1977 The respiratory components of mirthful laughter. Journal of Biological Psychology 19: 39–50. Fry, William F., and Waleed A. Salameh (eds.) 1987 Handbook of Humor and Psychotherapy: Advances in the Clinical Use of Humor. Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Exchange. Fry, William F., Jr., and William Savin 1988 Mirthful laughter and blood pressure. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 1 (1): 49–62. Fry, William F., Jr., and P. E. Stoft 1971 Mirth and oxygen saturation levels of peripheral blood. Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics 19: 76–84. Gehring, Wes 1993 ’Oh, why couldn’t it have been Robert?’ HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (3): 285–298.

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Gelkopf, Marc, and Marcia Sigal 1995 It is not enough to have them laugh: Hostility, anger, and humorcoping in schizophrenic patients. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 8 (3): 273–284. Gibson, Donald E. 1994 Humor consulting: Laughs for power and profit in organizations. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 7 (4): 403–428. Goldstein, Jeffrey, Jerry Suls, and Susan Anthony 1972 Enjoyment of specific types of humor content: Motivation or salience? In: Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee (eds.), The Psychology of Humor, 159–171. New York: Academic Press. Greenfeld, Anne 1993 Laughter and humor in Camus’s The Stranger, The Fall, and The renegade. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (4): 403–414. Gregory, J. C. 1924 The Nature of Laughter. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Greig, J. Y. T. 1923 The Psychology of Laughter and Comedy. New York: Dodd, Mead. Reprinted: New York: Cooper Square, 1969. Grotjahn, Martin 1957 Beyond Laughter. New York: McGraw-Hill. Gruner, Charles 1978 Understanding Laughter: The Workings of Wit and Humor. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Haig, Robin Andrew 1988 The Anatomy of Humor: Biopsychological and Therapeutic Perspectives. Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas. Hallett, Ronald A. 1992 Is the Parisian lady funny? Sexism and comique technique in Rabe­ lais. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 5 (4): 331–342. Hazlitt, William 1903 Letters on the English comic writers, Lecture I. “On wit and humour.” In: his Collected Works, Vol. 8, 5–30. London: Dent. Hegel, Georg W. F. 1835 Vorlesungen uber die Asthetik. Berlin: H. Glockner. English translation: The Philosophy of Fine Art. London: G. Bell, 1920, Vol. 4. Hobbes, Thomas 1650 Human Nature. Oxford: Fra: Bowman. Reprinted in: The English Works of Thomas Hobbes. London: John Bohn, 1840 4: 1–76.

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Leviathan. London: Crooke. Facsimile edition: Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. Holcomb, Christopher 1992 Nodal humor in comic narrative: A semantic analysis of two stories by Twain and Wodehouse. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 5 (3): 233–250. Holt, Dan G., and Colleen Willard-Holt 1995 An exploration of the relationship between humor and giftedness in students. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 8 (3): 257–271. Hopkins, Chris 1997 Comic flexibility and the flux of modernity in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (2): 207–218. Humes, James C. 1975 Podium Humor. New York: Harper and Row. Hunt, L. 1846 Wit and Humour. London: Smith, Elder and Co. Kallen, H. M. 1911 The aesthetic principle in comedy. American Journal of Psychology 22: 137–157. Kant, Immanuel 1790 Kritik der Urtreilskraft. Berlin: Lagarde. English translation: Critique of Judgment. New York: Hafner, 1951. Karabas, Seyfi 1990 Hairy Turkish cartoons. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (2): 193–215. Kaufman, Gloria (ed.) 1991 In Stitches: A Patchwork of Feminist Humor. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kazanevsky, Vladimir 1995 The history of the cartoon in the USSR. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 8 (2): 167–176. Keith-Spiegel, Patricia 1972 Early conceptions of humor: Varieties and issues. In: Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee (eds.), The Psychology of Humor, 3–39. New York: Academic Press. Klein, Allen 1989 The Healing Power of Humor: Techniques for Getting Through Loss, Setbacks, Upsets, Disappointments, Difficulties, Trials, Tribulations, and All That Not-So-Funny Stuff. Los Angeles: Tarcher.

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Köhler, Gabriele, and Willibald Ruch 1996 Sources of variance in current sense of humor inventories: How much substance, how much method variance? HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 9 (3/4): 363–397. Kuiper, Nicholas A., and Rod A. Martin 1993 Humor and self-concept. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (3): 251–270. Kushner, Malcolm 1990 The Light Touch: How to Use Humor for Business Success. New York: Simon and Schuster. Leeds, Christopher 1992 Bilingual Anglo-French humor: An analysis of the potential for humor based on the interlocking of the two languages. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 5 (1/2): 129–148. Lefcourt, Herbert M., Karina Davidson-Katz, and Karen Kueneman 1990 Humor and immune system functioning. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (3): 305–321. Lefcourt, Herbert M., and Rod A. Martin 1986 Humor and Life Stress: Antidote to Adversity. New York: Springer Verlag. Ludovici, Anthony M. 1932 The Secret of Laughter. London: Constable Press. Lundell, Torborg 1993 An experiential exploration of why men and women laugh. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (3): 299–317. Martin, Rod A. 1989 Humor and the mastery of living: Using humor to cope with the daily stresses of growing up. In: Paul E. McGhee (ed.), Humor and Children’s Development: A Guide to Practical Applications, 135–154. New York: Haworth Press. 1996 The Situational Humor Response Questionnaire (SHRQ) and Coping Humor Scale (CHS): A decade of research findings. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 9 (3/4): 251–272. Martin, Rod A., and James P. Dobbin 1988 Sense of humor, hassles, and immunoglobin A: Evidence for a stress moderating effect of humor. International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine 18 (2): 93–105. Martin, Rod A., and Herbert M. Lefcourt 1983 Sense of humor as a moderator of the relation between stressors and moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45: 1313–​ 1324. Martin, Rod A., Nicholas A. Kuiper, L. Joan Olinger, and Kathryn A. Dance 1993 Humor, coping with stress, self-concept, and psychological well-

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being. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (1): 89–104.

Masten, Ann S. 1986 Humor and competence in school-aged children. Child Development 57: 461–473. 1989 Humor appreciation in children: Individual differences and response sets. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (4): 365–384. Mbangwana, Paul 1993 Some instances of linguistic and literary resource in certain humorous Cameroonianisms. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (2): 195–222. McDougall, W. 1922 Why do we laugh? Scribners 71: 359–363. McGhee, Paul E. 1974 Cognitive mastery and children’s humor. Psychological Bulletin 81: 721–730. 1976a Children’s appreciation of humor: A test of the cognitive congruency principle. Child Development 47: 420–426. 1976b Sex differences in children’s humor. Journal of Communication 26: 176–189. 1991 The Laughter Remedy: Health, Healing, and the Amuse System. Self-published. McGhee, Paul E., and Antony J. Chapman (eds.) 1980 Children’s Humour. Chichester: Wiley. McGhee, Paul E., and Theodora Panoutsopoulou 1990 The role of cognitive factors in children’s metaphor and humor comprehension. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (4): 379–402. Meyerhofer, Nicholas J. 1988 To laugh or not to laugh: Humor in the works of Thomas Bernhard. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 1 (3): 269–277. Mindess, Harvey 1971 Laughter and Liberation. Los Angeles: Nash. Mindess, Harvey, Carolyn Miller, Joy Turek, Amanda Bender, and Suzanne Corbin 1985 The Antioch Humor Test: Making Sense of Humor. New York: Avon. Mintz, Lawrence E. 1988 Newsletter. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 1 (1): 89–98. Monro, D. H. 1951 Argument of Laughter. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

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Morreall, John 1983 Taking Laughter Seriously. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1989 Enjoying incongruity. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (1): 1–18. 1991 Humor and work. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (3/4): 359–373. Morreall, John (ed.) 1987 The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor. Albany: State University of New York Press. Mowrer, Donald E. 1994 A case study of perceptual and acoustic features of an infant’s first laugh utterances. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 7 (2): 139–155. Mowrer, Donald, and Mary Elizabeth D’Zamko 1990 A comparison of humor and directive language in Head Start classrooms. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (3): 297–304. Mundorf, Norbert, Azra Bhatia, Dolf Zillmann, Paul Lester, and Susan Robertson 1988 Gender differences in humor appreciation. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 1 (3): 231–243. Nevo, Ofra, Giora Keinan, and Mina Teshimovsky-Arditi 1993 Humor and pain tolerance. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (1): 71–88. Nilsen, Don L. F. (ed.) 1990 Newsletter. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (4): 455–465. Olson, Kirby 1996 Bertie and Jeeves at the end of history: P. G. Wodehouse as political scientist. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 9 (1): 73–88. Oring, Elliott 1989 Between jokes and tales: On the nature of punch lines. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (4): 349–364. Plato 1975 Philebus. English translation: Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1956 Phaedrus. English translation: W. C. Helmbold and W. G. Rabinowitz. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Radday, Yehuda 1995 Sex and women in Biblical narrative humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 8 (4): 363–384.

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Ramani, S., and V. S. R. D. Varma (eds.) 1989 Humour and Productivity: Effective Use of Humour for Higher Productivity in All Walks of Life. 2 vols. Pune, India: Vijaya and Venkat. Rapp, Albert 1947 Toward an eclectic and multilateral theory of laughter and humor. Journal of General Psychology 36: 207–219. 1949 A phylogenetic theory of wit and humor. Journal of Social Psychology 30: 81–96. 1951 The Origins of Wit and Humor. New York: Dutton. Raskin, Victor 1985 Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (Synthese Language Library 24). Dordrecht: Reidel. 1992 Meaning, truth, and the sense of humor. Presented at the 1992 annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association, Chicago. Risden, E. L. 1990 The Owl and the Nightingale: Post-modernist play and medieval stand-up comedy. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (4): 403–413. Rosenheim, Eliyahu, Frederique Tecucianu, and Lilly Dimitrovsky 1989 Schizophrenics’ appreciation of humorous therapeutic interventions. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (2): 141–152. Ross, Charles 1989 The grim humor of Spenser’s Faerie Queene: Women and laughter in a  Renaissance epic. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (2): 153–164. Rothbart, Mary K., and Diana Pien 1977 Elephants and marshmallows: A theoretical synthesis of incongruity resolution and arousal theories. In: Antony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot (eds.), It’s a Funny Thing, Humour, 37–40. Oxford: Pergamon. Ruch, Willibald 1990 Exhilaration: The emotional response to humor. Presented at the Eighth International Conference on Humor, Sheffield. Ruch, Willibald 1991 An appeal for a cross-cultural approach to a taxonomy of humour. Presented at the Ninth International Conference on Humour and Laughter, St. Catharines, Ontario. 1993a Current issues in psychological humor research: Introduction. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (1): 1–7. 1994 Temperament, Eysenck’s PEN system, and humor-related traits. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 7 (3): 209–​244.

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1996

Measurement approaches to the sense of humor: Introduction and overview. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 9 (3/4): 239–250. Ruch, Willibald (ed.) 1993b Current issues in psychological humor research. Special issue of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (1). Ruch, Willibald, Salvatore Attardo, and Victor Raskin 1993 Toward an empirical verification of the General Theory of Verbal Humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (2): 123–136. Ruch, Willibald, and Giovannantonio Forabosco 1996 A  cross-cultural study of humor appreciation: Italy and Germany. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 9 (1): 1–18. Ruch, Willibald, Gabriele Köhler, and Christoph van Thriel 1996 Assessing the ‘humorous temperament’: Construction of the facet and standard trait forms of the State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory – STCI. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 9 (3/4): 303–339. Ruch, Willibald, Christiane Ott, Jeannine Accoce, and Françoise Bariaud 1991 Cross-national comparison of humor categories: France and Germany. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (3/4): 391–414. Ruch, Willibald, and Sigrid Rath 1993 The nature of humor appreciation: Toward an integration of perception of stimulus properties and affective experience. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (4): 363–384. Ryan, Cynthia A. 1997 Reclaiming the body: The subversive possibilities of breast cancer humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (2): 187–205. Schaeffer, Neil 1981 The Art of Laughter. New York: Columbia University Press. Schopenhauer, Arthur 1819 Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Vol. 1. Leipzig: Brockhaus. English translation: The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957. Schutz, Charles E. 1989 The sociability of ethnic jokes. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (2): 165–177. Scott, Nina M. 1989 Rosario Castellanos: Demythification through laughter. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (1): 19–30.

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Sherman, Lawrence W. 1988 Humor and social distance in elementary school children. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 1 (4): 389–404. Shultz, Thomas R. 1976 A cognitive-developmental analysis of humour. In: Tony Chapman and Hugh Foot (eds.), Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Applications, 11–36. London: Wiley. Spencer, Gary 1989 An analysis of JAP-baiting humor on the college campus. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (4): 329–348. Suls, Jerry M. 1977 Social Comparison Processes: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. Washington: Hemisphere. Svebak, Sven 1996 The development of the Sense of Humor Questionnaire: From SHQ to SHQ-6. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, Vol. 9: 3–4, pp. 341–361, Takahashi, Yumiko 1994 Mechanisms of the comic in Johannes Pauli’s Schimpf exempla. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 7 (3): 269–280. Tanner, Stephen L. 1989 E. B. White and the theory of humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (1): 43–53. Thorson, James A., and F. C. Powell 1996 Women, aging, and sense of humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 9 (2): 169–186. Tsur, Reuven 1989 Horror jokes, black humor, and cognitive poetics. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (3): 243–255. Unger, Lynette S. 1996 The potential for using humor in global advertising. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 9 (2): 143–168. Van Giffen, Katherine 1990 Influence of professor gender and perceived use of humor on course evaluations. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (1): 65–73. Viktoroff, David 1953 Introduction a la psycho-sociologie du rire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Walker, Nancy 1988 A Very Serious Thing: Women’s Humor and American Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Walker, Nancy, and Zita Dresner (eds.) 1988 Redressing the Balance: American Women’s Literary Humor from Colonial Times to the 1980s. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Warren, Rosalind (ed.) 1991 Women’s Glib: A Collection of Women’s Humor. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press. White, Sabina, and Phame Camarena 1989 Laughter as a stress reducer in small groups. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 2 (1): 73–79. Winkel, Mark 1993 Autonomic differentiation of temporal components of sexist humor. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 6 (1): 27–42. Zajdman, Anat 1991 Contextualization of canned jokes in discourse. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (1): 23–40. Zelvys, V. I. 1990 Obscene humor: What the hell? HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (3): 323–332. Zillmann, Dolf, and Joanne R. Cantor 1976 A disposition theory of humour and mirth. In: Tony Chapman and Hugh Foot (eds.), Humour and Laughter:Theory, Research and Applications, 93–115. London: Wiley. Ziv, Avner (ed.) 1986 Jewish Humor. Tel Aviv: Papyrus Publishing House. 1988 National Styles of Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1991 Jewish humor. Special issue of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (2). Ziv, Avner, and Orit Gadish 1990 The disinhibiting effects of humor: Aggressive and affective responses. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 3 (3): 347–357.

Computational humor: Beyond the pun?1 Christian F. Hempelmann Introduction When Apple introduced OS 9 in 1999, it included many pioneering features, among them a speech recognition and generation system that could tell jokes. A child of its time, it is a very basic system that reacts to the recognition of the spoken command “computer, tell me a joke.” Whenever it does recognize the command – and as often in natural language processing (NLP) systems, the user almost has to relearn language to adapt to the computer’s menial abilities – it starts a punning knock-knock joke, guiding you through a simple dialogue. The following example from Apple’s joke teller is characteristic of most existing efforts at computational humor: It is strongly template-based, forces the user into very narrowly prescribed interaction, and uses punning wordplay as the spurious connector between two meanings, the main characteristic for a text to be a joke. (1)

You: Computer, tell me a joke. Computer: Knock, knock. You: Who’s there. Computer: Thistle. You: Thistle who? Computer: Thistle [This will] be my last knock knock joke.

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 languagebased human-computer interaction. Finally, an additional benefit of studying computational humor can be reaped for those interested in humor, as it requires formalization of humor’s key components in order to make them

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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 Computational linguistics is the home discipline contributing to computational humor research, but psychology, linguistics, and humor research, oddly in that order, also furnish theories and methodologies. Computational linguistics, despite its name, is not linguistics applied with the help of computers. Despite its name, computational linguistics is often expressly antilinguistic in disciplinary background. When natural language is processed by computers, the systems to do so can be categorized with the help of two dimensions. The first of these, linguisticality, accounts for a general disciplinary split among the group of researchers working on human language with computer programs: On the one hand are those who use linguistic theories and formalize them sufficiently to be able to use them in programs, an approach sometimes called Computational Linguistics (CL) to distinguish it from the other approach of Natural Language Processing (NLP). This second, and until recently dominant, approach treats natural language like any other non-random collection of data and processes it with the help of statistical methods, as well as formalisms that work well on artificial languages. The first approach, based on linguistic theories, is commonly deemed not feasible by language statisticians and formalists, because of the multitude and irregularity of linguistic phenomena. Capturing these sufficiently, it is argued, would require too much effort. Their statistical and formalism-driven approach is the attempt to not have to do that work. Because of this rationale, their approach is fatally flawed by the necessary correlation of their performance with the degree to which natural language output is regular. This regularity is lower than the acceptance level of users of NLP systems. The irregular part of language output can only be captured when the underlying production and comprehension systems are modeled into an NLP system based on linguistic theories. A  second dimension, theoretically orthogonal to the first, but correlating to it because of similar psychological and disciplinary-philosophical issues, is the degree to which an NLP system is really (intended to be) doing something useful. Because statistical systems hit a  ceiling of performance below levels of user acceptability, they cannot be employed for a real task. Seemingly easy, they are stop-gap measures that don’t scale up2 and the non-

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s­ calability is usually overlooked, because the systems are not implemented. So they are models of systems that would not be feasible to be built at a real scale, because the feeble materials they are built from could not bear the necessary loads. From this stems the prevalent culture in NLP of creating proofs-of-concept and toy applications in limited domains, as well as comparing these proofs-of-concept and toy applications. While they are comparable among each other, the performance data derived in that way have no meaning, because they don’t reflect performance in relation to an implementation. Humor can be a field for implementation of NLP systems, which need to be based on linguistic theories to perform at an acceptable level, but also on linguistic and other humor theories. When done in fully implemented fashion, it sits on a complete NLP system, but plays a role centrally at the following two interfaces between man and the machine: The computer may have to detect and analyze the humor in its input, produced by the human, and the computer may be required to create humor in its output for human consumption. Both types of computational humor should be based on humor theory and a model of humor, namely on theories of the humor competence that underlies both the interpretation and creation of humor performance.3 Ideally, one interdisciplinary theory or group of complementary theories brought into relation can serve as the fundaments for humor analysis as well as humor generation. Since Apple’s joke teller, progress has been achieved in computational humor, both in humor analysis and humor generation, but mostly in generation. The reason is that even an unsophisticated intelligence, human or artificial, can parrot a  dumb joke, because it doesn’t even have to understand it. But understanding humor is far harder, not least because it is often not signaled in interaction that a certain part of an exchange was intended to be humorous. Understanding is of course what analysis is based on, and the computer might be faced with quite clever humor when it interacts with a human without being able to dictate the course of the dialogue as much as in the knock-knock jokes introduced above. And this is a general principle in NLP: If your system can’t do natural language, force the user to use your version of an artificial language and make it feel like natural language as much as necessary. To introduce the field of computational humor in NLP, this chapter will first outline the general motivation for and provide an overview of existing humor generators and attempts at humor analysis systems. In the course of this I will discuss in some detail the humor-linguistics of the pun and related

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­ ordplay as the most frequent type of humor used in humor generation. Fiw nally, I will briefly propose an improved system based on ontological semantics and i­ntegrated into a full natural language generation system. Motivations for computational humor 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 consider 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 (Nijholt 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 emotional 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.

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Multimodal symbolic interaction between humans is modeled for the computers at two main levels: First, textual expressions will be the focus of the remainder of this chapter, and, second, facial expressions, including as of recently also gestural bodily expressions in general. Facial movements are best describable with the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; Ekman and Friesen 1978; Ekman 2002), although it has not generally been accepted in ECAs, where the face is often modeled as a  three-dimensional surface object, ignoring the underlying muscular structure that is the basis of FACS. The movie industry, on the other hand, has realized its potential and used it, e.g., in Shrek and Toy Story. This is a common issue: Theory-based (in this case anatomical) models are available, but cheaper existing models that inevitably will not scale up are used on an ad-hoc basis. Based on an anatomical analysis of facial action, FACS describes facial expressions and movements and in a second step relates them to emotions. FACS therefore is an ideal tool for research of the emotional responses to humor since it allows a  distinction among different smiles and laughs and to score basic parameters such as frequency, intensity, duration, or symmetry. It has been successfully applied to study the human emotional responses to humor before (see Ruch and Ekman 2001). On the generation side of computational linguistics, it can also be used to model the facial responses of embodied agents on the other end of the user-agent interaction (Bailly et al. 2003). Facial actions cannot strictly be distinguished from movements of the upper torso and tilting of the head. Such actions are common in laughter, as are other bodily gestures. Equally fine-grained systems as FACS are not available yet for bodily expressions, but under development (see, e.g., Pantic et al. 2006). Existing computational humor systems Two much-quoted first-generation systems of computational humor generation are LIBJOG (Raskin and Attardo 1994) and JAPE (Binsted and Ritchie 1994, 1997), implemented by Loehr (1996). JAPE’s joke analysis and production engine is merely a  punning riddle generator, as it is not based on a theory that would provide a basis for generation in the mathematical sense intended by Chomsky (1965), neutral to and possibly forming the basis for both perception and production. It is a  good example of a  limited-range application described above, based largely on ad-hoc decisions during its ­creation.

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For example, the JAPE-1 system uses the knowledge that

(2) (i) “cereal” IS-A “breakfast food” (ii) “murderer” IS-A “killer” (iii) “cereal” SOUNDS-LIKE “serial” (iv) “serial killer” is a meaningful phrase to produce the pun: (3)

Q: What do you get when you cross breakfast food with a murderer? A: A cereal killer.

LIBJOG is a  light-bulb joke generator based on a  template that explicitly associates a target group with a stereotypic trait and selects the appropriate modification of the same light-bulb-changing situation. LIBJOG was the first toy system of computational humor, loosely inspired by the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH; Attardo and Raskin 1991), which in turn is based on the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH; Raskin 1985), but its authors were aware of its zero intelligence. The following is a template on which LIBJOG’s pseudogenerative power is based: 5 (4)

Polish Americans DUMB (activity_1 hold light bulb) (number_1 5) (activity_2 turn table) (number_2 4)

Raskin’s assessment that “each such lexicon entry is already a ready-made joke” (1996: 14) is a criticism that holds just as much for JAPE, and largely also for STANDUP, as we will see below, whose components are hardwired into “templates” and “schemas” so that the “generator” has no freedom or intelligence to make any choices, because, as Ritchie himself observes, “[t]he JAPE program has very little in the way of a theory underpinning it” (2001: 126). In fact, the main thrust of LIBJOG was to expose the inadequacy of such systems and to emphasize the need to integrate fully formalized large-scale knowledge resources in a scalable model of computational humor. The subsequent widespread emulation of LIBJOG’s lack of intelligence or insight with similar systems, such as JAPE or AUTEUR,6 developed by computer

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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 passwords by assigning to each letter and number words that form a syntactically 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 positive and one negative, and the use of politicians’ names. Another system loosely based on the SSTH and designed towards an implementation 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 augmented for this project to the degree that its own contribution to the system becomes marginal, while the domain and antonymy relations created for HAHAcronym are the crucial components. Exploring largely the phonological component of a pun generation system, Hempelmann (2003) presents a formalized model for the complex phenomenon of punning, and heterophonic punning, at all levels of linguistic and humor-theoretical relevance. It started from the assumption of Optimality 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

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generate imperfect puns. A more detailed description of its next incarnation is part of the next two sections below. A similar, but deeper, meaning-based approach supported by humor-theoretic underpinnings is described by Taylor and Mazlack (2005), but is still in the conceptual stage. Further work on punning joke recognition by Taylor and Mazlack (2007a, b), based in part on Hempelmann (2003), takes that approach further toward implementation in the vein of a full-fledged semantic NLP system, similar to the one described below. Another recent system with a  specific purpose is the STANDUP 9 generator by Ritchie and colleagues (Binsted et al. 2006, Ritchie et al. 2006). It is based on JAPE and intended to interact with children who have complex communication needs. The idea is to improve their language abilities by having them use STANDUP to construct jokes, that is, work with language. Humor serves as a motivator intended to keep the users at the task. STANDUP is an improvement over JAPE because it has an application and increased resource size, but in terms of computational humor it is at the same level of sophistication. Further recent developments in computational humor have aimed to improve humor analysis, not generation, and are often limited-range implementations of general stochastic algorithms, typical for NLP. Mihalcea and Pulman (2007), continuing in the vein of Mihalcea and Strapparava (2005), exemplify this common approach in NLP as applied to humor: Find recurring patterns in the surface structure of a  text that correlate with underlying text properties, in order to classify texts as humorous or non-humorous on the basis of these patterns. In particular, Mihalcea and Pulman postulate that humorous texts frequently show words from classes that signify human-centric vocabulary (e.g., pronouns), use negations and negative polarity words (“wrong,” “error”), mention professional communities (lawyers, programmers) and negative human traits (“ignorance,” “lying”). Grouping these classes under Human Centeredness and Polarity Orientation, Mihalcea and Pulman then show that they can distinguish certain humorous texts from non-humorous texts on the basis of the occurrence of words from these classes. As usual in NLP research of this kind, no clear application is given, not least because the performance of the algorithms is too poorly to support an ­application. Tinholt and Nijholt (2007) present a more promising theory-based system that is a useful contribution to computational humor research. They focus on anaphoric ambiguity, where it is unclear which previously mentioned person a pronoun refers to, e.g. “The cops arrested the demonstrators because they

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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 ConceptNet 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 filtering 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 accumulated 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. Puns in computational humor In almost all these applications introduced so far, humor was realized through verbal play, in particular punning. In verbal play, a text surface element carries 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 conveniently 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 necessary 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 mechanisms 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 mechanism (LM), maybe more appropriately called pseudo-logical mechanisms,

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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 indeed 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 usually paid to script opposition, while overlap is, at the most, quietly understood 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 playfully 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 punning, where the crucial part of SOv is realized in an easily identifiable element 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 In imperfect punning, the target is a word, often only paradigmatically present in the text, while the pun is the actual or first occurring word that aims at this target. In the following example the target is “insane” and the pun “in Seine.” (5)

Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine. (www.punoftheday.com)

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Perfect punning is understood as the special case of the pun-target relation where the pun and the target surface as identical units. This represents one end of the spectrum from homophony (sound identity) to the highest tolerable heterophony (sound difference). As an illustration, the same example can be used, when we assume a speaker who does not attempt a French pronunciation of “Seine,” so that it sounds identical to “sane.” A straightforward observation is that a pun and the target it is punning on are similar in sound, thus creating an overlap. But the multiple purpose of this sound similarity and its interaction with the requirements of the text to be a joke, as well as the faulty reasoning that underlies it, are far from simple. This section will briefly outline the relevant results of Hempelmann (2003) as an attempt to address the former two of these issues, while the following section will address the faulty reasoning, that is, the LM, before we can return to the theoretical discussion in the final section. The following hypothesis claims two closely related functions for the sound similarity in imperfect punning: (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). My original study focused centrally on the complicating phonological issue (6a) and how it interacts with other factors that facilitate the recovery of the target. In the following example, with respect to hypothesis (6a) the target “pearly” is sufficiently similar in sound to be recoverably from the pun “curly” to evoke the latter, while the idiomatic force of the collocation “Pearly Gates” aids this recovery substantially. (7)

Labia majora: the curly gates. pun: curly → target: pearly (Crosbie 1977: 60)

Further down, we will briefly introduce the important cratylism LM (9) in order to focus on the antagonistic relation of the factors in (6) and another necessary element of puns, imperfect as well as perfect ones, taken straight from the SSTH:

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(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. Before we can illustrate the interaction of SOp/SOv, and LM on the example of its partial failure in bad puns, let us now turn to the double analogy of the cratylism LM (9). The LM of punning: Cratylistic syllogism In a much-quoted passage, Coleridge identified the two key elements of poetry as “a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith” (1907 (1817): 169; my emphasis). Accordingly, I would like to suggest that for a text to be a joke as a specific type of poetry, i.e., aesthetic text, we need not only specific types of oppositeness, which may well be what makes it of human interest for us (cf. Raskin 1985: 113). But to reconcile this incongruity at least playfully, make it spuriously appropriate (Oring 2003), so as to facilitate the suspension Coleridge speaks of for poetic text in general, as well as to accept a relation between the incongruous concepts, the joke needs the LM that seemingly bridges that unbridgeable gap between them. And it needs this dynamic cognitive process in addition to and, at least in the case of puns, triggered by the static SOv that is part of the text. The local logic of punning functions on the basis of obviously erroneous reasoning in two steps: first, sound symbolism as a motivated relationship between a word’s meaning and its sound, and second, the assumption that this motivated relationship works across sound similarity between two words. The following paralinguistic syllogism summarizes the faulty logic: (9)

Major premise: If meaning motivates sound [cratylism],10 Minor premise: and in two words the sound is identical (similar), Conclusion: then the meaning of the two words must be related (identical/similar).

This syllogism based on cratylism clearly requires a “momentary suspension of disbelief,” that is, faulty logic, albeit of such pervasive power that

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we encounter it in many contexts that are not at all perceived to be playful or humorous, but in which statements implicitly involving this kind of reasoning are taken at face value. This includes religion (e.g., Exodus 20: 7)11 and magic, prominently name taboos, but also kabalistic and similar exegetic exercises, folk etymology and the etymological fallacy, as well as, more straightforwardly, onomatopoeia (for references, see Hempelmann 2003, Attardo 1994: ch. 4). Of course, the exact opposite position, the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign in which the signifier (sound sequence) is related to the signified (mental concept) not through cratylistic motivation, but systematically and conventionally only within the structure of a particular language, is the canonical assumption, most famously treated in Saussure (1983 (1916): 67–69). Pseudopunning Wordplay: de dicto without de re? On the basis of the discussion in the previous sections, we are now in a position 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 Kalauer, and in French calembour – the incongruity (SOp) is achieved through the phonological overlap in the text (SOv). Yet, crucially, this sound similarity 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 phonological 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: (10) Knock Knock. Who’s there? Cantaloupe. Cantaloupe who? Can’t elope tonight – Dad’s got the car. (from Pepicello and Weisberg 1983: 67) cantaloupe → can’t elope

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The only SOp that this text could be conceived of carrying is that of a metajoke (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 punning 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 humortheoretical relevance for the discussion of script opposition, script overlap, logical mechanism, and, on that basis, the distinction of verbal and referen-

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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. Implementing computational humor in a full-fledged NLP system Ontological semantics In this last section, I will outline a semantic approach to NLP, already integrated 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 declaring it an impossibly difficult problem. A  major problem, first pointed out by Bar-Hillel (1960) in his assessment of the first generation of machinetranslation 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. (11) I don’t like bowling, because I’m afraid of athlete’s foot. 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

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c­ omputational semantics, ontological semantics (Nirenburg and Raskin 2004) has developed the following resources, all of which are currently being expanded: • a 6000-concept language-independent ontology; • several ontology-based lexicons, including a 60,000-entry English lexicon with 100,000 senses; • a bunch of onomastica, dictionaries of proper names for a number of languages; • a text-meaning representation (TMR) language, an ontology-based knowledge-representation language for natural language meaning; • a fact repository, containing the growing number of implemented and remembered TMRs; • a preprocessor analyzing the pre-semantic information; • an analyzer transforming text into TMRs; • a generator translating TMRs into text. An ontological semantic NLP system represents input text as a  complex TMR – initially, one for each clause. Thus, starting to analyze a sentence, the system uses morphological information, syntactic information, and lexical entries based on ontological concepts to arrive finally at a (much simplified) TMR (see Fig. 1). Meaning representation in TMRs is sufficiently rich for the purposes of computational humor (see Nirenburg and Raskin 2004: ch. 6). For the purpose of humor analysis and generation, the ontology centrally has to be augmented by lexicon enhancement to include humorous stereotypes. as used in Attardo and Raskin (1994) and suggested by Raskin (1996). A complementary approach is the effort to develop the possibility to include complex concepts into the ontology (cf. Raskin et al. 2003), in order to finally be able to make full use of the semantic theory of humor based on scripts, as described in Raskin (1985). In the following subsection, we will explain on a full example how this integration is achieved. The necessary components of the integrated system will be described and it will be pointed out, which ones have already been developed and which are desiderata. On the basis of the humor theory adopted, the focus here will be the role of scripts and the oppositeness relations between them. The general semantic/pragmatic framework for a  computational humor system, including its status as part of a general NLP system able to detect humor and switch to its appropriate non-bona fide mode of communication, and accounting for humor analysis as well as generation have been formulated by Raskin and Attardo (1994). Raskin (2002) reports the progress in this

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direction. The rationale is still “that only the most complex linguistic structures can serve any formal and/or computational treatment of humor well” (Raskin 1996: 17). Toy systems don’t produce useful output. Semantic enablement of computer humor understanding The legacy implementation of ontological semantics automatically produces the Text-Meaning-Representation in (12) for the joke in Figure 1. (12) request-info-1 agent gender has-social-role beneficiary gender age attraction-attribute marital-status beneficiary theme theme gender

value human-1 value male value patient value human-2 value female value .5 value married value human-3 value location-of value human-3 value male

A text can be characterized as a single-joke-carrying text if both of the conditions are satisfied: (i) the text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scripts [overlap]; (ii) the two scripts are opposite [oppositeness]. The old example: “Is the doctor at home?” the patient asked in his bronchioal whisper . “No”, the doctor’s young and pretty wife whispered whispered in reply. “Come right in.” Figure 1.  Joke sample and main hypothesis (cf. Raskin 1985)

Script 1 PATIENT

Script 2 LOVER

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marital-status value married beneficiary value human-2 has-social-role value doctor instrument value natural-language loudness value cartoons

Main results

Humorous rating Photographs > cartoons Preference Realistic illustrations > cartoons Photographs, shaded line Perception speed Cartoons > Ryan & 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 color > dark, serious colors

Playful, bright > 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).

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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 elements

Text (in picture: indicating text or speech balloons), caption, number of words

Samson & Huber (2007), Ring (1975)

Text & picture

Proportional effect of picture and text

Herzog & Larwin (1988), Jones et al. (1979), McKay & McKay (1982), Carroll et al. (1992), Watson et al. (2006)

Drawing, picture

Degree of abstraction/ reality

Ryan & Schwartz (1956); Sheppard (1977, 1983), Fraisse & Elkin (1963), Hagen & Perkins (1983), Tversky & Baratz (1985), Rhodes, Brennan & Carey (1987), Dirr & Katz (1989), Mauro & Kubovy (1992)

Degree of partial distortion (Tendenzselektion, Woschek 1991)

Samson & Huber (2007)

Characteristics of the drawing style: details, color, brightness, style, lines, background

Bonaiuto (see 2006), Samson & Huber (2007)

Localization of the punch line

Samson & Huber (2007)

Visual artwork

Herzog & Larwin (1988)

Logical mechanisms Characters, Emotions

Paolillo (1998), Samson, Zysset & Huber (2008), Tsakona (in press) Number of (speaking) characters

Samson & Huber (2007)

Hair

Karabas (1991)

Action-lines

Brooks (1977)

Expressed emotions

Woschek, (1991), Samson & Huber (2007)

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Table 2.  (cont.) Categories

Formal feature(s)

Authors

Other

Theory of Mind

Gallagher et al. (2000), Corcoran et al. (1997), Marjoram et al. (2006), Samson et al. (2008)

Note: Some of the studies mentioned in this table will be discussed in the chapter about cognitive 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 control 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 example, 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 postulates 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 Aesthetics can be seen as an affective experience that is based on affective preference and cognitive selection and evaluation (Kunst-Wilson and Zajonc 1980). We claim that visual aesthetics are different from verbal aesthetics, for example, providing access to emotions differently. But again, only intui-

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tive attempts to describe aesthetic characteristics of cartoons or mechanisms that are used in cartoons (and which are – sometimes – restricted to visual humor) exist. For example, Woschek (1991) supposes that exaggeration and simplification are not the only properties of satirical drawings, and lists additional ones: simple contrasts (distorted proportions, e.g., a person is very tall which might refer to his rank in society, partial distortion (Tendenzselektion), bisociation, or substitution (e.g., an object is in an untypical environment). Similarly, Behrens (1977) sought to categorize different (visual) mechanisms in visual humor. Ramachandran and Hirstein (1999) propose in their theory of artistic experience eight laws that influence aesthetic appreciation – some of them might be relevant for cartoon processing: One of these principles is a  psychological phenomenon called the peak shift effect and describes the stronger reaction towards stimuli that are constructed (e.g., drawn) with the important characteristic illustrated in a  more exaggerated manner than its prototype. Ramachandran and Hirstein suggest that caricatures as ‘supranormal’ stimuli evoke activation more strongly in some areas in the brain than natural stimuli. Another artistic law relevant for cartoons might be that stimuli with stronger contrasts evoke stronger reactions (with respect to cartoons: simple line drawings vs. a realistic, detail-oriented drawing style). However, the influence of aesthetic aspects of visual humor on affective and cognitive processes is difficult to investigate, not least because aesthetic elements are hard to be measured objectively. Visual artwork (understood as the subjective evaluation of the quality of the drawing) is investigated in one study by Herzog and Larwin (1988) only, but unfortunately many other dimensions or means of representations and their influence on cognitive and affective processes have not been addressed yet. However, if aesthetic aspects are broken down to formal elements, such as, for example, rounded shapes vs. realistic drawings, they can be made more easily accessible and operationalizable. Some of the above-mentioned aesthetic characteristics of cartoons were investigated as formal elements (see, for example, Bonaiuto 2006). It has been shown that the drawing style can create or provoke a certain atmosphere and increase or decrease the humorous experience. Aesthetic properties can also facilitate the recognition that something is meant to be funny (e.g., simple lines and rounded shapes can indicate that a  picture is meant to be humorous). However, aesthetic, formal and cognitive elements of cartoons are difficult to separate and because of the complex interaction between these levels, an attempt to distinguish them might be artificial. There seems to be a lack of studies – and also theories – that approach the influence of aesthetic aspects

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on humor processing. Most enumerations of aesthetic/formal/cognitive elements are not theory-driven and not (all) of these elements have been systematically investigated yet. In psychological research methods have found ways to operationalize several aspects of aesthetics, such as the mere exposure or familiarity (see studies by Leder, e.g., 2003; Leder, Belke, Oeberst, and Augustin 2004). Further studies on the influence of aesthetic aspects on humor processing have much room to develop. In summary, aesthetic aspects of visual humor remain largely unexplored, not least because of difficulties of quantifiability and operationalizability and the difficulty to separate them from formal elements and cognitive mechanisms. Furthermore, we claim that aesthetic elements are non-essential to humor, which is a cognitive experience that definitely can be enhanced by aesthetic factors, but is in principle independent of it. Aesthetics of humorous stimuli may have a high impact on affect: the drawing itself may not alter the core elements of humor (i.e., incongruity, incongruity-resolution), but may increase or decrease the humor response in dependence on whether the drawing style is appreciated or not. Cognitive aspects As repeatedly mentioned above, the implicit assumption in previous research (e.g., Suls 1972) has been that the cognitive-semantic processes involved in cartoon humor are generally compatible to those posited for purely textual humor, which are, we believe, most thoroughly formalized by the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH, Attardo and Raskin 1991) outlined elsewhere in this primer. Because of the fundamental identity of semiotic processes, we share this assumption of far-reaching adaptability of the humor cognition theories developed for verbal humor to visual humor. Thus, a brief overview of the research on verbal-humor cognition will form the backdrop against which we will develop the final section presenting open research issues for cartoon humor cognition. One crucial benefit for general theories of humor cognition is that in cartoons, the triggers for the various stages of cognition are distributed not strictly linearly as in joke texts, but are spatially arranged, even across the modes of picture and text. Thus, we assume that the processes may be more easily teased apart operationally and, consequently, empirically into various constellations of stages and their successions than it is possible in verbal humor. A crucial tool for experiments in both areas will turn out to be an eyetrack-

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er but also neuroimaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance ­imaging (fMRI). A representative paper from the early heyday of cognitive humor research in the 1970s is Suls (1972). He explicitly equates jokes and captioned cartoons in the respects he intends to address, as they present “a sequence of ideas” (82). This implies linear processing for both, and in the case of captioned cartoons a sequence that begins with the picture and then moves on to the caption, and also requires an additional assumption, namely that the picture present the incongruity and the caption the resolution. The latter, while common, is obviously not necessarily always the case, witnessed, not least, in cartoons without text. In contrast to models that consider incongruity alone to be sufficient for humor (e.g., Nerhardt 1970), Suls posits two stages: In the first, an expectation is disconfirmed (which tacitly assumes a preceding stage in which the expectation is built). This creates the incongruity. The second stage includes the search for (and identification of) a  cognitive rule, the resolution. Note that Suls does not distinguish problem-solving and general logic from its playful pseudo-logical variant. Similarly, McGhee, Ruch, and Hehl (1990) describe the salient features of incongruity-resolution humor (INC-RES) as being characterized by punch lines in which the surprising incongruity can be completely resolved. They distinguish the INC-RES type of humor from nonsense (NON) humor as follows: The other consistently emerging structural factor is nonsense humor, which also has a surprising or incongruous punch line, exactly as in incongruity-resolution humor. However, ‘... the punch line may 1) provide no resolution at all, 2) provide a partial resolution (leaving an essential part of the incongruity unresolved), or 3) actually create new absurdities or incongruities.’ (McGhee et al. 1990: 124) In nonsense humor the resolution information gives the appearance of making sense out of incongruities without actually doing so (see also Rothbart and Pien 1977).

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 resolution, 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).

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Shultz (1972), together with Suls (1972) and Jones (1970) another proponent 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 individually 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 general 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 cartoon funny, for example homomorphic rhyme, metamorphic rhyme, homomorphic 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 described and defined by the GTVH: the Logical Mechanisms (LMs). LMs describe 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 parameters 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 underlying 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

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well as the picture were necessary to get the joke (neither element was sufficient by itself). They were able to distinguish two processing stages: the exploratory stage (visual analysis of the picture and identification of characters and objects in the picture, shorter fixation duration, more fixations and longer saccades) and a  search-and-problem-solving stage (deeper processing, 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 cartoons 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 caption-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 caption 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 (Carroll et al. 1992). It would be most interesting to conduct further studies on cartoon processing and eye movements. We assume, for example, that in pure nonverbal cartoons 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 magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) used strictly verbal materials which were ­presented via head phones (Goel and Dolan 2001). However, most of the

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fMRI studies on humor processing used visual materials such as (captioned) cartoons or short movie clips. Pure non-verbal cartoons were used for example by Wild et al. (2006) or Samson, Zysset, and Huber (2008). Generally, the humor-related processes are the same for verbal and visual humor: The activations during cognitive processes (comprehension, incongruity-resolution) can be found in a more left-sided network, e.g., in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Affective processes are reflected in reward processing areas, also called the limbic system, for example the putamen, nucleus accumbens and amygdala. Affective correlates are independent of the stimulus mode (visual or verbal). The picture can be seen as more or less important in order to get the joke (sometimes the picture is just an illustration of the verbal joke in the caption, no further incongruities in the picture, Samson and Huber 2007). This leads to the assumption that it could be important to localize the incongruity (text only, between text and picture, picture only or both) which requires different abilities (visual vs. verbal). One attempt to do this is the study by Watson et al. (2006) who investigated explicitly the difference between more verbal or more visual dependent materials. By using captioned cartoons, they compared “sight gags”, i.e., cartoons in which the joke is based on elements in the picture (the cartoons remain funny, even if the caption is removed) to language-based humor (the cartoons are only funny when the caption is available). Visual-based humor activates more strongly areas in the bilateral higher order visual cortex, including the horizontal posterior segment of the superior temporal sulcus, the middle occipital gyrus, and the precuneus. Language-based cartoons activate more strongly the inferior and middle temporal gyrus (MTG and ITG) and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), regions functionally defined as Wernicke’s area, Broca’s area, and the basal temporal language area, respectively. These findings indicate that the brain networks recruited during a humorous experience differ according to the type of humor being processed, with high-level visual areas more activated during visual humor and classic language areas more activated during language-dependent humor. Related to reward- and emotion-related processes no differences where found but rather a common network activated by both types of humor that includes the amygdala and regions in the limbic system. As visual puns are a special case of visual humor (see above), in which neural processes in the processing of visual puns and other visual humor materials shall be considered here. Samson et al. (2008) investigated different types of visual humor that differed regarding their Logical Mechanism (LM): Visual puns in which one visual element evokes two different meanings show

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more activation in higher-order visual areas (the extrastriate cortex). This might be interpreted as the play with two meanings evoked by one visual element or associated with visual picture play. Furthermore, this activation might be interpreted as reflecting visual adjustment processes and that more visual cognition is involved in this LM. Semantic cartoons in which the LM is based on purely semantic relations (and not visual ones) and in which several LMs were subsumed (e.g., role reversal, exaggeration) show activation in areas that were associated with the incongruity-resolution process in general, e.g., the TPJ. The third stimulus group required additionally the attribution of (false) mental states in order to get the joke, so-called Theory of Mind (TOM) cartoons. This LM was already described by Paolillo (1998). TOM cartoons reveal more activation in areas known to be important for mind reading, such as the anterior medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, TPJ and anterior superior temporal sulcus (aSTS). This study shows that the underlying cognitive mechanisms such as LMs influence cognitive processes related to humor. Theory of Mind cartoons were already investigated by Gallagher et al. (2000): they studied brain activation in relation to TOM cartoons and non-TOM cartoons and arrived similar results as the above mentioned study. In another study that concerns cartoons with and without Theory of Mind condition were presented to patients with schizophrenia. Schizophrenic patients found the mental-state jokes significantly more difficult to understand, whereas for control subjects there was no difference between the two conditions (Corcoran, Cahill, and Frith 1997). Marjoram et al. (2006) presented the same stimulus materials to schizophrenic patients in an fMRI scanner and showed differences to a control group. Summary This chapter on visual humor provides an overview on cartoon research and some historical and theoretical background that should prove useful for readers who are interested in doing their own research on this subject. It emphasizes the general universality of the semiotic processes of humor comprehension, which concern the cognitive core elements of humor: incongruity and incongruity detection. Several studies showed that Logical Mechanisms, for example, are not only applicable to verbal humor but can be found in visual humor as well (e.g., Tsakona in press). But we expect mechanisms peculiar to the visual domain to emerge from further research soon, an instance of the second emphasis of this introduction: Despite the great overlap of the

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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 example, 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 localization of the incongrous visual element in the cartoon – are cartoons funnier 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 easier 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 peculiarities 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 theoretical 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 considerations presented here are valid.

Notes 1. The present text is joint work, based in particular on introductory presentations by the authors at International Summer Schools for Humor and Laughter and conferences of the International Society for Humor Studies.

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2. A seminal introduction to comics and cartoons, itself entertaining because humorous, but not focussing on humor, is McCloud (1993). 3. Asimov (1956) tells us what would happen if we found out about the origin of jokes. Obvious exceptions in verbal humor are works of humorous art and commercial entertainment, like movies, shows, books. The extremely rare exception of more or less spontaneous cartooning is office lore (Dundes 1987, 1996). 4. See McCloud (1993: 150) for a neat illustration of this. 5. We are very grateful to Oswald Huber for his generous and fast grant of the permission to use his work here.

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Ruch, Willibald 1992 Assessment of appreciation of humor: Studies with the 3WD humor test. In: Charles D. Spielberger and James N. Butcher (eds.), Advances in Personality Assessment. Vol. 9. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 27–75. Ruch, Willibald, and Franz-Josef Hehl 1998 A two-mode model of humor appreciation: Its relation to aesthetic appreciation and simplicity-complexity of personality. In: Willibald Ruch (ed.), The Sense of Humor: Explorations of a Personality Characteristic, 109–142. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Ryan, T. A., and Carol B. Schwartz 1956 Speed of perception as a  function of mode of representation. The American Journal of Psychology 69: 60–69. Samson, Andrea C., and Oswald Huber 2007 The interaction of cartoonist’s gender and formal features of cartoons. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 20 (1): 1–​25. Samson, Andrea C., Stefan Zysset, and Oswald Huber 2008 Cognitive humor processing: Different logical mechanisms in non-verbal cartoons: An fMRI study. Social Neuroscience 2 (3): 125–​140. Schmidt, Stephen R., and Alan R. Williams, 2001 Memory for humorous cartoons. Memory & Cognition 29: 305–​ 311. Sheppard, Alice 1977 Developmental levels in explanations of humour from childhood to late adolescence. In: Anthony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot (eds.), It’s a Funny Thing, Humour, 225–228. New York: Pergamon. 1983 Effect of mode of representation on visual humor. Psychological Reports 52: 299–305. Shultz, Thomas R. 1972 Role of incongruity and resolution in children’s appreciation of cartoon humor. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 13 (3): 456–​ 477. 1976 A cognitive-developmental analysis of humour. In: Anthony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot (eds.), Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research, and Applications, 11–36. London: John Wiley. Shultz, Thomas R., and Francis Horibe 1974 Development of the appreciation of verbal jokes. Child Development 45: 100–105. Suls, Jerry M. 1972 A two-stage model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons: An information-processing analysis. In: Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee (eds.), The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, 81–100. New York: Academic Press.

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Index of authors Aarne, Antti  192 Abadie, Ann J.  255 Abe, Goh  160, 167, 611 Abelson, Robert  107 Abrahams, Roger  120, 187, 189 Abramis, David  460–461 Accoce, Jeannine  74, 319 Adams, Bruce  159 Adams, Douglas  250 Adams, Katherine  553, 554 Adams, Scott  472 Addison, Joseph  221, 587 Adler, Christine M.  482 Aharonson, Haim  69 Aiello, J. R.  310 Al-Khatib, Mahmoud A.  131 Alarcon, Christy  553 Alberts, J. K.  549, 550 Alexander, Richard D.  79, 307, 413, 528, 533 Alexieva, Bistra  579 Allard, Louis-Paul  163, 163 Allen, M.  309 Allik, Jüri  72, 73 Allman, John M.  612 Allport, Gordon W.  38, 456–457, 486 Alpern, Lynne  461, 462 Alsua, Carlos J.  61 Altfreder, Olga  54, 54 Alves, Julio  311 Ammons, Elizabeth  252 Anderson, Bonnie P.  408 Anderson, Craig A.  505 Anderson, Ronald E.  611 Andor, Jozsef  131 Andrew, Christopher  170, 246, 258–259 Andries, Lise  103 Anthony, Susan  29, 249, 307, 315

Antonini, Rachele  599 Antonopoulou, Eleni  116–117, 127, 129 Apte, Mahadev L.  6, 32, 73, 184, 303–306, 310–311, 316–317, 319, 361, 365, 379 Apter, Michael J.  32 Araki, Kenji  125 Archakis, Argiris  117 Aristotle  24, 29, 102–103, 214–218, 225, 298–299, 306, 310, 313, 363, 399–402, 525, 548 Arnoult, Lynn H.  505 Arora, Sanjay  28, 315 Asimakoulas, Dimitris  113 Asimov, Isaac  530, 541, 633 Attardo, Salvatore  4, 7, 28, 50, 101–113, 115–117, 119, 121–124, 127–130, 157, 178, 308, 310, 314, 319, 336–338, 342, 345–346, 348, 352, 356, 363, 412, 425–426, 433, 524, 536–539, 580, 582, 612, 617, 626, 628 Atwill, Janet M.  430, 432 Aubouin, Elie  117 Augustin, Dorothee  405–406, 626 Babad, Elisha Y.  44, 44 Babcock-Abrahams, Barbara  189 Bachorowski, Jo-Anne  24, 79 Bailly, G.  337 Bain, Alexander  307, 310, 313, 460 Bainum, C.  460 Baker, Katherine H.  251, 288, 493 Baker, Russell  251, 288, 493 Bakhtin, Mikhail M.  189–190, 377, 385, 417, 420, 526–527, 531 Ballard, Michel  570, 572 Balshine, Sigal  79

642 

Index of authors

Banc, C.  159, 168 Banfi, Emanuele  131 Bänninger-Huber, Eva  21, 22 Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua  347 Baratz, D.  621–623 Bariaud, Françoise  65, 74, 319 Barnes, Gordon E.  301, 484 Barnet, K.  310 Barreca, Regina  243, 251, 259, 263, 266, 301, 311, 409, 411, 413–414 Barrett, Tracy  316 Barron, William L. III  33 Barsoux, Jean-Louis  463 Bartels, Mathias  63 Barthel-Hackman, T. A.  550, 554 Bassnett, Susan  569, 575 Basso, Bob  463 Basso, Keith H.  119, 191 Bateson, Gregory  194 Batts, John S.  316 Bauman, Richard  187, 200–201, 203–204 Baumgartner, Jody C.  257 Bausell, R. Barker  489 Baym, Nancy  125 Beattie, James  226, 308 Bechterew, Wladimir Michailowitsch von  18 Beckmann, Petr  159 Bedford, Anthony P.  299 Beeman, William O.  119, 120 Beermann, Ursula  28, 47, 54, 62, 64 Behrens, Laurence  423 Behrens, Roy R.  609, 625, 628 Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin  503 Belke, Benno  626 Bell, Michael J.  203, 244 Bell, Nancy J.  118, 128, 507 Bell, Steve  169, 592 Ben-Amos, Dan  174 Bender, Amanda  47, 59 Bendix, John  188 Bendix, Regina  430

Bennett, Barbara  251, 259 Benton, Gregor  369 Bergen, Doris  65 Berger, Arthur Asa  417, 548–549 Berger, Peter  1, 367, 378 Berger, Phil  300 Bergmann, Linda S.  419–420 Bergson, Henri  4, 228–229, 235, 253, 261, 265, 299, 303, 305–307, 310, 313, 364–365 Berk, Lee S.  450, 453, 468–469, 490, 492 Berk, Ronald A.  430 Berlyne, Daniel E.  18 Bermant, Chaim  311 Bete, Tim  417 Bethea, Lisa Sparks  554 Betts Van Dyk, Krista K.  421 Bier, Jesse  283, 299, 311 Bihrle, Amy M.  53 Bilger, Audrey  409–412 Billig, Michael  103, 365–366, 382–383, 385 Binsted, Kim  124, 336–337, 340, 354 Bippus, A. M.  549 Birden, Lorene  54 Bizi, Smadar  503 Blair, Walter  169, 172, 251, 283, 299 Blissett, Sonia E.  505 Blount, Roy  251 Blumenfield, Esther  461 Boatright, Mody C.  252 Boden, Margaret A.  124 Boeke, W.  18 Bogardus, Emory S.  611 Boland, R. J.  549 Bonaiuto, Paolo  613, 621–623, 625, 632 Bonanno, George A.  488 Bönsch-Kauke, Marion  63, 65 Booth, Wayne C.  411–413, 418, 431 Booth-Butterfield, Melanie  550 Booth-Butterfield, Steven  550

Index of authors  Bormann, Ernest G.  561 Boskin, Joe  283, 299, 301 Bostdorff, D. M.  430 Botkin, B. A.  252 Bouchard, Thomas J., Jr.  76 Bouché, Thérèse  102 Bowen, Barbara C.  402, 406, 408–409 Boyd, Rosangela K.  454, 474 Bradbury, Thomas N.  249, 253, 507 Bradford, Arthur L.  418 Bradney, Pamela  365 Branner, Rebecca  117 Brdar, Ingrid  75 Bremmer, Jan N.  102–103, 550 Brennan, Susan  28, 621, 623 Bressler, Eric R.  79 Brice, C.  424 Bricker, Victoria Reifler  188 Bridgeford, Tracy  430 Briggs, Charles L.  62, 203 Brodzinsky, David M.  44, 310, 612 Bronner, Simon J.  187–188, 201 Brooks, Mel  112, 260, 293 Brooks, Penelope H.  620, 623 Brown, Mary Helen  554 Brown, Renee  549, 554, 558 Brown, Robert L.  411 Brown, Stuart B.  78 Brown, T. Graham  18, 53, 78 Browne, Stephen H.  412–413 Brownell, Hiram H.  53 Bruehl, Steven  482 Brunswick, Nicola  300 Brunvald, Jan Harold  159 Brust, Robert G.  77, 554, 563, 618 Brutsche, Martin H.  63 Bryant, Chad  166 Bryant, Gregory A.  123 Bryk, Anthony S.  505 Brzozowska, Dorota  131 Brône, Geert  129 Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV  562

643

Bucaria, Chiara  107, 127, 599 Buchowski, M. S.  489 Buckman, Elcha Shain  457 Budd, Louis J.  231–232, 241, 256, 291 Buela-Casal, Gualberto  51–52, 59 Burgdorf, Jeff  78 Burge, Tyler  164, 249, 582, 586 Burke, Kenneth  416, 421 Burma, John  371–372 Burns, Inger H.  201–202 Burns, Thomas A.  201–202 Burroughs, W. Jeffrey  495 Buscaldi, Davide  125 Buttny, Richard  117 Byron, Stuart  300 Cady, Edwin H.  256 Cahill, Connie  612, 631 Camarena, Phame  311, 496 Cambell, N.  121 Camfield, Gregg  252, 263 Campbell, Donald T.  39, 58 Campbell, George  407 Campbell, N. 116 Cancian, Francesca  186 Cantor, Joanne R.  29–30, 307 Carey, Susan  28, 594, 621, 623 Carlson, Charles R.  482 Carlson, Richard S.  252 Caron, James E.  78 Carpenter, R.  313 Carrell, Amy T.  4, 36, 38, 55, 63–64, 70, 115, 319, 356 Carretero-Dios, Hugo  51–52, 59 Carroll, Lewis  244, 249, 570–571 Carroll, Noël  203, 615, 623 Carroll, Patrick J.  623, 628–629 Carstensen, Laura L.  507 Carver, Charles S.  503 Cassell, Justine  336 Cattani, Adelino  417 Cattell, Raymond B.  45, 59 Ceccarelli, Fabio  101

644 

Index of authors

Cerf, Bennet  251 Chabanne, Jean-Charles  319 Chafe, Wallace L.  79, 104, 116, 121, 125 Chang, Mei-Jung  19, 70, 301, 550, 555 Channon, Shelley  27 Chapel, Gage William  554 Chapman, Anthony J.  18, 65, 68, 73, 311, 317, 544, 549, 601 Charland, Maurice  431 Charles, Lucille Hoerr  188 Charney, Maurice  246, 246 Charpentier, Hélène  102 Chen, Guo-Hai  40, 61, 75, 553–554 Chen, Huey-Rong  553–554 Chen, K. Y.  489 Cheriff, Adam D.  492 Cherkas, Lynn  75–76, 78 Chiaro, Delia  5, 127, 570, 574, 595, 597–599 Chlopicki, Wladysław  109, 121, 131 Chomsky, Noam  5–6, 337 Chornovol-Tkachenko  131 Churchill, Elizabeth  169, 428 Cicero  102, 216, 218–219, 225, 227, 306–307, 313, 402–406, 408–409, 576, 582, 601 Clark, Kimberley C.  299 Clark, William Bedford  299 Clarke, Danielle  408, 414 Coan, James  507 Cochran, Robert  159 Cogan, Dennis  493 Cogan, Rosemary  493 Cohan, Catherine L.  507 Cohen, Sarah Blacher  257, 262–263, 284, 300 Cohen, Sheldon  483, 507 Coleman, James S.  172, 178 Coleman, Robin  388 Coleman, Stephen  370 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor  344, 344 Collins, Randall  386

Collins, Sharon M.  418 Colston, Herbert L.  122–123 Connors, Robert J.  424 Consalvo, Carmine  310 Cook, Guy  127 Cook, Mark  484 Cooper, Colin  58 Corbin, Suzanne  47, 59 Corcoran, Rhiannon  612, 624, 631 Corduas, Marcella  112, 121, 131 Corrigan, Robert W.  252 Cosentino, Donald  190 Coser, Rose  365–366, 368, 375 Coulson, Seana  103, 126, 128, 609 Cousins, Norman  311, 316, 451–453, 479, 496 Cox, Donald S.  482 Cox, Harvey  228, 231–232 Cox, Joe A.  310, 406, 430 Craig, David M.  262, 299 Craik, Kenneth H.  35, 40–43, 45, 53, 61–62, 317, 485 Crawford, Mary  120, 375, 387, 425 Crile, J. W.  313 Cronbach, Lee J.  57, 58 Crosbie, John S.  252 Crowley, Daniel J.  190 Crystal, David  127 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly  19 Culler, Jonathan  252 Culpeper, Jonathan  121 Cunningham, Michael R.  507 Cunningham, William A.  27, 44 Curcò, Carmen  129–130 Cutica, Ilaria  126 Cutler, Howard C.  562 Dahlberg, W. A.  430 Daiute, Collette  415, 422 Dale, Iain  169 Dale, J. Alexander  503 Dance, Kathryn A.  482 Danielson, Larry  190, 190

Index of authors  Danzer, Amy  503 Darwin, Charles R.  17, 24, 75, 77–78, 103, 297 Daum, Irene  613, 27 Davidson, Karina  493 Davidson, Richard J.  21 Davidson-Katz, Karina  311 Davies, Catherine Evans  118, 128 Davies, Christie  4, 24, 73, 157–160, 163, 167–168, 172, 174–175, 177–178, 194, 196, 202, 301, 311, 317, 369, 372, 379–381, 383–384, 387, 583–584, 598, 602 Davies, Patricia  24 Davies, Sarah  170 Davis, D. Diane  416, 421, 425 Davis, Dineh  4, 553 Davis, Jessica Milner  73, 131, 243, 262, 264, 267 Davis, Murray  363, 376–378 De Beaugrande, Robert  571 Dean, Kevin W.  287, 293, 554 Deckers, Lampert H.  25, 28, 32–34, 315, 611 Defays, Jean-Marc  131 Dekker, Rudolf  382, 387 Delabastita, Dirk  127, 570 Deloria, Vine, Jr.  258 Deneire, Marc  127 Denton, John  591 Deren, Veronica  319 Deriabin, Peter  170 Derks, Peter  27–28, 44, 51, 126, 310–311, 315, 502, 507, 511, 612 Descartes, René  102, 219–220 Desclos, Marie-Laurence.  102 Dews, S.  122 Diener, Ed  47, 66, 73 Dillon, Kathleen M.  493, 493 Dimitrovsky, Lilly  319 Dirr, Karen L.  621–623 Dixon, Norman F.  503 Dobbin, James P.  316, 505

645

Dobi, Shobi  453 Dohrenwend, Bruce P.  482 Dolan, Raymond J.  125–126, 629 Donaldson, Toby  124 Donawerth, Jane  408 Dore, Margherita  127, 255 Doty, William G.  253 Dougherty, L. M.  23 Douglas, Mary  112, 171, 186, 189, 246, 250, 363, 431, 433 Downe, Pamela J.  117, 120 Drack, Phillip  24 Draitser, Emil  311, 372 Drennan, Robert E.  252 Dresner, Zita  256, 259, 301, 311, 412–413 Drew, Paul  119 Droz, Marilyn  465, 465 Duckworth, George E.  102 Dudden, Arthur  283, 299, 301 Duffey, Nelda S.  29–30, 507 Dunbar, Robin  79 Duncan, Jack W.  310 Dundes, Alan  158–159, 162–163, 168, 178, 187, 193–195, 202–203, 300, 367, 372, 633 Dunn, M. L.  106, 256 Durgnat, Raymond  300 Durkheim, Emile  178, 386 Dworkin, Earl S.  34 D’Zamko, Mary Elizabeth  311 Edwards, Carol  200 Edwards, Janis L.  553–554 Efran, Jay S.  34 Eggins, Suzanne  117 Ehrenberg, Tamar  310, 311 Ehrenstein, Walter H.  28 Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenäus  79 Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi, Gabriella  192 Eichler, Richard W.  613 Eisner, Joel  300 Eisterhold, Jodi  118–119

646 

Index of authors

Ekman, Paul  21–24, 75, 315, 337, 488, 490 El Refaie, Elisabeth  615 Elitzur, Avshalom C.  319 Elkin, E. H.  255, 621–623 Ellis, Bill  196 Ellis, Lori  456, 465 Ellis, Yvette  121 Elshtain, Jean Bethke  408, 414 Emerson, Joan  374, 374 Emmons, Robert A.  47 Epskamp, Kees P.  311 Erb, Michael  22, 38 Erdman, Manny  172, 172 Ermida, Isabel  131 Ernst, Gordon E., Jr.  256 Ertel, Suitbert  28 Esler, Murray D.  482 Espy, Willard  252 Esser, Claudia  43, 62 Etgen, Mike  310 Everts, Elisa  118, 120 Eysenck, Hans-Jürgen  26, 48, 71, 73 Fabrizi, Michael S.  44 Fahnestock, Jeanne  424, 424 Falk, Robert  254 Falkenberg, Irina  63 Farb, Peter  252 Fay, Allen  455 Fedo, Michael  255 Fein, O.  122, 433 Feinberg, Leonard  253, 254 Feingold, Alan  45, 484 Feldman, Ofer  431 Feleky, Antoinette  18 Felible, Roma  466 Felker, Donald W.  612 Fellbaum, Christiane D.  356 Ferguson, Mark  383 Feyaerts, Kurt  129 Filby, Ivan  374

Fillmore, Charles  107, 117 Fine, Elizabeth C.  203 Fine, Gary A.  361, 366, 374, 618 Finney, Fail  259 Finney, Gail  414 Fisher, Rhoda L.  202, 265, 317, 456, 612 Fisher, Seymour  202, 265, 456, 612 Fisher, W. R.  544 Fiske, Donald W.  39, 58 Flashner, Graham  255 Fleet, F. R.  545, 545 Fletcher, Doug  453 Fletcher, M. D.  254, 453 Flexner, Stuart Berg  252 Fogel, Alan  24 Folkman, Susan  482 Foot, Hugh C.  18, 73, 317, 549 Forabosco, Giovannantonio  25, 27, 53, 64, 73–74, 311 Forceville, Charles  615 Ford, Thomas  171–172, 355, 383 Fortunato, Eleonora Di  589 Forward, Susan  307 Fowler, Dorreen  255 Fox Tree, Jean E.  123, 123 Fraisse, P.  621 France, A.  415–416 Frank, Mark G.  22, 247, 258, 315 Frankl, Viktor  251, 286, 455–456 Franzini, Louis R.  311 Frater, J.  416, 417 Fredrickson, Barbara L.  482 Freedman, Jim  186, 188 Freeman, Derek  159, 160 Freiberg, Jackie  474 Freiberg, Kevin  474 Freud, Sigmund  29, 38–39, 48, 60, 103–104, 158, 170–171, 175, 177, 193, 198, 202–203, 222–225, 233, 253, 261, 265, 299, 303–304, 309–310, 362–364, 389–390, 410, 454, 479, 486, 503, 534, 588

Index of authors  Fricke, Harald  121 Friedman, Bruce J.  254 Friedman, Bud  291 Friedman, Howard S.  497, 500 Friesen, Wallace V.  21–22, 337, 488 Frijda, Nico  33 Frith, Christopher D.  612, 631 Fry, P. S.  499 Fry, William F.  104, 303, 305–306, 308–312, 316, 449, 452, 456, 468, 488–490 Frye, Northrop  250, 252–253 Frymier, A. B.  554 Fuller, Katherine L.  27 Fuller, Linda  388 Führ, Martin  60, 65 Gabora, Liane  103 Gadish, Orit  319, 507 Gajda, Stanisław  131 Galanter, Marc  381 Gale, Steven H.  243, 245, 256, 265–267, 299 Galiñanes, Cristina Larkin  121, 130–131 Gallagher, Helen L.  490, 612, 624, 631 Galligan, E.   250 Galloway, David  254 Gamble, Jennifer  78 Gander, Fabian  64 Gans, Eric  411 Ganter, Granville  414, 430–431 Gardner, Howard  53 Garland, Ron  256, 267, 299, 301, 463 Gasquet-Cyrus, Méderic  119, 120 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.  258, 343 Gedda, Luigi  75 Geffcken, Katherine A.  402, 404 Gehring, Wes  284, 300, 317 Geismar, Maxwell  255 Gelkopf, Marc  311 Genshaft, Judy  611 Gerberg, Mort  618, 624

647

Gervais, Matthew  78–79, 104 Giannini, Anna Maria  621 Giarelli, Ellen  612 Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr.  119, 122–123, 411, 418 Gibney, Frank  170 Gibson, Donald E.  311, 452 Giles, H.  117 Gillooly, Eileen  414 Gilmore, David D.  189 Giora, Rachel  122–123, 126, 128, 433 Glauser, Nadine  54 Glazer, Mark  187 Glenn, Cheryl  408, 411, 414 Glenn, Phillip J.  117, 120 Gluckman, Max  188 Goddard, Cliff  123 Godkewitsch, Michael  28 Goel, Vinod  125–126, 629 Goffman, Erving  374, 386, 390 Goldberg, Ken  43, 125, 224, 292, 294, 341 Golden, Sèan  382, 570 Goldstein, Donna  370, 377 Goldstein, Jeffrey H.  18, 26, 29, 283, 299, 315, 456, 479, 507 Goldstein, Kalman  247 Gombrich, Ernst H.  613, 628 Goode, C. Edward  423 Goodenough, Florence L.  78 Gordon, Dexter B.  169, 256, 263, 266, 301, 414, 456, 602 Gossen, Gary H.  191 Gottman, John M.  507 Gouin, Rachel  370 Graban, Tarez Samra  4, 402, 412 Graesser, Arthur C.  617 Graff, Richard  267, 399 Grant, Mary  597 Grauer, Neil A.  263 Grawe, Paul H.  243, 259–260, 266–267 Gray, Jeanette  38

648 

Index of authors

Gray, Jonathan  379, 388 Greenbaum, Andrea  415, 417 Greenfeld, Anne  316 Gregory, J. C.  194, 291, 309, 421 Greig, J. Y. T.  303–304 Grice, H. P.  108, 115, 129, 539 Griffin, Sharon  47 Grimes, Wilma H.  555, 555 Grimshaw, Melissa  62 Grodd, Wolfgang  22, 38, 53 Gross, Alan  399, 424 Grotjahn, Martin  175, 309, 454 Gruchala, Pawel  131 Grumet, Gerald W.  28 Gruner, Charles R.  30, 103, 383, 399, 544, 546, 549–550, 555–556 Guertin, Michael S.  628 Guidi, Annarita  105, 106 Guiraud, Pierre  104 Gulotta, Guglielmo  131 Gundelach, Peter  372 Gupta, Dhruv  125, 341 Gurewitch, Morton  263 Guth, Hans P.  415 Gutt, Ernst-August  578 Günther, Ulrike K.  120, 125 Haakana, Markku  119 Habermann, Günther  24 Habermas, Jürgen  377 Hackman, M. Z.  550–551, 554–555 Haddad, Jay  372 Haellstroem, Tore  484 Hagen, Margaret A.  621–623 Hager, Andrew J.  612 Hager, Joseph C.  22 Haggerty, Susan  311 Haig, Robin Andrew  311, 549 Haiman, John  122 Hale, Constance  318, 423 Hall, George Stanley  18 Hall, Phil  418 Hallett, Ronald A.  316

Hallowell, A. Irving  191 Hampes, William P.  501, 507 Hamrick, Phillip  129, 129 Hannah, T. Edward  55, 499, 505 Hanse, Joseph  165 Hansen, Kristine  415 Harlow, Ilana  188 Harmon, William  244, 253 Harper, Donna A. S.  258 Harris, Anne C.  27 Harris, Charles B.  254 Hartwell, Patrick  415, 424 Haselton, Martie G.  27 Hasenoehrl, Ruediger U.  63 Haskins, Ekaterina V.  411 Hauptman, Don  252 Hauschild, Thomas  372 Hausmann, Franz Josef  346 Hay, Jennifer  117–120, 125, 203, 268, 374–375 Hayden, Bradley  261 Hayworth, Donald  79 Hazlitt, William  226–227, 231, 235, 307 Hecker, Erich  18 Hegel, Georg W. F.  307, 313, 421, 424 Hegelson, Candace  424 Hehl, Franz-Josef  18, 20, 29, 49, 51, 64–66, 74, 485, 619–620, 627 Heitler, M.  18 Helgason, Asgeir R.  484 Hembree, E. A.  23 Hempelmann, Christian F.  4–5, 7, 49–50, 106, 123, 339–340, 343, 345, 351–352, 536, 615, 617, 628 Hener, Tamar  494 Herzog, Thomas R.  27, 611–612, 619, 623, 625 Hewitt, John Alexander  79 Heymans, Gerardus  18 Hickman, William C.  187 Hicks, Brian M.  76 Hieatt, Arron C.  495

Index of authors  Hill, Carl  104 Hill, Hamlin  251, 283, 299 Hiller, Harry  370 Hillhouse, Joel J.  482 Hillson, Tim R.  28 Hilscher, Matthew B.  63 Hiltebrand, Damian  64 Hinrichs, Kim T.  61 Hirsch, Rolf D.  63, 70 Hirstein, William  625, 625 Hirt, Michael  611 Hislop, Ian  169 Hobbes, Thomas  30, 103, 219–220, 226, 233, 235, 299, 306–307, 310, 313, 363, 368, 527 Hochberg, Fran  75 Hoffman, R.  102, 549 Hofstadter, Douglas  103 Hofstede, Geert  73, 74 Hogan, Walter  257 Holcomb, Christopher  125, 316, 415, 430, 432–433 Holcomb, Kathleen  407 Hollingworth, Harry Levi  18 Holman, C. Hugh  244, 253 Holmen, Jostein  499, 500 Holmes, Janet  117–118, 120, 125, 252, 367, 375 Hols, Edith J.  430 Holt, Dan G.  299, 311 Homer, Brian  169, 252, 525 Honeycutt, James M.  549, 554, 558 Honeyman, A. M.  187 Hopkins, Chris  316 Horibe, Francis  628 Hornby, Peter  172 Horowitz, Jeannine  102 Howe, Norman E.  79 Howell, Tes  129 Howitt, Dennis  384 Hsu, Hui-Chin  24 Huber, Oswald  612, 619–620, 623–624, 630, 633

649

Huber, Tania  21–22, 24, 47, 49 Hubert, Walter  492 Huffman, Lois E.  417 Hughes, Joseph J.  258, 263, 293, 402, 404 Hulstijn, Joris  123–124, 354 Humboldt, Wilhelm von  581 Humes, James C.  308 Hunt, L.  313 Hunter, Dede M.  612 Hurley, Kathleen Ann  430 Hutcheon, Linda  255, 413, 419 Hyers, M. Conrad  231–232 Hymes, Dell  203 Hynes, William J.  253 Hösli, Karin  62 Inge, M. Thomas  201, 256, 299–300, 613 Isen, Alice M  460 Islam, Asad  24, 175, 230 Ivvarson, Jan  589 Iwase, Masao  126 Izard, Carol E.  23, 23 Izzett, Christin D.  411, 418 Jablonski, Carol J.  554 Jakobson, Roman  600 James, Ann  454, 613 James, William  18 Jandorf, Lina  482 Janes, Leslie M.  508 Jarvie, I. C.  186 Jaskanen, Susanna  127, 127 Jefferson, Gail  116, 178, 295, 300, 374 Jefferson, Gail  374 Jenkins, Ron  370 Jhally, Sut  388 Johansen, Ruthann Knechel  255 Johnson, Ben  248 Johnson, Kathy E.  104 Johnson, T. R.  421 Jolly, Elaine  611

650 

Index of authors

Jones, James M.  73, 253, 410, 528, 534, 595, 618, 623, 628 Jordan, G.  197, 418 Joubert, Laurent  102, 408 Jung, Wonil Edward  78–79, 250, 560 Jurich, Marilyn  259 Kalland, Steve  310 Kallen, H. M.  313 Kamei, T.  492 Kant, Immanuel  26, 103, 226, 261, 308 Karabas, Seyfi  319, 620, 623 Karasik, V. I.  131 Kashdan, Todd B.  76 Kasriel, Judith  75 Kataria, Madan  479, 481 Katz, Alice A.  621–623 Katz, Jack  381, 386, 621–623 Kaufer, David  409, 411, 425 Kaufman, Gloria  311 Kawahara, Shigeto  106 Kazanevsky, Vladimir  311 Kazarian, Shahe S.  40, 61, 75 Keener, Polly  618 Kehl, D. G.  243, 260–261, 267 Keim, Inken  120 Keinan, Giora  319, 503 Keith-Spiegel, Patricia  24, 27, 307, 310, 313 Keller, Dan  256, 455, 474 Kelly, Fred C.  255, 289, 454 Keltner, Dacher  22, 488, 508 Keough, William  257 Kercher, Stephen  301 Kerkkanen, Paavo  483 Kerr, M. E.  257 Kerr, Sarah T.  507 Keysar, Boaaz  553 Kierkegaard, Soren  227–228, 231, 457 Kiley, Frederick  254, 256 Killingsworth, M. Jimmie  424, 424 King, Cynthia M.  212, 255, 290, 423, 555, 558, 586

Kiniry, Malcom  419 Kirsh, Gillian A.  43, 62 Klein, Allen  311, 454 Kline, Paul  29, 57 Klingman, Avigdor  69 Klinkowitz, Jerome  255 Klions, Herbert L.  503 Klosek, Judi  463 Klügel, Kilian  63 Kobler, James B.  126 Kochman, Thomas  120 Koestler, Arthur  25, 103, 250, 253, 265 Kolasky, John  159 Kolberg, Karen  465 Koller, Marvin  366 Koller, Werner  576 Koponen, Maarit  127 Koppel, Mark A.  44 Korotkov, David  55, 499, 501, 505 Kotthoff, Helga  104, 116, 119–120 Kowal, Sabine  117, 117 Kraepelin, Emil  18 Krantzhoff, Erhard U.  63, 69 Krikmann, Arvo  129, 159 Krinsky, David  300 Kristeva, Julia  571 Kronenberger, Louis  547, 547 Kropscott, Laura S.  27 Krueger, Robert F.  76, 265 Kubie, Lawrence  454 Kubovy, Michael  621–623 Kueneman, Karen  311, 493 Kuhlman, Thomas  456 Kuiper, Nicholas A.  43, 62, 316, 387, 482, 483, 500, 501, 502, 504 Kuipers, Giselinde  4, 6, 52, 157, 196, 372, 375, 380–381, 383, 385, 387–388 Kumano, H.  492 Kunst-Wilson, William R.  624 Kunzle, David  613, 613 Kushner, Malcolm  311, 462 Kutas, M.  126

Index of authors  Kyrston, Victor H.  418 Köhler, Gabriele  28, 33–34, 37–38, 44, 46, 52–53, 55–56, 59, 63, 317 LaFave, Lawrence  372 Labov, William  120, 187 Lampert, Martin D.  40, 317, 485 Lang, Candace  1, 108, 252, 258, 262–​ 263, 266, 292, 319, 334, 354, 412, 417, 420, 425, 587, 589, 600, 602, 630 Lanham, Richard A.  423, 426–428 Larsen, Gwen  38 Larsen, Randy J.  47 Larwin, David A.  619, 623, 625 Lasswell, Harold  549 Latta, Robert L.  25 Lauer, Jeanette C.  507 Lauer, Robert H.  507 Laurian, Anne-Marie  127, 569–570, 575, 588 Lausberg, H.  587 Lawler, Donald  255 Lazarus, A. L.  255 Lazarus, Richard S.  482 Le Goff, Jacques  102 LeMaster, J. R.  256 Leach, Jerry W.  187 Leacock, Stephen  251 Leary, James P.  187 Leder, Helmut  612, 619, 623, 626 Lederer, Richard  415, 424 Lee, Judith Yaross  255 Leeds, Christopher  311 Lefcourt, Herbert M.  40, 52, 59–60, 311, 316, 469, 480, 482, 485, 488, 493, 496, 501, 504–505, 507 Lefevère, André  571, 578 Legman, Gershon  158, 158 Leite, Catherine  62 Lemeunier, Thierry  125 Lessard, Denys  615 Lessard, G. M. Levison  124

651

Leung, Kwok  72 Levasseur, David G.  554, 554 Levenson, Robert W.  507, 507 Levine, Jacob  59 Levy, Barbara  263 Levy, Jonathan  415 Lewis, C. S.  249 Lewis, Jerry  260, 269, 293, 294 Lewis, Paul  243, 264–265, 268, 370–371, 378, 382–384, 388, 571 Liao, Chao-Chih  120 Lim, Daniel  164, 300, 532, 546, 562 Limon, John  300 Limón, José E.  203 Lincoln, Kenneth  258, 430, 591 Linderman, Frank B.  258 Lippman, Louis G.  106 Lipps, Theodor  18, 27 Lipset, Seymour Martin  172, 178 Littman, D. C.  123 Liverpool, Hollis V.  73 Lloyd, Sally A.  30, 292 Lockyer, Sharon  370–371, 373, 384–385, 388, 430 Loehlin, John C.  76 Loehr, Dan  337 Lohman, John  190 Loomis, Diane  465 Louwerse, Max M.  617 Love, Ann Marie  527, 611 Lowe, John  301, 414 Lowis, Michael J.  70, 609 Lucariello, J.  123 Lucas, Teresa  127 Luck, Michael  336 Ludovici, Anthony M.  307, 313 Lundell, Torborg  310 Lundy, Duane E.  507 Lunsford, Andrea A.  408, 416–417, 423 Lyman, Bernard E.  20 Lynn, Kenneth  251, 423, 461

652 

Index of authors

McAndrews, Kristin M.  259 McClelland, David C.  492 McCloud, Scott  633 McCluskey-Fawcett, Kathleen A.  65 McCoy, K.  507 McCrae, Robert R.  72–73 McCroskey, James C.  63 McCubbin, James A.  482 McCue, Melissa  493 McDavid, Jr.  251 MacDonald, Dwight  255, 586 McDonald, Skye  122, 256 McDonald, Walter  256 McDonough, Craig J.  339 McDougall, W.  313, 452 McDowell, John Holmes  252, 597 McEntire, Nancy Cassell  187 McGhee, Paul E.  18, 20, 23, 26–27, 29–30, 32, 36–38, 44, 49, 52–53, 55–56, 63, 65–66, 70–71, 78, 228, 283, 299, 310–312, 450, 456, 467, 488, 507, 544, 549, 556, 558–559, 627 MacGregor, Alex J.  75 McGuire, Francis  454 McKay, M. E.  619, 623 McKay, T. D.  619, 623 McMahon, Maureen  418 Maas, Cliff  63 Macaulay, M.  424 Machline, Vera Cecilia  399 MacHovec, Frank J.  555 Macklin, Pat  172 Maddocks, Peter  618 Madini, Mongi  131 Mahony, Diana L.  495 Makarius, Laura  188 Malinowski, Bronisław  177–178, 191 Manke, Beth  76 Mann, Brenda  377 Marc, David  300 Mardiganian, Aurora  175 Maria, Rosa  410

Marjoram, Dominic  612, 624, 631 Marra, Meredith  118, 120 Martin, David  178 Martin, Leslie R.  484, 498 Martin, Lillian J.  18 Martin, Rod A.  3–4, 18, 20, 23–24, 28, 38–40, 48, 52, 55–56, 59–61, 63, 68, 75, 79, 309, 311, 316–317, 450, 454, 468–469, 480, 482–485, 487, 489, 492, 499–502, 504–505, 510 Martineau, William  367 Maslow, Abraham  479, 486–487 Mast, Gerald  300 Masten, Ann S.  311 Masumura, S.  492 Matthews, Benjamin J.  612 Mauro, Robert  621–623 May, Rollo  479, 503 Mazlack, Lawrence J.  124, 340 Mazzella, Ronald  45, 484 Mbangwana, Paul  311 Mead, Margaret  159–160 Meilhammer, Tonie  615 Menache, Sophia  102 Ménager, Daniel  103 Merbaum, Michael  485 Meredith, George  253, 259 Mervis, Carolyn B.  104 Metcalf, C. W.  466 Meunier, Raymond  18 Meyerhofer, Nicholas J.  316 Mey, J. L.  123 Meyer, John C.  549, 553–554 Michell, Gillian  425 Michels, Robert  172 Middleton, Russell  372 Mihalcea, Rada  124–125, 340 Mill, John Stuart  177 Miller, Geoffrey F.  47, 79 Miller, Nancy Weitz  416 Miller, Susan  419 Mills, Brett  387

Index of authors  Minchoff, Brian  493 Mindess, Harvey  47, 59, 104, 306, 313, 317, 456 Miner, Horace  546 Minois, Georges  102–103 Minsky, Martin  107 Mintz, Lawrence E.  4, 250, 299, 318 Mitchell, Alexandre G.  613, 615 Mitchell, Heather H.  617 Mitchell, William E.  189 Mitchell-Kernan, Claudia L.  120 Mitrokhin, Vasili  170 Mitz, Rick  300 Mobbs, Dean  126, 632 Moller, M.  492 Monro, D. H.  311 Moody, Raymond A.  267, 452, 479 Moore, Mark P.  261, 296, 554 Morain, G. G.  127 Moran, Carmen C.  503 Moran, Joseph M.  126 Morgan, Marcyliena  120 Morkes, John  125, 336 Morreall, John  4, 216, 224–227, 235, 239, 299, 311, 318, 361–362, 371, 399, 450, 463, 548, 558 Morris, Jonathan S.  257 Morris, Linda A.  301, 414 Morris, Ray  615, 628 Morrison, Monica  187 Morrow, P. D.  367 Moulin, Francis  124 Mounin, Georges  584 Mowrer, Donald E.  311 Mulder, Matthijs P.  336 Mulkay, Michael  79, 367, 374–375, 377–378 Mullany, Louise  118 Mullen, Patrick B.  204 Müller, Ralph  104, 121, 131 Muller, William Edward  131, 417 Mundorf, Norbert  310 Murray, Robert P.  293, 416, 484

653

Murstein, Bernard I.  77, 554, 563 Muschard, Jutta  130 Myers, David G.  66 Myers, Greg  417 Nack, Frank  356 Nardini, Gloria  117, 120 Narváez, Peter  187–188 Nash, Walter  261, 585 Neale, John M.  482 Nelms, Jodi  123, 127 Nelson, Arvalea J.  40, 317, 485 Nelson, T. G. A.  121 Nerhardt, Göran  627 Neroni, Lydia  75 Neubert, Albrecht  578 Nevo, Ofra  69–70, 316, 319, 372 Newman, Michelle Gayle  506 Newmark, Peter  576 Nezlek, John B.  502, 507, 511 Nezu, Arthur M.  505 Nezu, Christine M.  505 Nickels, Cameron  298 Nicholl, Sorrel  500 Nichols, Robert C.  76, 249 Nida, E. A.  576, 582 Nieuwoudt, Johan M.  70, 609 Nijholt, Anton  123–125, 336, 340, 354 Nikiforidou, Kiki  129 Nilsen, Alleen P.  4, 250, 257, 268, 299, 417, 614 Nilsen, Don L. F.  4, 127, 250, 256, 257, 268, 284, 298, 299, 317–318, 415, 417, 570, 614 Nirenburg, Sergei  5–7, 348 Noppa, Henry  484 Norrick, Neal R.  116, 119, 204 Norrick, Neill  375 Novak, William  174, 257 Nwokah, Evangeline E.  24 O’Brien, J.  122–123 O’Connell, Daniel C.  117

654 

Index of authors

O’Connell, Walter E.  456, 487 O’Donnell-Truijillo, Nick  553–554 Oakley, T.  128 Obrdlik, Antonin J.  166, 368–369 Oeberst, Andriens  626 Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie  117, 412 Olinger, L. Joan  482, 504 Olsen, Lance  250, 430 Olson, Clark D.  430, 432 Olson, James M.  508 Olson, Kathryn M.  430, 432 Olson, Kirby  317 Olson, S. Douglas  102 Oring, Elliott  4, 25, 159, 161, 170, 174, 178, 184, 186, 188, 191–192, 194–197, 199, 202, 204, 300, 308, 311, 344, 361, 363, 367, 380–381, 383–384, 387, 389 Oshima, Kimie  372 Ott, Christiane  74, 319 Overholser, James C.  505 Owusu-Bempah, Kwame  384 Owren, Michael J.  24, 79 Oxford, G. S.  117 Ozawa, Fukujiro  126 Özkök, Bora  187 Page, Tim  255 Pain, Helen  493 Palmer, Jerry  112–113, 299, 363, 367, 370, 383–384 Panksepp, Jaak  75, 78 Panoutsopoulou, Theodora  311 Pantic, Maja  337 Paolillo, John C.  609, 612, 623, 628, 631 Paolinelli, Mario  589 Park, Nansook  47 Partington, Alan  116, 122, 125 Partnow, Elaine  545 Paton, George  361, 367, 369, 374, 379 Patton, David  484 Paulos, John Allen  103, 555

Paulson, Terry  462 Pavesi, Maria  572 Payne, David A.  554 Pearce, S.  122 Pearson, Paul  61, 612 Pearson, Terry R.  61, 612 Pennebaker, James W.  499 Pepicello, William J.  105, 417 Perez, Cristino  51–52, 59 Perkins, David  621–623 Perry, Stephen D.  549, 554–555 Peterson, Christopher  19, 46–47, 60 Peterson, L.  417, 419 Peters, Tom  458, 460 Petrenko, Maxim S.  7 Pexman, Penny M.  411 Pickering, Michael  371, 373, 383–385, 388, 430 Pickering, W. S.  178 Pien, Diana  25, 49, 312, 610, 627–628 Pieper, Gail W.  430 Pinsker, Sanford  254, 256 Pisek, Gerhard  570 Pizzini, Franca  365 Plato  29, 103, 213–215, 235–236, 261, 298, 306, 310, 313, 356, 363, 399, 401, 548 Platt, Tracey  54 Pollard, Arthur  254 Pollio, Howard R.  44, 460 Polounine, Slava  561 Popovič, Anton  571, 577 Porcu, Leide  120 Porteous, Janice  104 Porterfield, Albert L.  499, 501, 505 Porter, James  416 Posen, I. Sheldon  188 Poveda, Daniel  128 Powell, Chris  59, 75, 365–367, 369, 379 Powell, Falvey C.  311, 485, 501 Powelson, John A.  53 Praeger, Charles  250

Index of authors  Pratt, Alan R.  254, 419 Preuschoft, Signe  75 Priego Valverde, Béatrice  117 Priest, Robert F.  62, 77 Propp, Vladimir  107, 113, 541 Provine, Robert R.  117, 120–121, 260, 366, 385 Proyer, René T.  47, 53–54, 62, 74 Pughe, Thomas.  255 Puhlik-Doris, Patricia  38, 505, 508, 511 Pulman, Stephen  125, 340 Purdie, Susan  121 Purdy, Jedediah  254, 413, 418 Pym, Anthony  578 Quintilian  102, 215, 402, 404–405, 408 Rackl, Lorilyn  479 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R.  185–186, 364 Radday, Yehuda  311 Rader, C.  309 Rahman, Jacquelyn  120 Ramachandran, Vilayanur S.  79, 625 Ramani, S.  311 Ramsay, Edward Bannerman  161 Rapp, Albert  307, 313 Rapp, Alexander M.  22, 38 Raskin, Victor  1, 5–7, 11–12, 25, 32, 50, 52, 103, 107–109, 115, 121, 123, 127, 170, 178, 250, 303, 305, 308, 310–311, 314, 317–318, 336–338, 342, 344–345, 347–349, 351, 353–355, 363, 372, 425, 427, 524, 534–536, 539, 581, 596, 602, 612, 626 Rath, Sigrid  20, 22, 51–52, 317 Raudenbush, Stephen W.  505 Raulin, Jules M.  18 Raz, Tal  494 Read, Raymond L.  310 Redfern, Walter  252

655

Redlich, Frederick C.  59, 609 Reeves, C.  415, 417 Reuters News Service  561 Rhodes, Gillian  28, 621–623 Richler, Mordecai  251 Riemann, Rainer  76 Rim, Yalom  504 Ring, Erp  618, 623 Risden, E. L.  316 Rishel, Mary Ann  416 Rissland, Birgit  63 Ritchie, David  409, 433 Ritchie, Graeme  106, 124, 337–338, 340, 408–409, 433 Ritchie, Joy  408 Roberts, Paul  239–240, 423, 426–428 Robinson, Dawn  365, 367, 374–375 Robinson, Vera  453 Rodden, Frank A.  22, 38, 53 Roeckelein, Jon E.  20 Rogerson-Revell, Pamela  117 Romero, Eric J.  61 Ronald, Kate  408 Roodenburg, Herman  102–103, 550 Rose, Mike  419 Rosenberg, Erika L.  22–23, 501 Rosen, Leonard J.  423 Rosenheim, Eliyahu  319 Rosier, Laurence  131 Ross, Alison  121, 417, 425–426 Ross, Bob  462 Ross, Charles  316 Rosso, Paolo  125 Rosten, Leo  257 Rothbart, Mary K.  25, 33, 49, 265, 312, 610, 627–628 Rotton, James  23, 494, 497 Rourke, Constance  257 Rouzie, Albert  421–422 Rowland, Robert C.  431 Royot, Daniel  243, 260, 268 Rubien, Janet  44, 612 Rubin, Louis D., Jr.  250, 284, 300

656 

Index of authors

Ruch, Willibald  3, 6, 18, 20–24, 26, 28–29, 33–34, 36–38, 44, 46–56, 58–60, 62–66, 70, 73–76, 109, 178, 284, 310–311, 315, 317, 319, 336–337, 363, 385, 469, 482, 484–488, 490, 495, 499, 502, 540, 598–599, 602, 610, 619–620, 627 Ruiz Moneva, Angeles  130 Rusch, Sandra  71 Russell, David  167, 251, 287, 416 Rust, John  75, 507 Ruszkiewicz, John J.  417 Rutter, Jason  120, 284 Ryan, Cynthia A.  311 Ryan, T. A.  621–623 Ryff, Carol D.  502 Sacks, Harvey  200 Safer, Elaine B.  243, 245, 255, 268 Safranek, Roma  485 Salameh, Waleed A.  53, 309, 311, 456 Samson, Andrea C.  5, 21, 49, 612, 615, 620, 623–624, 630 Sanborn, Kate  409–410 Sapir, Edward  586 Sarmany-Schuller, Ivan  501 Saroglou, Vassilis  40, 43, 61–62 Sassenrath, Simone  37, 63–64, 70 Savin, William  306, 309–311, 316 Sayre, Joan  365 Scariot, Christel  40, 61 Schaaf, Barbara  256 Schank, Roger C.  107 Schaub, Thomas H.  255 Scheff, Thomas  367, 385–386 Schegloff, Emanuel A.  117 Schill, Thomas  485 Schirmer, Otto  18 Schmidt-Hidding, Wolfgang  43, 46, 71 Schmidt, Stephen R.  612 Schmitz, J. R.  127 Schmitz, Neil  250 Scholl, Peter A.  255 Schopenhauer, Arthur  226, 308, 310

Schulz, Max F.  254, 289 Schutz, Charles E.  311 Schwartz, Carol B.  621–623 Schwartz, Shalom H.  73 Schwarzwald, Joseph  494 Schwitalla, Johannes  120 Schwoebel, J.  122 Scogin, Forrest R.  485 Scott, James  259, 369 Scott, John R.  188 Scott, Nina M.  316 Sears, Richard N.  48 Seaver, Paul W., Jr.  258 Sechrest, Lee  44 Secor, Marie  424 Seitel, Peter  203 Seligman, Martin E. P.  19, 46–47, 60 Selzer, Jack  424 Semino, Elena  121 Shalit, Gene  251 Shats, Mark  494 Shelley, Cameron  123–124 Shepherd, Jean  255 Sheppard, Alice  612, 620, 622–623 Sherman, Lawrence W.  311 Sher, Phyllis K.  78 Sherwood, Steve  418 Sherzer, Joel  192 Shibles, Warren  299 Shiffman, Limor  370, 381 Shinohara, Kazuko  106 Shloss, Carol  255 Shultz, Thomas R.  25, 312, 611, 628 Shuttleworth, J. M.  254 Sifianou, Maria  116–117 Sigal, Marcia  311 Simmons, John  540 Simon, Jolen M.  501 Simpson, Paul  121 Siporin, Steve  187 Sirc, Geoffrey  420 Sjöbergh, Jonas  125 Skowron, Justyna  131

Index of authors  Skrobocki, Eugeninez  159 Slade, Diana  117 Sloane, David E. E.  243, 262–264, 269, 299–300 Smith, Alden Clarke  415, 417, 430 Smith, Jane E.  507 Smith, K. C. P.  32 Smith, Mary R.  86 Smith, Seba  286, 287 Smith-Lovin, Lynn  365, 367, 374–375 Smoski, Moria J.  24 Snell-Hornby, Mary  578 Snieder, Harold  75 Snodgrass, Mary Ellen  254 Sohler, Theodore P.  59, 609 Sommer, Karin  37, 62 Sonnichsen, C. L.  252 Sontag, Susan  266 Spector, Tim D.  75 Speier, Hans  368–371 Spencer, Gary  311 Spencer, Herbert  17, 222–223, 362 Sperber, Dan  115, 122, 129, 409 Spinath, Frank M.  76 Spradley, James  377 Sroufe, L. Alan  33, 78 Staley, Rosemary E.  27 Stanton, Annette L.  482 Stecconi, Ubaldo  578 Steffens, Dean  424 Steger, Michael F.  76 Stein, Mary Beth  430 Steiner, George  575, 601 Stephenson, Richard  365 Stevens, Markus F.  63, 474 Stewart, Donald  432–433 Stocking, Holly  372 Stock, Oliviero  124, 336, 339, 354 Stoft, P. E.  309 Stokker, Kathleen  369–370 Stoller, Paul  189 Stolz, Heidi  71 Stone, Arthur A.  482, 506

657

Stone, Laurie  300 Stopsky, Fred  465 Strapparava, Carlo  124, 336, 339–340 Strebeigh, F.  417, 419 Streeck, Juergen  120 Suh, E. M.  73 Sully, James  452 Suls, Jerry M.  25–27, 29, 31, 49, 103, 228, 313, 315, 610–611, 626– 628 Sutcliffe, Rebecca  408 Sutherland, Christine Mason  408 Svebak, Sven  32, 45, 317, 485, 499–​ 500 Swearingen, C. Jan  401, 405–406, 431–​432 Sykes, A. J. M.  186, 365 Szameitat, Diana P.  24 Szende, Thomas  127 Takahashi, Yumiko  316 Takizawa, Osamu  124 Tallman, Richard S.  187, 204 Tan, Josephine  450, 453, 468–469, 490, 507 Tannen, Deborah  118, 125 Tanner, Stephen L.  316 Tan, Stanley A.  450, 453, 468–469, 490, 507 Tavarelli, Paola  188 Taylor, Dean  124, 340 Taylor, Frederick  457 Taylor, Shelley E.  482 Tecucianu, Frederique  319 Tedlock, Dennis  203 Tepper, Inbal  494 Teshimovsky-Arditi, Mina  319 Theibaux, Marcelle  408 Thein, Melinda Taylor  62, 77 Thompson, Richard  63 Thompson, Stith  192 Thompson, Teresa L.  611 Thorelli, Irene M.  33

658 

Index of authors

Thorson, James A.  59, 75, 311, 485, 501, 503 Tijus, Charles-Albert  124 Tilton, John W.  254 Tinholt, Hans Wim  125, 340 Titze, Michael  53–54, 74 Todt, Dietmar  119, 121 Tollefson, Donald L.  59 Toombs, Sarah Eleanor  256 Totten, Mary C.  493 Toury, Gideon  577–578 Tower, C.  415, 418 Trachtenberg, Stanley  256, 299 Tragesser, Sarah  106 Trédé, Monique  102 Trembath, David L.  507 Trevor, William  577 Triezenberg, Katrina E.  4–5, 7, 12, 129, 355, 537 Trouvain, Jürgen  116, 121 Tsakona, Villy  110, 117, 623, 628, 631 Tsur, Reuven  319 Tucker, Joan S.  256 Tulman, Lorraine  612 Tümkaya, Songül  40, 61 Turek, Joy  47, 59 Turner, W. Craig  299 Tversky, B.  621–623 Tyler, Kathryn  286, 296 Uberoi, J. Singh  165 Uekermann, Jennifer  27 Ulea, V.  266 Ulrych, Margherita  601 Unger, Lynette S.  311 Utsumi, Akira  122–123 Vaid, Jyotsna  78, 104, 126–127 Vaillant, George E.  486 Valdimarsdottir, Heiddis  482 van Alphen, Ingrid C.  609 Van Auken, Philip M.  310

Van Giffen, Katherine  310 van Hoof, Jan A. R. A. M.  77 van de Vijver, Fons  72 Vandaele, Jeroen  113, 127, 570, 599 Varma, V. S. R. D.  311 Vasey, George  489 Veale, Tony  129 Velker, Barbara  488, 495 Verdon, Jean  102 Vermeer, Hans  577 Vettin, Julia  119, 121 Viana, Amadeu  117 Vickers, Scott B.  259 Viikberg, Jűri  159 Viktoroff, David  303–305 Vitanza, Victor  415, 421 Vives, Juan Luis  258, 408 Volpe, Michael  402 Wagg, Stephen  371, 379 Wagner, Jane  292 Waldoks, Moshe  174, 257 Waldorf, V. Ann  507 Walford, Geoffrey  178 Walker, Nancy A.  259, 263, 283, 299, 301, 311, 410–411, 414 Wallace, Ronald  254, 261 Walle, Alf H.  199, 374 Waltz, William  493 Walzer, Arthur  409 Wanzer, M. B.  554 Wanzer, Melissa Bekelja  554 Ward, John  414–415 Ward, Stephen  370 Ware, Aaron P.  35, 40, 42–43, 45, 61–62 Warnick, Barbara  412 Warren, Rosalind  299, 311 Waters, Everett  33, 78 Waters, Janet C. E.  20 Watkins, Mel  120, 258, 284, 301 Watson, David  499 Watson, Karli K.  612, 623, 630

Index of authors  Weber, Alan  415, 422–423 Weber, Marco  76 Weber, Max  380 Wechsler, Robert  255 Weiner, E. Judith  128 Weinstein, Matt  464 Weir, Kelly  38 Weisberg, Robert W.  105 Weisenberger, Steven  263 Weisenberg, Matisyohu  494 Weisfeld, Glenn E.  79 Weiss, Elizabeth  300 Weiss, R. L.  509 Weizenbaum, Joseph  355 Wells, H. G.  162 Welsch, Roger L.  193 Wernblad, Annette  255 Wertheimer, Molly Meijer  408 Whitaker, Steve  618 White, E. B.  243, 530 White, Katherine S.  243, 530 White, Sabina  311, 496, 503 Wickberg, Daniel  382, 387, 486 Wicker, Frank W.  33 Wiget, Andrew  258 Wild, Barbara  22, 38, 53, 63, 75, 474, 630 Willard-Holt, Colleen  311 Williams, Alan R.  612 Williams, Dana A.  120, 126 Williams, David  415, 424 Williams, Joseph M.  415, 423 Willis, Amy C.  33 Wills, Thomas A.  483, 507 Wilson, Christopher P.  28, 33 Wilson, David Sloan  75, 78–79, 104 Wilson, Deirdre  104, 115, 122, 129, 409 Wilson, Glenn D.  75, 78 Wilson, James D.  256 Wilson, Steve  464 Wilson, Thomas  406–407

659

Winkel, Mark  315 Winner, E.  122 Winston, Mathew  254, 299, 428 Wisse, Jakob  402–403 Withalm, Gloria  112 Withers, Carl  252 Womack, Deanna F.  431 Wonham, Harry  263 Wood, James  250 Wooten, Patty  452–454 Woschek, Bernard P.  614, 619, 623–625, 628–629 Wrench, Jason S.  63 Wright, Elizabethada A.  412–413 Wright, Thomas  613 Wu, Ying Choon  126 Wyss, Tobias  64 Yacowar, Maurice  255 Yan, Gao  255 Yip, Jeremy. A.  63 Yokogawa, Toshihiko  124 Young, Jason R.  628 Yurchak, Alexei  159, 168 Yus Ramos, Francisco  115, 130 Zajdman, Anat  319 Zajonc, Robert B.  624 Zelvys, V. I.  319 Zerbinos, Eugenia  611 Zerkowitz, Judit  121, 131 Zigler, Edward  44 Zijderveld, Anton  361, 376, 378–379, 385 Zillmann, Dolf  29–31, 307, 372 Zinsser, Judith P.  408, 423 Ziv, Avner  45, 73, 258, 311, 317, 319, 507, 598 Zucker, Wolfgang  189 Zurawik, David  285 Zweyer, Karen  66, 488, 495 Zysset, Stefa  49, 623, 630

Subject index acronym, 196 adjacency pair, 116, 119 adoxography, 531 aesthetics, 18, 47–52, 65, 188, 203, 204, 601, 611, 624–626 aggression, 28, 29, 61, 76, 104, 119, 166, 175, 176, 177, 188, 193–194, 305–306, 307, 313, 363, 368–369, 375, 382–385, 390, 527, 531, 535, 536, 545, 562, 609 agon, 531 allegory, 404, 535, 536 ambiguity, 11, 102, 105, 240, 246, 373, 374, 376, 378, 384, 401–​ 404, 426, 470, 531, 541, 548, 553 anaphoric, 340, 341 quasi, 345–346 American (see also Black) 298–301 Humor Studies Association, 262, 268, 269, 298, 301, 317 political cartoons and comics, 246 anachronism, 531 anagogy, 535 anaphora resolution, 341 antaclasis, 531 anthropology, 4, 37, 73, 183, 203, 298, 548 anti-masque, 531 antiphrasis, 531 apprenticeship novels, 247 archetypal characters, 248, 260, 264, 560–562 Arizona State University, 252, 267, 268, 318 aspects aesthetics, 624–626 cognitive, 626–631

audience, 2, 5, 41, 115, 117, 118, 119, 200, 215, 216, 225, 238, 246, 264, 282, 285, 288, 289, 291, 292, 303, 304, 305, 307, 308, 310, 312–315, 363, 374, 384, 400, 401–402, 404, 406–407, 411–413, 416, 417, 419, 424, 425, 428, 430, 431, 432, 433, 450, 451, 527, 531, 537–539, 553, 559, 561, 590, 592, 593, 601 Audience-Based Theory of Verbal Humor, 310, 314 backtracking, 11, 617 bathos, 531 bawdy, 525, 526, 527, 528, 531, 532 Belles-Lettres, 244 Bible, 212, 213, 216, 229, 230–232, 258, 303, 419, 535, 586, 601 Bildungsroman, 247 blending, 103, 128 bona-fide communication, 539 Borscht Belt, 290 braggadocio, 531 Broadway variety show, 290 Broca’s area, 126, 630 burlesque, 188, 221, 222, 246, 264, 290, 292, 412, 531, 548 caricature, 258, 263, 264, 613, 615, 620, 621 carnival, 189, 190, 365, 377, 526, 527 cartoon, 26, 28, 48, 52, 58, 59, 69, 75, 169, 222, 224, 263, 285, 388, 609–640 cartoonist, 613 censorship, 158, 263, 264, 383, 528

662 

Subject index

cheerfulness, 24, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 55, 56, 62, 63, 66, 77, 482, 485, 487, 497, 498 Christianity, 216, 228, 229, 231, 232, 241 clown, 188, 189, 261, 449, 451, 452, 453, 454, 527, 531, 532, 533, 548, 561, 562 co-reference, 11, 523 cognitive process, 24–28, 342, 344, 632 comedies of manners, 247 comedy African-American, 120, 284, 413 Black, 254, 531 high, 246 history of, 229–230, 247–248, 290, 454, 538, 548 Irish, 247 New Comedy, 214, 525 new wave stand up, 290, 291 physical, 262, 292 queer, 246 romantic, 292, 533 screwball, 293, 300 sick, 28, 41, 43, 48, 52, 179, 193, 195, 196, 367, 534 situation (sitcom), 283, 388, 530, 570, 573, 589, 600 television, 109, 111, 295, 297, 300 Spanish, 247 stand-up, 245, 300, 417, 486, 490 television, 245, 284, 292, 294, 296 comic strip, 281, 284, 285, 288, 289, 300, 472 highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow, 282, 283, 528, 531 film newspaper comic, 288 performance studies of, 283 comic theater, 292 commedia dell’arte, 264 communication mediated, 125, 387, 422, 557–558 studies, 4, 388, 400, 548

comparative -historical approach, 378–382 method, 158, 162, 163, 167, 168, 172, 174, 175, 177, 178 competence, 7, 44, 114, 115, 116, 119, 335, 355, 356, 410, 418, 483, 507, 596 composition contact zones in, 419, 429 humor as critical expression in, 415 humor as disciplinary enculturation in, 416 humor as disciplinary negotiation in, 1, 6, 184, 188, 301, 316, 317, 319, 334, 362, 376, 384, 415, 416, 417, 423, 424, 425, 429, 548, 555 humor in first-year, 416–418, 419–420, 426, 429 pedagogy of, 415–430 professional and business writing in, 423, 429, 430 textbooks and handbooks in, 18, 251, 400, 426 writing tutorials in, 418 computer databases, 298 conceit, 536, 587 concept, 8, 25, 33, 35–37, 40, 43, 46, 53, 54, 58, 60, 73, 103, 104, 107, 108, 110, 120, 123, 128, 183, 211, 223, 226, 232, 246, 258, 260, 266, 282, 283, 308, 316, 335, 336, 341, 345, 348, 352, 384, 416, 421, 484, 501, 543–548, 550–559, 563, 570, 577, 578, 580, 581, 582, 588, 615, 616 connector, 106, 107, 333 consumption, 282, 284, 335, 483, 489, 585 contrast, 44, 49, 103, 122, 123, 165, 173, 174, 176, 220, 240, 286, 368, 377, 529, 535, 578, 614,

Subject index  618, 620, 621, 627 conversation analysis, 116, 125, 618 coon caricature, 264 coon songs, 264 cooperative principle (CP), 108, 115 coping, 39, 40, 55, 60, 61, 65, 68, 70, 73, 195, 289, 316, 454, 482, 485, 487, 502, 503, 504, 505, 506, 509, 510 coping humor scale (CHS), 40, 60, 70, 485, 502 CORHUM, 131, 318 corpus, 117, 119, 120, 123, 125, 132, 426, 597 cross-cultural perspectives, 71–75 cross-national perspectives, 71–75 cultural differences, 123 culture, 4, 35, 37, 72–74, 131, 159, 165, 175, 183, 190–192, 238, 246, 256–259, 262, 263, 266–268, 281–294, 296–301, 311, 335, 374, 375, 379, 387, 399, 418, 431, 432, 459, 463, 473, 538, 547, 550, 552, 562, 572, 573, 575, 576, 579, 580, 583–587, 590, 596–602 democracy, 169, 171, 172, 176, 178, 286 derision, 30, 39, 103, 117, 313, 385 diction, 536, 538, 539 disambiguation, 11, 105, 106 discourse analysis, 115–118, 119, 123, 131, 412, 424, 618 disjunctor, 106, 107 disparagement, 29, 30, 31, 39, 103, 307, 310, 313, 372 dissoi logoi, 402, 409, 412, 421 distancing, 195, 504 distribution, 61, 110, 111, 112, 131, 282, 284, 610, 628 doggerel, 261 double entendre, 296, 536

663

dozens, 120, 187, 236, 290, 291, 297, 318, 452, 460, 465, 526 drawing style, 610, 614, 615, 620, 622, 623, 625, 626, 632 driving schools, 466 Duchenne display, 21, 496 dyadic tradition, 188 economy, 103, 104, 224, 309, 460, 463 eiron, 531 eironeia, 401 embarrassment, 2, 22, 117, 132, 365, 383, 385, 386, 596 embodied computational agent (ECA), 336–337 emotion, 19, 39, 51, 77, 78, 160, 161, 213, 224, 233, 235, 236, 237, 307, 336, 385, 386, 389, 405, 406, 480, 481, 482, 485, 491, 493–496, 510, 536, 559, 562, 630 enthymeme, 532 environment, 75, 76, 77, 192, 418, 453, 459, 462, 469, 473, 532, 547, 549, 550–552, 555, 561, 583, 596, 625 equivalence, 65, 570, 571, 572, 574–580, 582, 589, 592, 593, 599, 600 ethos, 400, 402, 403, 404, 405, 417, 431 evolution, 6, 77–79, 229, 237, 307, 308, 310, 318, 432, 537 exclusion, 175, 303, 364, 366, 383, 385 eye tracking, 632 fabliau, 532 facetiae, 402, 406, 408, 409 and vir bonus, 404 Facial Action Coding System (FACS), 22–24, 337, 481, 488, 495–496, 510 factor analytic studies, 48, 51, 54–57, 486

664 

Subject index

familiarity, 101, 119, 261, 282, 538, 539, 626 fantasy, 232, 250, 253, 254, 259, 289, 544, 561, 562 farce, 247, 262, 264, 425, 532, 533, 548, 592 film comedy, 267, 284, 292, 293, 294, 300 criticism, 266 flyting, 532 folklore, 73, 160, 167, 192, 197, 200, 249, 252, 281, 286, 297, 299, 300, 379, 560 studies, 4, 183, 184, 203 fool, 212, 213, 248, 290, 307, 527 vs. jester, 532 wise, 286–287, 295 formal features, 571, 612, 618, 620, 624, 632 formalism, 8, 334 frame, 7, 19, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 52, 56, 126, 186, 200, 265, 298, 306, 374, 375, 409, 421, 433, 546, 576, 620 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 627, 629, 630, 631, 632, 627, 629 functionalism, 366, 367 gelotophobia, 53, 54 gender, 30, 66, 120, 132, 187, 259, 263, 310, 349, 361, 375, 377, 379, 381, 399, 424, 425, 430, 465, 544, 549, 551, 556, 558, 559, 560, 562, 611, 620 issues 561–563 genre, 108, 112, 119, 157, 166, 185, 191–192, 247, 249, 250, 252, 254, 261, 262, 264, 266, 267, 282, 283, 288, 290, 291, 292, 296, 300, 301, 380, 381, 387–​ 388, 400, 411, 416, 417, 420,

423, 424, 426, 431, 532, 533, 540, 550, 558, 559, 572, 573, 613 God, 189, 212, 213, 217, 230, 231, 247, 252, 261, 356 grotesque, 250, 253, 260, 377, 531, 532, 613 hahacronym, 124, 339 heritability, 75 hierarchy, 109, 187, 262, 341, 363, 365, 366, 367, 368, 425 Horatian satire, 249 hospitals, 69, 240, 318, 319, 365, 449, 452, 453, 454 hostility, 61, 103, 104, 166, 174, 175, 177, 188, 193, 194, 212, 219, 238, 239, 246, 249, 307, 313, 362, 367, 368, 369, 372, 380, 383, 384, 455, 462, 471, 488, 545, 558, 562 human–computer interface (HCI), 336, 339 humor analysis of automatic, 374, 569, 589, 600 and aggression, 28, 29, 61, 76, 103, 104, 119, 166, 175, 176, 177, 188, 193, 194, 305–309, 313, 363, 368, 369, 375, 382–384, 390, 527, 531, 535, 536, 545, 562, 609 health advocacy, 3, 451–457, 468–471 hierarchy, 109, 187, 262, 341, 363, 365, 366, 367, 368, 425 hostility, 61, 103, 104, 166, 174, 175, 177, 188, 193, 194, 212, 219, 238, 239, 246, 249, 307, 313, 362, 367, 368, 369, 372, 380, 383, 384, 455, 462, 471, 488, 545, 558, 562

Subject index  non-seriousness, 373, 374, 378, 382, 383 power, 64, 74, 168, 170, 175, 176, 193, 217, 220, 238, 252, 288, 306, 338, 344, 353, 363, 368, 369, 370, 375, 384, 409, 411, 412, 413, 415, 418, 420–429, 433, 452, 454, 472, 531, 551, 552, 556 psychology, 3, 6, 17, 18, 19, 23, 44, 46, 57, 69, 73, 77, 108, 177, 185, 220, 228, 240, 265, 298, 299, 315–316, 317, 334, 355, 449, 450, 452, 454, 456, 460, 461, 465, 467, 548, 549 resistance, 188, 189, 196, 361, 367, 368, 369, 370, 377, 410–417, 456, 469, 583 social structure, 184, 186, 187, 366 appreciation, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 44–48, 51, 52, 55, 56, 59, 64–67, 69, 70, 73–78, 124, 203, 227, 228, 239, 251, 261, 282, 298, 310, 312, 315, 372, 381, 387, 388, 418, 469, 484, 485, 487, 507, 546, 563, 610, 612, 619, 620, 622, 625, 629, 632 as art, 203–204 catharsis, 367, 385 as a character strength, 19, 35, 46–47, 76 coping mechanism, 39, 73, 506 cultural production, 400, 414, 430–433 rhetorical device, 400–408, 412, 425, 426, 432, 587, 592 social activity, 303–306, 416 temperament, 35, 36, 37, 38, 44, 45, 46, 55, 482, 485, 487

665

virtue, 46, 47, 77, 214, 215, 217, 218, 401, 561, 579 as an ability, 43–46 aesthetic perception, 47 behavior, 17, 23, 27, 32, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46, 52, 55–59, 61, 64, 69, 72, 75, 77, 116, 158, 186, 200, 204, 229, 283, 292, 303, 305, 312, 313, 316, 355, 377, 401, 405, 407, 409, 415, 422, 454, 456, 467, 485, 526, 528, 534, 550, 559, 620 Black, see comedy, Black children’s, 65, 184, 246, 311 comparative, 4, 131, 157–163, 166–168, 172, 174–178, 194, 197, 202, 203, 301, 362, 364, 378, 379, 380, 382, 383, 569, 609 competence, 7, 44, 114–116, 119, 335, 355, 356, 410, 418, 483, 507, 596 computational, 5, 123–125, 333–354 contexts, 196–203 conversational, 375, 384, 387 creation of, 36, 52, 56, 335 death, 114, 170, 174, 179, 189, 196, 217, 230, 249, 252, 261, 449, 453, 454, 500, 526, 531, 541, 551, 562 dark side of humor, 42, 46, 382, 383 development, 65–68, 389, 610 disaster, 196 enhancer, 537, 538 ethics of, 237, 238, 239, 268 event, 9, 11, 20, 22, 36, 113, 119, 195, 196, 200, 201, 304, 305, 315, 351, 363, 411, 432, 474, 534, 592 failed, 405 feminist vs. feminine, 413–415 gender-based, 263, 558

666 

Subject index

humor (contd.) generation of, 3, 6, 34, 67, 124, 170, 223, 333, 335, 336, 337, 339, 340, 347, 348, 352, 353, 386, 418 automatic Hispanic, 203, 258 history of, 230, 538, 548 in advertising, 294, 297, 388, 474, 596, 597, 615 church, 190, 213, 216, 407, 526, 527, 528 education, 464–466, 472–473 song, 190, 213, 423, 465, 471, 474, 531, 571 the workplace, 118, 125, 195, 310, 318, 369, 429, 450, 451, 457–464, 466, 467, 470–472 instruments 57–65 3 Witz-Dimensionen (3WD), 64, 76, 599 Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), 39, 40, 55–56, 61, 487, 502, 506, 508–511 State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI), 34, 62, 63–64, 70, 74, 482, 487, 510 Humor Behavior Q-Sort Deck (HBQD), 40, 42, 55–56, 61–62, 74 international conference on, 73, 258, 316- 319, 602 Internet, 2, 12, 161, 257, 297, 387, 450, 479, 506, 511, 558 Jewish, 174–177, 191, 192, 198, 199, 202, 203, 217, 255, 257, 258, 263, 269, 285, 290, 369, 372, 381, 384, 573, 574 literary, 4, 5, 243, 244, 245, 246, 249, 250, 251, 259, 260, 266, 267, 301, 409, 523, 524, 529, 534, 537

literature, 5, 18, 19, 20, 33, 38, 41, 43, 44, 53, 60, 101–120, 123, 126, 184, 191, 192, 211, 221, 226, 232, 243, 244–246, 248, 250–268, 281, 283, 284, 288, 290, 295, 298–300, 316, 368, 408, 417, 451, 454, 457, 461, 473, 480, 488, 490, 523–533, 536, 537, 539, 540, 541, 548, 549, 555, 556, 557, 613 medical benefits of, 452 nonsense, 27, 49, 64, 66, 67, 74, 78, 485, 620, 627 performance, 44, 65, 115, 335 political, 299, 301, 368, 369, 370, 371, 373, 410, 412, 430–433, 554 production, 43, 44, 70, 76, 365, 496 Quotient Test, 259 referential, 345, 346 research, 310–311 multidisciplinary, 2, 7, 316, 609 first-timers in, 1, 2 part-timers in, 3 response, 17, 20–23, 29, 32, 40, 48, 51, 54, 59, 60, 72, 78, 116, 124, 126, 176, 195, 211, 227, 230, 232, 237, 263, 265, 297, 315, 364, 374, 385, 387, 403, 406, 418, 422, 425, 484, 485, 534, 552, 556, 563, 595, 599, 612, 622, 626, 632 ritual, 173, 185, 188–191, 365, 379, 386, 585 scholarship, 116, 131, 178, 263, 264, 298, 300, 316, 362–364, 385, 387, 388, 389, 400, 403, 410, 415, 422, 429, 430, 431, 563 sense of, 3, 32, 35–47, 52, 55, 56, 58–71, 74–78, 159, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 259, 307, 316, 317, 336, 379, 381, 382, 409, 410, 459, 462, 464, 467, 469,

Subject index  473, 479, 481–488, 492, 493, 496–510, 544–547, 550, 552, 559, 562, 563 sick, 48, 193, 196, 367 social functions of, 367, 389 styles, 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 53, 55, 61, 62, 73, 74, 379, 381, 483, 486, 487, 502, 505, 506, 508, 509, 510, 511 support, 117, 119, 374 taboo, 42, 120, 188, 293, 374, 379 talk show, 283, 296, 297 television, 169, 195, 196, 245, 246, 257, 266, 281, 283, 284, 285, 290, 292, 293, 294, 296, 299, 300, 387, 486, 524, 530, 556, 559, 573, 589, 596 therapeutic, 306, 309, 311, 319, 449, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 479, 481, 482, 483, 503 theory of audience-based theory of verbal humor, 310, 314–15 conflict, 25, 27, 73, 166, 174, 177, 185, 186, 240, 268, 288, 296, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 367, 368–373, 377, 378, 380, 383, 390, 421, 422, 423, 461, 463, 487, 621 disparagement, 29, 30, 31, 39, 103, 307, 310, 313, 372 functionalist, 165, 166, 362, 364–368, 374, 377, 383 general theory of verbal humor (GTVH), 7, 50, 104, 108–117, 121, 124–131, 310, 314, 338, 341, 342, 425, 536, 537, 541, 612, 626, 628 incongruity, 104, 211, 215, 219, 221, 225–229, 231, 233–236, 240, 311–313, 363, 389, 463 phenomenology, 373, 424, 609 processing, 20, 27, 31, 32, 35,

667

110, 122, 125, 126, 128, 333, 334, 339, 363, 377, 611, 612, 617, 618, 621, 624, 625, 626, 627, 628, 629, 630, 632 release, 103, 104, 211, 221, 222, 223, 224, 233, 264, 304, 309, 310, 313–314, 362, 415, 450, 453, 468 relief, 221–225, 233, 235, 313–314, 362, 368, 378 script-based semantic ­theory (SSTH), 7, 25, 107–109, 114–115, 126–128, 310, 314, 338, 339, 341, 342, 343, 347, 353, 537, 541 verbal humor, 314 superiority, 24, 29, 30, 31, 39, 103, 211, 212, 214, 215, 220, 221, 225, 228, 229, 233, 234, 246, 249, 305, 307, 310, 313, 362, 363, 368, 381, 383, 384, 389, 390, 399, 531 verbal, 5, 7, 36, 45, 50, 55, 63, 108, 120, 234, 294, 310, 338, 342, 347, 399, 417, 425, 534, 536, 609, 610, 611, 612, 615, 617–618, 624, 626, 631, 633 verbally expressed (VEH), 569–608 visual, 5, 204, 260, 419, 429, 431, 559, 570, 589, 590, 593, 594, 596, 600, 601, 609–632 HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 2, 262, 267, 268, 298, 316 humorlessness, 34, 38, 52–54, 56, 65, 215, 218 humorology, 6, 316–319 humorous characters, 35, 245, 248 genres, 119, 370, 381, 387, 417 mode, 377, 385 plot, 112 poetry, 261

668 

Subject index

humorous (contd.) triple, 532 humours, 248 hyperbole, 532 inclusion, 303, 385 incongruity, 17, 20, 24–28, 31, 33, 48–51, 53, 64–67, 73, 74, 77, 102–108, 121–123, 126, 129, 130, 170, 211, 215, 219, 221, 223, 225–229, 231, 233–237, 240, 246, 260, 308, 310–312, 315, 344, 345, 362, 363, 389, 411, 421, 431, 463, 480, 541, 545, 553, 610, 611, 614, 617–620, 624–631 incongruity resolution, 27, 31, 48, 49, 50, 51, 64, 66, 67, 73, 74, 77, 129, 130, 246, 620, 626, 627, 628, 629, 630, 631 individual differences, 19, 24, 27, 29, 30, 36, 45, 48, 68, 69, 485, 550, 555 intent, 558 interdisciplinary scholarship, 264–266 interlingual translation, 570, 571, 575, 583, 585, 596, 600 International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS), 2, 262, 267, 268, 298, 301, 316–319, 602, 632 intervention programs, 69–71 invariant core, 577, 578, 584, 588 inventio, 400, 406 ironic tone, 123 irony, 21, 34, 102, 104, 118, 119, 122–123, 126, 128, 131, 199, 228, 245, 246, 248, 254, 255, 259, 318, 376, 400, 401, 404–413, 418, 423–433, 531–534, 548, 570, 574, 595, 596, 602, 609 frame-shifting in, 409, 433 relevant inappropriateness in, 123,

412, 425, 433 isotopy, 101, 104, 106 disjunction model (IDM), 107 jab lines, 110, 112, 114 Japanese kyògen, 264 JAPE, 124, 337, 338, 340, 548 jester, 341, 532, 548 Jewish characters in prime-time television, 285 joke as genre, 108, 112, 119, 157, 166, 185, 191, 192, 247, 249–254, 261, 262, 264, 266–267, 282, 283, 288, 290–292, 296, 300, 301, 380, 381, 387, 388, 400, 411, 416, 417, 420, 423, 424, 426, 431, 532, 533, 540, 550, 558, 559, 572, 573, 613 Auschwitz, 193 blonde, 194, 195, 202, 380, 381, 562 cycles, 185, 192–196, 202, 203, 251, 265, 372, 384 dead baby, 193 disaster, 11, 179, 195, 196, 367, 387 elephant, 193, 194, 199, 244, 471, 535 ethnic, 4, 28, 30, 48, 157, 158, 166, 167, 178, 192, 194, 238, 255, 263, 264, 268, 284, 294, 295, 296, 299, 301, 311, 313, 368, 371, 372, 373, 379, 380, 381, 383, 384, 424, 453, 551, 556, 583 Jewish–American Princess, 202 lawyer, 246, 289, 381, 462 Polish, 131, 162, 165, 172, 193, 194, 195, 199, 202, 238, 384, 404 role of, 190, 373, 375, 378, 400, 480, 503, 508, 549, 554 quadriplegic, 193 script, 557, 562 stupidity, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171,

Subject index  172, 173, 174, 178, 179, 194, 195, 202, 231, 234, 238, 379, 380, 583, 591 teller, 200, 202, 239, 303, 304, 305, 313, 314, 315, 333, 335, 346, 363, 384 under Socialism, 169, 171, 178, 179 Yekkes, 381 joking practical, 187, 381, 548, 552 relationships, 68, 184, 185–188, 303, 304, 306, 364, 365 journalism, 281, 283, 286, 288, 295 kairos, 404, 408, 416, 417 knowledge resource language (LA), 108, 114, 294, 425, 536 logical mechanism (LM), 50, 108–111, 114, 129, 314, 341–​ 347, 352, 425, 536, 537, 539, 540, 630, 631 narrative strategy (NS), 108, 50, 108, 109, 114, 314, 425, 426, 427, 536, 539 script opposition (SO), 50, 108, 110, 114, 123, 314, 341, 342, 345, 346, 352, 353, 425, 535, 536, 537, 538, 539, 540, 541 situation (SI), 108, 114, 425, 536 target (TA), 108, 114, 425, 536 lampoon, 251, 293, 297, 532 language rules of, 11 laugh tracks, 559 laughable, 23, 119, 120, 131, 226, 304 laughter, 23–24, 120–121, 385–386, 488–500 grades of, 260 types of, 488 lexicon, 8, 33, 338, 348, 352 liberation, 103, 104, 367

669

light verse, 261 limerick, 532 linguistics, 4, 5, 6, 101–105, 120, 131, 185, 188, 268, 298, 299, 339, 341, 400, 424, 569 cognitive, 107, 128–129 computational, 7, 334–337, 354–355 relevance theory in, 115, 121, 129–130 literary ballad, 244 enhancer, 537–539 fairytale, 107, 541 literary terms, 530–534 low comedy, 246 social order, 366, 166, 187, 189, 364, 365, 367, 372, 377, 417 maintenance of social order, 366 malaprop, 532 malice, 214, 235, 239, 305, 306, 307, 313 mass media, 170, 281, 292, 554, 555, 559 meaning, 2, 7, 8, 9–11, 36, 46, 47, 53, 60, 106, 114, 122, 171, 189, 195, 196, 221, 245, 246, 248, 252, 262, 287, 290, 292, 335, 340, 344–349, 355, 356, 374, 376, 382–384, 387, 388, 389, 390, 401, 406, 419, 433, 486, 525, 530–536, 553, 570, 577, 578, 580, 587, 593, 601, 602, 611, 614, 619 meaning making, 367 text-meaning representation (TMR), 9 media, 66, 68, 125, 170, 178, 195, 196, 238, 257, 281, 284, 292, 297, 362, 371, 387, 388, 479, 486, 489, 490, 509, 524, 534, 552, 554, 555, 559, 561, 589

670 

Subject index

Menippean satire, 532 message type, 557 metaphor, 190, 404, 530, 536, 557, 558, 578, 615 methodology, 5, 6, 18, 60, 106, 184, 354, 376, 400, 491 Middle Comedy, 525 mime, 533 minstrel shows, 290 mock, 21, 222, 265, 286, 381, 401, 424, 433, 546, 571, 613 epic, 269, 533 heroic, 533 modality, 10, 575 mode adoption, 119 mood, 31–38, 43, 52, 55, 56, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 70, 188, 304, 454, 469, 491, 495, 501–506, 544, 550, 551, 563 morale-boosting, 4, 369, 370 motivational processes, 21, 28–31, 70, 450, 462, 464, 495 narrative functions, 107 narratology, 106 Native American, 251, 259 literature, 258 trickster tales, 247 natural disambiguation mechanism, 11 natural-language processing (NLP), 333–336, 339, 340, 347–354, 355, 356 neural correlates, 612 neurolinguistics, 125–126, 132 non-seriousness, 373, 374, 378, 382, 383 Old Comedy, 214, 525, 531 ontological semantics, 7–12, 336, 347–​ 350, 353, 354 ontology, 8, 347, 348, 351, 356 oxymoron, 282, 536

pain tolerance, 316, 479, 482, 493, 494, 495, 496, 509 paraprosdokian, 533 parody, 250, 254, 255, 262, 263, 388, 400, 408, 410, 411, 412, 413, 415, 418–420, 423, 424, 427, 428, 531, 533, 539, 548, 570, 572, 628 as social critique, 383, 416–418, 423, 433 pathologies of humor and laughter, 52–54 performance, 35, 43, 44, 47, 54, 56, 59, 64, 65, 115, 116, 187, 200, 203, 262, 281–285, 290, 291, 292, 294, 334, 335, 340, 341, 355, 381, 420, 485, 504, 531, 561 personality, 3, 17, 18, 35, 36, 40, 46, 47, 48, 54, 57, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 72, 73, 75, 76, 202, 484, 527, 532, 550, 560, 599, 612, 615, 620 phenomenology, 373, 376–378, 424, 609 philosophy, 1, 4, 5, 17, 18, 121, 176, 213, 215, 227, 229, 232, 237, 240, 263, 362, 400, 407, 450, 458, 463, 548, 549 philosophy of science, 5 phonetic distance, 105, 106 picaresque novels, 253 play serio-ludic, 422 playfulness, 19, 32, 33, 36, 37, 55, 56, 63, 64, 68, 70, 71, 218, 232, 241, 383, 386, 464, 471, 472, 473 pleasure, 41, 42, 43, 48, 214, 218, 221, 224, 225, 226, 228, 234, 236, 238, 303, 304, 309, 401, 421, 601 po-faced reaction, 119 poetics, 102, 131, 214, 401, 525

Subject index  politeness, 118, 130, 532 popular culture, 4, 190, 191, 246, 257, 258, 262, 263, 266, 281–298 theater, 287, 290, 294 power, 166, 168, 170, 175, 176, 188, 220, 238, 252, 288, 363, 368–​ 370, 375, 384, 409, 411–422, 426, 428, 429, 433, 454, 472, 525, 551, 552, 556, 558 black power, 193 power differences/divisions, 370, 375 power distance, 74 power relations theory, 168 therapeutic power, 306, 311 pragmatics, 115, 116, 118, 120, 122, 129, 417 principle of least disruption, 118 production, 43, 44, 70, 76, 78, 117, 174, 176, 200–201, 284, 304, 337, 365, 399, 400, 402, 414, 430–433, 495, 496 pronoun, 340 prototypicality, 128 psychology, 3, 6, 17, 18, 19, 23, 44, 46, 57, 69, 73, 77, 108, 177, 185, 220, 228, 240, 265, 298, 299, 317, 334, 355, 449, 450, 452, 454, 456, 460, 461, 465, 467, 548, 549 pun, 105–106, 335, 338, 339, 341–347, 352, 356, 385, 531, 533, 536, 571, 572, 587–589, 591, 592–595, 628 cratylistic syllogism, 344–345 imperfect, 342–344 perfect, 342–343 pseudopunning, 345–346 taxonomy, 106 visual, 615–617 punch line, 28, 49, 51, 109, 110, 111, 112, 130, 222, 308, 529, 537,

671

539, 557, 563, 614, 615, 620, 621, 623, 624, 627, 628 Purdue University, 318 radio, 171, 290, 292, 294, 297, 383 rationality, 174, 195, 213, 228, 229, 236, 237, 239, 380 reception, 284, 285, 388, 552 recipient/audience, 2, 5, 26, 29, 31, 41, 48, 49, 52, 115–119, 200, 215–216, 225, 238, 246, 264, 282, 285, 288–292, 303–315, 363, 374, 384, 400–407, 411–​ 419, 424, 425, 428, 430–433, 450, 451, 527, 531, 537–539, 549–554, 559, 561, 573, 575, 581, 583, 584, 590, 592, 593, 600, 601 relief, 29, 33, 189, 247, 309–310, 313, 314, 366–367, 369, 385, 452 repartee, 41, 45, 529, 533 repertoire, 116, 201, 372 repetition, and variation, 105, 245, 315, 539, 570, 596 research, ethnographic, 285 resolution, 25–27, 31, 48–51, 64, 66, 67, 73–74, 78, 103, 106, 108, 121, 126, 129, 130, 228, 233, 234, 246, 294, 295, 312, 345, 541, 610, 618, 620, 626–631 anaphora resolution, 341 Restoration comedy, 533 rhetoric, 199, 215, 298, 399–433, 463, 548, 554 ribaldry, 533 riddle, 108, 193, 337, 557, 575, 576, 580 rogues, and picaros, 248, 253 sacred, 188, 230, 232, 547, 574, 575 salience, 27, 29, 49, 128, 433 sarcasm, 21, 34, 39, 216, 249, 254, 418, 426, 427, 428, 486, 533, 548, 609

672 

Subject index

satire, 21, 48, 169, 232, 247, 250, 252, 253, 254, 263, 264, 288, 290, 291, 293, 370–371, 400, 408, 413, 415, 418, 431, 486, 525–​ 529, 532, 533, 548, 570, 572, 613 Juvenalian, 249 social criticism in, 410, 417, 539 stereotypes in, 66, 72, 239, 245, 348, 410, 538, 539, 561, 562, 591, 611 scalability, 124, 335, 355 scatology, 188, 533 script, 7, 25, 50, 107–109, 121, 123, 126, 127, 128, 170, 310, 314, 338, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 350–353, 379, 380, 410, 425, 531, 534–541, 557, 562, 589, 596, 597, 601, 611 script opposition, 50, 108, 123, 314, 341, 342, 346, 352, 353, 425, 535–541 good/bad, 11, 351 normal/abnormal, 11, 114 real/unreal, 11, 25 sense of humor, 3, 32, 35–47, 52, 55–​71, 74–78, 159, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 259, 307, 316, 317, 336, 379, 381, 382, 409, 410, 459, 462, 464, 467, 469, 473, 479, 481–488, 492, 493, 496–510, 544–547, 550, 552, 559, 562, 563 measurement, 3, 23, 35, 40, 52, 57, 58, 60, 62, 480, 484, 485, 487, 577 humor scale (SHS), 63, 36, 40, 47, 59–64, 68, 70, 485, 501, 502, 508 sex, 7, 12, 25, 29, 49, 50, 64, 76, 170, 178, 179, 186, 195, 201, 202, 203, 222, 282, 287, 293, 351, 363, 411, 413, 496, 531, 533, 535, 551, 561 signifier, 105, 194, 195 and signified, 260, 345

signifying, 120, 258 smart allusions, 245 smile, 17, 21, 22, 24, 32, 41, 46, 55, 218, 247, 305, 315, 366, 459, 461, 481, 485, 487, 545 smiling, 21–23, 24, 38, 51, 75, 77, 78, 79, 184, 240, 249, 254, 315, 385, 488, 495, 545 social cohesion, 366 control, 188, 364, 365, 383 sciences, 5, 211, 298, 364, 548 sociology, 361–398 comparative research in, 157, 162, 379 conversation analysis in, 116, 125, 618 ethnography of, 370 experiment in, 29, 30, 418, 459, 587, 621, 629 historical analysis in 306–310 interview in, 53, 171, 201, 473 methodology of, 5, 6, 18, 60, 106, 184, 354, 376, 400, 491 survey in, 35, 41, 101, 123, 128, 130, 184, 196, 284, 285, 286, 296, 300, 459, 461, 499, 561 sophistication, 13, 178, 246, 340, 381, 389, 404, 410–413, 416, 418, 422 levels of, 12, 249 source language (SL), 570, 571, 572, 575, 576, 578, 584, 592, 594 text (ST), 169, 216, 217, 226, 256, 318, 452, 571, 572, 573, 574, 575, 576, 577, 578, 579, 581, 582, 583, 584, 588, 593, 601, 602 spoonerism, 534 squib, 534 stack, 111 statistics, 354

Subject index 

673

stereotype, 71, 203, 238, 258, 259, 410, 427, 538 strand, 111, 112, 114 stress, 36, 39, 40, 52, 55, 60, 61, 63, 64, 70, 74, 247, 316, 449–454, 458–459, 462–470, 482–483, 487, 488, 490, 492, 500, 503–511, 558, 563 stylistics, 129, 400, 419 sublimation, 103 superiority, see power symbol, 193, 194, 421, 616, 628 symbolic interactionism, 373–376, 390

multimedia translation, 589–598 triumph, 103, 225, 370, 531 trope, 534

taboo, 42, 120, 188, 293, 374, 379 target language (TL), 570, 571, 573, 575, 576, 579, 582, 592, 594, 599, 601 text (TT), 571, 572, 574, 575, 576, 577, 578, 579, 581, 582, 583, 584, 589, 601 teasing, 39, 54, 185, 291, 307, 465, 473, 486, 508, 550, 552 tension management, 367 text world representation, 110 -meaning representation (TMR), 9, 11, 348 textual studies, 284 theory of mind, 612, 624, 631 Tom Swifties, 124 tragedy, 18, 102, 195, 196, 227, 240, 261, 404, 525, 527, 546, 547, 562, 572 traits, 19, 32, 35–41, 49, 56, 58, 59, 62, 66, 72, 73, 76, 77, 231, 255, 336, 340, 484, 485, 560, 563, 620 transgression, 382–385 translatability, 126–127, 570, 580–582, 589, 599 translation studies, 569, 574, 599 equivalence, 574–580 sociocultural issues, 582–587

Western Humor and Irony Movement (WHIM), 318 wit, 28, 42–46, 54, 59, 71, 75, 76, 78, 214, 218, 220–221, 224, 227, 232, 245, 246, 249, 253, 254, 267, 306, 308, 366, 370, 371, 400–410, 433, 486, 527, 528, 534, 543, 547, 548, 582, 587, 609 Greek views on, 53, 75, 102, 117, 212, 213, 215, 216, 231, 247, 248, 313, 401, 523–527, 530, 531, 533, 613 Renaissance views on, 102, 103, 405, 406, 408, 412, 420, 525, 526, 536 Roman views on, 102, 215, 216, 247, 249, 313, 402, 526, 527, 533, 575, 600, 613 women humor and morality arguments, 413 for mixed audiences, 410 humorists, 301, 408–415 WordNet, 12, 339, 356 wordplay, 160, 249, 333, 336, 345, 346, 379, 418, 571, 577, 591, 595 Workshop Library World Humor (WLWH), 317, 318

university presses, 263 untranslatability, 571, 580, 582, 588 validity, 39, 45, 51, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 166, 170, 511 vaudeville, 290, 291, 292, 294 verbal abuse, 307 verbal dueling, 187, 191

young-adult novel, 247