(Humor Research 8) Raskin, Tom, Victor Raskin-The Primer of Humor Research-Mouton de Gruyter (2008)

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.
앪
앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines
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
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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
vi Contents
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 know-
ledge of preceding work. A decade or so later, Peter L. Berger, a prominent
enough scholar of religion to know better, committed the same sin in a major
book. A reasonably well-known professor of philosophy – well, esthetics ac-
tually – from The University of Chicago decided to tell a few jokes in print
disguising it as a research book – in total ignorance of humor research as
well. Conferences, including the Annual Meetings of the International Soci-
ety of Humor Studies, also billed as the International Conferences on Humor
2 Victor Raskin
(Research), saw such first-timers as well: the author witnessed the massive
embarrassment of a prior-research-ignorant Canadian psychologist, who had
brought an entire adoring entourage to the 2000 conference in Osaka.
It was there and then that this author conceived the idea of the Primer as
the one-stop place for a not so quick and dirty introduction to the multidis-
ciplinary area of humor research. He had just resigned, after 12 years, as the
founding editor of Humor: International Journal of Humor Research a year
earlier and apparently wanted to continue to dominate the field from a differ-
ent venue. His idea (does everybody understand that his is my?) was to select
the major, leading author in each major discipline contributing to humor re-
search and suggest a more or less rigid template for a 30–50-pp. essay on the
approach. Their task was not to propose original research nor to push forth
their own particular school of thought too much; rather, their mandate was
something like this, “You are awakened in the middle of the night and asked
to deliver a two-hour lecture on the subject to a reasonably educated audience
without any specific knowledge on humor or your area. You deliver it. Now
write it up. This is what I need.”
Not everybody was happy with the task: some felt lazy, others just resisted
the tyranny – and then there was Elliott. But most authors answered the call
and did it valiantly – at various speeds. Other projects intervened, including
the editor’s major involvement in further research in ontological semantics
and applying it to information security and meaning-based Internet search.
A significant effort was spent on developing a particularly brilliant and highly
select group of young scholars, one of them a difficult and reluctant part-time
genius, already planning her escape from this author’s clutches. And pro-
crastination took its toll, the editor’s as well as, obligingly, some contribu-
tors’. In the meantime, new developments in humor research have emerged,
and the editor was out of live classics, and as the dead ones, including the
ever grouchy Sig, refused to cooperate, he went for the young firebrands, the
future classics, most of them recognized by ISHS as emerging scholars and
awarded the eponymous prize at its meetings (two of those were members of
that select group of the editor’s advisees). So a bit of nepotism kicked in also,
and the project thus matured.
Primer structure
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
Editor’s notes and thoughts 3
alphabet nor the seniority of the authors sounded more promising. An inter-
esting idea to arrange the chapters by the street numbers of the authors’ resi-
dences faced the difficult choice of the ascending or descending order as well
the philosophical challenge of using the address at the time of submission
or publication, and several contributors have moved once or twice since. So
the contributions are introduced here more or less disciplinarily but they are
arranged in the volume in a complicated multi-factor way that may strike an
occasional reader as chaotic.
There are no full-time humor researchers in the world. A few years ago,
there was a rumor that there was one in France but it has never been independ-
ently confirmed, and the oddity of French academic affiliations and titles,
before the EU attempts to homogenize them into some sort of an American-
like system, has made it even harder. It is a definite fact, however, that all the
major humor researchers have always been “part-timers,” as are indeed all the
Primer contributors. Everybody was educated and established in an adjacent
widely recognized basic field. The older ones had to satisfy the mainstream
requirements of their discipline to get promoted and recognized, and only
then, protected by tenure or equivalent, they migrated to some sort of ap-
plication of the discipline to humor research. Their right to do so was made
easier, in the USA, by the late 1980s–early 1990s, thanks to the prestige of
the principals and the success of Humor, founded in 1987 and recognized
by all the major abstracting services within the next several years. It was
also a backlash to the shameful denial of tenure by Northwestern University
to somebody who has become a major force in his field as well as in humor
research within less than a decade on the grounds that he had been writ-
ing “joke books.” An advocate, who physically produced the candidate’s two
excellent books on the nature of humor at the highest university committee
meeting and ventured a statement that there was nothing funny in the books,
had no effect; nor did a dozen or so of first-rate refereed no-humor articles
published in the most prestigious journals of the time. This ignorant prejudice
about interdisciplinary areas: in Film Studies, they watch movies; in Humor
Research, they tell jokes; in sexology, they . . . – can still be encountered in
remote areas of the globe like some rare and basically eradicated infection.
In the current scientific/scholarly/academic rigorous study of humor, psy-
chology has the longest history. It is represented here by Willibald Ruch,
a dominant force in the psychology of humor, whose seminal work on humor
and personality and on the sense of humor measurement, has influenced
a generation of researchers. Rod Martin presents a psychological perspective
on the non-scholarly humor and health advocacy, whose claims he was one
4 Victor Raskin
on the first to challenge on serious scientific grounds back in the late 1990s.
Linguistics made a grossly overrated entry into humor research (in this
author’s work) in the late 1970s–early 1980s and has since developed into
a major contributor. It is represented by Salvatore Attardo and complement-
ed, in its computational aspect, by Christian Hempelmann. Its imperialist am-
bitions are curtailed by Katrina Triezenberg, who takes it on herself to defend
the literary studies’ right of way in studying literary humor.
Triezenberg also complements somewhat Don and Alleen Nilsen’s take
on that right of way. Literary humor has indeed been studied for a long time,
but it seems important to differentiate between literary analyses of the use
of humor, on the one hand, and much rarer studies of the nature of literary
humor: in the former case, the field of inquiry is literary studies per se, and the
goals of research come from there, for example, the establishment of influ-
ence or the attribution to a certain style. In the latter case, it is indeed humor
research, and the authors had been urged to stay within those constraints.
Sociology has lagged behind those two disciplines in spite of Henri Berg-
son’s (1899) early entry. Christie Davies, the most prominent sociologist of
humor and a supreme authority on ethnic humor, considered this author’s re-
quest for a chapter on the sociology of humor but decided it was too boring.
So instead, he contributed an insightful chapter on comparative humor, and
the volume is all the better for it. The task to write the basic chapter eventu-
ally fell on Giselinde Kuipers.
John Morreall, the major philosopher of humor, kindly contributed two
chapters, one on the philosophy of humor per se and the other on an inter-
esting application of humor research to morale-boosting corporate seminars
and workshops. Fully versed in the field, he is one of the very few seminar-
givers who do not oversell humor as a product, so he is impervious to Rod
Martin’s well-justified criticism of those who do aggressively pitch humor as
a panacea for maintaining and improving good health, both for individuals
and corporations.
Elliott Oring presents a major perspective on humor and anthropology,
with a healthy dose of folklore studies. Adjacently even though very discipli-
narily differently, Larry Mintz, one of the pioneers of humor research revival
in the mid-1970s, deals with humor in popular culture, an area he has co-
founded and maintained for several decades.
The younger cohort addresses a number of less well-established subdisci-
plines in humor research. Amy Carrell provides a solid historical overview.
Dineh Davis looks at humor from the perspective of communication studies.
Tarez Graban pioneers the rhetorical take on humor. Hempelmann, already
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 chap-
ter 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 in-
terfere 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 aca-
demic 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 ad-
vanced 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 Chom-
sky’s (1965) work, linguistics has developed a view of itself that requires an
explicit theory. As Nirenburg and Raskin (2004, Ch. 2) demonstrate, this
6 Victor Raskin
theory comes complete with a methodology that generates descriptions for

the object of linguistics, text. Linguistics has been most successful in devel-
oping such theories in the syntactic analysis of sentences, providing method-
ologies 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 them-
selves 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 fash-
ions/gimmicks, often introduced by a temporarily dominating figure. In fact,
for a number of years, after the author’s obligatory appeal to develop the the-
ory 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 psychol-
ogy of humor, back in the early 1990s, Willibald Ruch practiced the null-
hypotheis 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 energeti-
cally 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 the-
oretical 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
reading a paper in such a discipline, one has to reverse-engineer the underly-

ing premises, and when challenged about them, the authors often sincerely do
not understand why they are questioned about something they never explic-
itly 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, prefer-
ably 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 the-
ory 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 ontologic-
al 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
8 Victor Raskin
sentence and, ultimately, of the entire text in a simple LISP-like formalism

to model as closely as possible the human understanding. Its ontology con-
tains 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 prop-
erties 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 say ; as in Spencer said a word
cat v
subj root $var1
cat n
obj root $var2
cat n
2 root say ; as in Spencer said that it
cat v ; rained
subj root $var1
cat n
comp root $var2
sem-struc
1 2 inform ; both syntactic structures have
agent ^$var1 ; the same semantic structure,
theme ^$var2 ; agent ^$var1, where ‘^’ is read
; as ‘the meaning of,’ and theme
; ^$var2 – the variables provide
; mappings between syntactic
; and semantic structures
(2) 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
Using first the preprocessor taking care of special characters, removing the
markups, stemming the morphology, and performing the minimal syntactic
parsing driven by the syn-struc zones of each lexical entry, the semantic
processor called the OntoParser transforms the sentence (3) into the simpli-
fied text-meaning representation (TMR), also – believe it or not – somewhat
simplified, in (4)
(3) Dresser Industries said it expects that major capital expenditure for
expansion of U.S. manufacturing capacity will reduce imports from
Japan.
(4)
author-event-1
agent value unknown
theme value inform-1
time
time-begin > inform-1.time-end
time-end unknown
inform-1
agent value Dresser Industries
theme value decrease-1
time
time-begin unknown
time-end (< decrease-1.time-begin) (< import-1.time-begin)
(< reduce-1.time-begin)
(< expend-1 .time-begin) (< increase-1.time-begin)
decrease-1
agent value unknown
theme value import-1
instrument value expend-1
time
time-begin (>inform-1.time-end ) (> expend-1.time-begin)
(> import-1.time-begin)
time-end < import-1.begin-time
import-1
agent value unknown
theme value unknown
10 Victor Raskin
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 unknown
theme value manufacture-1.theme
time
time-begin (> inform.time-end ) (< manufacture-1.begin-time)
time-end unknown
manufacture-1
agent value unknown
theme value unknown
location value USA
time
time-begin > inform.time-end
time-end unknown
modality-1
type potential ; this is the meaning of expects in (1)
value 1 ; this is the maximum value of potential
scope decrease-1
modality-2
type potential ; this is the meaning of capacity in (1)
value 1
scope manufacture-1
co-reference-1
increase-1.agent manufacture-1.agent
co-reference-2
import-1.theme manufacture-1.theme
Essentially, the TMR is a set of embedded events, with the properties for each
event filled with the appropriate case role fillers. Lower events fill a case role
for a higher event. Notably, events and objects do not correspond at all to the
verbs and nouns in the sentence. The modalities, aspects, co-references and
other “parametric” elements make the meaning of the sentence even more
explicit that it is for the native speaker. Thus, for instance, speakers are not
aware of the top authoring event, even if they know that somebody did write
the sentence.
One of the main bragging rights in ontological semantics has been its
disambiguation ability. Ambiguity is indeed one of the two or three major
problem in formulating and explicating the rules of language, as internal-
ized in the native speakers’ minds, and the said native speakers are protected
from fully realizing the nature of the ambiguity disaster in natural language
by a naïve but amazingly successful natural disambiguation mechanism: it
just highlights, as it were, one of the meanings of the word as appropriate,
the speaker “runs” with it, and most of the time succeeds. When it does not
work out, the speaker actually reveals his or her subconscious awareness of
the ambiguity by backtracking, i. e., going back to the source of the incorrect
interpretation, and tries to pull the trick with an alternative one. Thus, if a na-
tive speaker hears the sentence It’s a lovely table, he or especially she may
think furniture. But the continuation, I love the sixth row data sends them
back to the alternative, chart meaning of table.
To be useful for ontological semantics, the disambiguation mechanism of
ontological semantics, besides trying to model as faithfully as possible the
native speaker’s natural mechanism, must also take into consideration that
humor, unlike the ordinary language usage where disambiguation is a must,
is often deliberately ambiguous. So, in the ontological semantics of humor,
an ongoing search for intended ambiguity must take place. One advantage
over the scripts that ontological semantics has is a built-in opposedness of the
handful of properties, such as normal/abnormal, real/unreal, good/bad, etc.,
on which most jokes are based (cf. Raskin 1987).
12 Victor Raskin
It is probably somewhat premature yet to attempt a full-fledged ontologic-

al 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 imperi-
alism is continuing unabated, and even more complex and unreadable formal-
isms 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 sophisticat-
ed 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-
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 whatso-
ever. 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 ap-
preciate (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 infer-

encing like in (6–7) above, and not just in humor. My own sophistication
about sophistication is still growing: it is a work in progress.
14 Victor Raskin
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 Uni-
versity.
Hempelmann, Christian F., Victor Raskin, and Katrina E. Triezenberg
2006 Computer, tell me a joke ... but please make it funny: Computation-
al humor with ontological semantics. In: Ingrid Russell and Zdravko
Markov (eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Florida Artifi-
cial 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
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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 con-
sequences. Behavior refers to activities and processes that can be objective-
ly assessed and recorded. They may be visible externally (like walking, or
talking), or via a recording device (such as the action of a particular mus-
cle). 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 inter-
nal (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 extra-
verted 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 empir-
ical study of various physiological components of laughter, like respiration,
18 Willibald Ruch
vocalization, pupil dilation, or heart rate was undertaken (Boeke 1899; Feleky
1916; Hecker 1873; Heitler 1904; Raulin 1900; Schirmer 1903) as well as
the first observations of pathological and drug-induced laughter and possible
neurophysiological correlates were made (Brown 1915; James 1882; Meu-
nier 1909; von Bechterew 1894).
The influence of philosophy was most visible and lasting through its sub-
field of aesthetics, which addressed not only qualia like beauty, harmony
tragedy, but also the “comic”. The first empirical studies of the “comic” by
psychologists, like Hall and Allin (1897), Heymans (1896), Hollingworth
(1911), Kraepelin (1885), Lipps (1898), and Martin (1905) continued in this
tradition albeit aimed at providing experimental evidence for early theories
and notions. Experimental aesthetics (see Berlyne 1974; Ruch and Hehl 2007)
would indeed be one natural home for the psychological study of humor if we
had not merged into an interdisciplinary field. Readers of other disciplines,
however, should note that as a science, psychology endeavors to answer ques-
tions through the systematic collection and logical analysis of objectively
observable data. An empirical study typically utilizes a sophisticated meth-
odology, e.g., carefully thought out experimental designs, psychometrically
sound assessment tools, and statistical treatment of the data collected. Those
and related features separate scientific articles from pop psychology books
and essays.
Psychology has always been one of the disciplines contributing most to
the knowledge on humor. However, research in humor and laughter, like in
other positive phenomena, surprisingly, has been peripheral in psychology
during the 20th century. Not only were relatively few studies dedicated to
humor (compared to anger, anxiety or depression), but also interest in psy-
chology came in waves, each of which had a different focus. For example,
while the rediscovery of humor as a research topic in the 1970 had a strong
experimental, developmental, and cognitive focus, the research starting in
the mid 80-ies was directed more towards personality, and applied issues like
health and therapy. However, we can’t say that the basic issues addressed in
the 1970s are solved by now and we are on safe grounds when having pro-
gressed to the application of humor. Luckily, a recent textbook summarized
most of the pertinent literature including the more historical ones (Martin
2007a). Nevertheless, readers are advised to study the anthologies and jour-
nal articles of those times, as not all knowledge from that time is preserved in
recent books. Books like the ones by Goldstein and McGhee (1972), McGhee
(1979), Chapman and Foot (1976, 1977), McGhee and Goldstein (1983a,
1983b) can be considered to be classics and up to date in some respect. Also,
Psychology of humor 19
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 Csikszent-
mihalyi 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 Psy-
chiatric 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 inter-
national frame of reference for the definition of character and its assessment
across the lifespan. It also forms the basis for designing and evaluating inter-
ventions that bring about individual character strength. This has been the re-
search 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 un-
derstanding 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 system-
atic 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 relat-
ing to the structure and dynamics of humor. As psychology is concerned with
people, the view onto humor will be made from the individual’s perspective;
e.g., the phenomena associated with responding to or creating humor and
not a description of humor itself. It is not aimed to give a full account of the
psychological literature, which is not possible given the space constrictions.
Rather sources will be mentioned where further information can be looked up
20 Willibald Ruch
if needed. For a fuller account of the literature the reader is referred to other
sources (e.g., Martin 2007a; Roeckelein 2002).
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 re-
sponse”, 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” in-
volved in amusement (Lyman and Waters 1986). However, the second mean-
ings 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 ap-
propriate 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 frequent-
ly 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 “fun-
niness” ratings typically are prone to produce skewed distributions. Most in-
dividuals do find a given stimulus not funny, and typically there are always in-
dividuals 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 pos-
ition 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,
hilarious, or droll. Humor also seems to have different “flavors”, such as bit-
ter, salty or dark. Depending on how narrow or broad we define the realm of
humor (see below) we also do have phenomena like irony, satire, sarcasm, or
mock/ridicule. While those may well be perceived as funny, it is questionable
that the sole rating of degree of funniness fully represents the experiential
world of the receiver. In other words, do ratings of ironic and sarcastic covary
with judgments of funny in irony and sarcasm, respectively? A factor analy-
sis of 23 qualities (e.g., funny, droll, bizarre, macabre, absurd, subtle) used
to judge 60 jokes and cartoons yielded a two-dimensional space (Samson
and Ruch 2005). One dimension was more cognitive (subtle, ingenious vs.
odd, bizarre) and referred to more structural features of jokes and the other
referred more to motivational qualities (stinging, macabre vs. droll, touch-
ing) presumable reflecting the impact of the content of jokes and cartoons.
Nevertheless, all 23 terms assumed unique places in that space suggesting
that they all measured different aspects. The perception of “funniness” was
located exactly in the diagonal (subtle high, droll high) suggesting that both
dimensions contributed equally to this perception.
Smiling
Smiling is the most frequent response to jokes. A review of studies reveals

that in experiments smiling occurs roughly five times more often than laugh-
ter (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 zy-
gomatic 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 configur-
ation named (Ekman, Davidson, and Friesen 1990) the Duchenne display (to
honor Duchenne who first described how this pattern distinguished enjoy-
ment 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 caus-
ing 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
22 Willibald Ruch
(Ekman 2005; Frank and Ekman 1993; Ruch 1990). Smiles not following
those definitions are unlikely to reflect genuine enjoyment of humor.
This does not exhaust the number of types of smiles as there may be smil-
ing involved in blends of emotions (e.g., when enjoying a disgusting or fright-
ening film), smiles masking negative emotions (e.g., pretending enjoyment
when actually sadness or anger is felt), miserable, flirting, sadistic, embar-
rassment, compliance, coordination, contempt, and phony etc. smiles (see
Ekman 1985; Bänninger-Huber 1996). In humor experiments unilateral con-
tractions of the buccinator muscle (i.e., the smile of contempt) often goes
along with finding the jokes distasteful (Ruch 1990, 1997; Ruch and Rath
1993).
While the expression of smiling is innate we have learned when and to
who show or not show enjoyment, and with what intensity. Also in experi-
ments the social situations may activate those display rules, which might alter
our facial actions. Scholars of humor should therefore look at facial signs of
the attempt to dampen, control, or suppress smiling, as those are of signifi-
cance (e.g., Ekman and Rosenberg 2005; Keltner 2005). When the experi-
menter or a companion is present, phony smiles may occur. Phony smiles try
to convince somebody that one enjoys humor when actually nothing much is
felt. These are deliberate (voluntary, contrived) contractions of the zygomatic
major muscles (that might be unilateral, outside the time limits given above,
and most likely also not having a smooth ballistic movement). Most impor-
tantly, the eye region is not involved in this type of smiling. Deliberate facial
actions probably have their origin in the motor strip of the neocortex, while
spontaneous emotional movements originate in the subcortical motor centers
(Wild, Rodden, Rapp, Erb, Grodd, and Ruch 2006).
Smiling (and the facial component of laughter) is best assessed with the
help of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; Ekman and Friesen 1978;
Ekman, Friesen, and Hager 2002). FACS is a comprehensive, anatomically
based system for measuring all visually discernible facial movement. It de-
scribes all visually distinguishable facial activity on the basis of 44 unique
action units (AUs), as well as several categories of head and eye positions
and movements. FACS coding procedures allow for coding of the intensity
of each facial action on a 5-point intensity scale, for the timing of facial ac-
tions, and for the coding of facial expressions in terms of events. An event
is the AU-based description of each facial expression, which may consist
of a single AU or many AUs contracted as a single expression. FACS there-
fore allows for a comprehensive assessment of all facial events related to
humor. Learning FACS takes approximately 100 hours or one week of inten-
sive training. Also applying FACS is time consuming, and less sophisticated
systems, such as the MAX (Izard 1983) and the AFFEX (Izard, Dougherty,
and Hembree 1983) exist, which require less time to score. Applications of
FACS to humor and the measurement of smiling can be found in Ekman and
Rosenberg (2005).
Laughter
Laughter is often seen as synonymous with humor. Our field was occasion-
ally referred to as the realm of the ridicula, the laughable (objects), and titles
of books or talks might be, e.g., “laughter in the medieval ages”, although
then not actually laughter is studied but occasions for laughter. In psychology
the two concepts are more carefully distinguished, as there is laughter with-
out humor (e.g., social, embarrassed, or nervous laughter) and enjoyment of
humor not always involves laughter (McGhee 1979), especially in experi-
ments, when research participants are tested in solitude (Ruch 1990). Still
the psychological study of humor includes the study of smiling and laughter
for a myriad of reasons. Not only are they a good indicator of the intensity
of the emotional response to humor (Ruch 1995), they also might mediate
some of the effects of humor on health or other outcomes (Martin 2001; Rot-
ton 2004).
Laughter is also not unambiguously defined in research articles and
encyclopedias. Sometimes researchers refer only to the respiratory or vocal
component of the expressive pattern (neglecting the face), sometimes they
refer to the whole act or behavioral episode. In studies of primates laughter
the face gets most attention (“relaxed open-mouth display”) and in everyday
life a smiling face is often referred to as “laughter” although the vocal parts
are missing. As a consequence of the lack of a comprehensive view on laugh-
ter, estimation of such basic parameters as duration yielded quite discrepant
results. While studies of the face suggest a mean duration of laugher of about
4.5 seconds (Ruch 1990), acoustic studies of laughter yield a mean duration
of 1.2 seconds. This is not surprising as the latter includes only the parts dur-
ing which respiratory changes occur and they cover only a smaller portion
of the entire response. Also, while a morphology-based taxonomy exists for
smiling (Ekman 1985), nothing comparable has been achieved for the more
complex behavior of laughter. While dictionaries distinguish between, for ex-
ample, hearty and derisive laughter, or between a guffaw, chuckle or chor-
tle, the separation is not done at an objective (e.g., physiological, muscular,
24 Willibald Ruch
acoustic) basis so far. Huber, Drack and Ruch (in press) report of a pilot study
with actors posing 23 putative categories of laughter. Decoder studies will
show whether actors agree in their interpretation of the laughs, whether some
types of laughs will yield different FACS-codes and whether naïve listeners
will be able to identify the nature of the laughs. Acoustic analyses of laughter
occasionally distinguish among types of laughs, such as laughter induced by
tickling, mocking laughter, or hearty laughter (Habermann 1955; Szameitat
2007).
Already Darwin (1872) gave a comprehensive and in many ways remarka-
bly accurate description of laughter in terms of respiration, vocalization, facial
action and gesture and posture, which was updated, elaborated, or corrected
in contemporary writings (Bachorowski, Smoski, and Owren 2001; Nwokah,
Davies, Islam, Hsu, and Fogel 1993; Ruch 1993; Ruch and Ekman 2001; Sza-
meitat 2007). He addressed the important issues. Thus, he noted that “... [t]he
sound of laughter is produced by a deep inspiration followed by short, inter-
rupted, spasmodic contraction of the chest, and especially of the diaphragm”
(Darwin 1997 [1872]: 199). “A man smiles - and smiling, as we shall see,
graduates into laughter.” (Charles Darwin 1997 [1872]: 195). “A graduated
series can be followed from violent to moderate laughter, to a broad smile, to
a gentle smile, and to the expression of mere cheerfulness” (p. 206). “Between
a gentle laugh and a broad smile there is hardly any difference except that in
smiling no reiterated sound is uttered, though a single rather strong expiration,
or slight noise - a rudiment of a laugh - may often be heard at the commence
ment of a smile” (p. 208). “During excessive laughter the whole body is often
thrown backward and shakes, or is almost convulsed.” (Darwin 1997 [1872]:
206–207).
Cognitive processes
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
be a necessary condition for humor (Deckers 1993). From this perspective,

humor involves the bringing together of two normally disparate ideas, con-
cepts, 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 im-
plicit 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 un-
resolvable incongruity, or the “safeness” of the context in which the incon-
gruity 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 sub-
tle aspect of jokes which renders incongruity meaningful or appropriate by
resolving or explaining it” Shultz 1976, pp. 12–13) refer to the process al-
ready, 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 in-
formation 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 nega-
tion 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 elab-
orated interpretation see Raskin 1985).
26 Willibald Ruch
How are jokes cognitively processed? Perhaps we need to distinguish three

stages. Historically, often two stage models were described, however, refer-
ring 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 differ-
ent (usually implausible or ludicrous) perspective. Eysenck (1942) goes be-
yond 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 incon-
gruity – 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 incongru-
ous, as it does not readily follow the prior “no” (especially as it is not supple-
mented by a statement to the patient that he was welcome to wait for the doc-
tor‘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 sud-
denly 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 cog-
nitive processes continue after resolving the incongruity. Unlike after real
problem solving, the recipient is aware that the fit of the solution is a pseudo-
or “as if ”-fit.
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 viola-
tion 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 interpre-
tations 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 cog-
nitive 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 apprecia-
tion (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 experi-
ments; 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 vari-
ation of the key ingredients (e.g., degree of incongruity, resolution, salience
of contents) cannot be varied independently of each other by manipulating
28 Willibald Ruch
a joke or cartoon. For example, making the punch line more incongruous may
simultaneously mean to change its content or other properties. One way out
is, for example, to leave the jokes intact, but undertake a differential priming
of the two meanings of a key word in a joke (Wilson 1979), or a priming of
the structure (Derks and Arora 1993) of the jokes to follow. Another possibil-
ity is the use of artificial humor stimuli. This may take, for example, the form
of sequences of words deviating from proper grammatical sequences (Eh-
renstein and Ertel 1978), adjective-noun pairs varying in semantic distance
(Godkewitsch 1974), a domains-interaction approach (Hillson and Martin
1994), computer-drawn caricatures with various degrees of exaggeration
(Rhodes, Brennan and Carey 1987), or the weight-judging paradigm (WJP;
Deckers 1993; Ruch 2001; Ruch, Köhler, Beermann, and Deckers 2008).
Such studies typically demonstrate the importance of an intermediate degree
of incongruity.
So far little research was devoted to the temporal characteristics of the
perception of humor. For example, wit is quick, in jokes there is still a sud-
den manifestation of the incongruous, while in humorous stories there might
be a gradual realization of the incongruous. Thus, also the perception of fun-
niness differs in intensity, duration and form over time. Finally, humor may
involve different modes; for example, it can be verbal (e.g., jokes), graphical
(cartoons, caricatures), acoustical (funny music), or behavioral (e.g., panto-
mime), again making matters very complex. So far, the scope of most theories
is limited to the analysis of jokes and cartoons (but see Attardo 2001).
Motivational processes
One can argue that the cognitive-structural aspects in jokes are peripheral, as
we might respond more to the connotative elements involved. For example,
in the joke above some might experience a rapid succession of one’s sym-
pathy for a patient in pain and one’s feelings towards adultery. Or, we just
love the sexual element in there or are repulsed by it. Indeed, sexual themes
apparently are one of the most prominent contents in humor (Grumet 1989).
Also, other topics like scatological ones (bathroom humor), violence and
aggression, sick, black, ethnic, blondes and Scots etc. come into mind when
one does an intuitive classification and those are all content-related. Indeed,
several theories tried to explain the favorite topics and targets.
Generally, two principal models can serve as a theoretical framework for
deriving hypotheses for research on appreciation of tendentious content in
humor. According to Freud (1905), repressed impulses find relief in a dis-

guised 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 mo-
tive 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 (Gold-
stein, Suls, and Anthony 1972). Their experiment showed that experimentally
established salience of certain themes (in their case aggression, but also au-
tomobiles 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 ex-
tended to the study of individual differences in appreciation of sexual humor
(Ruch and Hehl 1987, 1988). It was hypothesized that sexual topics are ha-
bitually 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 differ-
ences 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 dispar-
aging 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
30 Willibald Ruch
weakness and ugliness. Thomas Hobbes (1651) stated that the passion of
laughter is nothing else but some sudden glory arising from some sudden
conception of some eminence in ourselves, by comparison with the infir-
mity of others, or with our own formerly. Laughter is thought to result from
a sense of superiority derived from the disparagement of another person or of
one’s own past blunders or foolishness. Currently Gruner (1978) is one of the
most outspoken champions of this approach as for him ridicule is the basic
component of all humorous material, and if one wants to understand a piece
of humorous material it is necessary only to find out who is ridiculed, how,
and why. So for Gruner a combination of a loser, a victim of derision or ridi-
cule, with suddenness of loss is necessary and sufficient to cause laughter.
Disparagement theory was most often tested with pre-existing groups, or
in an individual differences approach, but there is also experimental support
(Zillmann 1983). In an experiment half of the research participants were first
negatively predisposed to a female experimenter (who behaved inappropri-
ately to them). Then, in one experimental condition, a mishap occurred to
the experimenter (she spilled a cup of tea on herself). Only this combination
(angered subjects see experimenter spilling tea on herself) led to higher facial
enjoyment. Spilling the tea alone did not do it when subjects were not nega-
tively predisposed to experimenter or when the angered subjects saw her just
spilling the tea (but not on her).
Research utilizing pre-existing groups (e.g., males vs. females, US-Amer-
icans vs. Canadians, professors vs. students, employers vs. employees) typ-
ically uses two sets of jokes or cartoons. One in which a member of the first
group disparages a member of the other group, and another where the agent
– victim – roles are reversed. Then the degree to which members of par-
ticular groups are amused by humor that disparages members of their own
versus other groups is examined. For example, McGhee and Lloyd (1981)
and McGhee and Duffey (1983) found that preschoolers found it funnier
when an adult/parent is victimized in humor than when a child is victim-
ized. Also, Zillmann and Cantor (1976) found evidence in support of this
theory in a study in which a group of college students and a group of middle
aged business and professional people were presented jokes involving peo
ple in superior–subordinate relationships (father–son, employer–employee,
etc.). As predicted, students gave higher ratings of funniness to the jokes in
which the subordinate disparaged his superior than to those in which the su-
perior disparaged his subordinate, whereas the ratings of the professionals
revealed the opposite relationship. These theories have been quite success-
ful in predicting appreciation of racial, ethnic, political, and gender forms of
disparagement humor (see Zillmann 1983). However, it seems that the model
works well in predicting the preferences of groups, which are traditionally
superior (e.g. males appreciated jokes in which females were disparaged but
showed less appreciation for jokes in which a female disparaged a male) but
not of the inferior groups (females showed no preference for ‘put down of
male’-jokes). On the contrary, sometimes the inferior groups laughed more
at jokes putting down a member of their own group.
Unfortunately studies of disparagement humor do not report the size of
the intercorrelation among funniness scores of the humor categories (e.g.,
anti-male, anti-female humor) studied, nor do they report correlations with
appreciation of non-disparagement humor. While the role of disparagement
is supported by studies we do not know exactly how much of the variance in
humor appreciation it actually accounts for. A simple but convincing dem-
onstration of the relevance of disparagement in differential humor appreci-
ation would be that, for example, there is a negative correlation between
rated funniness of “American puts down Canadian” humor and funniness of
“Canadian puts down American” when computed across a mixed sample of
Canadians and Americans. Furthermore, even for the separate groups the cor-
relations between parallel sets of disparagement humor (with the same target)
should be much higher than their correlation with funniness of disparagement
humor (with different targets) and even much higher with funniness of non-
disparaging humor of the same (most likely the incongruity-resolution) struc
ture. No such evidence yet exists.
In summary, the superiority/disparagement approach offers an explanation
for how negative or hostile attitudes are expressed through humor. However,
Suls (1977) has argued that the processing of disparagement jokes is the same
as for all other humor (i.e., other incongruity-resolution jokes). There are the
same two stages and the topic just affects how well the recipient masters those
two. Suls suggested that disparagement humor typically involves an incon-
gruity relating to some misfortune befalling a victim, and this incongruity can
only be recognized or resolved (and therefore found funny) if one has a nega-
tive or unsympathetic attitude toward the victim.
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/
32 Willibald Ruch
playful mood or frame of mind, etc. refer to such states of enhanced or low-
ered readiness to respond to humor or act humorously. We are all inclined to
appreciate, initiate, or laugh at humor more at given times and less at others.
Thus, we also need to consider and measure actual dispositions for humor;
internal states and moods that vary over time. Like traits, those are internal
dispositions. However, they are of a transient nature and may be affected by
environmental and social factors. A play signal (McGhee 1979) may shift
a serious frame of mind into a playful one, and alcohol might raise our level
of cheerful mood; both, in turn, might facilitate responding more favorably
to humor. A reciprocal relationship is likely too; laughing a lot will have an
impact on mood level and frame of mind. Thus, there will be a feedback loop
between actual states and moods and humor behavior.
For a more complete understanding of humor (and for successful experi-
menting) we do seem to have to distinguish among the components of trait,
state/mood, and behavior/acts. Traits are relatively stable over time and con-
sistent across situations. They may predict the emergence of humor-related
mood and of humor behavior; e.g., individuals high in sense of humor may
get into a cheerful mood more quickly when joining a merry group and they
also might smile more often in response to attempts at jocularity. States are of
shorter duration, fluctuate in intensity, and may vary in response to eliciting
conditions. In cases of homologous states and traits, the trait may be seen as
the average state; e.g., trait cheerfulness will correlate highly with measures
of state cheerfulness aggregated across a longer time period. States may also
be seen as dispositions for behavior. When we are in a silly mood we more
readily engage in clowning behavior, and in an elated mood we will more
likely laugh at a joke rather than merely smile.
Humor research has acknowledged the effects of mood/states on humor
(see review by Deckers 2007). McGhee (1979) emphasized the importance
of a playful (as opposed to serious) frame of mind for the successful process-
ing of a humorous message. Apter and Smith (1977) distinguish between
telic and para-telic states with the latter being conducive to humor. In their
reversal theory (see Apter 1982) seriousmindedness is one defining elem-
ent in the telic or goal-oriented metamotivational state, while playfulness
marks its obverse, the paratelic or non goal-oriented state. Svebak and Apter
(1987) report that a funny videotape changed participants’ state to paratel-
ic. Relatedly, Raskin (1985) distinguishes between the bona-fide (serious,
truth-committed) mode of communication and the non-bona-fide (humorous)
mode of joke telling and argues that the non-humorous, serious person wants
to function exclusively in the bona fide mode of communication. While no
explicit reference to frame of mind is made, one can see that this volitional
aspect refers to a preferred state or frame of mind. Thus, whatever name they
used, the theorists stated that the actual level of seriousness vs. playfulness
is essential. Finally, several theoretical accounts of the humor process more
or less indirectly refer to changing states of seriousness vs. playfulness. For
example, Frijda (1986) considers laughter to be preceded by a sudden annul-
ment of seriousness; for Sroufe and Waters (1976) and Wilson (1979) if fol-
lows the buildup of strain or tension and its abrupt relief, and Rothbart (1976)
highlights the necessity that the setting in which the incongruity is processed
is “safe” (i.e., non-dangerous, non-serious).
While theoretical accounts clearly suggest that humor research needs
a concept of state seriousness (vs. playfulness or humorousness) to account
for the fact that the individuals’ tendency, preparedness, and readiness to en-
gage in humorous interactions differs over time, the empirical research con-
ducted did not frequently involve this dimension of frame of mind (Deckers
2007). One reason might be that scales assessing current mood states do not
include frame of mind but more affect-based mood states like elation, sad-
ness or excitement. Thus, the few studies of mood and humor appreciation
had to rely on whatever mood state was included in the multidimensional
scale used. In such studies scales of elation, vigor and surgency did predict
subsequent subjective and/or facial enjoyment of humor (Ruch 1990; Wicker,
Thorelli, Barron, and Willis 1981). Those scales are not really tailored to the
needs of humor research.
Analyses at the level of individual items showed that in two studies mood
states relating to cheerfulness predicted facial enjoyment better than the glo-
bal category of elation (Ruch 1990, 1995). This effect and the fact that nega-
tive mood states were not predictive of appreciation of humor anyway, gave
rise to the idea to tailor the mood states more specifically to humor research
and look for actual dispositions that might facilitate but also impair the induc-
tion of humor. Based on research of several sources (e.g., literature review,
lexicon) a state-trait model of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood was
put forward, and scales for their assessment were created (Ruch, Köhler, and
van Thriel 1996, 1997). The inspection of the factor loadings of the posi-
tive mood terms allowed distinguishing between the components of cheerful
mood and hilarity (see Table 1). The former is more calm and composed and
the latter is more aroused and contains the items relating to action tendencies
(e.g., I feel the urge to laugh). State cheerfulness is expected to represent
a state of heightened readiness to respond to a humor stimulus with enjoy-
ment. It turned out that most interventions to increase appreciation of humor
34 Willibald Ruch
Table 1. The definitional components of the state concepts

Facets of Short description
State cheerfulness
cheerful mood Presence of a cheerful mood state (more tranquil,
composed)
hilarity Presence of a merry mood state (more shallow, outward)
State seriousness
earnestness Presence of an earnest mental attitude, task-oriented style
pensiveness Presence of a pensive or thoughtful mood state
soberness Presence of a sober or dispassionate frame of mind
State bad mood
sadness/melancholy Presence of a sad or melancholy mood state
ill-humor 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 seri-
ous individuals and those in a bad mood may be perceived as humorless,
the reasons are different. In the latter case, the generation of positive affect
is impaired by the presence of a predominant negative affective state; in the
former, there is lowered interest in engaging in humorous interaction or in
switching to a more playful frame of mind; i.e., a stronger aspect of volition
is involved. There may be differences among bad mood facets as well. While
an ill-humored person, like the serious one, may not want to be involved in
humor, the person in a sad mood may not be able to do so even if he or she
would like to. Also, while the sad person is not antagonistic to a cheerful
group, the ill-humored one may be. Individuals high in trait bad mood might
be predisposed to be “out of humor” easily; i.e. losing humor. Bad mood
might also be a disposition facilitating certain forms of humor, such as mock-
ery, irony, cynicism, and sarcasm (see Dworkin and Efran 1967; Ruch and
Köhler 2007). The state part of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI-
S, Ruch et al. 1997) allows for scoring the seven facets as well as the three
scales and thus the hypotheses relating to different states of humorlessness
can be empirically examined.
Nevertheless, we need more research on the structure of mood states that
have an impact on humor or are outcomes of humor. Furthermore, we need
to investigate the dynamics of mood relating to humor. Deckers (2007) out-
lines the various effects linking humor and mood, such as mood and cognitive
processing, mood regulation, effect of mood on activity preferences.
Personality
The trait approach to personality assumes that there are personality charac-
teristics stable over time and consistent across situations. A trait or person-
ality characteristic is a descriptive hypothetical construct, an invention, not
an “existing” entity. It is a disposition for behavior, not the behavior itself. It
cannot be observed directly but inferred via indicators, such as tests, ques-
tionnaires, behavior observation, etc. A certain conceptualization of sense of
humor may be useful or not useful, but not true or false. Its usefulness has to
be demonstrated empirically. There are different types of personality traits; at
least we distinguish between ability (maximal performance) and style (typ-
ical behavior). However, the non-cognitive traits may be further divided into
temperament, interests, attitudes, motivation, character strength, virtues, etc.
Likewise, different forms of abilities may be distinguished, such as memory,
convergent and divergent ability (or creativity). Those distinctions are not
trivial, as they influence, for example, the type of questions to be asked, but
also the type of measurement approach.
Everyday observation tells that there are enduring interindividual differ-
ences in humor behavior and experience. Some people tend habitually to
appreciate, initiate, or laugh at humor more often, or more intensively, than
others do. In everyday language this enduring disposition typically is as-
cribed to the possession of a “sense of humor.” Dictionaries typically contain
various type nouns (e.g., cynic, wit, wag), trait-describing adjectives (e.g.,
humorous, witty, cynical), and verbs (to tease, to joke, to humor or wind
up someone) that describe individuals characterized by one form of humor
or the other. When members of a culture validly observe, distinguish and
communicate among types of humorous and humorless people, when poets,
play writers, and philosophers describe humorous characters, then there is
plenty to base a psychological analysis on. Surprisingly, this has not been
done to a great extent. Neither the pre-scientific accounts of the sense of
humor have been modernized, nor is there a published attempt at systematiz-
ing the language of humor traits. Rather, psychologists worked on designing
instruments, and some also worked on the concept. Craik and Ware (2007)
is a good source for new directions in personality research on humor. A re-
view of the historical and current accounts as well as a survey of instruments
36 Willibald Ruch
can be found in a recent edited volume on the sense of humor (Ruch 2007a).
Some representative approaches are discussed next. It should be mentioned
beforehand that there is a variety of expressions in use often meaning the
same thing (e.g., sense of humor, styles of humor, humorous temperament,
creation of humor, wit etc.) and often the same expression is used for totally
unrelated aspects of humor (Ruch 2007b).
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 some-
how 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 se-
rious 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 qual-
ity specific to humor. Six other facets represent more genuine humor skills
and humor behavior and relate to individual differences in the fields of en-
joyment 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 play-
ful. 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 homoge-
neous 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 clari-
fied that it is better to reconceptualize them as “playfulness vs. seriousness”
and “positive mood/optimism vs. negative mood/pessimism.”
The dynamic part of the model is not yet substantiated. There is no empir-
ical study yet aimed at examining whether a shift in seriousness vs. playful-
ness indeed enhances the sense of humor; i.e., that playfulness (and low seri-
ousness) are “motors” for the other components of the sense of humor. While
there is evidence that the training changes several components of the sense
of humor (Sassenrath 2001), the intervention program that comes with the
scale does involve a training of the skills measured by this scale. Therefore,
strictly speaking, a positive evaluation of the effectiveness of the program
cannot count as evidence. A convincing test of the hypothesis would involve
a training of general playfulness (without any humor-related content) and yet
the study provides evidence that the humor skills develop.
McGhee’s positive vs. negative mood (or good vs. bad humor) scale refers
to a very old understanding of humor. After being a medical term (referring
to the four basic body fluids blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile as-
sociated with the so-called humor theory of temperament and humoral-pa-
thology) since the ancient Greeks the term humor survived in anthropology.
At that time one assumed that the predominance of humors or body fluids
was responsible for labile behavior or mood in general. So in the middle of
the 16th century humour referred to a more or less predominant mood qual-
ity, which could be either positive (good humour) or negative (bad humour).
Good humoured and bad humoured eventually became dispositions. By the
turn of the 16th century the dictionary definition of good humour was “the
condition of being in a cheerful and amiable mood; also, the disposition or
habit of amiable cheerfulness.” Such an affect-based state-trait approach to
humor is the core of the next model.
Ruch and colleagues (Ruch and Köhler 1999, 2007; Ruch et al. 1996,
1997; Sommer and Ruch in press) start from an entirely different perspec-
tive than McGhee but yield a rather similar outcome. Their temperament ap-
proach to humor is based on the premise that the affective and mental founda-
tions of humor are likely to be universal, even if the expression of humor may
vary across cultures and time. Therefore they bypass the concept of “sense
of humor” and also specific humor behaviors that may be culture specific but
focus on the “underlying” temperamental factors. Considering that humor is
not unidimensional, not unipolar and covers both affective and cognitive fac-
tors they postulate that cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood are the traits
forming the temperamental basis of humor.
Based on the study of several sources for each trait a facet model consist-
ing of five to six facets was generated and tested in several (German, Ameri-
can, English) samples. For example, trait cheerfulness (i.e., the disposition
38 Willibald Ruch
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 cheerful-
ness 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 grumpi-
ness) found empirical confirmation. The relationships between the three con-
cepts were outlined and tested and it was found that cheerfulness is nega-
tively 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 struc-
tural 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 in-
vestigating 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 theoretic-
al 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 mala-
daptive 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, self-
enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humor, each postulated to be com-
posed 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
ease, to facilitate relationships, and to reduce interpersonal tensions. Accord-

ing 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 in-
volves 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-en-
hancing 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, “put-
down,” or disparagement humor (as referred to by the “superiority” the-
ories 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 ingratiat-
ing 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 in-
volve the use of humor as a form of defensive denial, or the tendency to en-
gage 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 Question-
naire (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 (Camp-
bell 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
40 Willibald Ruch
example, the self-enhancing humor scale correlates highly with the Coping
Humor Scale (CHS); the author’s (Martin and Lefcourt 1983) prior measure
of the degree to which subjects report to use humor in coping with stress. The
HSQ also aims to replace the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire
(SHRQ; Martin and Lefcourt 1984). This instrument defines the sense of
humor as the “frequency with which a person smiles, laughs, and otherwise
displays mirth in a variety of life situations”, and was used rather success-
fully in research on stress and coping (see review by Martin 1996: 253–254).
While the self-enhancing and affiliative humor scales correlate significantly
and fairly strongly with the SHRQ and CHS, the aggressive and self-defeat-
ing scales seem to assess dimensions that are not tapped by these measures.
Adaptation of the concept underlying the HSQ to other cultures yielded that
the four dimensions by and large can be recovered from the translated items
(Chen and Martin 2007; Kazarian and Martin 2006; Saroglou and Scariot
2002; Tümkaya 2007).
Martin and colleagues used a top-down approach. They grouped theories
and derived representative statements for them. These were then empirical-
ly purified with the aim to derive homogeneous scales. A contrary approach
would be to disregard homogeneity but underscore the representativeness and
exhaustiveness of the humor behaviors, attitudes, feelings, habits or whatever
is being sampled. Indeed, research shows that the list of humor-related acts is
not endless. For a comprehensive approach to humor one could collect state-
ments that can be made to describe individuals’ everyday humor behavior.
Furthermore, it is difficult to justify that some behaviors are more important
or central than others, as it is implicitly done when scales are built around
a cluster of items (perhaps at the expense of items that are less redundant).
The approach by Craik and collaborators (Craik, Lampert, and Nelson
1993, 1996; Craik and Ware 2007) bears in mind such considerations. They
also pursue a theory-guided approach to humor and highlight the importance
of a community-oriented analysis of personality and humor. During their
lives people obtain a reputation in the social network they live in and other
members of the community can provide a comprehensive portrait of the tar-
get person’s style of humor when aided by an appropriate assessment tool,
such as the Humorous Behavior Q-sort Deck (HBQD; Craik et al. 1996).
Three features characterize the measurement approach underlying the HBQD,
namely the attempt to cover the whole behavioral domain of everyday humor-
ous conduct as comprehensively as possible (rather than formulating partly
redundant items for the assessment of a few selected traits or components of
humor), the focus on humor-related behaviors or behavior tendencies and,
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 lit-
erature 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 I–. Socially cold humorous style
Maintains group morale through humor. Smiles grudgingly.
Has a good sense of humor. Responds with a quick, but short-lived
smile.
Uses good-natured jests to put others at Is a ready audience but infrequent
ease. contributor of humorous anecdotes.
Relative to other traits, displays Has a bland, deadpan sense of humor.
a noteworthy sense of humor.
II+. Reflective humorous style II–. Boorish humorous style
Is more responsive to spontaneous Imitates the humorous style of
humor than to jokes. professional comedians.
Uses humor to express the contradictory Recounts familiar, stale jokes.
aspects of everyday events.
Takes pleasure in bemused reflections on Tells funny stories to impress people.
self and others.
Appreciates the humorous potential of Is competitively humorous, attempts to
persons and situations. top others.
III+. Competent humorous style III–. Inept humorous style
Displays a quick wit and ready repartee. Reacts in an exaggerated way to mildly
humorous comments.
Manifests humor in the form of clever Laughs at the slightest provocation.
retorts to others’ remarks.
Enhances humorous impact with a deft Spoils jokes by laughing before finishing
sense of timing. them.
Has the ability to tell long, complex Laughs without discriminating between
anecdotes successfully. more and less clever remarks.
IV+. Earthy humorous style IV–. Repressed humorous style
Has a reputation for indulging in coarse Does not respond to a range of humor
or vulgar humor. due to moralistic constraints.
Delights in parodies which others might Is squeamish about “sick jokes.”
find blasphemous or obscene.
42 Willibald Ruch
Table 2. (cont.)
IV+. Earthy humorous style IV–. Repressed humorous style

Relishes scatological anecdotes Enjoys hearing jokes but rarely
(bathroom humor). remembers them.
V+. Benign humorous style V–. Mean-spirited humorous style
Finds intellectual word play enjoyable. Occasionally makes humorous remarks
betraying a streak of cruelty.
Enjoys witticisms which are Needles others, intending it to be just
intellectually challenging. kidding.
Enjoys limericks and nonsense rhymes. Is scornful; laughs “at” others, rather
than “with” them.
Enjoys exchanging topical jokes and Jokes about others’ imperfections.
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 Humor-
ous 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 Humor-
ous 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 rau-
cous delight in joking about taboo topics, at the positive pole, and an inhi-
bition 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 men-
tally 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
study is based on the quotidian term (i.e., the current understanding of sense
of humor by laypeople), not the concept stemming from a theory, or the
philosophical literature. Craik and Ware (2007) demonstrate the usefulness
of the tool for the analysis of the humor style of comedians, such as Woody
Allen, Whoopi Goldberg, and Lucille Ball.
This approach did yield the most differentiated structural model so far.
Also, it seems to be most comprehensive in terms of the behavioral indica-
tors. Several studies made use of this approach (e.g., Kirsh and Kuiper 2003;
Saroglou 2004). Unfortunately, most studies only apply the scale, or variants
of it, but the pool of statements was rarely used to investigate the model or to
develop it further (Esser 2001). The model also seems ideally suited to test
method variance in humor assessment as some of its dimensions can be as-
sessed by different measurements approaches as well. For example, earthy
humor could be compared with the typical joke test of funniness of sick, sex-
ual or bathroom humor, and competent humor might be related to perform-
ance tests of being witty.
Humor as an ability
The etymology of the term wit involves knowledge, mind and reasoning cap-
acity and even today the term wit (like esprit) is the humor term showing the
strongest semantic link to superior intelligence (Schmidt-Hidding 1963). In
the past humor and wit sometimes meant the same thing, but often they were
seen as opposed to each other. As Schmidt-Hidding (1963) pointed out, the
term wit, like humor, did not enter the field of the comic before the late 16th
century. At this time a humour meant an odd, uncommon, and eccentric char-
acter whose peculiarities emerged from an imbalance of body fluids and who
therefore was laughed at. This involuntary funny, odd and quaint object of
laughter later became known as the humourist, and the man of humour took
pleasure in exposing and imitating the peculiarities of the humourist. During
this period humor and wit became seen as talents relating to the ability to
make others laugh. Before that humor was merely understood as a predomin-
ant mood. The idea that humor involves a component of ability prevails until
today, although this concept is less well understood and a variety of names
(e.g., wit, humor creation, humor production) are being used.
Today, wit may be defined as the ability to make clever remarks in an
amusing way. It is a talent referring to using unexpected associations be-
tween contrasting or disparate words or ideas to create a clever humorous
44 Willibald Ruch
effect. Thus, it is appropriate to conceptualize this aspect of humor as abil-

ity, 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 produc-
tion, some psychologists also pursued a temperament or competence ap-
proach. 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 (stor-
ies, 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 add-
itional 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 litera-
ture where an optimal fit between the child’s cognitive ability and the dif-
ficulty 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 appre-
ciation (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 in-
structed 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-
ferent types, e.g., repartee, humorous fiction, cartoons etc.) to see how their
convergent validity and dimensionality is.
Components have been separated at a rational basis. Feingold and Maz-
zella (1991, 1993) developed a multidimensional model of “wittiness.”
They defined wittiness as the ability to perceive in an ingeniously humorous
manner the relationship between seemingly incongruous things. Accord-
ing to them wittiness is composed of the three dimensions of humor mo-
tivation, humor cognition, and humor communication. This model of wit-
tiness is not a pure ability model as it covers not only the person’s ability
to create humor, but also the degree to which the person is motivated to be
funny and is able to communicate the humor effectively. Humor cognition
is an intellectual variable related to intelligence and creativity, whereas mo-
tivation and communication humor are related to social and temperamen-
tal variables. The authors developed measures of each facet of the model,
which were generally found to correlate with each other. Feingold and Maz-
zella (1991) distinguished between two types of “verbal humor ability”,
namely memory for humor (akin to Cattell’s crystallized intelligence) and
humor cognition (comparable to fluid intelligence). The former is measured
by tests of humor information and joke knowledge, and the latter measured
with tests of humor reasoning and joke comprehension. Research with those
measures revealed significant correlations between traditional measures of
verbal intelligence and the tests of humor cognition, whereas memory for
humor was not strongly related to intelligence. Humor reasoning was also
correlated with creative thinking.
Finally, some multidimensional models of humor do contain elements
that seem to refer to ability in general, and humor creation ability in specif-
ic (e.g., Craik and Ware 2007; Svebak 1974; Ziv 1984), although they rely
on questionnaire approach. Svebak (1974) suggested that individual differ-
ences in sense of humor involve variations in the three dimensions of me-
ta-message sensitivity, personal liking of the humorous role; and emotional
permissiveness. The first of these dimensions involves a cognitive ability
(i.e., the ability to take an irrational, mirthful perspective on situations, see-
ing the social world as it might be rather than as it is) related to intelligence
or creativity, the second has to do with attitudes and defensiveness, and the
third involves emotional temperament. Similarly, Ziv (1979) distinguishes
between humor creation and humor appreciation, and in the model by Craik
et al. (1996) one of the five factors relates to a Competent Humorous Style
suggests an active wit and capacity to convey humorous anecdotes effec-
tively (compared to the Inept Humorous Style, referring to a lack of skill
46 Willibald Ruch
and confidence in dealing with humor at the negative pole). Those scales
have been shown to have low correlations with ability measures of humor
creativity (e.g., Köhler and Ruch 1996).
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 amuse-
ment. 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. Ac-
cording to Schmidt-Hidding (1963) in the 19th century humor became a spe-
cific 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 question-
naires of sense of humor are typically blind to the dark side of humor. Never-
theless, the idea of humor as a virtue was never explicitly transformed into
a modern personality concept and there is no instrument specifically measur-
ing 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, human-
ity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Humor is located at the level
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 transcend-
ence 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 Swit-
zerland confirm that that the VIA-IS humor scale is a good predictor of satis-
faction 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 vir-
tues of humanity and transcendence.
Humor as an aesthetic perception
From the beginning of testing of sense of humor psychologists were inter-

ested 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-
48 Willibald Ruch
ical, sexual, scatological, social satire, hostile, demeaning to men, demeaning

to women, ethnic, and sick humor. While intuitive and theory based classifi-
cations 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 “ag-
gressive” rarely end up in the same factor. Also, beginning with the first fac-
torial study by Eysenck (1942), structural factors, like complexity/simplicity
showed to be of importance. However, unlike in general research on person-
ality, 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 out-
comes. 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 fac-
tors and so he extracted 12 presumably minor ones that are difficult to repli-
cate (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. sche-
matic (Sears 1934); cognitive vs. arctic factors (Eysenck 1942)) have to be
distinguished as two different sources of pleasure, and factor analytic stud-
ies 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 ap-
pearing: 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 charac-
terized 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 pro-
jective element in these jokes as essential things are not spelled out and have
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 under-
standing 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, how-
ever, “... 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 bilat-
erally 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
50 Willibald Ruch
Table 3. The 3 WD categories distinguished by (original and derived) GTVH-

parameters
GTVH-parameters INC-RES NON SEX
Degree of medium high medium (high for
incongruity NON SEX)
Degree of residual medium high low (high for NON
incongruity SEX)
Degree of very simple to very simple to very –
resolution complex complex
Script opposition diverse actual/not actual diverse
less often; possible/
impossible more
often
SO antonymy diverse diverse sex/non sex prevails
Logical diverse diverse False analogies
mechanism (especially in INC-
RES and PURE)
Narrative Strategy Text, cartoons Cartoons with Text, cartoons with
with 1 panel a higher number of 1 panel (NON SEX
panels with more panels)
Pornotopia does not apply does not apply prevails in PURE
SEX
Target involves targets involves targets rarely involves targets
frequently 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 GTVH-
analysis of the 60 jokes and cartoons of the 3 WD. The distinguishing features
are listed in Table 3.
Table 3 shows that the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH; Attardo
and Raskin 1991) can contribute to the analysis of the 3 WD. However, it is
more the parameters derived from the GTVH that seem to distinguish among
the humor types rather than the original parameters (e.g., script opposition,
logical mechanism, narrative strategy, target).
These three humor factors consistently explain approximately 40% of
the total variance. They are considered to provide an exhaustive taxonomy
of jokes and cartoons at a very general level. Even when the recipients typ-
ically are asked how funny they find the joke at the moment and not in gen-
eral, the response is quite trait-like. Factor analytic studies show that there
is only about 5% state variance in the funniness scores. Also, manipulation
of internal state or external conditions (Derks et al. 2007) does not yield
strong effects and retest correlations are sufficiently high (Ruch 1992).
These factors were first extracted in studies of Austrian samples and later
replicated in Western countries like Belgium, England, France, Germany,
Israel, Italy, and Turkey (Ruch and Hehl 2007). While most of these studies
were in collaboration with researchers from the respective countries, they
cannot be regarded as independent replications of the factor structure. Such
studies would perhaps use markers of the factors but else use representa-
tive samples of humor from the respective country. Carretero-Dios, Perez,
and Buela-Casal (in press) were able to separate factors of incongruity-res-
olution and nonsense in Spain; however, they did not use the 3 WD to con-
firm the convergent validity. Recently, Ruch and Hehl (2007) argued that
other structural models need to be tested that might be more appropriate and
maybe would allow for the identification of further, perhaps more specific
content categories. More studies need to be done on substantiating the inter-
pretation of the factors.
Factor analysis was also used to uncover the dimensions of appreciation.
Results show that the response mode in humor appreciation is defined by
two nearly orthogonal components of positive and negative responses best
represented by ratings of funniness and aversiveness (Ruch 1992). Maxi-
mal appreciation of jokes and cartoons consists of high funniness and low
aversiveness; while minimal appreciation occurs if the joke is not consid-
ered funny but is found aversive. However, a joke can also be considered
not funny but be far from being aversive; or it can make one laugh although
there are certain annoying aspects (e.g., one can consider the punch line ori-
ginal or clever but dislike the content of the joke).
Subsequent work, however, suggested that the component of positive
responses might actually be a broad dimension transcending by far what
has been called the “humor response” (i.e., the perception that a stimulus
is funny). Factor analytic studies (Ruch and Rath 1993) of responses to
humor yielded a strong factor of positive evaluation fusing the perception of
the stimulus properties (e.g., funny, witty, original) and the induced feeling
state (being amused, hilarity). Furthermore, studies of facial responses (e.g.,
Ruch 1995) show that rated funniness or experienced amusement correlates
very highly with smiling and laughter. It has therefore been suggested that
the responses to humor are explicitly conceptualized as an emotion covering
52 Willibald Ruch
the experiential level, behavior, and physiology (Ruch 1993). Factor analy-
sis also suggested that negative ratings might be further split into two sep-
arate but correlated clusters, representing milder, and more cognitive (e.g.,
plain, feel bored) and stronger affective (e.g., tasteless, feel angered) forms
of aversive reactions (Ruch and Rath 1993).
Joke and cartoon based tests of humor appreciation were the dominant
approach to the measurement of the sense of humor. When Lefcourt and
Martin (1986) started their stress-moderation studies they did not find such
tests useful for their purposes. While their judgment was probably right, they
were misinterpreted often as if they had said that tests of humor appreciation
were not of use at all, and subsequently the interest in such tests declined for
a while. Questionnaire measures became more fashionable and showed their
utility. However, humor questionnaires don’t predict actual creation of humor
and appreciation of jokes and cartoons well. Meanwhile the interest in humor
appreciation measures got stronger again (e.g., Carretero-Dios, Perez, and
Buela-Casal in press).
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 disre-
spectable or even pathological. Being in a “paratelic state” or serious frame
of mind will prevent individuals engaging in humorous interactions or non
bona fide mode of communication.
In terms of appreciation of jokes and cartoons, being prone to respond
with negative affect (i.e., find humor easily aversive) might count as humor-
less, but it might also show a superior moral attitude. Furthermore, some
would probably suggest that joking about certain topics is “bad taste,” “sick,”
and showing a bad vicious character (Kuipers 2006). Again, this might be the
blind spot of the recipient of humor rather than telling something about the
person acting.
Humor as a strength clearly involves a unipolar dimension running from
low to high humor, assuming that humor has no clear “opposite.” The term
“humorless” is indicating the lack of humor, not an opposite trait. The ques-
tion is what is below this zero point? When we look for antonyms, dictionaries
point to serious-mindedness. Indeed, serious-mindedness is seen as a crucial
factor in several temperamental models (McGhee 1996; Raskin 2007; Ruch
and Köhler 2007). So is bad (or negative) mood; a trait needed to predict how
easily people are “out of humor” (McGhee 1996; Ruch and Köhler 2007).
The aggressive and self-defeating humor styles might represent bad taste or
unhealthy forms of humor but they do not explicitly represent humorlessness.
The other style approach to humor (Craik et al. (2007) involves styles that
tap into the region below zero and might be seen as humorless (e.g., inept,
socially cold), and earthy might be seen to represent bad taste.
The ability approaches to humor contribute to humor impairment in a var-
iety of ways. One can see the habitual inability to get a joke as a form of lack-
ing humor. Likewise, people might have low skills in performing humorously
and not be able to make up funny things on the spot. These might probably
best be described as phenomena located at the lower end of an else unipolar
scale.
The question arises whether there are more severe “pathologies.” Clearly,
there are pathologies of laughter, such as laughter as part of an epileptic fit,
as an effect of poisoning, or unmotivated laughs due to pseudobulbar palsy
(Wild, Rodden, Grodd, and Ruch 2003). Furthermore, various brain dam-
ages go along with impairments either to detect incongruity (or “surprise”) or
resolve it (or “coherence”) (Bihrle, Brownell, Powelson, and Gardner 1986;
Forabosco 2007). In the clinical field, Salameh (2006) described “humorpho-
bia” and “sado-maso” humor, and Titze (1996) postulated the existence of
a pathological fear of being laughed at: Gelotophobia.
Derived from Gelos, the Greek word for laughter, and phobia, meaning
fear, drawing from both literature and clinical observations, Titze (1996, in
press) applied a phenomenon called the Pinocchio Complex (wooden physic-
al appearance in psychosomatic patients) to gelotophobes – those with a fear
of being laughed at. Gelotophobes have the distinct conviction that there is
something wrong with them and that they are ridiculous to others, who enjoy
laughing at them. Ruch and Titze (1998) designed a pilot instrument for the
assessment of Gelotophobia, the Geloph <46>, from descriptions given by
clinical Gelotophobic patients. Ruch and Proyer (2008a) studied these items
in healthy adults and various clinical groups (non shame-based neurotics,
shame-based neurotics, gelotophobes) and found that this list of statements
describing the experiential world of gelotophobes was basically unidimen-
sional. Most importantly, the group of gelotophobes (identified via a clinical
interview) scored highest on this dimension. Ruch and Proyer (2008b) pro-
posed a scoring key for a final scale containing 15 items, which should enable
more in-depth explorations of the concept of the fear of being laughed at.
Based on the insights from the clinical case studies provided by Titze
(1996) a model of the putative causes and consequences of Gelotophobia was
54 Willibald Ruch
produced (Ruch 2004), which guided the empirical studies of the concept.
It should be noted that while Titze sees Gelotophobia as a clinical category,
Ruch and Proyer (2008b) outlined and studied the fear of being laughed at as
a non-pathological dimension, to be studied among healthy adults. Neverthe-
less, cut-off points for diagnosing slight, marked and extreme manifestation
of the fear of being laughed at were developed.
The concept was originally developed in Germany. Hence a cross-cultural
study (Proyer, Birden, Platt, Altfreder, Glauser, and Ruch 2005) was started
to verify that Gelotophobia does exist in other countries as well. Indeed, the
14 countries (with altogether 3526 participants) studied yielded a noticeable
number of gelotophobes. Later this study was expanded to include more than
70 nations. Furthermore, the fear of being laughed at was studied in answers
given to ambiguous social situations; i.e., in a semi-projective test (Altfreder
2000). Studies showed that gelotophobes misperceive auditorily presented
laughter of a positive quality, and consider it to be negatively motivated.
Likewise, Platt (2008) illustrated that gelotophobes have difficulty in dis-
criminating good-natured teasing from ridicule. Individuals with pronounced
Gelotophobia respond to prototypical ridicule scenarios with shame and fear;
but they also report experiencing these emotions in response to good-natured
teasing as well. Ruch, Beermann, and Proyer (in press) show that gelotophobes
score lower in most components of humor, but not generally so. While gelo-
tophobes consider their humor abilities to be inept, this cannot be verified by
a performance test of wit. Other studies show that gelotophobes indeed have
experienced shame in a higher intensity than others and happiness in a lower
intensity. Furthermore, their personality may be described by neurotic intro-
version with a tendency towards psychoticism (Ruch 2004). Other studies
investigated the prevalence of the fear of being laughed at among psychiatric
groups, the actual frequency of being laughed at for a variety of reasons, the
body image, and the satisfaction with life (see the special issue by Ruch in
press). In sum, one can state that gelotophobia represents one form of humor
pathology.
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
all others redundant. In the domain of self-reports, the model underlying the
HBQD is the most complex one as it involves five bipolar dimensions with
10 styles. So it might be the best candidate for a single all encompassing
measure. However, as discussed above, it is not clear whether it predicts
appreciation of jokes and cartoons, and it does not predict humor creation
behavior well. So right now, there is no universal measure for all aspects
of humor. It is also questionable whether we should aim at such a measure.
Nevertheless, it is very important to see how these measures overlap and
how many dimensions we need to distinguish to describe a person’s sense
of humor.
This leads to questions like where do the current approaches overlap?
How much redundancy is there? Do we arrive at a better or more compre-
hensive model when we jointly look at all conceptual approaches simultan-
eously? One could apply the most widely used scales to the same sample
and then perform factor analysis at the level of individual items or at the
scale level. Exactly this has been done in a few studies (Köhler and Ruch
1996; Korotkov and Hannah 1994; Ruch 1994; Ruch and Carrell 1998).
The two studies with the highest number of scales used (Köhler and Ruch
1996; Ruch and Carrell 1998) involved 24 subscales of humor inventories.
Joint factor analyses confirmed that all sense of humor scales available at
that time and all facets of cheerfulness always merged in a potent first factor.
In study one this comprised elements such as a prevalent cheerful mood, the
tendency to smile or laugh and to be merry, coping humor and cheerful com-
posedness, initiating humor/liking to entertaining others, liking of humor
stimuli, and a positive attitude about things being related to cheerfulness
and playfulness. In the second study McGhee’s (1999) sense of humor com-
ponents (i.e., enjoyment of humor, laughter, verbal humor, finding humor in
everyday life, laughing at yourself, and humor under stress) marked this fac-
tor equally well as the facets of cheerfulness did. Thus, the affect-based tem-
perament and the major factor underlying the sense of humor instruments
used seem to be indistinguishable. Of the inventories published meanwhile
most likely the affiliative and self-enhancing humor style of the HSQ (Mar-
tin et al. 2003) and the socially warm vs. socially cold humorous style (of
the HBQD) would load on this factor too.
While the sense of humor scales in the first study all shared a common
loading on the cheerfulness (or affect-based sense of humor components) fac-
tor, they differed with respect to whether they were also loaded negatively by
seriousness, the second factor, and how marked this loading was. While the
more affect-related humor scales were close to the axis, the sense of humor
56 Willibald Ruch
scales involving mentality or attitudes were additionally loaded negatively

by seriousness and thus located in the cheerfulness/low seriousness quad-
rant. 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-dimen-
sional system of affect (good vs. bad humor) and mentality (serious vs. play-
ful 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 crit-
erion. A confirmation in other domains such as peer-reports, behavior ob-
servation, or performance tests should be required. For example, aggres-
sive, 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, self-
reports 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 apprecia-
tion 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 com-
mon 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
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 pro-

vides 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 psychologic-
al 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 (struc-
tured) 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 evalu-
ations 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 reliabil-
ity (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 correla-
tion 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
58 Willibald Ruch
d ecisions) if the alpha-coefficient is below .70 and that it should be above .90
for decision about an individual. Reliability is a precondition for the validity
of a test.
The validity describes in how far a test measures what it is intended to
measure. There are different forms of validity. For example, face validity (the
assumption that the items from a test “look good”, i.e. seem to measure what
is intended), content validity (the items of a test are representative for a spe-
cial domain) or predictive validity (the degree to which a test predicts a spe-
cific criterion; e.g., behavior). Additionally, the construct validity is of special
interest. It is aimed at showing the relation between the test score and the
psychological construct it is intended to measure. Usually this is shown by its
convergent (correlation to a well-established test for the same construct; same
trait) and divergent validity (correlation to measures of unrelated constructs;
different trait).
Campbell and Fiske (1959) suggested that convergent and divergent va-
lidity are best tested in a so-called multitrait-multimethod matrix (MTMM).
Their approach of testing the validity of a test includes tests of the same and
different traits and additionally, they demand that the relations should even
be stable if the methods used for the data collection are different. While ob-
jectivity, reliability, and validity are the most important quality criteria of
psychological tests there are many other criteria to be considered as well. For
example, the fairness of a measure (i.e. equal opportunities for members of
different groups that take the test) or the use of appropriate norm values for
the respective research questions. Further information can be retrieved from
Cronbach (1984) or Cooper (2002).
Measuring humor has sometimes been considered to be an impossible
task due to the elusive nature of the concept. Nevertheless, throughout the
20th century there were numerous attempts to develop measures of the sense
of humor and related states and traits. Ruch (2007b) surveyed the existing
humor measurement tools and found more than 60 instruments. Mostly those
were self-report questionnaires or joke/cartoon tests, but occasionally also
methods, like humor diaries, informant questionnaires/peer-reports, behavio-
ral observations, experimental tasks or interviews and informal surveys were
used.
In self-report trait measures of humor the testee reacts to statements or an-
swers to questions how he or she typically behaves. The testees either indicate
how strongly they endorse a statement or disagree with it, or give the quan-
tity/frequency of a certain behavior. As humor is a desirable trait a few indi-
viduals might overestimate their humor. Using a Q-sort technique, in which
the frequency for each step of the answer scale is set, may prevent such ten-
dencies. A peer-report version of a trait measure of humor typically uses the
identical questions. Then two or three good acquaintances of the target person
fill in the questionnaire (questions are reformulated in a “he/she”-format) and
inform how the target person typically behaves, thinks, or acts. The use of
friends, spouse, siblings, parents or colleagues at work typically adds com-
plementary non-redundant information about the humor of the target person,
as the target and acquaintances do have access to different information. Typ-
ically, the aggregate of two peer-ratings personality traits and the self-report
yields coefficients of .40. This is also a coefficient that should be expected
for humor instruments. Such questionnaires may be unidimensional (e.g.,
the Situational Humor Response Questionnaire-SHRQ; Martin and Lefcourt
1984) or multidimensional; i.e., measuring several dimensions (e.g., Multidi-
mensional Sense of Humor Scale–MSHS; Thorson and Powell 1993).
In state measures of humor the testee indicates how he or she feels or is
mentally set in the moment, the last hour, or the last day or week. Obviously,
state measures should be as homogenous as trait measures, but the temporal
stability cannot be expected to be high, but in a .20–.40 range. In perform-
ance (joke/cartoons) tests of humor the individual does not reflect on how he
or she typically behaves in daily life but this behavior is elicited and recorded
under controlled conditions. More precisely, in humor appreciation tests the
individual is confronted with a test booklet containing the set of humorous
stimuli and an answer sheet with rating scales where the testee records his or
her subjective experience (e.g., the IPAT humor test of personality by Cat-
tell and Tollefson 1966; the Antioch sense of humor test by Mindess, Turek,
Bender, and Corbin 1985; EUHA by Carretero-Dios, Perez, and Buela-Casal
in press). Sometimes the material is grouped into piles (“like,” “dislike” or
“indifference”), or nonverbal indicators of enjoyment are recorded (e.g., the
Mirth Response Test by Redlich, Levine, and Sohler 1951). Performance
tests of wit or humor creation can be quite diverse, but most often the indi-
vidual is confronted with an incomplete joke or cartoon, and is asked to write
as many funny captions as possible. Or they are asked to comment something
in a funny way etc (Lefcourt and Martin 1986). The frequency and quality of
the captions, also contents may be later evaluated. For example, e.g., 5 to 10
raters judge the degree of funniness of the material produced or the persons
humor creation ability and wit (Köhler and Ruch 1996). Once a great range of
answers is assembled and evaluated for funniness (e.g., 6–10 raters), anchors
for different quality might be derived and used as an aid for scoring individual
answers by a fewer numbers of people doing the coding.
60 Willibald Ruch
Is humor research equipped with appropriate measuring instruments?

While probably more than 70 humor measurement tools may have been con-
structed 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 em-
pirical 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 prototyp-
ical 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 re-
port using humor to cope with stress which respondents rate in terms of en-
dorsement 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 (summar-
ized 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 seri-
ously (r’s = .58 to .78). Also, the CHS was significantly correlated with the
rated funniness of participants’ humorous monologues created while watch-
ing 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 mech-
anism. Führ (2002) developed a coping humor scale for use with children.
The Situational Humor Response Questionnaire (SHRQ; Martin and Lef-
court 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
a 1–5 scale. The internal reliability of the SHRQ ranges from .70 to .85 and
the test-rest reliability is .70. Martin (1996) gives a review of validity stud-
ies of the SHRQ. For example, the SHRQ correlates with the frequency and
duration of spontaneous laughter during unstructured interviews and with
peer ratings of participants’ frequency of laughter and tendency to use humor
in coping with stress (r’s ranging from .30 to .50). Furthermore, scores cor-
related with rated funniness of monologues created by participants in the
laboratory. Finally, the SHRQ has been shown to moderate the effects of life
stress on mood disturbance (for reviews see Martin 1996, 2007).
The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al. 2003) is a self-re-
port questionnaire composed of 32 items in a seven point-answer format
measuring four styles of humor, namely self-enhancing, aggressive, affilia-
tive, and self-defeating humor. Internal reliability (alpha coefficients) ranges
from .77 to .81, and the (one week) test-retest reliability from .80 to .85.
Initial evidence for construct validity is provided in terms of multiple corre-
lations with other humor scales (they range from .47 to .75) and correlations
between questionnaire and one peer report (one item per scale; coefficients
range from .22 to .33). Evidence for criterion validity is provided by correlat-
ing the HSQ with a variety of indicators of psychological health, well-being,
mood, and personality. The scales of social and self-enhancing humor corre-
late moderately positively with self-esteem, well-being, and social intimacy,
and negatively with depression and anxiety. The aggressive and self-defeating
humor scale correlates positively with aggression and hostility, and self-de-
feating relates negatively with depression, anxiety, well-being, self-esteem,
and social support. The scale has been used to study regional differences in
the USA (Romero, Alsua, Hinrichs, and Pearson 2007). Furthermore, inter-
national versions are available for use with participants from countries such
as, China, Belgium, Germany, Lebanon and Turkey (Chen and Martin 2007;
Kazarian and Martin 2006; Saroglou and Scariot 2002; Tümkaya 2007).
The Humorous Behavior Q-sort Deck (Craik et al. 1996) is a Q-sort tech-
nique consisting of one hundred descriptive statements describing specific
forms of everyday humorous conduct. The respondent (or an observer) sorts
those statements into piles from one to nine, with one being the least, five
being neutral, and nine being most characteristic of the person being assessed
with the following specified distribution: 5, 8, 12, 16, 18, 16, 12, 8, 5. Craik
and Ware (2007) recommend the HBQD for studying the everyday humor-
ous conduct of persons in three levels: (1) at the individual level of descrip-
tive statements, by analyzing its 100 items separately; (2) at the overall pat-
tern level, by incorrelating individual or composited HBQD descriptions; and
62 Willibald Ruch
(3) at the stylistic level, by calculating factor scores for individual HBQD
descriptions. The latter level allows to interpret the five style of humor found
by (Craik et al. 1996), namely the socially warm versus cold, reflective versus
boorish, competent versus inept, earthy versus repressed, and benign versus
mean-spirited humorous styles.
The internal reliability (alpha coefficients) ranges from .61 to .71, ex-
cept for style 2 (which is .43). Information regarding construct validity is
provided by several studies (Craik et al. 1996; Craik and Ware 2007). The
HBQD discriminates among comedians in a plausible way, and there are cor-
relations with a sense of humor index. In a sample of 60 Irish students the
correspondence between self and peer report was very high for socially warm
(.52), earthy (.63), benign (.55) and competent (.37) humor styles and low
for the reflective (.17) humor style. A study with 91 German adults yielded
high coefficients for the earthy (.56), competent (.44) socially warm (.32),
and benign (.23) humor styles, and again a low and not significant one for the
reflective (.16) humor style (Esser 2001). This suggests that, rater and rated
person disagree primarily on one of the styles. Clearly, they have different
access to the information necessary for that judgment. Furthermore, the cor-
relations with several personality scales were studied, among them the Cali-
fornia Psychological Inventory (CPI), Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI),
and the Big Five Inventory (BFI) (Craik et al. 1993, Esser 2001). The scale,
or variants of it were used in several studies (e.g., Kirsh and Kuiper 2003;
Kuiper, Grimshaw, Leite, and Kirsh 2004; Priest and Thein 2003; Ruch, Beer-
mann, and Proyer in press; Saroglou 2004).
The State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI; Ruch et al. 1996, 1997) is
a self-report questionnaire for the assessment of cheerfulness, seriousness,
and bad mood both as states (STCI-S) and traits (STCI‑T). There are 20 and
10 items per scale for the trait and state versions, respectively, which respond-
ents rate in terms of endorsement on 1–4 point scales (strongly disagree to
strongly agree). The internal reliability (alpha coefficients) of the trait scale
for adults ranges from 88. to .94, and the test-retest reliability from .77 to .86
(4 weeks). The state part has high internal consistency too (.85 to .93), and
the stability over a month is low (.33 to .36), as expected. The self-reports
of the traits correlate .53 to .66 with peer reports (average of three good
friends). The self-reports of the traits correlate with the homologous states,
with the size of correlations higher for the aggregated states and the longer
lasting states than for a single measurement of one state. Recently, Sommer
and Hösli (2006) introduced a version for use with children and youth. There
are self- and peer-rating forms for both the child and adult versions.
State and trait cheerfulness predicts amount of laughter in a variety of ex-

perimental settings, and predicts ease of induction of cheerful mood and ro-
bustness of mood when facing adversity. The STCI-T cheerfulness scale cor-
relates 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 Mar-
tin 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 re-
search 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 de-
veloped 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), laugh-
ter (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. Fur-
thermore, 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
64 Willibald Ruch
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 recom-
mended 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 item-
instrument 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 pre-
liminary evidence that the “laughing at yourself ”-subscale of the first version
of the SHS is indeed predictive of the homologous behavior in an experi-
mental setting. Also, for the total score there is a satisfactory self-peer cor-
relation (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 incongruity-
resolution 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 incongruity-
resolution (INC-RES), nonsense (NON), and sexual (SEX) humor. Further-
more, 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, respect-
ively. 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.
Internal reliability (alpha coefficients) of the six regular scales rage from
.81 to .91, and the retest reliability (4 weeks) ranges from .60 to .74. The con-
struction of parallel versions allowed the estimation of the reliability based
on equivalence of tests, which yielded high coefficients too (.82 to .93). Con-
struct validity was assessed by correlations with other humor instruments.
The 3 WD scales are uncorrelated from affect-based sense of humor meas-
ures, but correlate with humor performance measures, (low) seriousness, and
type nouns related to humor and humorlessness. They correlate with various
measures of preference for different types of art (especially with the simplic-
ity-complexity dimension) underscoring the similarity between appreciation
of humor and of aesthetics. Finally, a myriad of studies examined correlations
with various dimensions of personality, attitudes and values, and so on (see
reviews in Ruch 1992, 2002; Ruch and Hehl 2007).
Development of humor over life span
The development of humor appreciation during childhood received much at-

tention 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 dur-
ing 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 stud-
ies 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 incongruity-
based humor and to the role of cognitive development in determining gen-
eral developmental changes. McGhee (1979) reviews the existing theories of
humor development and puts forward a four stage-model of humor develop-
ment 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 the-
oretical framework, this cognitive-stage theory suggests that each new major
cognitive acquisition leads to the appearance of a qualitatively different form
66 Willibald Ruch
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 res-
olution), 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 ap-
preciation 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 de-
velopmental 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 philosoph-
ical 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 con-
firmed 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-
90
INC-RESf
28
26
24 NON-f
Total scores
22
20
18 NONa
16
INC-RESa
14
15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
Age (in years)
Figure 1. Development of humor appreciation across the life span (INC-RESf =
funniness of incongruity-resolution humor, NONf= funniness of nonsense humor;
NONa = aversiveness of nonsense humor; INC-RESa = aversiveness of incongruity-
resolution humor) (Drawn from data presented in Ruch et al. 1990).
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. Incongru-
ity-resolution humor increased in funniness and nonsense humor decreased
in funniness among progressively older subjects after the late teens. Aversive-
ness 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 differ-
ences in conservatism, the major predictor of appreciation of incongruity-
resolution 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
68 Willibald Ruch
humor too. Therefore, we do need longitudinal studies albeit short time ones
with different age cohorts.
We also lack in developmental studies of other forms of humor. Test con-
structors typically give information about the correlation of the new humor
scale with age (e.g., Martin et al. 2003). However, correlations do only indicate
the linear trend in age related differences. The samples typically are too small
to give a more fine-grained analysis of means for different age groups. Once
larger samples are accumulated, reviews of the validity of the scale should
involve the study of age differences. This will give a first hint of what differ-
ences might be expected in subsequent short-term longitudinal s tudies.
Factors that support or impede humor
Speakers of most languages know expressions referring to somebody los-

ing or cultivating his/her sense of humor. However, most research regard-
ing 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. Never-
theless, 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 in-
dulgence 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 as-
sumed (e.g., humorous people might be more likely to engage in joking rela-
tionships, and engaging in joking relationships might increase one’s humor)
and hence a design allowing for a causal analysis is necessary.
Intervention programs
As mentioned in the beginning, psychology is not only interested in describ-

ing, 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 appre-
ciation 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 per-
sonal resource many might be interested in raising their humor skills. Like-
wise, 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. Psychol-
ogists 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, Aharon-
son and Klingman (2007) theoretically two opposing approaches to improv-
ing humor can be distinguished. Adopting a psychoanalytic perspective
one can predict that improvements in sense of humor will emerge indirect-
ly 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 evalu-
ated empirically. This requires instruments that are sensitive to change (for
pre-post comparisons) and the utilization of groups getting the humor train-
ing (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 assump-
tion 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
70 Willibald Ruch
Hirsch 2001; Lowis and Nieuwoudt 1994). Lowis and Nieuwoudt (1994)
published results from a workshop aimed at increasing humor usage as
a coping aid. Twenty-two participants met for five sessions and the only sig-
nificant change found was an increase in the Coping Humor Scale.
The most elaborate published evaluation study first designed a systematic
program for the improvement of the sense of humor and then tested its effec-
tiveness in a sample of 101 female high-school teachers (Nevo et al. 2007).
The program consisted of 14 well-documented units, and the interventions
were designed to specifically activate the proposed motivational, cognitive,
emotional, and social components of sense of humor. One group received the
full program, while another groups received only part of the program, and
two others formed a control group or were only tested before and after. Re-
sults provide only partial support for the effectiveness of the program. While
participants in the humor improvement program received higher peer-ratings
of humor appreciation and humor production after the program (as in com-
pared to rating before the program and compared to the control group), there
were no differences in a variety of questionnaires or the humor production
tests used.
McGhee (1999) developed a program that is both most explicit and theo-
retically founded. The program is based on the assumption that playfulness
forms the basis for the sense of humor, and the rediscovery of a playful at-
titude or outlook on life (that got lost during education, school years and
work) is a key element for change. The set of skills to be taught during group
meetings and ”home play” is distributed across eight steps ordered in dif-
ficulty from simple (e.g., enjoying humor in everyday life) to difficult (e.g.,
laughing at yourself) to acquire. Earlier steps need to be successfully mas-
tered to finally be able to have access to humor skills in the midst of stress.
To assess progress in the skills to be acquired the sense of humor scale (SHS;
see Ruch and Carrell 1998, for a psychometric evaluation of the scale) is
provided consisting of subscales that partly match these steps. Simone Sas-
senrath (2001) applied McGhee’s program over a span of two month to four
groups. She reports that the group of 20 adults that underwent the theoretical
and practical part of the program (but not the three other groups) yielded in-
creases in self-reports of humor, with some of those increases still prevailing
one month after the end of the intervention. Changes involved increases in the
six scales measuring the skills comprising the sense of humor, in playfulness,
positive mood (subscales of the SHS), and the CHS, and also reductions in
the seriousness and bad mood scales of the STCI. While both studies (Nevo
et al. 2007; Sassenrath 2001) had a placebo control, the circumstances of the
studies did not allow for a random assignment of participants to groups. Heidi
Stolz and Sandra Rusch (2008) were testing the eight-step-program in a sam-
ple of Swiss adults and yielded, among others, an increase in satisfaction
with life in the experimental groups. While the participants were randomly
assigned to the four groups, these were still differing in baseline levels and
group dynamics.
While there is some preliminary evidence for effect of the intervention
programs many issues remain unresolved. For example, the optimal length of
such programs is not known. Also, what are the requirements on the leaders
conducting the program (does anyone qualify?), who will likely profit from
the course (everyone or specific groups?), what is expected to be improving
(e.g., selective skills or the global sense of humor?). Do changes in the sense
of humor occur, as McGhee would predict, when merely playfulness is nur-
tured but no humor skills are trained? Does a program for the training of the
more humorless individuals need to be different from the one for the average
person and the one with superior wit? Or is there no need to tailor it to the
humor skills level of that group? Finally, one needs to consider broadening
the goals of such programs. Humor may be used in destructive ways (as in
put down witticisms). But when guided by benevolence, wisdom or tran-
scendence, it may be used in virtuous ways to foster relationships, strengthen
group morale, act as a social lubricant, promote intimacy, provide insight and
facilitate the ‘good life’ generally. Therefore, programs might also want to
incorporate the unlearning or refraining from destructive uses of humor, and
we need studies examining whether the virtuous use of the humor skills can
be learned as well.
Cross-national and cross-cultural perspectives
Already for a long time, people characterize their own group and their neigh-
bors in terms of how much or what type of humor they supposedly possess.
This took the form of regional differences (i.e., within countries) but also
national differences (i.e., across countries). Usually more flattering forms of
humor were attributed to themselves than to others (Eysenck 1944–1945; Ni-
cholson 1946; Schmidt-Hidding 1963). Rarely, a country disliked by some-
one will be praised with much good humor. Having or not having a sense of
humor is part of the national stereotype and may or may not go along with
average scores of representative samples of citizens. In Europe, for example,
chances are that Germans and English will turn out on opponent poles of
72 Willibald Ruch
such scales, and many people in both countries seem to believe in those stere-
otypes (i.e., the postulated national character).
Irrespective of attributions of humor to certain countries, there may also be
differences in humor existing in terms of mean levels of certain humor traits.
Note again, that a psychological approach would not necessarily compare the
humor material produced in two countries (i.e., studying the best 10 comic
writings, Sit-coms, or joke collections) but the actual behavior of people. Dif-
ferences in the type and quality of humor material produced in the countries
may exist (especially as often the work of a limited number of writers comes
to mind which may or may not be representative for the other citizens of that
country) but it may well be that humor produced in one country is more high-
ly appreciated in the other. Regional, cross-national or cross-cultural studies
must take a different venue then, namely to study the humor of fairly repre-
sentative (or at least comparable) samples from the entities to be compared.
Such research has been done with other personality traits using translations of
scales, and mean levels of representative groups from different cultures were
compared quantitatively (e.g., McCrae and Allik 2002). Also, the factor struc-
ture of the scales is compared to see whether the scale is indeed applicable to
the other country. This approach, however, has drawn extensive criticism, be-
cause raw scores obtained in different cultures, often from instruments in dif-
ferent languages, may not be directly comparable. Critics (e.g., Van de Vijver
and Leung 1997) have pointed to a number of potential problems: Transla-
tions may not be equivalent, response styles may confound results, samples
may not be representative of the culture as a whole etc.
Such research needs to be aware of the emic–etic distinction. Emic con-
structs are accounts, descriptions, and analyses expressed in terms of the con-
ceptual schemes and categories that are regarded as meaningful and appropri-
ate by the members of the culture under study. Am emic construct is correctly
termed “emic” if and only if it is in accord with the perceptions and under-
standings deemed appropriate by the insider’s culture. There is a vast amount
of information on humor members of a society can share. The validation of
emic knowledge thus becomes a matter of consensus – namely, the consensus
of native informants, who must agree that the construct matches the shared
perceptions that are characteristic of their culture.
Etic constructs are accounts, descriptions, and analyses expressed in terms
of the conceptual schemes and categories that are regarded as meaningful and
appropriate by the community of scientific observers. An etic construct is
correctly termed “etic” if and only if it is in accord with the epistemological
principles deemed appropriate by science (i.e., etic constructs must be pre-
cise, logical, comprehensive, replicable, falsifiable, and observer independ-

ent). The validation of etic knowledge thus becomes a matter of logical and
empirical analysis – in particular, the logical analysis of whether the con-
struct 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 empath-
ic 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 Liv-
erpool 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 sym-
posium 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 appre-
ciation 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 per-
sonality traits that predict appreciation of sexual humor in Australia also are
predictive in Scotland?
74 Willibald Ruch
Indices describing differences among cultures exist. For example, Hof-

stede (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 compon-
ents of sense of humor.
A small-scale cross-cultural project was conducted for humor apprecia-
tion 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, Ger-
many, 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-resolu-
tion 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., Ger-
man 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 coun-
tries (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 reli-
able irrespective of cultural variations. As there were systematic differences
between the countries studied the project was subsequently expanded to in-
clude 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
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 ef-
fort on “develop your sense of humor”-programs wasted or may everybody
be trained to use humor in stressful situations? What is the etiology of the
different forms of humor? Behavior genetics asks the extent to which differ-
ences in genetic differences among individuals contribute to the differences
we observe in their behavior. This is the issue of nature and nurture and this
question needs to be addressed by humor research as well.
Smiling and laughter are universal expressions (Darwin 1872) and there
is evidence that man is not the only animal that laughs (Panksepp 2007;
Preuschoft 1992; van Hoof 1972). While in ontogenetic development laugh-
ter emerges around the fourth month, the rare cases of gelastic epilepsy (from
Greek; gelos = laughter) among neonates demonstrate that all structures are
there and functional on date of birth (Wild et al. 2003). Further evidence for
the innateness of laughter comes from early twin studies (Gedda and Neroni
1955) as well as from the fact that laughter was observed among deaf-blind
children (even among deaf-blind thalidomide children, who could not ”learn”
laughter by touching people’s faces) (see Ruch and Ekman 2001).
Little is known about the heritability of the various components of humor.
Two twin studies of appreciation of cartoon humor show no genetic influ-
ence for appreciation of nonsense, satirical, aggressive, and sexual cartoons
(Cherkas, Hochberg, MacGregor, Snieder, and Spector 2000; Wilson, Rust,
and Kasriel 1977). In both studies monozygotic twins were not more similar
to each other than dizygotic twins. The high correlation among the twins (all
reared together) shows that the shared environmental influence seems to be
most relevant, followed by the non-shared (i.e., unique) environment. Thus,
76 Willibald Ruch
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 larg-
er 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 vari-
ance, 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 monozygot-
ic (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 con-
tributions of shared and non-shared environment but no genetic effect. How-
ever, 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 envir-
onment 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.
If we find that the affect-based and behavioral forms (e.g., laughter, cheer-
fulness, social humor) are more strongly genetically determined than humor
appreciation or a humorous attitude or humor as a virtue, we will have to
examine whether the genetic factors involved are the same that are involved
in positive affect or extraversion. Studies of the effects of family and peers
will have to take a variety of factors into accounts (e.g., learning, models,
imitation, life events). So far there is only anecdotal evidence that life events
transform a person’s humor as part of a general rearranging of priorities in life
(e.g., through the insight that nothing earthly is infinite, typically following
a painful loss). Too few intervention studies were conducted and the existing
ones do not yield clear results. Therefore, nothing much can be said about the
relative contributions of genes and environment on the different components
of humor at this stage. Also, we need more studied on humor and assortative
mating (Murstein and Brust 1985; Priest and Thein 2003).
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 re-
productive significance of humor? Knowing the origins of humor and laugh-
ter would help understanding their present status; i.e., facilitate deriving hy-
potheses about people’s current behavior and make predictions in current
studies more successful. However, vice versa, speculation about evolution-
ary origins would be facilitated if we knew more about the current functions
of humor and laughter, what their antecedents and consequences are, what
changes there are from pre to post when humor and laughter occur. We most-
ly lack this knowledge. Also, we have not yet established a complete net of
the humor-related variables, which would help determining what later forms
build upon which earlier ones.
While smiling and laughter are recognized as universal and innate ex-
pressions, the status of the emotion of amusement (or mirth, hilarity) is less
clear. Van Hoof (1972) demonstrated that smiling and laughter have a differ-
ent phylogenetic development. However, Darwin proposed that laughter pre-
ceded smiling. While it seems likely that all humans are capable of the per-
ception that something is funny, the pertinent research is still missing. If one
takes appreciation of jokes and cartoons as an index of humor appreciation
the situation is somewhat mixed. Research with the 3 WD humor test shows
some evidence for cross-cultural stability of factors of incongruity-resolution
78 Willibald Ruch
humor and nonsense humor at least in several Western cultures. However,

the Cherkas et al. (2000) twin study of Gary Larson humor (a good mark-
er 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 environ-
mental 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 car-
toons emerged. Therefore, it seems to make sense that humor appreciation
(as a form of aesthetic experience) was included in speculations about evo-
lutionary origins as well. Definitely, humor creation, or wit, would be a good
candidate for evolutionary speculation, but no genetic study has been con-
ducted yet and we know less about production of humor than about appre-
ciation of humor. Wit and appreciation of nonsense humor are indeed corre-
lated 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 dem-
onstrated 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 incon-
gruities when using objects (Gamble 2001). Recently, it has been discovered
that rats show play- and tickle-induced ultrasonic vocational patterns inaudi-
ble 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 nor-
mally (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 abil-
ity 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
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 ori-
gins 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 ‘sta-
tus 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 smil-
ing 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 fe-
male’s different preferences during humorous interaction (Bressler, Martin
and Balshine 2006). Gervais and Wilson (2005) present an integrative ap-
proach 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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A primer for the linguistics of humor
Salvatore Attardo
Introduction
This paper seeks to introduce the field of the linguistics of humor for the non-
specialist. It assumes a certain degree of familiarity with linguistic termin-
ology, but should be readable by the general educated public. Conversely, it
assumes no prior familiarity with humor research, besides what can be gath-
ered by the chapters of this primer.
The historical survey was kept deliberately short since a general treatment
of the subject is available in Attardo (1994) and bibliographic references and
secondary literature are available in that source. However, sources that were
not listed in 1994, either because they did not exist then or had been over-
looked, have been added in the text.
The reader should be aware of the fact that the historical survey is focused
entirely on linguistic analyses and therefore would appear partial to a non lin-
guistically-oriented observer. I am unapologetic about this; the other surveys
in this book will provide the balance of an impartial review.
The rest of the essay will be dedicated to an overview of the field as it is
currently. Emphasis is given to width of coverage, rather than depth, espe-
cially where in-depth coverage of some areas is available in other sources,
which are then referenced in the text. Technical terms such as isotopy are used
without special definition, but most of them are discussed in Attardo (1994).
Literature review
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 ad-
vantages 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.
102 Salvatore Attardo
The linguistics of humor begins (much like any other scientific field) with
the Greeks. Obviously, at the time, linguistics was not a distinct science; we
have to wait for Saussure for that, since even the great (mostly) German his-
torical linguists saw themselves as working in the historical sciences. None-
theless, philosophers and literary theorists deal with humor and in doing so
deal with its linguistic aspects. For example, Aristotle, in the Rhetorics, an-
ticipates the incongruity theories in a discussion of metaphors and puns (At-
tardo 1994: 20). The historical importance of Platonic and Aristotelic thought
in the theory of humor cannot be overstated: for example, it establishes the
opposition comedy–tragedy which will determine theoretical thought on
humor for well over 20 centuries (note that in linguistics, the opposition is
rather that between serious and humorous discourse).
The Latin authors deal with humor within the more practical context of
the education of the orator but rely heavily on Greek sources (some lost).
Their taxonomies are at times still valid, as is Cicero’s distinction between de
re (referential) and de dicto (verbal) humor, which has been rediscovered by
countless authors (Attardo 1994: 27). By the time we reach Quintilian’s ex-
tensive treatment of humor, we can say that there is a coherent body of think-
ing about humor, mostly centered around the theme of its appropriateness,
but with serious forays in its linguistic aspects (thus ambiguity and irony are
singled out as linguistic mechanisms associated with humor). On the classical
theories of humor, see the relevant passages of Bremmer and Roodenburg
(1997) and Minois (2000). On Ancient humor, see Trédé and Hoffman (eds.)
(1998), Desclos (2000) and Olson (2007); on Roman comedy, a 1994 reprint
of Duckworth (1952) which includes a bibliographical essay that updates the
bibliography, is worth signaling, especially chapter 11, which surveys both
ancient and modern theories of humor.
The middle ages were not cheerful times and, in keeping with this, noth-
ing original about humor theory comes up. However, recent research is doing
much to nuance the image of the period, cf. Le Goff (1989; translated in
Bremmer and Roodenburg 1997), Bouché and Charpentier (1990), Horo
witz and Menache (1994) and Verdon (2001). We will have to wait until the
Renaissance, in Italy around the beginning of the 16th century, before some
new ideas will come up. For example, Madius (Vincenzo Maggi) in 1550
publishes an essay on humor, along with a commentary on Aristotle’s poet-
ics. In this essay he emphasizes the surprise aspect of humor, somewhat ne-
glected by the classics, but also introduces a novel interest in the physiology
of humor, which will culminate a few years later in Joubert’s Traité du Ris
(1579), Descartes’s treatment of humor in his Traité des passions de l’âme
A primer for the linguistics of humor 103
(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 Aggression Sublimation
Incongruity/resolution Superiority Liberation
Triumph Economy
Derision
Disparagement
The incongruity theories claim that humor arises from the perception of
an incongruity between a set of expectations and what is actually perceived.
This idea, as we saw, goes back to Aristotle, but has been rediscovered several
times. The most famous restatements of its basic concept are Kant’s, Shopen-
hauer’s, Koestler’s (bisociation), Paulos’s mathematical catastrophe theory,
and recent cognitive blending theories (e.g., Hofstadter and Gabora 1989;
Coulson 1996, 2001, 2005; and see below). Its standard modern statement
is Suls (1972). Hostility theories go back to Plato, but have had their best
known proponent in Hobbes and current champions in Gruner (1978, 1997)
and Billig (2005). Essentially, they claim that one finds humorous a feeling
of superiority over something, of overcoming something, or aggressing a tar-
get. Release theories claim that humor “releases” some form of psychic en-
ergy and/or frees the individual from some constraints. The best known such
theory is Freud’s (1905), which claims that humor allows an economy of
“psychic energy” although the psychodynamic model he bases it on has been
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 lin-
guistic 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 un-
dermine. 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 structur-
alist 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 pin-
point what makes humor funny), linguistics has tended to side (largely unwit-
tingly) 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 ap-
proach, 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 ad-
vantage to humor. The most developed linguistic approach along these lines
is Chafe’s (1987) disabling theory. He sees humor as evolutionarily advanta-
geous 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.
Taxonomies of puns
Puns have long been presumed to be the sole legitimate field of analysis for
the linguistics of humor (cf. Pepicello and Weisberg 1983). The analyses of
puns are primarily taxonomic. In Attardo (1994), four types of taxonomies
were classified (thus yielding a meta-taxonomy – and without any claim that
those are the only possible taxonomies):
–– Taxonomies based on linguistic phenomena (e.g., homophony, homogra-
phy, paronymy, etc.)
–– Systematic taxonomies based on linguistic categories (e.g., syntagmatic,
paradigmatic, etc.)
–– Taxonomies based on surface structure (e.g., the phonetic distance between
the two phonetic strings punned upon)
–– Eclectic (i.e., taxonomies that mix criteria)
The positive sides of these taxonomies are many: primarily that they collect
and systematize a wealth of data vastly more detailed than any other area
of the linguistics of humor, for example, it seems that punning may well be
a universal since it is attested in many non-Indo-european languages (Guidi
Forth). The downside of taxonomic approaches to puns is that taxonomies
cannot substitute theory building and, worse, taxonomies always presuppose
a theory, but do so implicitly, with all the attendant risks that this poses.
A few general points about puns bear stating:
–– Puns invoke significantly the surface structure (the signifier) of lan-
guage, but this claim can be generalized to non-verbal linguistic forms
(e.g., signed languages) and in general to semiotic systems (e.g., graphic
signs)
–– Puns are non-casual speech forms; in casual speech the speaker is uncon-
cerned by the surface structure of the forms he/she is uttering.
–– Puns involve the presence of (minimally) two senses, but need not in-
volve two “words,” the two senses can come about via the interpretation
of any string and can come about as a result of syntactic, as well as mor-
phological, ambiguity (lexical ambiguity falls in this last category).
–– Furthermore, alliterative puns involve the repetition of a given (group of)
phonemes and may be scattered along (parts of) the relevant text, as op-
posed to the punctual location of the punning material in morphological
and syntactic puns.
–– Not any ambiguous string is a pun. Ambiguity is generally eliminated
by semantic and pragmatic disambiguation. Puns preserve (at least) two
meanings/interpretations. Hence puns exist only as a byproduct of disam-

biguation 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 in-
compatible 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 mean-
ings, 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 fam-
ilies 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 incon-
gruity-based theory of humor with the research in semantic and narratology
that flourished in Europe in the 1960s. The central concepts around which the
model I have called “isotopy-disjunction” (Attardo 1994) were built are:
–– isotopy (associated with Greimas’s semantics), and
–– 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 es-
sentially 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 ter-
minological substitution.
The analysis in narrative functions raised similarly interesting prospects
only to result in disappointing conclusions, once it was shown that the three-
part 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 dis-
junctor and connector and opened the way to the possibility of investigat-
ing 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 de-

parture 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 im-
plement 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 for-
malization) 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 identi-
fied between the strictly semantic (lexical) and the pragmatic (encyclopedic)
information, thus pre-empting claims that the SSTH was a purely semantic
theory. The SSTH does in fact incorporate a very significant pragmatic com-
ponent, which sees humor as a violation of Grice’s cooperative principle (see
Attardo 1994, chapter 9 for discussion).
Raskin’s theory of humor boils down to two separate claims:
–– that each joke text is interpretable according to (at least) two distinct scripts
(i.e., the scripts overlap over the joke), and
–– two that the scripts are opposed (i.e., they are local antonyms; on this issue
see Attardo 1997).
I have claimed, controversially and against Raskin’s views (1985, and p.c.),
that the SSTH can be reduced to an incongruity/resolution model (the lead-
ing psychological model of humor). Under this view (Attardo 1997), the op-
position requirement is essentially a case of incongruity, but with better for-
malization than the concept of incongruity in psychology. The alert reader
will have noticed that the SSTH makes claims only about jokes, the simplest
and least complicated type of humorous text. This methodological restriction
made perfect sense for the linguist, who wanted to analyze simple cases first,
but was a problem pretty much anywhere else.
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 in-
congruity/resolution models, essentially it is the mechanism whereby the
incongruity of the SO is playfully and/or partially explained away (cf. At-
tardo 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.
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 theo-
rist? Someone who will make you an offer you cannot understand.
A SSTH analysis of this joke would identify the scripts for mafioso and for
postmodern theorist (script names are in small caps), see that they over-
lap in the second line: “Someone who will make you an offer you cannot…”
can be attributed equally well to the mafioso (the quote from the Godfather
movie is obvious) but as the punch line “understand” reveals, was actually
also applicable to the postmodern theorist (we assume that script is complete
enough to have information about the fact that PoMo theorists are notori-
ously hard to understand). Needless to say, the scripts for mafioso and for
postmodern theorist are opposed, at least for the purposes of this text.
The GTVH would further identify in the quoted stereotypical sentence with
a changed word a pun-like mechanism as the LM, a strange “crossing” situ-
ation, an obvious target (the PoMo theorists), an equally obvious NS (the
“crossing” jokes), and finally the language of the text, would be described as
the words, syntactic constructions, etc.
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. How-
ever, the GTVH retained the same almost exclusive focus on the joke. Not
all approaches to the SSTH/GTVH shared the same focus, however. Several
researchers, and most notably Chlopicki (1987), had turned to longer texts.
Their efforts are summarized and critiqued in Attardo (1994). Further re-
search in the humor of “longer texts” (as non-joke-related humor research
became known) resulted in a number of seminars (see Chlopicki 1997, for
example) and eventually in Attardo (2001a, 2002b) in which I present what
I take to be the first full scale application of a much expanded GTVH to the
analysis of long humorous texts, such as novels, short stories, TV sitcoms,
movies, plays, etc.
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 infer-
ences, 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 se-
mantically indistinguishable (and when there is no need to do so the generic
term line is used), but they differ at a narratological level. Whereas punch
lines are disruptive of the narrative they close, jab lines are not, and in fact
often contribute to the development of the text (see Tsakona 2003, for an
interesting development of the distinction). Consider the following two ex-
amples, in which the lines are bolded:
–– at the end of the picture-gallery stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsruhe,
a heavy Tartar-looking lady, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emer-
alds, talking bad French at the top of her voice… (Lord Arthur Savile’s
Crime)
–– Do you believe in clubs for young men?
Only when kindness fails.
It is clear that while in (3) the punch line makes the interpretation of the text
up to that point as relating to social organizations completely implausible, in
(2) no such reconfiguration of the text takes place, and we are witnessing the
description of a lady all along, except, of course, that the description is far
from flattering. Incidentally, the example occurs at the beginning of the text,
which continues for thousands of words.
The cataloging of all the lines of the text along the GTVH parameters af-
fords two kinds of novel insights:
–– the identification of connections among the lines, and
–– the identification of patterns of occurrence of the lines, in relation to one
another and globally in the text.
The connections among lines lead to the identification of thematic or formal

connections among the lines. For example, all lines targeting a given indi-
vidual 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 combi-
nations thereof. This may give rise to subtle and interesting strands. For ex-
ample, 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 char-
acter 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 config-
urations 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 occur-
rence 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
distribution of the lines is not random (Corduas et al, forth). Corduas et al.,
using statistical tools, determine not only that the distribution of humor in
the Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime text is not random, but that another text (The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams) differs significantly
from Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime. This result is extremely significant, in that
it shows that texts have an individual distribution of humor. It remains to be
explained what causes the different distributions.
Finally, the GTVH is augmented also with a component concerned with
the nature of humorous plots. Significantly, their very existence had been de-
nied (Palmer 1987). According to Palmer, all humorous stories are essentially
serious plots, with humor attached to it. This is indeed the case in many in-
stances, such as Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which is a fairly grim
novel, but includes a humorous strand of anachronistic names and quotations
(e.g., Guglielmo di Baskerville, Jorge de Burgos). We label these cases “Se-
rious Plot, with jab lines” There are however, cases of genuinely humorous
plots. These include:
–– 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 reinter-
pretation of the story. Examples are Katherine Mansfield’s Feuille D’Album
(analyzed in Attardo 2001a) and Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr. Tarr
and Dr. Fethers (see Attardo 1994).
–– Humorous plot, with metanarrative disruption
This is a text that contains one or more disruptions of the narrative conven-
tions of its genre and these disruptions have a humorous nature (mere disrup-
tion is not necessarily humorous, as Pirandello’s plays show). Examples of
this kind of humorous texts are Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs (Attardo 2001a),
and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, probably the greatest example of the genre.
On humorous self-reference in movies, see Withalm (1997).
–– 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-
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 non-
existence. 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 con-
scious of the fact that he had no right to marry until he had committed the
murder. (Attardo 2001a: 177)
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 in-
volved 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 contradic-
tions: 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 low-
level (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 identi-
fying 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
semantic competence is the sole legitimate object of study for the SSTH/
GTVH. In fact, the opposite is true: first, the SSTH incorporates at the very
core of its theoretical apparatus a whole battery of pragmatic devices and con-
cerns, in a way unheard of at the time (and in fact still largely unmatched);
second, as we saw, the SSTH included a pragmatic component, which went
beyond prior suggestions that humor violated the cooperative principle (see
Attardo 1994 for discussion); third, from within its fold there have been calls
of a theory of the audience in humor (Carrell 1997). We turn now briefly to the
pragmatics of humor, before addressing squarely the performance /audience
side of humor.
Pragmatics of humor
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 claim-
ing 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 men-
tioned, as some have claimed. The most significant conclusions reached in
this area seem to be that a) humor is non-cooperative, although b) this viola-
tion of the CP may be used for communicative purposes.
Recently, some criticisms of the SSTH have been voiced within the Rele-
vance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986) framework claiming that no seman-
tics 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 Saus-

surian sense, not limited to the “stage” sense of performance) needs to be
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”) in-
troduce an aspect of competence in the heart of performance. This is an in-
teresting 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 tran-
scription of a recording of the data.
Early work in discourse analysis/conversation analysis focused on laugh-
ter (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 hu-
morous 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 in-
terspersed with laughter. Recently, these results have come under criticism,
witness the claim that “most laughter is not a response to jokes or other formal
attempts at humor” (Provine 2000: 42) but his objections, based on an exclu-
sive focus on involuntary laughter, seem to have been refuted (e.g., O’Connor
and Kowal 2005; O’Connell and Kowal 2006).
Moreover, and needless to say, laughter may be caused by all sorts of non-
humorous stimuli (tickling, laughing gas, embarrassment, etc.) and can be
triggered by imitation (e.g., by observing other people laugh). This is hardly
news to humor research. Giles and Oxford (1970) list seven causes of laugh-
ter: humorous, social, ignorance, anxiety, derision, apologetic, and laughter
as a reaction to tickling. Aubouin (1948) and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1974) had
already pointed out that one could not use reliably laughter as a one-to-one
marker of humor because “laughter largely exceeds humor” (Olbrechts-Tyteca
1974: 14; see Attardo 1994: 10–13 for more extensive discussion).
In general, discourse analysis has focused on the functions of humor (e.g.,
building in group rapport, controlling the conversation, etc.). Excellent sum-
maries of the functions documented by the research can be found in the sur-
veys mentioned above. The field seems to be particularly active. To the papers
reviewed in those surveys, we may add Glenn (1989, 1991/1992, 1995, 2003),
Fillmore (1994), Eggins and Slade (1997: 155–167), Priego Valverde (1998,
2003), Downe (1999), Nardini (2000), Buttny (2001), Viana (2001), Schegloff
(2001), Branner (2003), and Rogerson-Revell (2007). With significant excep-
tions (e.g., Priego-Valverde’s “enunciative” theory influenced by the work of
Ducrot and Baktine), all these studies suffer from an anecdotal approach since
they merely document the existence of one or several functions of humor in
conversation; in itself, this is a useful task, but of limited theoretical value,
since none of these studies goes beyond the four general primary functions
of humor listed in Attardo (1994: 323): social management, decommittment,
mediation and defunctionalization. A particularly interesting study, based on
spontaneous humor in Greek telephone conversations, is Antonopoulou and
Sifianou (2004) which is informed by recent theoretical work in humor re-
search, including the GTVH. Archakis and Tsakona (2005) applies the GTVH
to conversational data and the issue of identity, thus demonstrating practically
the applicability of the GTVH to conversational data, as postulated by Atta-
rdo (2001). Recently, attention has shifted towards an attention to numerical
data collected from larger corpora and towards the reactions of the audience.
A strong proponent of this approach is Hay (2000, 2001) who has investigated
“humor support” i.e., conversational strategies used to acknowledge and sup-
port humorous utterances, among which figures prominently the production
of more humor and/or laughter. The work of Holmes and her associates (see
below) is relevant, and see also below, the section of corpus-based studies.
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-an-
others’ 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 intim-
acy 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 ex-
ists 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 relation-
ship 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, Hol-
mes and Marra 2002). This is what Mullany (2004) does, using the “commu-
nity of practice” approach.
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 adop-
tion” 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 ag-
gression act as determinants. Haakana (2002 and references therein), Vet-
tin 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 sociolin-

guistics 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 socio-
linguistic work. In fact, one could argue that before Norrick (1993) and At-
tardo (1994: ch. 10) the interplay had been virtually nonexistent (with the ob-
vious exceptions of anthropological work, e.g., Basso 1979, Beeman 1981a,
1981b; see also Beeman 2000). However, things are beginning to change,
witness Gasquet-Cyrus’s own work, Crawford’s work on gender (1989, 1995,
2003) and a recent crop of researchers (e.g., Georgakopulou 2000; Rutter
2000; Liao 2001; Everts 2003, etc.) whose work is beginning to appear. Of
particular significance is a body of work by New Zealand scholars focusing
on conversational data, enriched by quantitative methods and with significant
theoretical forays, cf. Holmes (1998, 2000), Holmes and Hay (1997), Holmes
and Marra (2002), Holmes et al. (2001), Hay (1994, 1996, 2000, 2001)
On gender, see Downe (1999), Everts (2003), Crawford (2003), the 2006
special issue of Journal of Pragmatics (38:1) edited by Kotthoff, and the re-
sults by Günther (2003). The results of Günther (2003) and Holmes et al.
(2001) seriously question the common assumption that women produce less
humor.
Other sociolinguistic factors, such as race/ethnicity are seldom investi-
gated from a (socio)linguistic perspective. An exception is Rahman (2007)
on African-American standup humor. There is little work on the linguistics of
African American humor, although the genres of the “dozens” or “signifying”
which have some humorous aspects, have been investigated, see Abrahams
(1962; 1976), Kochman (1983), Labov (1972) Mitchell-Kernan (1972), and
Morgan (1998). Watkins (2002) is an anthology of African-American humor,
while Watkins (1994) is a historical essay. Williams (2007) deals with more
contemporary material. Other factors, such as class have not been researched
extensively: Keim and Schwitalla 1989, Schwitalla (1995), Streeck (1988),
Nardini (2000) Porcu (2005) and Günther (2003) show that lower class and
older speakers are freer to address taboo topics. Günther also found that very
young speakers (less than 25 years old) produced significantly more jokes.
Children famously produce more verbal humor.
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;
ttardo 2005). Thus, Provine professes surprise in finding that speakers laugh
A
also in the absence of humor. This is however entirely predictable from the
literature reviewed above: there is spontaneous laughter and there is inten-
tional laughter, just as there is laughter that occurs in the absence of humor
and laughter that occurs as a reaction to humor. Vettin and Todt (2004) reach
similar conclusions. On the acoustics and prosody of laughter, Chafe (2007)
is a synthesis. Trouvain and Cambell (eds.) (2007) are the proceedings of
a conference on laughter. See also Trouvain (2001; 2003) and Trouvain and
Schroeder (2004). See also Ellis (2002) on French.
Longer texts
While Chlopicki’s work (1987, 1995, 1997, 2001), and that of several other
scholars (see Csàbi and Zerkowitz 2003), including my own, have made
a valiant attempt at dealing with longer and more complex humorous texts
than jokes (see above), it is clear that many issues remain to be dealt with.
For example, further analyses of longer texts comparable to those in Attardo
(2001a) and Corduas et al. (Forth.) would clarify if the results found for those
texts are unique or can be generalized to a class of texts (and of course, to
which class). Recent work by Attardo has focused on the nature and role of
the resolution of the incongruity in humorous texts (Attardo Forth. a).
The role and significance of such traditional narratological concerns such
as characters, point of view, narrator, etc. in humor is almost entirely to be
determined and assessed. A discussion can be found in Chlopicki’s work,
mentioned above, as well as in Semino (1997), Simpson (2000), Fricke and
Müller (2000), Attardo (2001a), Culpeper (2001), Müller (2002, 2003c) and
Galiñanes (2000, 2005). Galiñanes (2005) is particularly interesting because
it blends script-theory, the expanded GTVH and relevance theory accounts
of literature in an interesting way, suggesting that a text creates a preponder-
ant “script” which forces the interpretation of the text along the lines of how
a stereotypical script forces the interpretation of a joke.
Conversely, a distressing number of works often comes tantalizingly close
to linguistics (either because they quote some of the classics of the field, such
as Raskin (1985), or because they use some of the terminology of linguis-
tics, a fact easy to explain in the age of the “linguistic turn” in philosophy)
but eventually fails to engage its contribution to the interdisciplinary field.
Examples are Nelson (1990), Purdie (1993), and, possibly the worst such of-
fender, Ross (1998), which however is targeted at high school students.
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), Ut-
sumi (2000), Gibbs and Colston (eds., 2007)and in many of the current con-
tributions 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 be-
tween 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 succes-
sively 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. How-
ever, 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 Sper-
ber 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 com-
ponent 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-
ity” (Colston and O’Brien 2000). Gibbs (1994: 397) speaks of “incongruity”
and in (2000: 13) quotes “contrast between expectation and reality.” My own
proposal of “inappropriateness” (Attardo 2000) can probably also be reduced
to this broad concept, but has the advantage of being formulated in much
more formal(izable) terms (i.e., in terms of mismatch of presuppositions).
The issue of whether incongruity and inappropriateness are interchangeable
is in need of discussion, which should also relate to Giora’s proposal of irony
as “negation” (especially in light of my analysis of script opposition as a form
of negation, Attardo 1997). On the role of contrast in irony, see also (Colston
2000, 2002, and Utsumi 2000). In general, an area in dire need of research
is that of the connections and differences between irony and humor. A recent
development, possibly related, is the finding that there is no specific ironic
tone of voice (for reviews of the literature trying to identify a specific iron-
ical tone, see Attardo et al. 2003 and Bryant and Fox Tree 2005). Contrast
between the ironical turn and those surrounding it is the prosodic marker of
irony (Attardo et al. 2003), Bryant and Fox Tree (2005), although prosodic
contrast is not unique to irony.
An aspect of irony which has traditionally been a source of much debate,
namely whether irony is necessarily (or even primarily) negative, should have
been put to rest, first by several theoretical discussions (reviewed in Attardo
2000a, 2000b) and then by empirical data (Nelms 2001: 119–120) which
show that 15% of occurrences in a naturally observed corpus are instances
of positive irony. Situational irony (i.e., irony of events, rather than words)
has also begun to be tackled (Littman and Mey 1991, Lucariello 1994, Shel-
ley 2001), however, a theory incorporating situational and verbal irony has
not yet been proposed. Other aspects of irony are discussed in various recent
publications, such as the functions of irony, which have been investigated by
discourse analysts and psycholinguists. Similarly, the issue of the reactions to
irony have been the subject of recent work in discourse analysis and of much
ongoing work (see Attardo 2001b, for references). Goddard (2006) deals with
cultural differences (ethnopragmatics) of Australian irony.
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
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 “intel-
ligence” 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 es-
sentially 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-sys-
tem approaches, for example, Mihalcea’s and Taylor’s work (see below)
toward humor recognition (rather than generation) is an important step to-
ward 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 for-
malization 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 hu-
morous acronyms), Taylor and Mazlack, (2004a, 2004b, 2005), Taylor et al.
2007, Mihalcea and Strapparava (2005, 2006), Binsted et al. (2006), Mihal-
cea (2007), Mihalcea and Pulman (2007), Buscaldi and Rosso (2007), Tinholt
and Nijholt (2007, featuring an application of the GTVH), Sjöberg (2006),
Sjöbergh and Araki (2007). A different approach, utilizing “collaborative fil-
tering” to determine subjects’ tastes in humor gathered a large following and
media coverage (Gupta et al. 1999, Goldberg et al. 2001). Some researchers
have investigated humor in human-computer interaction Lemeunier (1996),
Morkes et al. (1999) and computer-mediated communication (Baym 1995;
Holcomb 1997).
Corpus approaches
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 research-
ing 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. Parting-
ton (2006) is based on several corpora, including White House press confer-
ences. Chafe (2007) is based on the Santa Barbara corpus. It should be noted
that early conversation analysis (Tannen 1984) was also based on a conver-
sational 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 activ-
ity during the processing of humor. Despite the tentativeness of all results
in this field, some of them are extremely interesting and promising. For ex-
ample, 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
areas involved in the processing of the semantic and phonological material of

the texts (for example, puns activate Broca’s area) and the “affective” com-
ponents 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 ini-
tiated for better alternatives” (287). Coulson and Kutas (1998, 2001), Coul-
son (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 lateraliza-
tion 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 laugh-
ter, 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 direct-
ly 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 re-
quire 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-
cutionary goal of humor, but abandoning the sense of the original text), to
simply ignoring the humor and perhaps replacing it with another joke, even
elsewhere in the text. Since Laurian and Nilsen (1989), several collections of
essays have appeared: Delabastita (1996, 1997), Laurian and Szende (2001),
Vandaele (2002; see also Vandaele 1999) and a special issue of HUMOR
edited by Delia Chiaro in 2005. I will not address in any detail the topic of
the translation of humor, since it is dealt with in Chiaro (this volume). To her
bibliographic review we can also add a little undiscovered gem, Jaskanen
(1999) which does an excellent job of analyzing two Finnish translations of
an American movie and has much to say about the theory of humor transla-
tion (see also Jaskanen 2001). Attardo (2002c) presents an application of the
GTVH to the theory of translation of jokes. Antonopoulou (2002; 2004) ap-
plies this approach to the translation of Raymond Chandler and so does Ko-
ponen (2004), which focuses on comics. Dore (2002) is focused on dubbing.
The topics of dubbing and subtitling are very prominent in European humor
research, see Bucaria (2007) and references therein.
Humor and language learning
In Attardo (1994: 211–213), I reviewed some applications of humor to lan-

guage learning, especially in the ESL situation. Recently, Cook (2000) has
presented the first book length treatment of language play and language learn-
ing/teaching. In it, he discusses briefly humorous language play (70–84).
Despite discussing Raskin’s SSTH, Cook seems to be unaware of the exist-
ence 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 stu-
dents’ and American students’ ratings of New Yorker’s cartoons and under-
scores 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
non-native speakers’ use and adaptation to humor, especially in relation to na-

tive 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 inform-
ativeness” requirement (i.e., the fact that texts will introduce less informa-
tive material first and increasingly more informative material later, a concept
related to the theme/rheme approach of the Prague school). Thus jokes are
texts that far from introducing gradually more informative elements, end with
a markedly informative element. The positive aspect of this approach is that it
captures the surprise element of humor. Giora (2003) addresses these issues,
as well as the processing of irony. Weiner and De Palma, in a number of pa-
pers (e.g., Weiner 1997), have presented a similar approach, in part based on
the SSTH and enriched with cognitive linguistics ideas such as prototypical-
ity and salience. In this model, the switch to the second script involves also
a switch from a salient, prototypical script, to a less salient script, in the given
context.
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 develop-
ment 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
humor. An interesting issue, which has yet to be explored, is how close blends
and the kind of mappings used in Attardo et al. (2002) are. Hamrick (2007)
presents an interesting analysis which argues convincingly that blends are nei-
ther necessary nor sufficient for humor, but that they can, along with other
kinds of construals often mentioned in cognitive linguistic accounts of humor,
be treated as a kind of logical mechanism.
Significant pieces in the CL accounts of humor are the special issue of
HUMOR edited in 2006 by Brône, Feyaerts and Veale and Brône’s disserta-
tion (2007). Some of the potential of cognitive linguistic approaches seems
to have been wasted on polemical attacks to previous theories (chiefly the
GTVH). For a reaction, Attardo (2006a). The connection between cognitive
approaches and stylistics has been explored in Antonopoulou (2004), Attardo
(2002b), Antonopoulou and Nikiforidou (Forth), and Triezenberg (2004).
Veale (2004) is an attack against the notion of incongruity. Other approach-
es are more conciliatory and compare cognitive approaches and the GTVH
(Howell 2007; Hamrick 2007). Attardo has pointedly claimed that the GTVH
is a cognitive theory of humor (2002b). Krikmann (2004), which may well
be the first monograph on the GTVH, has a discussion of some of the issues
(a partial English summary of the original Estonian text is available). Recent
work by Attardo on humorous metaphors (forthc. b) is a blend of CL, GTVH,
and neo-Gricean pragmatic methodologies. A forthcoming volume (Brône et
al. forth.) will likely be a significant contribution.
Relevance Theoretic accounts of humor
Relevance Theory (RT, Sperber and Wilson 1986) has produced some interest-
ing work on humor. RT does not seem prima facie to lend itself to an analysis
of humor, since the principle of relevance is inviolable (Sperber and Wilson
1986: 162). While Sperber and Wilson do not address directly humor, they
treat metaphors (which Gricean pragmatics treats as flouts of the CP) without
assuming a violation of the principle of relevance, in accordance to the invio-
lability principle. Since most analyses of humor see it as a violation of coop-
eration, this presents a prima facie difficulty in treating humor in RT terms.
Early relevance theoretic works were replete with hasty generalizations
and factual errors (see a review in Attardo 1996). Recent work by Curcò
(1995, 1996a, 1996b, 1998, 2000) is much more carefully hedged and calls
attention to the fact that in its present state it is not meant to account for all
humorous utterances. Curcò develops a two-stage (incongruity-resolution)
model formulated in RT terms. In her terminology, the hearer entertains a

“key assumption” (essentially a proposition consistent with the first inter-
pretation 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-coop-
erative 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 correla-
tion 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 inter-
pretation 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, none-
theless, here goes.
Where is the linguistics of humor headed?
Recently, several publications have begun exploring new and shockingly un-
der-examined domains. It seems desirable, if not necessarily likely, that this
trend continue. Among these diverse sources we can quote Gajda and Brzo-
zowska (eds.) (2000) which presents a vast collection primarily on Slavic
humor, the special issue of Stylistika on style and humor, edited by Gajda in
2001, and Brzozowska (2000; 2001) which presents a cross-cultural com-
parison of Polish and English jokes. Equally important, and on an equally
neglected area, is Davis (ed.) (2006), on Japanese humor. A few articles in
HUMOR have addressed cross-cultural and comparative aspects of humor
(e.g., Al-Khatib 1999) see also issue 20: 3 (2007) of HUMOR.
We can expect culture- or language-specific research to continue, see for
example Defays and Rosier (1999) and Madini (2002) for French, where
a society for the study of humor (CORHUM) holds conferences and pub-
lishes a journal, Humoresques, or Gulotta et al. (2001) and Banfi (ed.) (1995),
for Italian, Karasik and Sliskin (2003) for Russian, the just mentoned Gajda
(2001) and Gajda and Brzozowska (2002) for Slavic scholarship, Galiñanes
and Figuerroa (2002) for Spanish, or the German research reviewed in Müller
(2003a, 2003b, 2003c). What is missing is a serious effort to review system-
atically the research in each tradition, let alone an attempt to integrate it.
It seems possible that the computational and formal approaches to humor
will yield some solid results, if the trend of the most recent publication con-
tinues. Similarly, it is fairly easy to predict that that “longer texts” issue will
not rest. I expect that the work I have done with Corduas on the distribu-
tion of humor will have some impact. The publication of Chlopicki’s new
book (his doctoral dissertation at the Jagiellonian university) will inevitably
mean a significant step forward (see also Chlopicki 1995). The same holds
for Ermida (2002). The proceedings of the Poetics and Linguistics Associ-
ation conference held in Budapest in 2001 (Csàbi and Zerkowitz , eds. 2003)
also contain a number of short articles by several European scholars that are
pertinent: besides my own summary of the GTVH, we find contributions
by Andor (2003), Chlopicki (2003), Chornovol-Tkachenko (2003), Muller
(2003c) and Skowron (2003). A steady number of theses and dissertations
utilize the GTVH. Among the many, Gruchala (2005) merits mention, for
particularly insightful discussion.
The discourse analysis of humor is likely to continue being a very active
field. It remains to be seen if the field will evolve in what I see as a positive
direction, i.e., attempt a linkage with theoretically-based work and on quan-
titative grounds, or if it will follow dead-end avenues such as the “laughable”
approach.
Another area in which progress seems inevitable is irony and its connec-
tion with humor. Several important papers have appeared recently, as we saw,
and there is a large (by humor research standards) group of researchers who
are actively publishing in this area. It is also likely that the neurolinguistics
of humor will continue to receive some attention, but probably predominant-
ly from outside of the humor research domain, per se. Perhaps some of the
recent work on puns will revitalize that field.
The sociolinguistics of humor is getting some interest. Issues such as gen-
der and humor are being investigated, especially significantly from within
quantitative models (corpus-based work). Other issues such as the connection
between class and humor have received much less attention.
Perhaps a good note to close on is why it is so hard to make predictions:
twenty years ago the field was much smaller and less active. It is wonderful
to have to deal with an embarrassment of riches.
Note
The author would like to thank Victor Raskin, Jen Hay, and Francisco Yus who pro-
vided him with extensive feedback on a version of this paper. Many other colleagues
helped by sending me their papers, clarifying issues, and being generally supportive.
I cannot thank them all by name, but my gratitude for their help and support is undi-
minished. Needless to say, the opinions expressed in the article are only mine.
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Undertaking the comparative study of humor
Christie Davies
The comparative study of humor involves making systematic comparisons

between the humor and in particular the jokes associated with different na-
tions, ethnic and regional groups, religious traditions, social classes, occupa-
tions, 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 net-
works of individuals. Jokes are a true spontaneous product of the imagina-
tions of and a good reflection of the tastes of ordinary people. It is for ex-
ample 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 con-
siderable overlap between the two sets of jokes, which in itself provides inter-
esting 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
158 Christie Davies
told in the same society at different points in its history. One of the difficul-
ties is that we only have access to past jokes that were written down ( and
in some cases published) and these may not be typical of the jokes in oral
circulation at the time. Censorship, self censorship and publishers’ fear of
controversy and criticism limit the kinds of jokes that get printed. Thus in the
late twentieth century many excellent racial and ethnic jokes were in oral cir-
culation in Canada but they did not get into print. We only know about them
today because the tellers are still alive and can remember them and because
researchers recorded them at the time and indeed are still doing so.
The same problem exists in relation to the vast numbers of sexual and
scatological jokes that circulated in the Victorian era in Britain and America.
They could not be recorded and disseminated other than in small privately
published editions or else were written down in diaries or sexual samizdat.
Even those who wrote about jokes as part of their scholarly work were con-
strained in what they could publish. It is striking that even the jokes about
sexuality in Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (Freud
1960 (1905)) are exceedingly restrained relative to the general run of jokes
that must have circulated in male social gatherings in Vienna at the time.
Freud, who was so obsessed with sexuality that he even arbitrarily invented
sexual fantasies and motives for his patients, was unable to publish the more
outrageous jokes of his contemporaries. It was not socially permissible for
him to do what his erratic successor Gershon Legman (Legman 1982) was
able to do in more permissive times. Likewise Alan Dundes [1984] would
have been quite unable to publish his brilliant treatise about the Germans and
their excremental humor, including filthy Mozart, if he had been writing in
the nineteenth century.
The problem I have described is even worse for those studying the jokes
of yet earlier times, for which the sources are even more limited. We may
suspect from descriptions that have been given of the irreverent carnivals and
deliberate humorous inversions of behavior of the medieval and early modern
world that blasphemous jokes and comic tales might have circulated widely
but we can not decide this question with any degree of certainty. This cre-
ates a particular problem for those using the comparative method that I have
elsewhere called ‘The Dog that did not Bark in the Night’ (Davies 1998a) that
involves the study of jokes that could exist in that society or context but do
not. When I say could, I am assuming that a roughly similar cycle of jokes
does exist in a society to which the joke tellers have access ie the jokes have
failed to cross a cultural boundary. It is a tricky assumption to make since
jokes may be concealed rather than absent but at least in the contemporary
Undertaking the comparative study of humor 159
world it is often possible to get round these problems. Dealing with the past
is much more difficult.
Officially, jokes making fun of the regime did not exist in the former so-
cialist regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe, yet there
were enormous numbers of these jokes (Adams 2005; Banc and Dundes1986;
Krikmann 2004, 2006; Skrobocki 1992; Viikberg 1997) and it was easy to
collect them simply by talking to trusted citizens of these countries where
you could not be overheard (Brunvald 1973; Cochrane 1989). The ubiquity
of this kind of joke telling in the countries where they were forbidden (Dav-
ies 2007; Oring 2004; Yurchak 1997) confirmed what could be inferred from
collections of these jokes published in a number of countries in the free world
by émigrés (Beckmann 1969, 1980; Kolasky 1972). Collecting such jokes
directly showed that the externally published joke books were not merely
a representation of the perverse sense of humor of disgruntled dissidents in
exile who were unrepresentative of the population at large. It is not possible
to consult the joke-tellers of the distant past in this way because of the dif-
ficulties of communicating with the dead. The messages conveyed to us from
the ‘other side’ through spiritualist mediums and their nun, shaman and Red
Indian spirit guides do not, so far as I know, contain jokes, nor do reincar-
nated Hindus or memory regressed Westerners going back to a pre-life recall
the jokes of their previous existence. When I hear a series of new and funny
jokes from such sources, I will begin to take their claims seriously.
We are now in a position to review the sources of the jokes that will pro-
vide the basic data for the comparative study of humor. The most obvious
source of jokes is to get other people to tell you their jokes. It is easy enough
for an observer with a high degree of social adaptability to do this simply by
merging with the joke-tellers and letting them get on with it. A notebook or
a tape-recorder are optional extras which provide textual accuracy but at the
potential cost of interfering with what is being observed. In a society with
whose language the observer is unacquainted or whose culture is very dif-
ferent it is usually necessary to work with and to a large extent through an
interpreter and intermediary. Such a process is fraught with dangers as we
can see from the grossly and disgracefully incompetent work done by Mar-
garet Mead in Samoa (Mead 1928) which gulled entire generations of wishful
thinkers in the English speaking world (Freeman 1983). Mead did not speak
Samoan and in large measure became a victim of the Samoan sense of humor
– what fun it must have been for lively young Samoans to deceive this tiny,
pink, foolish American woman who was asking them silly questions. There is
less risk of being deceived in this way when what is being conveyed is itself
160 Christie Davies
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 so-
cieties (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 word-
play but this is less of a problem than might be thought. Most good joke-
tellers 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 out-
sider 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 com-
parative material drawn from many countries and sub-cultures. Often the col-
lectors 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 at-
tached 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
to undertake any kind of comparative analysis of them. It is of course rela-

tively 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 ob-
served. 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 search-
es 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 unrepre-
sentative sets of jokes to fit an existing theory or ideology based grid in an ar-
bitrary 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 wast-
ing 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 publi-
cations 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
162 Christie Davies
ideas and hypotheses and would complete a large section of a second project.
He then used the knowledge he had gained from the second project to com-
plete a proposal for a new research grant to carry out the second project, ap-
parently from scratch but with a pseudo-logical design and guaranteed results.
In this way a productive dialectical process was set up and could be main-
tained indefinitely, unconstrained by the paper walls (Wells 1928) of the iron
cage of bureaucracy (Weber 1930). It is not for me to comment on whether it
is wise and expedient for young researchers to follow this strange path. I cite
my cynical and much granted and promoted colleague, merely to expose the
falseness of the language of research design and of the way in which its under-
lying rationale is merely an artifact of bureaucratic pressures. The main point
to remember is that comparative research requires the researcher to fish in the
morning, hunt in the afternoon and compose in the evening. That is what com-
parative research into humor involves. That is how it is done.
The comparative researcher can use his or her data in many ways to ad-
vance our understanding not only of humor but of other related phenomena in
both constructive and destructive ways i.e. either to create new patterns and
theories that can be reasonably claimed to being closer to the truth than their
predecessors or to falsify and topple an existing thesis.
Let us consider some examples of the constructive uses of the comparative
method. The first example I want to consider is the comparative study of jokes
about stupid groups. A few American and Canadian examples will illustrate
the kinds of jokes that are being studied.
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
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 cham-
bre... 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 re-
lationship 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
164 Christie Davies
Table 1. The stupid

Country where jokes about
the “stupid” are told Identity of “stupid” group in jokes
United States Poles (and others locally, e.g., Italians, Portuguese)
Canada (East ) Newfies (Newfoundlanders)
Canada (West) Ukrainians
Mexico Yucatecos from Yucatan, Gallegos from Galicia in
Spain
Brazil Portuguese
Guatemala Guitecos ( people of Guite)
Colombia Pastusos from Pasto in Nariño
England Irish
Wales Irish
Scotland Irish
Ireland Kerrymen
France Belgians, French Swiss
Netherlands Belgians, Limburghers
Greece Pontians (Black Sea Greeks)
Austria Carinthians, Burgenlanders
Germany Ostfrieslanders, Saxons
Italy Southern Italians
Switzerland Fribourgers/Freiburgers
Russia Ukrainians, Chukchees
Sweden Finns, Norwegians
Spain Gallegos from Galicia, Leperos, the people of Lepe
in Andalucia
Finland Karelians
Denmark People of Aarhus
Turkey Laz
Iraq Kurds
India Sardarjis (Sikhs)
Pakistan Sardarjis (Sikhs)
Iran Rashtis from Rasht, Turks
Syria People of Homs and Hama
Egypt Sa’idis
South Africa Afrikaners (van der Merwe)
Australia Irish, Tasmanians
New Zealand Irish, Maoris (in the North Island), West Coasters
(in the South Island)
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 geo-
graphical, 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-Ameri-
cans 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 eco-
nomic 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 es-
cape 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 employ-
ing 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.
166 Christie Davies
The factual information about similarity and asymmetry given above ex-
ists independently of the perceptions of particular joke tellers, though it can
be demonstrated that many of the joke tellers do make the connection between
these social facts and the existence of the jokes. The widespread existence of
such a perception is not necessary to the argument being advanced, though it
would be unusual if it did not exist at all. What is being suggested here is the
less demanding proposition that the joke tellers can and often do perceive the
butts of their jokes about stupidity as a comically stupid version of themselves,
as themselves seen as if in a distorting mirror at a fairground.
The comparative approach to the stupidity jokes taken above also enables
us to refute the idea that these jokes are a product of conflict, hostility and ag-
gression, as is often suggested by those who have studied a single example of
one group telling stupidity jokes about another. What is striking about the var-
ious pairs of joke tellers and butts of jokes listed is how very varied this aspect
of the relationship between them is. In some cases there is overt hostility and
even violent conflict or a history of this in the recent past, in others an amica-
ble recognition of cousinship sometimes accompanied by rivalry and in others
an exchange of paternalism for nostalgia. There is no consistent relationship to
be found here and those who wish to continue to maintain the validity of the
hostility thesis are forced to put forward a bizarre combination of ad hoc argu-
ments claiming that the jokes are sometimes an adjunct to real hostility and
sometimes an expression of a hostility so well repressed that there is no other
evidence that it exists. It is an argument of the ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ kind
that can not be falsified.
We may also reject on similar grounds another widely touted theory of
jokes, the functionalist theory which argues that jokes are called into existence
to boost morale and solidarity under adverse circumstances (Obrdlik 1942 but
also see Bryant 2006). Humor can certainly be used for this purpose within
small groups but it is absurd to use it as an explanation for why a particular
genre of jokes exists at all. In any case the tellers of ethnic jokes about a stupid
neighbor rarely have any reason seriously to fear that the butts of their stupid-
ity jokes could destroy their social order in the way that other and more pow-
erful opponents could. Yet they do not tell stupidity jokes about the latter. The
functionalist theory like the hostility, conflict, aggression thesis is refuted by
comparative analysis. It is quite possible of course that particular individuals
will use jokes under particular circumstances to produce particular effects but
this is irrelevant, not just because most tellings of jokes do not have purposes
but are simply performances but also because such a use is not something that
can be inferred from the text itself. Tendenz is not a property of a text. The way
jokes are used and the feelings conveyed by the telling of a joke are a product
of tone and context, which are extremely varied and are not part of the joke
itself.
What should now be clear is that the use of the comparative method does
enable us to produce superior and more elegant explanations of why some
kinds of jokes exist and others do not than an analysis based on single case
studies, particularly if it is one permeated by a tendentious ideological theory.
The other strength of the theory derived by comparison is that it allows us to
make predictions about the likely existence of further stupidity jokes involving
pairs of groups, examples not known at the time when the theory was formu-
lated. After completing the work on which Table 1 is based, I discovered that
in Romania the stupidity jokes are told about the people of Altena and in the
Faeroes about the people of Klaksvig. Both are geographically and economi-
cally peripheral. In 1996, when the late Professor W. M. S. Russell, the dis-
tinguished former President of the Folklore Society in London told me that he
had learned that Peruvians told ethnic stupidity jokes about the Arequipeños,
the people of the province of Arequipa in Peru, I predicted on the basis of the
center-periphery thesis that they would live on the geographic and economic
periphery of the country, speak Spanish in a distinctive way and be conserva-
tive and Catholic. Professor Russell checked with his Peruvian informant and
reported back that all these predictions were correct.
Should there be countries (such as Japan) where these kinds of stupidity
jokes (ones pinned on a group) do not exist (Davies 1998; Davies and Abe
2003) this does not create problems for the theory. The theory of peripheral
cousins does not predict that such jokes must exist. It merely says that they are
likely to exist and that when they do they will be located within the particu-
lar social pattern that has been described.. This pattern is a necessary but not a
sufficient reason for these kinds of jokes to be generated. What would falsify
the theory would be the discovery of substantial numbers of stupidity jokes
being told about a group that enjoys a generally recognized leading economic
or cultural position relative to the joke-tellers. The theory clearly predicts that
such jokes do not exist. The only difficult case is where stupidity jokes are ex-
changed between two related countries such as Norway and Sweden, Austria
and Switzerland or Estonia and Finland. In each of these cases it is impossible
to judge who could be seen as dominant and both partners are peripheral to
a third party. Culturally and geographically Scandinavia is peripheral to Eu-
rope, Austria and Switzerland to Germany and Estonia and Finland both to
Scandinavia and to Russia. You can imagine the former being absorbed into
the latter but not the other way round.
168 Christie Davies
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 Afrikan-
ers 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 appa-
ratchiks 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 rela-
tions theory can be applied to these jokes, for the question of whether the jok-
ers 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 com-
petition 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, rul-
ers 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 ideologic-
al 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 co-
opted but which do not exist. During the Soviet socialist period certainly hun-
dreds, 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 coun-
tries 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?
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 Caledo-
nian 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 Clap-
ham 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 inhib-
ited 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
170 Christie Davies
the example set by the media, which may be exuberant as in present day Brit-
ain and America or exercise restraint as they did in the past is irrelevant where
the generation of waves of popular political jokes are concerned.1
It is the constraints on serious political speech that are relevant. In the
socialist countries there was no freedom of speech and even in conversation
critical comments might be reported by an informer (Andrew and Mitrokhin
2000 and 2005; Davies 1997; Oring 2004). Joking was thus playing with for-
bidden modes of speech, a sly evasion of the rules. The jokes were even en-
joyed by those who held power or were beneficiaries of the regime – they too
enjoyed time off from official constraints (Deriabin and Gibney 1960). The
validity of this view can again be upheld by means of comparison, for other
forms of forbidden speech also produce jokes – jokes about sex or excretion
or jokes defying politically correctness, such as jokes about mass media re-
ported major disasters like the Challenger explosion or the sudden death of
Princess Diana in a drunken car crash, the deaths of other celebrities, famines
and accidents or jokes about high levels of violence and illegitimacy among
African-Americans. Even a free society has its unmentionables and freedom
of discussion, though far greater than in the former socialist world, is cir-
cumscribed by politically correct holders of power who enjoy a high degree
of cultural hegemony through their dominance of crucial institutions such as
the media, education and supervisory agencies. Laughter is a product of the
deliberate evasion of the ways in which we are expected to use words accord-
ing to the conventions of a particular society. Even absurdity sneaks round
the socially entrenched rules of rational or at least bona fide communication
(Raskin 1985: 99–104). However, there is no need to invoke the unconscious
or the pressure of guilt as an explanation. People tell jokes knowing that jok-
ing evades externally imposed restraints on speech. Those who listen and
laugh know what to expect, even though each joke comes as a surprise. Pad-
ded brassières are more common that Freudian slips. In regard to the latter it
should be added that we only remember mistakes when they break some kind
of rule, when by chance they switch scripts from an anticipated script to a rule
breaking script, whether the latter be political, sexual, aggressive, blasphe-
mous, scatological or just plain absurd. It is this that constitutes appropriate
incongruity (Oring 1992, 2003), Left out of account are the probably far more
common cases where a meaningless error produces an unfunny incongruity
and no one laughs but rather feels sympathy or puzzlement. Likewise similar
mistakes are made in writing or in type-setting or with computers and are not
noticed but carelessly allowed to proceed to publication. Most of the time the
errors are not funny. Most spelling mistakes only become really funny if the
author of them is high and pompous about such things as in the case of the
English newspaper widely referred to as The Grauniad because allegedly it
has failed to print even its own title, ‘The Guardian’ correctly. If it had been
the Dogpatch Bugle or the Podunk Herald the mistake would not have been as
funny. The spelling mistakes that go down in history are those that are multi-
ply disastrous. The editors of a Soviet newspaper were arrested and possibly
executed because they published Stalin’s name as Sralin (in Cyrillic) meaning
shit. Was this a Freudian slip or an accident? After all shit happens. Indeed
the more we strive to avoid an embarrassing mistake the more we are likely
to make it.An urban legend tells of a radio interview with Diana Fluck, the
real name of the attractive actress Diana Dors. The interviewer tried so hard
not to get it wrong …and then introduced her as Diana Clunt.
The nature of the clear inverse link between democracy and political jok-
ing can be further illuminated by looking carefully at the few exceptions that
seem not to fit this generalization. Such exceptions if numerous (i.e. not just
the inevitable almost accidental transfer of a couple of jokes across a social
boundary) often can and should overturn a theory completely. However, our
first step must say whether the exceptions themselves have a structure and one
which is congruent with and allows us to dissect the original explanation.
Mass joking about the stupidity of politicians in general or about the of-
ficials running state organizations does not exist in Western democracies.
However, there have been jokes, though not as widespread as in the anciens
regimes of the old socialist countries, about particular individual politicians
such as Sir Alec Douglas-Home (British Prime Minister 1963–4), President
Gerald Ford, Vice-President Dan Quayle and President George “Dubya”
Bush, none of whom were outstandingly stupid and some of whom were very
insightful. What they had in common was that they were not elected in the
usual way and lost legitimacy in consequence. It is difficult to make stupid-
ity jokes about a democratic leader with a popular mandate because it would
imply that the people rather than the system were stupid since they put him
there. However, Sir Alec was a hereditary peer, an unelected Lord sitting in
the House of Lords before he became Prime Minister, Gerald Ford had never
run for the Presidency but got in because President Nixon and Vice President
Agnew had resigned, Dan Quayle was an unknown riding on George Bush
I’s coat-tails and George Bush II was put in office by the Supreme Court
on a technicality to do with chads and not by an unambiguous massing of
votes. The penalty for holding political office without having properly and
clearly won a competition for it is to become to some extent at least the butt
of stupidity jokes, though on nothing like the scale found under socialism.
172 Christie Davies
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 pol-
itical parties and indeed labor unions, though possessed of formally demo-
cratic 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 lim-
ited 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 speak-
ing 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 Erd-
man 1976) directly into his best selling British jokebook about the Irish pub-
lished 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.
The jokes were available to the British but were never taken up and added to
their standard jokes about Irish stupidity, even though many of the other Brit-
ish stupidity jokes about the Irish were of American origin and had originally
been jokes about Poles.
Likewise Irish jokes about the stupidity of the Kerrymen and French jokes
about stupid Belgians do not make these peoples out to be dirty, whereas
Canadian jokes about Newfoundlanders (in both English and French), Quebec
jokes about Italians and Swiss jokes about the people of Fribourg/Freiburg do
just that.
How are we to explain this contrast? Obviously we have to relate the exist-
ence of the jokes to some facet of the social world external to them. It might
be for example that those called dirty as well as stupid in the jokes really
are dirtier than those who are merely called stupid. It is perfectly possible,
though somewhat unlikely, that the Poles, Italians, Newfies and Fribourgers
really are filthier than the Irish, Kerrymen or Belgians. I am using the word
filthy here in a literal sense and to include modern dirt such as garbage or
grease as distinct from a symbolic or metaphorical sense where it refers to.
breakers of rules concerning ritual or sexual purity or propriety and/or the
proper maintenance of body boundaries.. The hypothesis that the Irish, Ker-
rymen and Belgians are in this unemotive sense cleaner than the Poles, Ital-
ians, Newfies and Fribourgers is a reasonable and testable, though problem-
atic, proposition. There is no evidence to indicate that the proposition is true
but it is valid to advance it as one possible explanation. It would be utterly
wrong not to investigate it merely because it might offend someone’s sensi-
tivies even to suggest it. There can be no bigoted presumption of equality.
Table 2.
Are the butts Filthy as well
Tellers of Stupidity Jokes Butts of Stupidity Jokes as Stupid in the jokes
Section A
Americans Poles, Italians Yes
Anglophone Canadians Newfoundlanders Yes
Québecois Newfoundlanders, Italians Yes
Swiss People of Fribourg/ Yes
Freiburg
Section B
British Irish No
Irish Kerrymen No
French Belgians No
174 Christie Davies
At this point let us consider what the members of the conflict and hos-
tility school of humor analysts are forced by their theory to predict about
these jokes. Given that they see stupidity jokes as an indication of hostility
and conflict, then, if dirtiness is added to the jokes, it ought to mean that the
jokes became the conveyors of even more hostility and indicators of even
fiercer conflict than is the case where stupidity alone is comically suggested.
Yet, as an inspection of Table Two comparing the relations between nations
and groups in Section A as against Section B shows, no such systematic dif-
ference exists. No clear relationship of this kind in any direction can be dis-
cerned from Table 2.
Now that we have shown by judicious comparisons that the addition of
dirtiness to stupidity jokes in some countries but not others is not a prod-
uct of differences in the nature of the relationship between pairs of jokers
and their butts, it is clear that there must have been differences in the late
twentieth century cultures of America, Canada and Switzerland on the one
hand and Britain, France and Ireland on the other that led to the production
of different patterns of joking. What is suggested here is that in the former
countries cleanliness is seen as an aspect of rationality whereas in the latter
it is not. It is easiest to see this in the case of America versus Britain, France
and Ireland. On the basis of market research data and of empirical studies of
the American way of death it may be infered that at the time when the jokes
were being invented, Americans thought that lasting physical perfection and
purity of appearance undiminished by age, decay and even death were at-
tainable through rational cleanliness, cosmetic surgery, deodorants, diet and
eventually embalming whereas by contrast the British, the French and the
Irish were content to live and die with imperfection (Davies 1990). They felt
it was wiser to live in a realistic “can’t do “ world. What is needed to test this
suggestion further is more extensive comparative data about the Swiss who
also told North American style jokes and who are obsessed with cleanliness
but within a different cultural framework and about the nature of the patterns
of joking found in other ultra clean and comfortably unperfectable countries
respectively. Only in this way can a more comprehensive explanation of these
important differences in patterns of joking be produced.
The destructive as well as constructive uses of the comparative method can
be further illustrated in relation to the analysis of Jewish jokes and humor, a
popular field of study because Jewish jokes and Jewish humor scholars ex-
ceed those of any other group in both quantity and quality. It is widely held
(Ben-Amos 1973; Novak and Waldoks 1981, see Oring 1992) that the jokes
are preponderantly self mocking jokes targeting the Jews themselves and that
this is a uniquely Jewish phenomenon (Freud 1905), and also that this form
of joking among the Ashkenazi Jews reveals a kind of masochistic aggression
directed by the group’s members against the group’s own ‘self’, which in turn
is a product of the undisputed and uniquely vicious persecution that has been
directed against them (Grotjahn 1970).
It is possible by the comparative method to demonstrate that none of these
propositions is true. Indeed it does more than that – it shows that the very pro-
cedures that led to these propositions were in error and that the theories lying
behind them are false. We can demonstrate this by looking at jokes about the
Scots invented by the Scots and published in Scotland in the latter half of
the nineteenth century and the earlier years of the twentieth century, which
were extremely numerous and formed the basis of today’s ubiquitous jokes
about canny Scotsmen. The jokes are self mocking and make the Scots out
to be covetous, argumentative and obsessed with keeping the Sabbath. The
original jokebooks were often edited by Scottish intellectuals and ministers
of religion and accompanied by commentaries on what the jokes might tell
us about Scottish life and character (Davies 2002). The Scots became ‘the
people of the joke’ at about the same time as or slightly earlier than the Jews.
As jokers the Scots may only have been runners up to the Jews both at that
time and subsequently but the very existence of another ‘people of the joke’
undermines the thesis of a unique Jewish tradition of self mockery through
jokes. It should also lead us strongly to doubt whether it ever makes sense to
analyze the humorous tradition of a people by reference only to that people’s
very own particular culture and traditions. On the contrary understanding can
only be attained through comparison. What do they know of Jewish jokes
who only Jewish jokes know?
The Scots have never suffered the kind or degree of persecution, hostility
and exclusion experienced by the Jews. Everyday life in nineteenth and twen-
tieth century Scotland and for Scots living in England was free of fear. Yet
this immediately demolishes the thesis that Jewish pre-eminence in joking in
general and self mockery in particular is rooted in the hostility of and perse-
cution by others. If this had been the case then we would expect the runners
up as people of the joke to be not the Scots but another persecuted minority
distinguished by commercial and professional skills living outside its own
territory and lacking political power and defined as alien by a hostile ideology
such as the Christian Armenians in the Islamic Ottoman Empire (Mardiga-
nian 1918) the Asians of East Africa (Davies 1972) or the overseas Chinese
in South East Asia. The latter groups have encountered racist and religious
hostility of an anti-semitic kind and in some cases it has led to mass murder
176 Christie Davies
but they are not noted for the production of jokes about their own group. By
contrast the Scots who have their own secure territory and institutions, a share
in British identity and ideology and a disproportionate share of British polit-
ical and military power were and are great jokers.
Comparative analysis forces us rather to ask first ‘what factors or historic-
al experiences do the Scots and the Jews have in common?’ and second and
more important ‘what do they share that other peoples lack?’ In answer to the
first question we can say that (in rather different circumstances) members of
both groups have a sense of simultaneously belonging to two groups that have
rather differing identities and expectations, in a way that is not true of, say, the
Swedes, the French or the Japanese, none of whom have invented a plethora
of jokes about their own group. However, other minorities or junior partners
in a federation such as the Welsh or the Québecois, also have this sense of
double identity but have not produced an efflorescence of jokes depending
on it. As a further response to the first question we may also note that other
groups have enjoyed commercial success and become the butt of canny jokes
such as the Dutch, the Regiomontanos, the Paisas or the Catalans (and no
doubt they enjoy and invent jokes about themselves ) but they have not pro-
duced a proliferation of self conscious jokes exploring their own peculiari-
ties. Only the Jews and the Scots have done that. Why? We must now turn to
the second and narrower comparative question about what other people lack,
though it should be noted that we have learned a good deal that is relevant to
finding an answer to it by asking the broader question in advance..
What may be seen from the distinctive style and content of the jokes that
Scots and Jews tell about their own group and which can be and is confirmed
by other quite independent evidence (this is absolutely vital) is that both
groups see their religious tradition as one that prizes learning and literacy
and as one that had evolved in the direction of argumentative democracy. In
either case analytical disputation was pursued almost for its own sake. From
this arose the Jewish and Scottish pre-eminence in physics, philosophy and
economics and in jokes that no other small nation can match.
We can now finally ditch the tangled thesis that Jewish self mockery is
rooted in an expression of masochism or selbsthass; it was anyway in trouble
for other reasons. We may do so with confidence, since a larger proportion
of self consciously Scottish jokes seem to be about self mockery than is the
case with Jewish jokes. There is no Scottish equivalent of the Jewish jokes
that comprehensively trounce outsiders of all kinds. Perhaps, when other fac-
tors such as intellectual and commercial acumen, self awareness and disputa-
ciousness are held constant, it is this outwardly directed aggression in Jewish
jokes that is the product of past persecution, which is the opposite of what the
Jewish masochism thesis suggests (Davies 2002).
There are no clear links between real and observable conflicts, hostility
and aggression on the one hand and the playing with aggression that underlies
a large proportion of jokes or come to that sports or consensual sexual inter-
action on the other. The differences between the two sets of activities are far
more important than the things they have in common. The comparative study
of jokes not only enables us to see this more clearly but also undermines
widely accepted theories of jokes that employ crude theories of aggression.
The followers of Freud and the otherwise psycho-analytically tinged have
long since been pushed out of the proper treatment of mental illness by ad-
vances in pharmaceuticals and in cognitive and behavioral psychology. The
world has said to them – ‘your ideas do not work, your theories are false, get
out’. The comparative analysis of jokes enables us to say exactly the same to
them in regard to the study of humor.
Such uses of the comparative method are not peculiar to the study of
humor. Freudian theory had already suffered a fatal rebuff from Malinowski
over Freud’s absurd explanation of the tensions between fathers and sons by
claiming that the ties between the male child and its mother lead to a sur-
pressed wish on the son’s part to kill his father and obtain undivided and sex-
ual possession of the mother. Malinowski [1927] studied a matrilineal socie-
ty, the Trobriand islanders, in which property descends not from father to son
but from the mother’s brother to her son. The mother’s brother not the father
has authority over her male offspring. In such a society there are no tensions
between father and son who enjoy an easy-going indulgent relationship but
there is conflict between maternal uncle and nephew even though there are no
sexual relations between the mother and her brother. Malinowski [1927] used
the comparative method to undermine the idea of the Oedipus complex and
to show that family tensions arise over quite different questions of authority
and autonomy and, where it exists, property. The methodological principle
employed here is very similar to that employed by Malinowski and is a de-
scendent of the principles set out by John Stuart Mill [1843]. In this respect
the study of jokes is no different from the study of any other social phenom-
enon. What makes the study of jokes more difficult to carry out is the elusive
and ambiguous quality of humorous as opposed to bona fide discourse and the
necessity always to avoid the temptation of reducing the former to the latter.
Jokes must never be treated as if they were serious statements. Jokes dwell in
a special world of their own with its own rules and it is by uncovering these
rules that aggregate patterns of joking can be explained and accounted for.
178 Christie Davies
The comparative methods for doing this do not in essence differ from those
used for other purposes. The constructive comparative method used to study
ethnic and political stupidity jokes is similar to that used by Emil Durkheim
(Durkheim 1897; Pickering and Walford 2000) in his study of suicide or by
David Martin [1978] when he produced a general theory of secularization by
looking at the history of religion in a large number of Christian countries. As
indicated earlier, an example of the use of the comparative method to con-
tradict and overturn a theory based on a narrow analysis of the mores of a
single society may be found in Malinowski’s anthropological study Sex and
Repression in Savage Society [1927].The method of seeking out the exception
in order to understand what are the preconditions of the general case is char-
acteristic of the best early work of S. M. Lipset and his colleagues, includ-
ing Union Democracy discussed earlier and also Agrarian Socialism [1950].
Reading these classics is the best way to understand the comparative method,
far better than getting tangled up in Boolean algebra. In the distant future it
may well be possible to use these Boolean methods in the comparative study
of humor but their failure so far to produce any significant or interesting re-
sults in other similar fields of study shows that it is not appropriate to use
them now. The premature use of such methods has the further disadvantage
that it creates a false impression of sophistication and enables their user to
hide problems and assumptions behind algebraic symbols. You can not easily
turn words into numbers. Those who try to do so usually do not understand
either.
The comparative study of humor is only one approach to understanding
humor. I have outlined how it works in more detail in my book The Mirth of
Nations (Davies 2002). It is essential to supplement the comparative approach
with a wide reading of the leading contemporary studies of humor from the
1980s through to the twenty first century listed below notably Attardo, Dav-
ies, Dundes, Oring, Raskin, and Ruch. The making of systematic comparisons
is a powerful way of answering questions but a knowledge of modern humor
scholarship is necessary if one is to know which questions to ask.
Notes
1. Sex is different because the media can withhold the information necessary
for sex jokes to be pinned on a politician. The public were not told about
Roosevelt or Kennedy’s wild sex lives, so there were no jokes, whereas
Profumo’s pecadilloes and Jefferson Clinton’s pecker dildos were public
knowledge and hence a subject of jokes. The rules of the game are anyway
different for sex jokes and political jokes. There are very few good sex
jokes about East European political leaders under socialism despite, say,
Lavrenti P. Beria’s exploitation of his position to have sex with under age
girls.It is partly that these girls’ experiences never got the coverage of a
Monica Wilensky or a Christine Keeler and partly that the East European
jokes were about politics and stupidity not sex. The sex jokes about politi-
cians in the Free World were equivalent to those told about Father Hickey
or the Christian Brothers or Michael Jackson or anyone else involved in a
sex scandal. The joke “ They have found the growth in President Reagen’s
colon. It was Rock Hudson’s wrist watch” is not a political joke. It makes
fun of a moral majoritarian having to respond to the death of an old friend
forced out of the closet by imminently fatal AIDS but it could have been
any two prominent people. It is a sick disaster joke with a sexual twist.
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Humor in anthropology and folklore
Elliott Oring
Introduction
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 im-
perialism and the rule over a range of societies with different languages, reli-
gions, 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 na-
tionalism, 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 folk-
lorists. Anthropologists were forced to confront humor because it was em-
bedded in certain social and religious practices whose significance they could
not ignore. Folklorists would confront humor because a number of the trad-
itions 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 excep-
tions 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 the-
oretical 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 re-
cording 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 expres-
sion for analysis and interpretation.
184 Elliott Oring
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 in-
cludes 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, lan-
guage, 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 “an-
thropological 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 re-
searchers 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 discus-
sion 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 expres-
sions. Anthropologists and folklorists encounter humor in day-to-day inter-
action, and their job is to document and explain the humor produced and
Humor in anthropology and folklore 185
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 charac-
terized 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 charac-

terize 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 vol-
untary 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 categor-
ies 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, anthro-
pologists 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 accommo-
dating such contradictory tendencies: extreme respect with social avoidance
on the one hand, or abusive joking on the other. The abuse and assault relieved
186 Elliott Oring
hostilities arising from the divergence of interests while the acceptance of the
assaults as playful reflected their mutual interests.
One example of a joking relationship is that between cross-cousins of the
opposite sex. Cross-cousins (the children of siblings of the opposite sex) have
often been observed to joke – often about sexual matters – with one another.
In the same societies, parallel cousins (the children of siblings of the same sex)
were forbidden to do so. Cross cousins tend to be members of different uni-
lineal descent groups but are eligible and expected to marry one another. The
disjunction resides in the different interests of the two descent groups and the
conjunction in the marriage alliances that are formed between them.
Radcliffe-Brown’s theoretical orientation was based upon the view that the
social arrangements found in different societies served to enhance the stability
and well being of that society. Joking relationships could help to corral conflict
when divergent interests threatened to destroy the management of a coopera-
tive relationship (Radcliffe-Brown 1941: 137). His was a functional theory and
functional theories have been shown to be limited in their explanatory powers
(Jarvie 1965; Cancian 1968).
Anthropologists have extended the study of patterned joking behaviors to
industrial settings in contemporary Western societies. Unlike what was ob-
served among cross-cousins in traditional societies, it was observed in a Glas-
gow print works, that it was the sexually impossible relationships – those be-
tween old men and very young women or old women and much younger men
– that were governed by licensed obscene joking. The sexually possible rela-
tionships between men and women of the same age group were marked by
modesty and restraint (Sykes 1966). Clearly, in traditional and modern soci-
eties, joking transmits an important statement about social relationships, al-
though there is no formula that states what joking will communicate about the
nature of the relationships in question. Between cross-cousins, sexual joking
reaffirms sexual possibilities and alliance between different descent groups;
between old and young in a Glasgow industrial setting, sexual joking affirms no
possibilities at all. Perhaps modern societies are more disposed towards ironic
modes of communication (Oring 2003[1994]: 71–84), but in fact, in traditional
societies, abusive joking behavior often takes place between categories of kin
whose relations are warm and supportive (Freedman 1977).
It has been suggested that what have been called joking relationships
occur between very different kinds of groups in societies of different levels
of complexity. Consequently, they cannot be comprehended within the frame
of a single theory (ibid.: 154–155). Nevertheless, Mary Douglas (1968) at-
tempted to generalize the relation of joking to social structure. She saw jok-
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 re-
ligious and civic rituals. Jokes assert uncontrol against patterns of control.
Consequently, joking promotes community over hierarchy and reveals ambi-
guities 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 ritual-
ized insult exchanges that take place between adolescent boys and some-
times between grown men. Folklorists studying the obscenities of the “doz-
ens” among black youth of the inner city (Abrahams 1964; Labov 1972),
between Turkish boys (Dundes, Leach, and Özkök 1970; Glazer 1976; Hick-
man 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 environ-
ments. 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 out-
lined 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 par-
ticularly prevalent at certain times of year – April Fools Day and Halloween
(Dundes 1989[1988]; McEntire 2002; Siporin 1994); certain events – ini-
tiations, weddings, and wakes (Honeyman 1959; Morrison 1974; Narváez
2003); and in certain kinds of groups – students, all male occupations, and
188 Elliott Oring
summer camps (Bronner 1990; Scott 1974; Posen 1974). They have been re-
garded as a means of social control (Posen 1974), resistance (Narváez 2003),
or an aspect of folk aesthetics (Harlow 2003).
“Dyadic tradition” was the term employed (Oring 1992 [1984]: 135–144)
to characterize behavioral and linguistics routines generated and maintained
by dyads: couples, siblings, or close friends. Dyadic traditions were largely
humorous and much of that humor involved insult, abuse, or references to
or re-creations of shared, unpleasant experiences. These traditions were em-
ployed to register mood, symbolize intimacy, and activate a shared sense of
the past and the history of the dyad (Bendix 1987; Tavarelli 1987–88). The
abusive nature of many of these expressions could connote intimacy because
the sense of the relationship trumped the abusive expression and framed it as
a joke. It did not communicate hostility or create antagonism (also Freedman
1977: 162).
Ritual humor
Ritual humor – the appearance of humor in the context of sacred rituals and
texts – posed another problem to anthropologists. As joking relationships
seemed a challenge to notions of solidary kinship relations, sexual reference
and display, scatology, transvestism, burlesque, and other forms of coarse and
unseemly expression seemed an affront to sacred belief and practice. Some-
times these outlandish behaviors were the actions of the multitude, some-
times the province of a designated specialist – a ceremonial clown or buf-
foon. These clowns were sometimes identified with mythological figures, and
they undertook healing, disciplinary, fertility-enhancing, and priestly func-
tions during major ceremonies. The breaking of taboos that was realized in
their inverse and perverse antics was, in fact, the source of their powers.
As with joking relationships, ritual humor has been viewed as a means of
releasing energy and reducing tension: tensions created in the ritual context
itself (Gluckman 1963) or those generated more generally in society (Charles
1945). Others have seen ritual humor as a critical practice concerned with
controlling behaviors that violate community norms or directing aggression
against dominant social classes (Bricker 1973). The taboo breaking of clowns
has also been viewed as reinforcing the mores of the society. By framing the
violations within a ritual context, they can be safely viewed, contemplated,
ridiculed, and rejected as modes of behaviors appropriate to the everyday
world (Makarius 1970: 68).
Humor in the context of ritual behaviors has also been regarded as polit-
ical, an act of resistance. With French colonialism, the Hauka spirit move-
ment emerged among the Songhay people of Niger. In the course of spirit
dances, new spirits began to appear: generals and governors of distant lands,
doctors and lawyers, judges and secretaries. They represented a panorama of
social and political statuses that had been established and occupied by Eu-
ropeans and their appointees. The dances were both terrifying and comic, as
super strong and belligerent spirit dancers engaged in burlesques of colonial
authority and manner. Even after French rule ended, the Hauka spirit dances
continued because the way of life that the colonial regime had established
continued to shape Songhay life (Stoller 1984).
In addition to the safety valve, social corrective, and resistance theories,
clowning was regarded as embodying abstract statements about the ideologic-
al bases of society and the cosmos. The clown is the violator of the nomos of
the social group. That nomos, which protects the social group, also violates
individual freedom. The laughter inspired by the clown is the laughter of an
infinite God at the presumption of a finite society that regards its prescriptions
as absolute (Zucker 1969). Ritual joking highlights the arbitrary nature of the
categories of thought (Douglas 1968).
Those who bring to ritual the notion of the carnivalesque that Mikhail
Bakhtin (1984) brought to the analysis of the novel do not regard ritual humor
as a contradiction. Play is not the opposite of seriousness. Neither the novel
nor ritual has a fixed meaning – not even a highly abstract one. Instead, there
is an overlapping of signification systems with a multiplicity of meanings.
Rituals have no unambiguous meanings. In rituals, the comic and the seri-
ous, the chaotic and the orderly, create meta-commentaries on themselves.
The comic in ritual is not comic relief; it is another system of signification
that speaks to, against, and with the serious one (Babcock-Abrahams 1974;
Mitchell 1992).
In Andalusia, for example, alongside the scurrilous coplas sung during
carnival, are “scholarly” songs – serious, sentimental, elegiac verses – in
praise of traditional, Christian values. These songs celebrate chivalry, com-
passion, and the brotherhood of humanity. The carnival does not merely turn
the world upside-down in reaction to the prevailing social order. It contains
within itself a denial of the denial, and expresses contradictions not only be-
tween classes but within them as well (Gilmore 1995).
Similarly, the Gede spirits, relatives of the grim Bawon Samdi, live in the
cemetery and run riot in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Carnival. The Gedes are
colorful, erotic, and obscene figures in the celebration of death and the dead.
190 Elliott Oring
Uproarious, macabre, and indecent, their antics not only serve as local polit-
ical critique, but in the context of the festival they offer a kaleidoscopic com-
mentary on human mortality in general and the miseries of Haiti in particular
(Cosentino 2003).
Folklorists and anthropologists, even when they do not study the carni-
valesque, study carnivals. Daniel Crowley, studied carnivals in the United
States, New Orleans, Brazil, the Cape Verde Islands, Guinea-Bisseau, the
Canary Islands, and the Caribbean. And while Crowley felt Bakhtin’s idea of
carnival might serve as heuristic for the analysis of literary texts, he also felt
that Bakhtin and many of those who employed his carnival metaphor had little
knowledge of what carnivals were really like (Crowley 1999). Carnivals can
be affairs of great seriousness requiring enormous discipline, expenditure,
and even pain. The preparation for Carnival goes on throughout the year, and
these preparations are not something apart from the festive celebration itself.
In some ways they seem to be as, if not more, important (Lohman 1999).
Folklorists have also paid attention to the role of humor as a commen-
tary on beliefs and practices in religious settings. Larry Danielson (1986)
described how a certain casual, humorous remark in a Lutheran congregation
actually communicated a serious message about the style of worship and the
ideology of the congregation. When Danielson served as worship deacon in
his church, he accidentally extinguished the sanctuary lamp in his attempt to
light the frankincense for an Epiphany service. A woman also serving in the
altar area said to him in a stage whisper, “We know what happens to people
who put out the eternal light.” The comment was ironic, indicating that she
believed nothing at all happened to such people, but the comment also al-
luded to the increasing penetration of Catholic practices – such as the use of
frankincense – into what she perceived to be plain Lutheran styles of wor-
ship. The comment meant to suggest that there were people in the congrega-
tion who were truly punctilious about how the objects in the altar area were
handled and who supported the type of excessive ritual display in which the
two participants were then engaged. The admirers of these new, high church
practices were humorously referred to as “chancel prancers” by those critical
of the shift from simpler and more traditional forms of worship.
Serious messages were also extracted from a series of comic songs that
playfully combined descriptions of religious belief and practice among Or-
thodox Jews with profane references and tunes from American popular cul-
ture. The songs – for example, a song that combined a discourse on studying
the Talmud with the tune and metaphor of “Home on the Range” – were ana-
lyzed to reveal a crisis in identity in the modern orthodox community. They
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 na-

tive 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 nar-
rator, legends lacking a chain of testimony, and hearsay based on events fall-
ing 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 permis-
sion. Libwogwo, however, might be told by anybody at any time (104–106).
In some cultures, even the distinction employed in the Trobriand Islands be-
tween true and false narratives, held no place. The northern Ojibwa, for ex-
ample, 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 characteris-
tics 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 as-
sume 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
192 Elliott Oring
words,” which are like riddles but are tailored to specific situations of behav-
ioral deviation (157–160). All of the above are translations of Tzotzil terms.
In Chamula, what is called humor in the West is distributed in numerous gen-
res of speaking, and that world of speech is ultimately connected to Chamula
religion and cosmology (165).
Chizbat was the term used by the Palmach to name their jokes and an-
ecdotes in the 1940s. The Palmach was a Jewish military group originally
trained by the British to oppose an expected invasion of Palestine by the
Wehrmacht during World War II. When the threat of invasion passed and the
British began to worry about those it had trained, the members moved under-
ground. Since chizbat were told in Hebrew, why was the name derived from
Arabic? Why was the available Hebrew term bedikhot (jokes) not used? How
did this humor differ from those jokes and anecdotes that were not regarded
as chizbat? The answers to these questions depend upon discerning the con-
tours and significance of this folk genre. These answers also suggest why it
would be inappropriate to simply categorize the chizbat as “Jewish humor”
even though the chizbat was humorous and the tellers and audiences were all
Jewish (Oring 1981).
The concern with “ethnic” or “folk” classifications attempts to compre-
hend culture-specific conceptualizations and categorizations of the natural,
social, and cultural environment. The study of folk genres can illustrate the
difficulties of applying the genre terminology of one culture to the verbal ex-
pressions of another. It can also lead to critical reflections on the categories
and terminologies that scholars themselves employ.
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 (Chil-
dren’s and Household Tales). Jokes and anecdotes comprised approximate-
ly 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 Thomp-
son’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
to their analysis or interpretation. But since the early 1960s, folklorists have
been documenting, analyzing, and interpreting the jokes and joke cycles that
have come to dominate oral expression in contemporary society.
Perhaps one of the best known of these joke interpreters is Alan Dundes.
It was Dundes who insisted that jokes had to be interpreted and not merely
recorded. His view of the sick humor of the dead-baby joke cycle (e.g., Q:
What is red and sits in the corner? A: A baby chewing on razor blades) was
that it expressed hostility and resentment against babies. The recourse to con-
traception and eventually abortion from the 1960s through the 1980s – when
the joke cycle ended – made people anxious and guilty about their complic-
ity in preventing or destroying babies. The telling of dead baby jokes which
dehumanized babies relieved their tellers and listeners of some of this guilt
(Dundes 1987 [1979]: 3–14). Dundes’s theory of joking is a cathartic one:
through jokes people express repressed sexual or aggressive wishes and re-
lieve themselves of their anxieties. This follows Sigmund Freud’s theory that
jokes “make possible the expression of an instinct (whether lustful or hos-
tile) in the face of an obstacle that stands in its way” (Freud 1960 [1900]:
101). This cathartic theory characterizes Dundes’s view of Auschwitz jokes
(1987 [1983]: 19–38) and quadriplegic jokes as well (Dundes 1987 [1985]:
15–18).
In some joke cycles that Dundes studied, the targets of the jokes were not
clearly identifiable. Consequently, he had to engage in symbolic interpretation
to determine against whom the aggression of the joke was directed. Dundes
(1987 [1969]: 41–54) argued that the elephant in elephant jokes – a cycle
which circulated in the early 1960s – was a symbol of the American black.
The internal evidence for this equation was that some of the jokes concerned
the color of the elephant, his prodigious sexuality, and his feminization –
even his castration. The external evidence was their similarity to other riddle
jokes circulating at the same time that explicitly referred to blacks. These
jokes were popular during the heyday of the Civil Right movement. The ele-
phant jokes, according to Dundes, reflected the anxiety of whites about black
power, and expressed their unconscious aggression. He made essentially the
same argument about the joke of the “wide-mouthed frog” (Dundes 1987
[1977]: 55–61).
In dealing with Polish jokes, Dundes was in somewhat of a quandary. Un-
like some other theorists (e.g., Welsch 1967), Dundes did not see the jokes as
aggressions against American Poles because he had no sense that such hostil-
ity existed. He suggested instead that Polish jokes took the heat off blacks.
The jokes were directed against the lower class, giving the middle class an
194 Elliott Oring
outlet for aggression and the means for feeling superior (Dundes 1987[1971]:
115–138) – presumably because explicit anti-black jokes were no longer ac-
ceptable at that time.
This aggressive/cathartic view of jokes was challenged on several fronts.
One re-analysis of elephant jokes showed that they violated very specific rules
of traditional riddling. The elephant jokes appeared at a time when traditional
knowledge and traditional authority were being challenged on college cam-
puses throughout America. The Civil Rights Movement was just one part of
a larger counter-cultural movement in the United States that sought to over-
throw traditional ideas and institutions. There was no basis for identifying the
elephant as a symbol of any specific person or group. The image of something
large and wild abroad in the land captured the sense of the counterculture and
its overturning of traditional attitudes and behaviors quite well. Furthermore,
it was argued that jokes could not be reduced to outlets for aggression. Jokes
were forms of play and they could play with aggression without themselves
being aggressive (Oring 1992[1975]: 16–28). Gregory Bateson had made the
same point about animal play: the playful nip denotes the bite but not what
would be denoted by the bite itself (1972: 180).
Others also challenged assumptions about the aggressiveness of ethnic
joking. In a broad comparative study of those ethnic jokes that ascribed stu-
pidity to one or another ethnic group, Christie Davies (1990) showed that
such jokes were not told about groups that were adversaries but about groups
that were peripheral to the mainstream: geographically peripheral provin-
cials, culturally peripheral ethnics, or economically peripheral proletarians.
The Polish jokes, therefore, did not express hostility against an ethnic group
that was challenging the white middle-class socially or economically. Ra-
ther, Poles were perceived to hold to blue-collar occupations and to remain
rooted in ethnic neighborhoods. The jokes were about a group that seemed
to reject the intellectual, cultural, and social advancement that the American
marketplace opened to individuals of all backgrounds. The jokes were about
these progressive values, and the Poles were simply the signifier of those
who chose not to pursue them (see “Undertaking the comparative study of
humor”, in this volume).
A similar argument was made about the blonde joke cycle that circu-
lated in the early 1990s in the United States. Most journalists, feminists, and
scholars immediately read them as yet another exercise in misogyny. But the
question of the jokes’ motives and meanings depended upon how to read the
blonde signifier: was it a sign for all women, a sign for certain women, or
was it a sign for something else? Among the data suggesting that the blonde
did not stand for all women was: (1) blonde women themselves often relished
telling and hearing the jokes; (2) the jokes included explicit references to
blondes and brunettes and the brunette was often portrayed as the opposite
of the blonde; (3) the blonde in the jokes was represented as having only two
faults: extreme stupidity and promiscuity. The interpretation that was offered
of these jokes was that they, like the Polish jokes, were about certain values
for which the blonde was a signifier. The workaday world into which women
were moving and succeeding, was held to be a world of rationality, calcula-
tion, organization, and efficiency. Ideally, intelligence and ability were the
coin of this realm and the key to success in it. In the jokes, the blonde is a
crystallization of wanton sex and helpless ineptitude. The blonde in the jokes
is rejected not because she is a woman, but because she represents values and
strategies that are anti-modern and opposed to expectations of conduct in the
contemporary workplace (Oring 2003: 58–70).
These semiotic perspectives also lead to a reconsideration of some of the
sick-joke and disaster cycles that emerged in relatively recent times. The jokes
that followed shortly after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in
January 1986 brought about a series of sick jokes concerning the failure of the
National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), the explosion of the
shuttle, the dismemberment of the astronauts, and Christa McAuliffe, “the
teacher in space” who was on board the shuttle to promote science education
in the schools. Journalists again condemned these jokes as an indication of
the depravity of the national psyche. Psychologists and scholars – including
Alan Dundes – were more forgiving. They regarded the jokes as a mechanism
for coping with the tragedy and distancing oneself from disaster.
But these interpretations were formulated without any consideration of the
context in which the public encountered the disaster. The disaster was a media
event. The public became aware of the disaster only through the media – pri-
marily television – and it was shown images of the Challenger explosion in
a seemingly endless series of repetitions. But if images of the explosion miles
above the earth were endlessly viewable, the trauma to and mutilation of the
bodies of the astronauts themselves was never discussed. In a sense, the tel-
evision footage was a lie. Furthermore, the media attempted to define for the
public the meaning of the event and how it should respond to it. Some anchor-
men on network news programs, for example, actually recited poetry. The fact
that the media create the spectatorship for disaster, its unwillingness to speak
about certain topics connected with disaster, and its attempt to define response
and control sentiment was probably what inspired the cycle of Challenger
jokes. Because the jokes were so outrageous, they could not be reported in
196 Elliott Oring
the media. In that way, the resistance of a public to the media-defined situ-
ation could not be co-opted. This hypothesis would go a long way to explain-
ing some of the other sick humor cycles that arise from time to time (Oring
1992[1987]: 29–40; Kuipers 2005). Disaster humor comes into being with
the omnipresence of television, and the interpretation of the Challenger jokes
was expanded into a more general theory of disaster humor (Davies 2003).
Bill Ellis (1991) noted that the Challenger jokes did not appear all at once,
but in stages. Two weeks following the explosion of the shuttle on 28 January
1986, jokes appeared on three different college campuses that focused on the
acronym NASA (e.g., Need Another Seven Astronauts); on Bud Light (e.g.,
they found the flight recorder and all that was on it was, “no, Bud Light,” par-
odying a series of beer commercials that produced incendiaries when all that
was wanted was a light beer); and on Christa McAuliffe’s last words (“What’s
this button for?). This wave lasted approximately a week when it was joined
and then replaced by more gruesome jokes that traded on graphic images of
death and dismemberment. These jokes lasted about a month before declin-
ing. Ellis stated that he did not regard the jokes as part of a grieving process.
They were a way to declare that the tellers themselves were not grieving. The
jokes signaled a move towards closure; meaning a willingness to bring the
tragedy back to private discourse, to a realm of discourse not controlled by
media or other public definitions of the event. This approach is not at odds
with the previous interpretation, although at times it seems to drift towards
the notion of grieving that it disclaims. Nevertheless, Ellis’s particular con-
tribution to the study of these jokes was his method of collecting them. He
formulated a questionnaire that was used to survey his college classes over a
three-week period in February and March following the explosion. He was
also able to correlate his surveys with collections made by colleagues at other
universities. When the jokes concerning the World Trade Center began after
the attack on 11 September 2001, he used the Google.com Groups metase-
arch to locate disaster jokes in archived messages on Usenet message boards.
He was able to sort messages by date and trace the history of the items and
note their peaks of popularity. He was also able to see the jokes in the context
of a message and conversational exchange (Ellis 2003).
Humor contexts
There are four contexts that anthropologists and folklorists take into account
in the effort to interpret humor: cultural context, social context, individ-
ual context and comparative context. Cultural context refers to the cultural
knowledge, concepts, values, and attitudes necessary to understand a humor-
ous expression. The following Israeli joke is from the early 1950s:
After the conquest of Eilat, Ben-Gurion arrived in the Aravah and sur-
veyed the area. In every fortification they honored him with a parade, and
he spoke to the soldiers. In one of the encampments, a platoon mustered
for him, and Ben-Gurion, who stood on a small rise, began to prophesy:
Do you see this wilderness? Here will be a forest!”
One of the guys added, “And bears will walk in it.”
Eilat is the southernmost town in Israel. It stands on the coast of the Red
Sea not far from the Jordanian port of Aqaba. On March 10, 1949, in the final
weeks of the War of Independence, it was conquered by Israeli forces. The
Aravah – actually the southern Aravah – is the desert in the Rift Valley south
of the Dead Sea that provides the major route to Eilat. David Ben-Gurion
was the first prime minister and defense minister of the State of Israel. Ben-
Gurion was known as a visionary with highly optimistic views of the future.
He felt that the agricultural development of the southern desert was crucial
for the country, and he later retired to a kibbutz in the desert. Ben-Gurion
was also short. In the joke, Ben-Gurion comes to the military encampment
and ascends a small rise, in order to speak to and be seen by the soldiers. He
conveys his fantastic vision of a forest eventually springing up in the middle
of a desperately arid landscape. “And bears will walk in it,” is an inversion of
the Hebrew phrase “No bears and no forest” which connotes something that
is a figment of the imagination. So when Ben-Gurion conjures up the image
of a forest, the soldier populates it with bears, thus communicating that it is
something that will never come to be – just another cock-and-bull story. The
joke, therefore, emerges as a playful criticism of visionaries in general and
of David Ben-Gurion’s fertile imagination in particular (Oring 1981: 71). The
above constitutes the minimum of cultural contextual information necessary
to comprehend and interpret the joke.
The following, however, described by its tellers as one of the “funniest
Navajo jokes,” remained cryptic to the folklorist to whom it was told, even
though he had spent some forty years studying Navajo folklore:
Long ago they say

(a man off to one side):
“Which of you dreamed something last night?”
198 Elliott Oring
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 Re-
lation to the Unconscious, Sigmund Freud included a good number of Jewish
jokes among his examples. Among these jokes were several about the figure
of the schadchen or Jewish marriage broker.
A Schadchen had brought an assistant with him to the discussion about the
proposed bride, to bear out what he had to say. “She’s as straight as a pine-
tree,” said the Schadchen. – “As a pine tree,” repeated the echo. – “And
she has eyes that ought to be seen!” – “What eyes she has!” confirmed the
echo. “And she is better educated than anyone!” – “What an education!”
“It’s true there’s one thing,” admitted the broker, “she has a small hump.” –
“And what a hump!” the echo confirmed once more. (Freud 1960: 64)
While there probably is nothing in this joke that needs explanation for it to
be easily understood (the assistant is so conditioned to echo the prospective
bride’s virtues that he also mechanically exaggerates her flaw), cultural con-
text is necessary to recognize the significance of the image of the deformed
bride in the period that Freud employed it.
In 1905, when Freud published his book on jokes, Jews in Central Europe
were widely regarded as a spiritually and morally corrupt people. This cor-
ruption was supposed to manifest itself in Jewish speech and in signs on the
Jewish body. The physical signs of this corruption were held to be evident
in their feet, gait, skin, eyes, nose, and in a variety of physical and mental
diseases. Their speech – their loquacity, duplicity, materialism, and penchant
for wit and irony – was also reckoned to reveal their moral deficiencies. Fur-
thermore, endogamous Jewish marriage was held responsible for the creation
and perpetuation of these defects in Jewish body and soul. Given these anti-
Semitic attitudes that pervaded fin-de-siècle Vienna, a joke about a schadchen
who promotes marriage with a physically flawed woman and who uses all
his rhetoric skills to achieve his purpose was hardly a benign joke for dispas-
sionate scientific analysis (Oring 2003: 116–128). Only the awareness of the
jokes’ cultural context would suggest that it probably resonated quite differ-
ently for people a century ago than it does for people today.
Social context refers to the situation and circumstances in which humor is
performed. Time, setting, personnel, the relationships among the participants,
the nature of their conversation and interaction are relevant to the description
of social context. For when, where, how, and to whom a joke is told bears
significantly on how the joke functions and what the joke means.
Alf Walle (1976) studied a diner in upstate New York and focused on the
dynamics of joking during the period of 12:45 to 2:00 A.M. Many bars in the
immediate area of the diner closed at 1:00 A.M. and waitresses who began
work the previous evening got off at 1:30 A.M. So this period, known locally
as “the bar rush,” was the period in which men from the bars went to try and
pick up waitresses who were getting off of work.
What Walle discovered was that jokes were used in a calculated manner
to ascertain the availability of a waitress for a liaison. Each type of joke sig-
naled a different degree of intimacy in the interaction between customer and
waitress. Thus “general humor” like elephant and Polish jokes were relatively
impersonal and were used to establish friendly relations between customer
and waitress. They indicated no more than a general friendliness. Were such
jokes refused by the waitress, however, the possibility for greater intimacy
was unlikely. The jokes were a risk-free way to assess the openness of the
waitress to greater intimacy. If the general humor was well received, the cus-
tomer could move on to “topical jokes” on social issues – notably politics
and race. For this type of joke to be successful, an alignment of attitudes and
views between customer and waitress would be required. These jokes in-
dexed a relationship between the waitress and customer as persons, whereas
general humor merely indexed a relationship between customer and waitress
in their assigned roles. The success of topical jokes in interaction with the
200 Elliott Oring
waitress could lead to the use of explicitly sexual humor. The waitresses were
free to reject these attempts at humor, laugh at them, or respond with their
own examples. The jokes provided a way for customers to test the availability
of waitresses without risking a personal rejection. Similarly, waitresses could
encourage someone they were interested in or discourage others without hav-
ing to entertain or reject explicit sexual overtures. Thus joking in the social
context of the bar rush was a coded communication about intimacy and sex-
ual availability.
The close study of folklore in particular social contexts, gave rise to a
focus on performance. Speakers of folklore frame their utterances to suggest
that they are a special mode of communication. The frame signals that com-
munications are not to be taken simply for their referential content, and that
speakers are to be evaluated not merely for the substance of their communi-
cations but for their skill and effectiveness as well. Performance is a way of
speaking indicating that communication is to be examined and appraised for
its form and style – that is, as art. In choosing to perform, a performer, there-
fore, assumes responsibility for a communication and is held accountable for
it by an audience (Bauman 1977: 7–14).
“Keying” is the framing of words and actions as performance. Perform-
ance may be keyed by special codes and formulas, paralinguistic features, ap-
peals to tradition, and even disclaimers of performance (Bauman 1977: 16).
Jokes, for example, may be keyed by stereotypic actors and locales (“Guy
goes into a bar”); a pervasive present tense (“Asks the bartender for a mar-
tini”); formulaic introductions (“Have you heard the one about…”); appeals
to tradition (“Here’s an old chestnut”); and disclaimers (“My husband is the
joke teller in the family, but…”). On occasion, breakthrough into joke per-
formance can prove an arduous social accomplishment (Sacks 1974). The
keying of joke performance through disclaimer has been discussed by Ed-
wards (1984).
The analysis of performance was meant to direct attention away from an
emphasis on text to a consideration of the production of text as only one
element in a larger event. Some of these events are institutionalized. Parties
and roasts, for example, are standard situations for the production of verbal
and behavioral comedy. Jokes and witty remarks may also emerge sponta-
neously in the course of conversation and other social activities. In these
latter instances, performance is said to be emergent; i.e., highly contingent
behavior dependent upon a complex interplay of situational factors. In both
formal and informal situations, analytic attention is directed to social roles,
social structures, interactional rules, and institutional regimes that govern the
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 re-
quest for sex, the wife’s refusal, the wife’s subsequent acquiescence, and the
husband’s recourse to masturbation. The point of the study was to explore the
ways that these individual tellers related to the various aspects of the joke and
to ascertain the joke’s psychological and social functions.
For example, one informant was extremely critical of masturbatory activ-
ity and claimed that he never engaged in it. His former girlfriend, however,
maintained that he was often unable to achieve climax when they had inter-
course, and he would go on to masturbate until he did. The informant was also
obsessed with cleanliness. Everything in his house was neat and orderly, and
he could get agitated if things were not in their proper places. The inform-
ant showered and changed his towels and underwear several times a day. He
202 Elliott Oring
always showered after sexual intercourse. This informant, when asked about
the joke, found it funny that the husband in the joke had to turn to masturba-
tion. Since the couple was married, he said, he should have been able to have
sex anytime he wanted (Burns with Burns 1976: 128–148).
These were the kinds of data that the researchers brought to the discussion
of the “Doing the Wash” joke and its significance for their eleven informants.
The range and detail of psycho-biographical information obtained from both
the informants and their friends, the data obtained from the projective test,
and their exploration of the joke repertoires and performances of each of their
informants make this work one of the most thorough clinical investigations
of the relationship between humor and personality. (For something compar-
able by psychologists looking at stand-up comedians, see Fisher and Fisher
[1981]).
The jokes of Sigmund Freud also became a subject for scrutiny. Freud
was an inveterate joke teller and his psychoanalytic disciples regularly re-
ported his fondness for telling Jewish jokes and anecdotes. In his letters,
Freud sometimes identified with certain joke characters, and at the time of the
self-analysis that led to his initial formulation of psychoanalytic theory, he
made a collection of what he described as “deeply significant Jewish jokes.”
Although this collection was destroyed, Freud’s favorite Jewish jokes found
their way into his book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious or were
recalled by his psychoanalytic disciples in their memoirs. All of these Jewish
jokes were examined in relation to Freud’s character and life circumstances,
and they offered new perspectives on Freud’s attitudes toward his wife, eco-
nomic status, career, ethnicity, and religious beliefs (Oring 1984).
Unlike the other contexts, comparative context does not itself bear on the
real-time situation of humor. Rather it refers to those traditions of humor that
are equivalent, analogous, or otherwise interconnected to those under inves-
tigation. Thus Christie Davies (pp. 162–163, this volume) compared Polish
jokes with jokes about stupid populations in Britain, France, the Netherlands,
Turkey, Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Nigeria. Determining who got called stupid
and by whom in these various countries proved critical in the formulation of
his theory for these kinds of jokes. Similarly, evidence for the interpretation
of blonde jokes (above, p. 196) depended, in part, on a comparison with
other joke cycles in which women were assigned stupidity and promiscuity
scripts – notably sorority girls jokes, B.Y.U. (Brigham Young University)
coed jokes, and Essex girl jokes in England (Oring 2003: 67–70).
Alan Dundes took a slightly different tack in his analysis of the Jewish-
American Princess (J.A.P.) jokes that were told in the United States in the
late 1970s and early 1980s. Rather than search for analogous jokes in other
cultural traditions, he compared the stereotype elaborated in these jokes with
the stereotype underlying jokes about the Jewish-American Mother. Where
the J.A.P is portrayed as spoiled, self-centered, materialistic, excessively con-
cerned about her appearance, and indifferent to sex and the needs of her
family, the jokes about the J.A.M., the Jewish-American Mother, were much
the reverse. The Jewish mother is over-solicitous of her children, she is ever
concerned with their feeding and health, she suffers for them and enjoys her
martyr role, and she looks forward to nothing so much as the attention and
appreciation of her children. The polarity in the representations of the Jewish
daughter and Jewish mother is likely to have some bearing on the significance
of both cycles of jokes (Dundes 1987 [1985]: 62–81), but it requires a com-
parative perspective to note and delineate the polarity.
Humor as art
The collection of peasant songs in the eighteenth century assumed not only
that such songs were art – but that they were an art that might invigorate
the creativity of the nation as a whole. The performance approach that de-
veloped in folklore studies and anthropology in the late twentieth century
recalled attention to the artistic qualities of folkloric communication. Most
notably, methods were developed to render a range of features in writing, so
that the aesthetics of the performance – including many paralinguistic fea-
tures – were incorporated in the documentation of that performance. Dennis
Tedlock (1971) and Dell Hymes (1975, 1981) pioneered these techniques
(but also see Fine 1984), and Peter Seitel (1980) used them to good effect in
rendering humorous tales of the Haya people of northwestern Tanzania, as
did Charles Briggs (1988) in his study of Hispanic communities of northern
New Mexico. Nevertheless, performance analysis is often more concerned
with social action than art. The question of how the performance of humor
creates, transforms, and challenges social identities, behaviors, and ideolo-
gies usually takes precedence over the analysis of aesthetics in its own terms
and for its own sake (e.g., Limón 1983; Bell 1983; Bauman 1986).
Although philosophers have long regarded humor as a problem in aesthet-
ics (see Freud 1960: 9–11, 95–96), they have never attended to its perform-
ance. Their attention was and is directed to the general structure of humor
and the pleasurable effects it engenders; not to the style of individual comic
exchanges or routines (e.g., Carroll 1991: 294). However, the investigation of
204 Elliott Oring
the aesthetics of particular performers and performances has been initiated:

timing in joke delivery (Norrick 2001); visual imagery (Tallman 1974b); nar-
rative persona (Mullen 1976; Bauman 1986); and the aesthetic preferences of
accomplished joke tellers (Oring n.d.). Greater ethnographic and analytic at-
tention 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 research-
ers 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 his-
torical periods. Theories will not stand that do not address the array of humor-
ous expression – whether from Kiriwina or the island of Manhattan
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Philosophy and religion
John Morreall
Introduction
The first people to write about the nature of laughter and humor, and their
place in human life were philosophers and religious thinkers. Before the 18th
century, the word “humor” did not mean funniness, and so what philoso-
phers and religious thinkers wrote about was usually laughter, with occa-
sional references to comedy. Lacking the concept of humor, it is not surpris-
ing that early writers did not distinguish between laughter at something funny
and other kinds, such as laughing on winning a contest or laughing on being
tickled.
Until the middle of the 18th century, the only developed theory of laughter
in Western thought was the Superiority Theory. According to it, laughter is an
expression of feelings of superiority over other people. That idea, as we will
see, raised moral objections to laughter and comedy.
In the 18th century, two other theories arose – the Relief Theory and the
Incongruity Theory. In the Relief Theory laughter is the release of pent-up
nervous energy, and in the Incongruity Theory laughter is a response to some-
thing unusual or out of place. These new theories liberated at least some
laughter and humor from the charge of being antisocial, and they also opened
the way for investigations of the connections between humor and positive
phenomena such as play and creativity. In the last century, particularly in the
last forty years, some philosophers and religious thinkers have joined col-
leagues in the behavioral and social sciences to study the valuable aspects of
humor.
Literature review
Today it is common to distinguish theories of laughter and humor into three

main groups: Superiority Theories, Incongruity Theories, and Relief (or Re-
lease from Restraint) Theories. But, as we said, for the first two thousand
years there was only one developed theory – the Superiority Theory.
212 John Morreall
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 trai-
tors . . . But you, O Lord, laugh at them, and deride all the nations” (4–8).
Similarly, when God’s prophets laugh, it is only out of hostility. In the
First Book of Kings the prophet Elijah ridiculed the prophets of Baal, and
after getting everyone to laugh at them, he “took them down to the Kishon
and slaughtered them there” (18: 27–40). Not only is the laughter of God and
his prophets associated with killing those at whom they laugh, but if people
laugh at God or his prophets, they deserve to die for it. In the Second Book
of Kings, when a group of boys laughed at the prophet Elisha for being bald,
“he cursed them in the name of the Lord: and two she-bears came out of the
woods and mauled forty-two of the boys” (2: 23–24).
The second most common kind of laughter in the Bible is the irresponsi-
ble and irrational laugh of the foolish person. In Genesis 17: 17, when God
tells Abraham at age 99 that he and his aged wife Sarah will have a son, Ab-
raham, out of foolish disbelief, “fell on his face and laughed.” Hearing the
news, Sarah also laughed in disbelief, and when God confronted her, she
compounded her foolishness by denying that she had laughed (Genesis 18:
12–15). Abraham and Sarah’s laughter did not express superiority or scorn
towards God, but it did show two serious shortcomings: the intellectual in-
ability to imagine the maker of heaven and earth performing a simple miracle,
and a lack of trust in God.
In the Bible, the opposite of the laughing fool is the sad wise person. The
Book of Ecclesiastes has this advice:
Philosophy and religion 213
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 (Ec-
clesiastes 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 fool-
ish laughter with wise tears by having his readers imagine laughers in hell:
Therefore, when you see people laughing, reflect that those teeth, that grin
now, will one day have to sustain that most dreadful wailing and gnashing,
and they will remember this same laugh on that day when they are grind-
ing and gnashing. Then you too shall remember this laugh!
Although the Bible generally treats laughter as foolish and even dangerous,
the occasional verse associates it with joy or other positive feelings. Psalm
126: 2 says, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those
who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongues with
shouts of joy.” Similarly, in the New Testament, Jesus says, “Blessed are you
who weep now, for you shall laugh.” (Luke 6: 21).
In both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, then, laughter was treated mostly
negatively. God laughs only in scorn at his enemies, and most humans who
laugh are irreligious or foolish for doing so. When we turn from ancient re-
ligion to ancient philosophy, the assessment of humor remains mostly nega-
tive, especially in Plato and his followers.
Plato conflated what we now call humor with laughter, and treated the
laugh of ridicule as the only kind. For him laughter was itself an emotion or
it expressed an emotion, and so it fell under his general objection to emotions
– that they override rationality and self-control. He was especially concerned
about the representation of Greek heroes and the gods as overcome with
laughter in the Iliad and Odyssey and in stage comedies. “If anyone repre-
214 John Morreall
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 them-
selves 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 imag-
ined 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 head-
ing 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)
Similarly, when Aristotle considered the morality of amusement in his Ni-

comachean Ethics, he acknowledged its potential for vice, but did not con-
demn 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 move-
ments of the character, and as bodies are discriminated by their movements,
so too are characters. (1941: 1000)
Although Aristotle accepted the Superiority Theory, then, he did not consider
all humor objectionable. And in a brief passage in his Rhetoric, he suggested
the germ of another way of thinking about humor, which would later be called
the Incongruity Theory. A good way to get a laugh in a speech, he wrote, is
to set up an expectation in the audience and then jolt them with something
they did not expect. His example is from a comedy which is now lost: “And
as he walked, beneath his feet were – chilblains [sores].” Unfortunately, Aris-
totle and those who came after him did not see here a way to analyze humor
in general, and so the Incongruity Theory would not be worked out for two
thousand years.
We have little on humor and comedy from Greek philosophers after Plato
and Aristotle. Plato’s objection that laughter involves a loss of self-control
showed up in other ethical systems, especially in the Stoics, who emphasized
the value of ataraxia, a state of low emotional arousal. The Stoic Epictetus
advised, “Let not your laughter be loud, frequent, or unrestrained.” [Enchiri
dion, 33]
Laughter and humor did not arise as a topic in Roman philosophy, but
it was discussed in a few works on rhetoric. In his Institutes of the Orator,
Quintilian complained that no one had yet given a satisfactory account of the
216 John Morreall
nature of humor, though many had tried. In On the Orator Cicero examined
the use of humor in public speaking, discussing such techniques as exaggera-
tion, sarcasm, and punning. Extending Aristotle’s comment about the unex-
pected making an audience laugh, Cicero wrote in ch. 63: “The most common
kind of joke is that in which we expect one thing and another is said: here
our disappointed expectation makes us laugh. But if something ambiguous is
thrown in too, the effect of the joke is heightened.”
Cicero also added a new distinction, between humor in situations and
humor in language. In ch. 59 he wrote, “There are two kinds of jokes, one of
which is based on things, the other on words.” And in the following chapter,
“Whatever is wittily expressed consists sometimes in an idea, sometimes
only in the language used. But people are most delighted with a joke when
the laugh is raised by the idea and the language together.”
The basis of laughter, according to Cicero, “lies in a kind of offensiveness
and deformity, for the sayings that are laughed at the most are those which
refer to something offensive in an inoffensive manner.” Cicero advised speak-
ers to be careful in their use of humor. “For neither great vice, such as that
of crime, nor great misery is a subject of ridicule and laughter. People want
criminals attacked with more forceful weapons than ridicule, and do not like
the miserable to be derided.” (Morreall 1987: 17). A speaker must also be
considerate of people’s feelings. “Do not speak rashly against those who are
personally beloved,” he advised (ibid.).
As Christianity grew and came to dominate the declining Roman Empire
in the fourth century, Christian thinkers added the negative attitudes of Pla-
tonism and Stoicism to the Bible’s negative attitudes toward laughter. In their
sermons against laughter, the Church Fathers Ambrose, Jerome, Basil, and
John Chrysostom hearkened back to the Greek philosophers’ emphasis on
self-control. Basil wrote that “raucous laughter and uncontrollable shaking of
the body are not indications of a well-regulated soul, or of personal, dignity,
or of self-mastery.” Early Christian leaders also came up with new objections
to laughter and humor. One was that they fostered sexual licentiousness. This
idea has been found in many cultures East and West, in part because women’s
laughter is thought to be sexually attractive. In East Asian countries even
today, a woman who laughs with her mouth open is judged sexually loose. St.
Jerome had this advise for one woman, “When you are present, buffoonery
and loose talk must find no place.” In the seventh century John Climacus said
that “Impurity is touching the body, laughing, and talking without restraint.”
People without temperance, he said, “have a shameless gaze and laugh im-
moderately.”
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 boister-
ous laughter.” The monastery of Columban in Ireland assigned the following
punishments: “He who smiles in the service . . . six strokes; if he breaks out
in the noise of laughter, a special fast unless it has happened pardonably.”
Christian condemnations of laughter based on the loss of self-control were
also found outside monasticism, most notably in the Puritans, who wrote
tracts against comedy and closed the theaters in England when they came to
power under Cromwell in the mid-17th century. One of these tracts, by Wil-
liam Prynne, condemned laughter as incompatible with the sobriety of good
Christians, who should not be “immoderately tickled with mere lascivious
vanities, or . . . lash out in excessive cachinnations in the public view of dis-
solute graceless persons.”
If we consider all that was written about laughter and humor before the
18th century, the consensus is negative. The first dissenter was Aristotle, but
his writings on laughter and humor were lost in Europe until the 12th cen-
tury. Shortly after they were recovered, fortunately, there was someone to
adopt his ideas about the benefits of laughter and play into Christian thought
– Thomas Aquinas.
Aquinas was familiar with the traditional religious and philosophical ob-
jections against humor. He quoted Ambrose, John Chrysostom, and Luke 6:
21 – “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall weep.” But he argued that
such objections do not justify a blanket rejection of humor. In his Summa
Theologiae (Handbook of Theology), Question 168, Aquinas assessed humor,
and play in general, in three articles: “Whether there can be virtue in actions
done in play,” “The sin of playing too much,” and “The sin of playing too lit-
218 John Morreall
tle.” His view mirrored Aristotle’s: humans are creatures who need to rest
from serious activity occasionally, and humor and other forms of play pro-
vide that rest.
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 pleas-
ure 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 inter-
course 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 rea-
son for a man to be burdensome to others, by never showing himself agreeable
to others or being a kill-joy or wet blanket on their enjoyment. And so Seneca
says, “Bear yourself with wit, lest you be regarded as sour or despised as dull.”
Now those who lack playfulness are sinful, those who never say anything to
make you smile, or are grumpy with those who do. Aristotle speaks of them
as rough and boorish.
In making his case for a virtue of humor, Aquinas admitted that humor is
sometimes associated with the morally objectionable activities cited by the
traditional critiques. In fact, in the middle of his argument, he included three
warnings:
First and foremost, that the pleasure should not be sought in anything indecent
or harmful. So Cicero speaks of some kinds of joke being “discourteous, im-
pudent, shameful, or obscene.” The next is that we should take care not to lose
our poise. Ambrose says that “we should beware when we relax lest we dis-
solve the harmony made up by good works in concert.” And Cicero, that “just
as we do not give children complete liberty to play, but only that which is not
inconsistent with good manners, so the light of a sound mind should be cast
on our very fun.” Finally we should be careful, as in all other human actions,
to suit the person, place, and time, and to be duly adapted to circumstances.1
Aquinas reinforced these warnings in his next article, on the sin of playing
too much. Play can be sinful, he says, in two ways. First, the action may not
be according to reason, as in jokes which are obscene or intended to harm
others. “Second, playing may be excessive because of defect of due circum-
stances, for instance when giving oneself over to play is mistimed or mis-
placed or unsuitable to the business in hand or to the company.”
Aquinas’s assessment of humor, then, marked an advance in religious and
philosophical thought about laughter and humor by showing that while they
can be associated with obscenity, hostility, or irresponsibility, they not have
to be.
The next significant writers on laughter and humor were in the 17th cen-
tury: Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Thomas Hobbes. Descartes’s com-
ments are found in his book The Passions of the Soul. He offered a physio-
logical explanation of laughter as the repeated rapid expulsion of air from the
lungs caused by a sudden flow of blood into the lungs from the heart, with
the accompanying movements of the diaphragm and muscles of the chest
and face. For Descartes there were six basic emotions – wonder, love, hatred,
desire, joy, and sadness. He did not say anything about amusement or what
we now call humor. Instead he explained how three of the basic emotions –
wonder, (mild) hatred, and (moderate) joy – cause laughter. Like most of his
predecessors, he concentrated on laughter in scorn and ridicule. Indeed, in his
explanation, even wonder and joy are part of scorn.
We do not laugh when we feel great joy, Descartes said, but only when
we feel moderate joy, and then only when the joy “has some wonder or hate
mingled with it.” He analyzed wonder as a surprised reaction to that which is
“rare and extraordinary.” Had he considered the relation of laughter to won-
der itself, apart from scorn, he might well have come up with something like
the Incongruity Theory. But throughout his analysis, he does not seem able
to get away from scornful laughter as the basic kind. The people who most
often laugh at others, he wrote, are “people with very obvious defects such
as those who are lame, blind of an eye, hunch-backed, or who have received
some public insult . . . for, desiring to see all others held in as low estimation
as themselves, they are truly rejoiced at the evils which befall them.”
220 John Morreall
Spinoza, Descartes’s contemporary, said simply, “A man hates what he

laughs at.” Thomas Hobbes’s analysis of scorn as the source of laughter be-
came 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 im-
perfections 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 Su-
periority 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 psychol-
ogy of the association of ideas. In the first part of the book, Hutcheson ar-
gued from examples that there is no essential connection between laughing
or being amused, and having feelings of superiority. We sometimes laugh
without such feelings, as when we find puns and clever allusions funny. And
feelings of superiority do not always lead to laughter. A rich man riding in
his coach past ragged beggars, Hutcheson said, is more likely to feel pity for
them than to laugh at them.
In presenting his own account of humor in the second part of the book,
Hutcheson agreed with Joseph Addison that genius in serious literature con-
sists in the ability to evoke ideas of greatness, novelty, and beauty in the read-
er through the use of apt metaphors and similes. Genius in comic literature,
he said, is largely the ability to use somewhat inappropriate metaphors and
similes to trigger ideas that clash with each other. Herein lay the germ of the
Incongruity Theory of humor. In the last part of the book, Hutcheson explored
some of the benefits of humor, most notably the pleasure it brings, its role as
social lubricant, and its ability to promote mental flexibility.
Once thinkers realized that there was no essential connection between
laughter and feelings of superiority, they began to look at it in fresh ways. In
doing so, they distinguished between humorous and non-humorous laughter,
and they created two new theories, the Relief (or Release from Restraint) The-
ory and the Incongruity Theory. We can consider these one at a time.
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 fun-
niness. It also gave a sketchy version of the Relief Theory.
The natural free spirits of ingenious men, if imprisoned or controlled, will find
out other ways of motion to relieve themselves in their constraint, and whether
it be in burlesque, mimicry, or buffoonery, they will be glad at any rate to vent
themselves, and be revenged on their constrainers.
To understand Shaftesbury here, we need to know something about 18th-

century physiology, in which our nerves were thought to be tiny tubes carry-
ing not electro-chemical impulses but spirits, that is, fluids. The spirits flow-
ing 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
222 John Morreall
a tendency to vent themselves by moving our muscles in other ways, such as

“burlesque, mimicry, or buffoonery.” Today these would be called displace-
ment 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 pro-
hibition 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 re-
pressed nervous energy – the energy of sexual desire and the energy asso-
ciated 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.
In reading the first three lines, the Relief Theory would say, we experience
feelings of sympathy for this dutiful nephew whose aunt has died unexpect-
edly. But then in the last line, we discover that he is a cheapskate who does
not deserve our sympathy. The nervous energy of our sympathetic feelings is
suddenly superfluous and we release it in laughter.
The emotions we summon and then find unnecessary need not be sym-
pathetic. They could also be negative. Consider Oscar Wilde’s quip, “The
youth of today are quite monstrous; they have absolutely no respect for dyed
hair.” Until the second last word, we are led to feel indignation toward young
people, but then as we hear the word “dyed,” we are led to question the adult
generation as young people do, and so our indignation is superfluous.
Two classic versions of the Relief Theory are the relatively simple theory
of Herbert Spencer, and the more complicated theory of Sigmund Freud. In
his essay “On the Physiology of Laughter,” Spencer said that in our nervous
systems our emotions take the form of nervous energy, and nervous energy
drives our muscles. “Nervous energy always tends to beget muscular motion,
and when it rises to a certain intensity, always does beget it.” In fear, for in-
stance, we have a tendency to run away or fight, and if our fear gets strong
enough, we do run away or fight. In anger, we clench our fists and want to hit
something or someone, and if we get angry enough, that is what we do.
Now laughter is a special case of the muscular release of nervous energy,
for it is not a practical action like running away or fighting. Rather the muscu-
lar movements in laughter are just the release of nervous energy. That release
occurs, Spencer said, when feelings build up in us but then are seen to be in-
appropriate. The energy is released first through the muscles “which feeling
most habitually stimulates,” the muscles of speech in our throats. And if our
vocal organs are not enough to vent all the superfluous energy, the energy
spills over into the diaphragm and muscles of breathing. In the strongest kind
of laughter, nervous energy also drives the muscles of the arms, back, and the
rest of the body.
When Spencer explains the process of the summoning of emotions and
their then becoming superfluous, he talks about “incongruity,” which as we
shall see, is the basic concept in the third standard theory of humor. Some-
thing is incongruous, to put it simply, if it does not fit our ordinary mental
patterns. Spencer points out that not all incongruities elicit laughter. If we are
at a banquet and suddenly discover a corpse, that is incongruous but hard-
ly funny. “Laughter naturally results only when consciousness is unawares
transferred from great things to small – only when there is what we may call
a descending incongruity.” (p. 108) The change, that is, must be from high
224 John Morreall
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, re-
quires careful reading, for it uses not only terms from Freud’s psychoana-
lytic 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 dis-
charged 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 sim-
ple 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 ma-
chine 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 en-
ergy 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 expend-
iture 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
came down far from his work site. At this point in the story, Freud says, we
have summoned concern and pity for the poor man. But the end of Twain’s
story is that his brother was docked half a day’s pay for the time he was in the
air “absent from his place of employment.” Listening to this twist, we realize
that concern and pity are not called for. And so the psychic energy we have
prepared for sympathetic emotions is discharged in laughter.
In his essay “Humor,” Freud extended his comments on humor used in his
special sense as a saving of emotional expenditure in feeling negative emo-
tions. He was especially interested in situations in which people respond to
adverse situations in their own lives with laughter rather than with fear, anger,
sadness, or other negative emotions.
Like wit and the comic, humor has in it a liberating element. But it also has
something fine and elevating, which is lacking in the other two ways of de-
riving pleasure from intellectual activity. Obviously, what is fine about it is
the triumph of narcissism, the ego’s victorious assertion of its own invulner-
ability. It refuses to be hurt by the arrows of reality or to be compelled to suf-
fer. (Morreall 1987: 113)
Humor, Freud adds, represents the triumph of the pleasure principle, “which
is strong enough to assert itself here in the face of the adverse real circum-
stances.” Freud also notes that “it is not everyone who is capable of the hu-
morous attitude: it is a rare and precious gift, and there are many people who
have not even the capacity for deriving pleasure from humor when it is pre-
sented to them by others.” (ibid. 116)
The Incongruity Theory
The second theory that arose in the 18th century to compete with the Supe-
riority Theory, now dominates humor research. It is the Incongruity Theory.
Put in its most general form, it says that humorous amusement is a reaction
to something incongruous, that is, something which does not fit our ordinary
mental patterns. Different versions of this theory will add various details to
this basic claim, as we will see.
In their writings on public speaking, Aristotle and Cicero had mentioned
that one way to get a laugh from an audience is to set up an expectation and
then violate it. According to the Incongruity Theory, this is not just a way to
create humor, but the basic way. Another precursor of the Incongruity Theory
226 John Morreall
was Francis Hutcheson, who in his critique of Hobbes had commented that
comic literature is based on the use of somewhat inappropriate metaphors and
similes to trigger ideas that clash with each other. In more detail, James Beat-
tie, in his “Essay on Laughter and Ludicrous Composition”, outlined ways in
which opposing images and ideas could be juxtaposed for comic effect.
The first widely known book in which the Incongruity Theory appeared in
relatively complete form is Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment published
in 1790:
In everything that is to excite a lively convulsive laugh there must be something

absurd (in which the understanding, therefore, can find no satisfaction). Laugh-
ter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expect-
ation 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 Chi-
huahua and a 200-pound St. Bernard “dogs.” Amusement arises when we are
suddenly struck by the discrepancy between a concept and a perception of the
same thing, and we enjoy the conceptual shock that discrepancy causes. What
we are enjoying when we laugh, according to Schopenhauer, is an
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
them, he discussed the cognitive processes in the creation and appreciation of

humor. But he also contrasted humorous amusement as a response to incon-
gruity 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 sym-
pathy with real and necessary distress; as we burst into laughter from want
of sympathy with that which is unreasonable and unnecessary, the absurd-
ity of which provokes our spleen or mirth, rather than any serious reflection
on it. (Morreall 1987: 65)
As a literary critic, Hazlitt explored the many ways comic writers achieve
their effects. He distinguished, as Cicero had, between naturally occurring
incongruity which we appreciate as someone points it out, and incongruity
created in the way someone represents something in words. Hazlitt calls the
first “humor” and the second “wit.” “Humor is the describing of the ludicrous
as it is in inself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with
something else. Humor is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit
is the product of art and fancy.” (Morreall 1987: 74)
Soren Kierkegaard was a philosopher and religious thinker with an ap-
proach similar to Hazlitt’s. In his version of the Incongruity Theory, “the
comical” appears where we have been using “humor,” and “contradiction”
where we have been using “incongruity.” “Wherever there is contradiction,”
Kierkegaard wrote, “the comical is present.” (Morreall 1987: 83) In his Con-
cluding Unscientific Postscript he discussed the nature and value of the comi-
cal. Traditional philosophy and religion emphasized what is serious in life, he
noted, and so tended to dismiss comedy and valorize tragedy. But he opposed
the idea that the tragic or otherwise serious perspective is “a bliss-bringing
panacea, as if seriousness were a good in and of itself, something to be taken
without directions, so that all is well if one is merely serious at all times.” He
insisted that it is “quite as dubious, precisely quite as dubious, to be pathetic
and serious in the wrong place, as it is to laugh in the wrong place.” (Morreall
1987: 84) The difference between a tragic view of a situation and a comic
view of the same situation is that “the tragic apprehension sees the contra-
diction and despairs of a way out,” while the comic vision faces the same
contradiction but sees a “way out.” In many situations, Kierkegaard said, the
comic perspective can be more imaginative, more insightful, and wiser than
the tragic p erspective.
228 John Morreall
Kierkegaard was especially interested in humor and its close relative irony,
for their place in three philosophies of life: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the
religious. Those making the transition from the merely ethical to the religious
way of life, he says, see lots of humor in their situation. Religious people, es-
pecially Christians, need to have a sense of humor to live with the incongrui-
ties in such puzzling beliefs as the Incarnation and the Trinity. Kierkegaard
wrote in his journal that “the humorous is present throughout Christianity,”
indeed, that Christianity is the most humorous world view in history. It was
largely Kierkegaard’s appreciation of humor in opposition to the traditional
Christian prejudices against it that made way for Christian thinkers in the
20th century such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Harvey Cox to wrote positively
about humor in relation to religion.
While the Incongruity Theory has allowed philosophers and religious
thinkers to get beyond the narrowness of the Superiority Theory and the at-
tendant moral objections to humor, it has also given rise to new objections to
humor. The basic objection here can be called Irrationality Objection. As the
enjoyment of something which does not fit our ordinary conceptual patterns,
humor seems to involve a perverse kind of pleasure. Our conceptual patterns
are the ways we process our experiences, understand, and get along in the
world. Something that clashes with our conceptual patterns should not de-
light but puzzle us. The creator of humor, according to this objection, creates
experiences that undermine our rationality, and packages these experiences
as something to enjoy! So humor is conceptually anarchic. At the end of the
19th century George Santayana put this objection in a strong form, arguing
that we do not really enjoy incongruity,but only the stimulation it brings.
He wrote of an “undertone of disgust” that accompanies our amusement at
humor. “Man, being a rational animal, can like absurdity no better than he can
like hunger or cold.”
The Incongruity Theory has had great influence in humor research over the
last forty years. In psychology it has taken two major forms: theorists such
as Paul McGhee say that humor is a reaction to incongruity. Others like Jerry
Suls and Thomas Schultz say that what we enjoy in humor is not incongruity
itself, but the resolution of incongruity. They propose a two-stage mental pro-
cess in which we at first are struck by something odd, anomalous, puzzling,
but then in the second stage we resolve the incongruity by finding a mental
pattern under which the apparently anomalous item does fit.
Before leaving our discussion of the three classic theories of humor, how-
ever, we need to note that there are several hybrid theories, most notably that
of Henri Bergson, whose 1905 book Laughter is often cited in literary studies
as well as philosophy. Bergson’s account of humor grew out of his metaphys-

ics and his ethics, especially his opposition to the materialism and mechanism
popular in his day. His own metaphysical theory of “Creative Evolution” pos-
ited 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 atti-
tude 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. Fortu-
nately, human beings have evolved a way of correcting mechanical behavior,
and that is laughter. For Bergson, laughter is a social gesture of mockery to-
ward 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 The-
ory. 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,
230 John Morreall
such as Lee Siegel, claim that the greater people’s sense of humor the less
religious they are, and the more religious they are the less sense of humor
they have.
One way to argue for the incompatibility of religiosity and humor is by
appealing to the notion of the sacred. All religions are based on certain be-
liefs, values, and rituals deemed worthy of absolute respect. Each religion
requires of its followers a commitment to these sacred beliefs, values, and
rituals which is incompatible with taking a humorous or playful attitude to-
ward them. And the more religious people are, the more their sacred beliefs,
values, and rituals will come up in their everyday life. Maximally religious
persons will devote most of their waking hours to thoughts and activities
centered around sacred beliefs, values, and rituals. Consider the life of the
Christian monk or nun, the devout Orthodox Jew, or the Muslim holy person.
Whenever something associated with anything sacred arises, they must think
and act in a way that shows respect for the sacred. For them to make a joke
about something sacred – such as to playfully attribute a base motive to a sa-
cred figure – would be sacrilegious.
In the history of humor, however, making fun of religious leaders, scrip-
tures, and even the gods is commonplace. Irreverence has been a central fea-
ture of comedy since Aristophanes. And so a pious person would not be able
to countenance much comedy. A recent example of this incompatibility of
humor and piety is the aftermath of the publication of Salman Rushdie’s
novel Satanic Verses, which gave unseemly characters names of members
of Muhammad’s family and gave derogatory names to the Prophet himself.
Several Muslim leaders condemned Rushdie as an apostate, and the standard
Islamic punishment for apostasy is death. So Rushdie has been under death
threats from pious Muslims ever since.
When we mentioned the Puritans’s opposition to comedy, we saw another
reason for thinking that religion and humor are incompatible. Comedy from
the days of Aristophanes has been full of drunkards, lechers, liars, adulterers,
and others with major vices, and these characters are the focus of our enjoy-
ment. According to the Puritans’s arguments, the proper response to such
vices is not to enjoy them in laughter but to reform them.
Still another way to argue for the incompatibility of humor and religion
in the Western monotheistic religions is to consider whether God has a sense
of humor. Considering what is said about God both in the Bible and in the
theology books, the answer seems a definite No. In the Bible, God laughs
only in scorn at his enemies, never in amusement, and each mention of God’s
laughter at his enemies is followed by his slaughtering them. Furthermore,
there seems to be nothing funny associated with this laughter. The humans
who speak for God, the prophets, also laugh only in scorn, and in one case
a prophet responded to children’s laughter at him for being bald by cursing
them, whereupon God had two bears maul the children. Furthermore, mirth-
ful and joyous laughter are treated with suspicion in the Bible. The author of
Ecclesiastes describes such laughter as empty, calling it “madness.” Later he
counsels that “Sorrow is better than laughter” (7: 3). The Book of Proverbs
warns that “Even in laughter the heart is sad, and the end of joy is grief ”
(14: 13). In the New Testament, the letter of James advises us to “Let your
laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection” (4: 9), advise
followed in many of the Christian monastic traditions.
If we consider the theology which developed as Christians, Jews, and
Muslims applied Greek philosophical concepts to God, we also have reasons
for thinking that God could have no sense of humor. To be amused, accord-
ing to the Incongruity Theory, a person must enjoy experiencing something
which violates their mental patterns, something which seems impossible for
God. If, as the theology books tell us, God has a plan for how every creature
is supposed to live, then God could not be happy when creatures act in ways
that oppose his plan. For human beings to violate God’s plan is precisely
the nature of sin, and God cannot enjoy sin. A list of the standard objects of
laughter in comedy is a list of the major sins – lechery, avarice, drunkenness,
gluttony, lying, adultery, slander, etc. Even the comic human traits which
are not sinful, such as stupidity and ugliness, are not something which God
would enjoy. If as Hazlitt said, humor is based on enjoying the discrepancy
between the way things are supposed to be and the way things are, then, it
seems that God is incapable of humor.
Although the overwhelming majority of religious thinkers who have ad-
dressed the relation of humor with religion have had such negative attitudes
to it, there have been a few religious thinkers who have seen value in humor.
Thomas Aquinas, as we saw, thought of humor as a kind of play which re-
freshes us for more serious activity. Some religious thinkers have even seen
religious value in humor. Kierkegaard thought that Christianity, with its il-
logical mysteries, was the most humorous religion of all. The two best con-
temporary proponents of the compatibility of humor and religion are Conrad
Hyers and Harvey Cox. For both a mature religious sense should include
a good sense of humor.
Hyers has studied the relationship between humor and religion not only in
the Biblical religions but also in Zen Buddhism, which is not constrained by
all the monotheistic assumptions we have reviewed. One of the major goals
232 John Morreall
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 re-
counts 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, celebra-
tive 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 es-
sential feature which all games have in common. Could “humor” be a word
and concept like Wittgenstein’s “game”?
One way to argue that humor does have an essence is to present some
feature that all cases of humor share which makes them all humor. The most
plausible of the three traditional theories here is the Incongruity Theory. The
Superiority and Relief theories have too many counterexamples to be viable
candidates.
Feeling superior to other people occurs in some cases of humor, but there
are many other cases of humor which lack such feelings, and many cases
of feeling superior which are not instances of humor. Here Frances Hutch-
eson offered useful examples in his critique of Hobbes, to which we can add.
Laughing at the clever and acrobatic way Charlie Chaplin gets out of a tough
situation in a silent film, for example, need not involve feeling superior to
that character and probably involves feeling inferior to him. And simply feel-
ing superior to someone, as in winning a race, does not by itself involve any
humor at all.
The Relief Theory is implausible for other reasons, most importantly, its
hydraulic account of the build-up and release of energy in the nervous sys-
tem. Many funny experiences occur in a few seconds, which hardly seems
long enough for nervous energy to build up, be seen to be superfluous, and
then be vented. In the 1960s there was a funny sign which read “THIMK.” To
be amused by it did not seem to require the build-up of any emotion which
needed venting. Nor did it seem to require the venting of any psychic energy
of repression or of understanding. All that seemed required is an enjoyment
of the opposition between the advice the sign was trying to give and the way
it was spelled. The most widely discussed version of the Relief Theory is that
of Freud, but few scholars today would commit themselves to Freud’s com-
plicated account of how psychic energy is expended, saved in statu nascendi,
and all the rest. No one, indeed, even uses Freud’s distinction of jokes, the
comic, and humor.
The example of the THIMK sign was intended not only to argue against
the Relief Theory but to argue for the Incongruity Theory. That theory seems
comprehensive in a way that the other two are not. What seems both neces-
sary and sufficient for humorous amusement, that is, is an enjoyment of some
incongruity. I include the element of enjoyment here, as many Incongruity
theorists do not, because the mere perception of incongruity is not sufficient
for humor. In many cases of fear, anger, disgust, and sadness, we perceive
something which violates our mental patterns, but we do not enjoy the incon-
gruity. What sets humorous amusement from these negative emotions is that
in humor there is something about experiencing incongruity which we enjoy.
Among proponents of the Incongruity Theory, as we noted earlier, some
claim that amusement lies in the resolution of an incongruity. As evidence
these theorists appeal mostly to jokes. But while there is resolution of
234 John Morreall
incongruity in most jokes, there are many other kinds of humor in which the
incongruity is not resolved, and in which what seems to amuse us is the in-
congruity itself. If I see a cloud which looks like Richard Nixon’s profile and
laugh, I seem to be taking pleasure in the unexpectedness of a cloud looking
like Nixon, not in figuring out how this coincidence might have some explan-
ation. To be amused when I accidentally spill a scoop of ice cream from an
ice cream cone on my dog’s head, similarly, I do not have to figure out how
I made such a blunder; indeed, going into an explanatory mode would seem
to inhibit rather than foster amusement.
Even in verbal humor, there is not always resolution of incongruity. One
of the running gags on the Bob Newhart TV show of the 1990s was having
three disheveled young men come into the hotel. One introduced himself and
then turning to his brothers said, “This is my brother Darrell, and that is my
other brother Darrell.” No explanation was ever even suggested for why two
brothers would have the same name. What viewers enjoyed was the sheer
unresolved absurdity.
We might add a note here about the traditional connection drawn between
superiority and humor. If, as I have argued, feeling superior to someone is nei-
ther necessary nor sufficient for amusement, why was the Superiority Theory
the only theory of laughter and humor for two millennia? To answer this ques-
tion, we should note that most of the incongruities we laugh at, especially in
comedy, are human shortcomings – ignorance, stupidity, awkwardness, mis-
takes, misunderstandings, and moral vices. The Incongruity Theory would say
simply that it is the unexpectedness, the out-of-placeness of these shortcom-
ings that we enjoy. The Superiority Theory says that what we enjoy in humor
is feelings of superiority evoked by our awareness of other people’s shortcom-
ings. The trouble with the latter claim is that when we perceive a shortcoming
in another person, and even when we laugh at it, we need not feel superior
to that person. In kidding our friends about their foibles, we often admit that
we have the same shortcomings; what we are really laughing at is our shared
shortcomings. And even when we perceive some shortcoming in a person and
we do feel superior, our feelings of superiority by themselves do not con-
stitute humor, as the Superiority Theory would have us believe. If I beat my
neighbor at a game because she makes several mistakes, and so I feel superior
to her, I am not therein experiencing my win or her defeat as funny. For there
to be humor here, something must be perceived as incongruous. If, for ex-
ample, she had been so confident of winning that she bet me $100 on the game
at 4-to-1 odds, or if the mistakes she made were all things that she criticized
me for the last time we played, then I might find her defeat humorous.
3. In addressing the last three philosophical issues about humor, I am going
to be using the Incongruity Theory. The first is the relationship between humor
and emotions. Virtually everyone writing about this topic before the 20th cen-
tury, and the vast majority writing after that, have thought of laughter as either
expressing some emotion(s) or in the Relief Theory releasing emotional en-
ergy. For Plato it was malice, for Hobbes it was “sudden glory,” for Spinoza
hatred. When laughter and humor were distinguished in the 18th century,
humor was thought to involve an emotion, often called “amusement.” Hazlitt
and Bergson did point out how humor blocks, and is blocked by such emo-
tions as fear, sympathy, and sadness, but even then, amusement was still clas-
sified as an emotion.
Recently, Robert Sharpe has gone beyond simply assuming that amuse-
ment is an emotion by giving seven similarities between it and standard emo-
tions such as fear and love (Morreall 1987: 208–211). Both amusement and
standard emotions, he says, have “intentional objects” – they are about some-
thing. Both admit of degrees. Both have behavioral manifestations which we
may suppress. Both allow for self-deception. Both are pleasurable or painful.
With both we can distinguish between the intentional object of the mental
state and the cause of the mental state. And with both we can cultivate taste.
I have challenged the standard view that amusement is an emotion, and
have argued that none of Sharpe’s parallels pick out essential features of emo-
tions or humor which unite them. Furthermore, using a standard account of
the nature of emotion, I have shown several dissimilarities between amuse-
ment and standard emotions.
According to a standard theory of emotion, an emotion is a state of physio-
logical upset, along with the sensations of that upset, caused by cognitive
events, which motivates practical action. The cognitive events are usually
described as beliefs and desires. If I am driving at night and suddenly see
a log in the road ahead, to use Jerome Shaffer’s example, I may experience
fear. That emotion is a set of physiological changes – my increased heartbeat
and blood pressure, muscle tension, sweating, etc. – along with my sensation
of these bodily changes. Those changes are caused by my belief that I am in
danger and my desire to escape the danger, and I am motivated to avoid hit-
ting the log by putting on the brakes or steering around the log.
This standard account of emotion does not fit amusement at all well. There
are physiological upsets in amusement – the spasms of the diaphragm, the
bursts of exhalation, etc., and we do have sensations of these changes. But the
changes in laughter need not be caused by beliefs and desires, and there is no
motivation to do anything practical. When I see the cloud as Richard Nixon
236 John Morreall
and am amused, for example, I do not believe that the cloud is Nixon, and
I do not have any particular desires about the cloud or about Nixon. Nor am
I motivated to do anything at all. The lack of motivation in humor, its idleness,
remember, is the basis for one of the traditional objections to it.
Even some of the similarities between humor and emotions which Sharpe
appeals to hide deeper dissimilarities. Amusement, like love, for example, is
pleasurable. But in love what we take pleasure in is the persons whom we
love. We are attracted to the persons themselves. In amusement, however, we
need not be attracted to what is making us laugh. If I am amused when I drive
past a house with dozens of tacky plastic statues on the front lawn, I am not
attracted to those statues and their arrangement. (If I were, I wouldn’t be
laughing.) What I am enjoying is the experience of seeing this attempt at dis-
playing good taste go awry.
Because amusement has no requirement of belief or desire, and does not
motivate practical action, the study of humor has not progressed in the ways
the study of emotion have progressed in the last half-century. While the
physiological changes in fear and anger are well understood through their
connections with actions like fleeing and fighting, the physiology of laughter
still seems anomalous.
4. The fourth issue, the relation of humor to rationality, is related to the third.
Most thinkers who have considered it have treated humor as making us ir-
rational. From Plato on, humor was classified as an emotion, and emotions
were usually thought to be irrational. Once the Incongruity Theory was es-
tablished, thinkers like Santayana were bothered by the apparent irrationality
of enjoying something incongruous. Indeed, Santayana claimed that human
beings, as rational animals, are incapable of enjoying absurdity.
If humor were utterly at odds with rationality, however, it would be diffi-
cult to see how it could have evolved in the human race. At least the emotions
have survival value in preparing us for fighting or fleeing, mating, etc. But
laughter and humor do not prepare us for appropriate action; intense laughter
is physically incapacitating. If humor were also mentally incapacitating, how
could it have become part of human nature?
I have argued that the enjoyment of incongruity did have survival value for
the species, and that its value lay in the way it enhanced rationality.
Rationality is our ability to think abstractly, that is, free of the limitations
of the place, time, and personal situation we are currently in. Lower animals
perceive their surroundings and respond with practical actions in order to get
food, find a mate, avoid predators, etc. They are aware of the place and time
in which they find themselves and their current needs. Emotions evolved as
ways of equipping animals to take appropriate actions – to get out of danger,
fight successfully, reproduce, etc. But while this practical orientation allowed
animals to get along, it did not foster abstract thinking.
In the lower animals, incongruity is experienced as puzzling or threaten-
ing, not as amusing. A striking example is the panic with which chimpanzees
respond to a photograph of a chimpanzee with its head separated from its
body. Humans, too, often treat incongruity as puzzling or threatening. But
somewhere in human evolution, our ancestors developed a new way to re-
spond to situations which did not match their expectations. They enjoyed
the mental jolt they gave them, they found them funny. Now such a response
would not have been appropriate in life-threatening situations which called
for immediate action. But in situations with no immediate danger, being able
to suppress the “fight-or-flight” response and enjoy the surprising situation
could have had benefits. It could have led to curious exploration and to re-
flection on normal patterns of events. As the brain’s emotional limbic system
did not dominate, the more rational cerebral cortex could operate. Especially
important here would have been early humans’ developing the ability to laugh
at themselves, for that would have given them a more objective, less ego-
centered perspective, and that is the essence of rationality.
Many have described the value of humor as its giving us emotional dis-
tance from the problems in life. Indeed, some psychiatrists and other thera-
pists now use humor precisely to get people to step back from their problems
and see them “in the big picture.” The goal here is much the same as the an-
cient Stoics’s goal – to get people to be more rational and less bothered by
life’s problems. What is unfortunate is that the Stoics, in classifying laughter
as an emotion, completely missed its opposition to emotions and its ability to
enhance rationality.
5. The last philosophical and religious issue I want to comment on is the
ethics of humor. Earlier we saw some of the ethical critiques of laughter and
humor in traditional religion and philosophy. Today too, we see ethical objec-
tions to certain kinds of humor, especially in cases of racial and sexual dis-
crimination and sexual harrassment. Among the traditional charges against
laughter and humor, nine stand out:
1. Humor is hostile.

2. Humor diminishes self-control.
3. Humor is irresponsible.
238 John Morreall
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 entertain-
ment media are at the heart of our national culture, and are the top U.S.
export around the world. But the first charge – that humor is hostile – does
arise frequently, usually in cases involving racial or sexual discrimination, or
sexual harassment. Ethnic humor, racist humor, and humor which “targets”
women, gay men, and lesbians is often held to be an expression of hostility
as offensive as physical violence.
If we look back through history, we find countless examples of groups
which had power over other groups making jokes (publishing cartoons, writ-
ing comic songs, staging comic plays, etc.) based on the supposed shortcom-
ings of the less powerful groups. Many have claimed that such humor re-
inforces the negative image of less powerful groups and thus helps the more
powerful groups maintain their dominance.
One position concerning the ethics of humor could be dubbed the Joke-
as-Libel position. It goes like this. Jokes and other humor which puts down
an individual or group works by representing the target as having some major
shortcoming – stupidity, laziness, sexual promiscuity, obsession with money,
etc. In such humor, the audience typically laughs at the moment when the
representative of the target group is revealed to have the shortcoming – usu-
ally to an extreme degree. Consider the joke about the Polish astronaut who
announced his plan to fly to the sun. When someone asked about the sun’s
intense heat, he answered, “No problem – I’m going to go at night.” That
revelation of his stupidity is what makes the audience laugh. The advocate of
the Joke-as-Libel position would say that tellers of this joke are making an
implicit assertion that Poles are stupid, and in doing so they are perpetuating
a morally objectionable stereotype.
One proponent of some of the basic ideas of the Joke-as-Libel position is
Ronald de Sousa (1987a, 1987b) In order to enjoy put-down humor, he says,
a person must not only understand that the target group is being represented
as having a shortcoming, but must believe that the group in fact has that short-
coming. De Sousa illustrates with a joke about Margaret Trudeau, the former
wife of Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who had a reputation for
promiscuity:
Margaret Trudeau goes to visit the hockey team. When she emerges she com-
plains that she has been gang-raped. Wishful thinking. (Morreall 1987: 239)
According to de Sousa, this joke has certain assumptions. One is that Mar-
garet Trudeau is promiscuous. Another is that all women secretly want to be
raped. To be amused by a joke like this with malicious content, de Sousa says,
it is not enough to understand these assumptions of the joke, or to hypotheti-
cally adopt them for the moment. We must endorse them. If we do not share
those assumptions with the joke teller, we will not find the joke funny. Sexist
and racist jokes are objectionable precisely because they amuse only people
who share their assumptions, and those assumptions are not merely false but
morally harmful inasmuch as they perpetuate false stereotypes and so unjust
treatment of the target group. People who think that all women secretly want
to be raped may well condone rape, and at least will treat women in a way
that denies them their autonomy and rights.
Robert C. Roberts and I have a different position on jokes with a tar-
get. In many cases, put-down jokes are told to perpetuate stereotyped beliefs
about a group being, and sometimes an objectionable malice is involved. But
malice is not a necessary feature of the telling or the appreciation of such
jokes. I once read a joke which put down Laplanders, for example. At the
time I had no distinctive beliefs about Laplanders other than that they live in
the far North of Europe. If someone had asked me about my attitude toward
Laplanders, I would have shrugged my shoulders. But the joke was clever,
and I found it funny. Now those who created this joke may well have had
malicious, morally objectionable attitudes toward Laplanders, and so some-
one might morally object to their telling it, much as someone might object
to the telling of jokes about blacks at Ku Klux Klan meetings. But I would
say that putdown jokes can be funny even for those who do not share their
assumptions.
Even jokes which can express hostility, then, do not require listeners to
share that hostility in order to enjoy them. The strongest reasonable position
about the ethics of joking here seems to be that such jokes should not gener-
ally be told because of the likelihood that they will reinforce people’s hostil-
ity toward other groups.
So far in exploring the ethics of humor I have focused only on the ways
in which humor could be ethically objectionable. But if my earlier comments
about the ability of humor to block negative emotions and foster rationality
240 John Morreall
are correct, then humor can also be ethically praiseworthy. Humor can be
used, for example, to calm angry people and get them to look more object-
ively at a situation. Several years ago California police officer Adelle Roberts
was called to a family fight. As she got out of her squad car and approached
the front door, she heard yelling and things being thrown against the wall
inside. Then a portable TV set came crashing through the front window. She
had to knock very loudly, and a voice bellowed, “Who is it?’ “TV Repair”
was her reply. The combatants came to the door, smiling, and began to resolve
their conflict.
Humor can also be used to reduce people’s fear and anxiety. About 100
hospitals in the U.S. now have either “comedy carts” or full-scale “humor
rooms,” precisely for that purpose. Another valuable use for humor is in get-
ting people to see their mistakes objectively rather than defensively. To contin-
ue the list of praiseworthy humor, all we need do is think of situations in which
negative emotions with bad consequences can be overridden by humor.
My favorite approach
I first got interested in researching humor for two reasons. First, I had always
been puzzled by its nature and how it might have evolved. Second, although
traditional attitudes toward humor in Western philosophy and religion have
been negative, I found humor to be valuable in a way nothing else is. As
Nietzsche said of music, without it, life would be a mistake.
So I have tried to do two things: articulate the nature of humor, especially
its relation to negative emotions like fear, anger, and sadness; and explore the
benefits it has for individuals and groups. To explain the nature of humor,
I have used a version of the Incongruity Theory. To explain the value of
humor, I have asked what possible benefits might accrue to a creature which
can enjoy something violating its concepts and expectations. Most recently,
I have applied both these approaches to examining the “comic vision of life,”
and contrasting it with the “tragic vision” of life. In Comedy, Tragedy, and
Religion, I develop twenty points of contrast between the comic and tragic
visions.
At the level of individual psychology, the comic and tragic visions rep-
resent: complex vs. simple conceptual schemes, high vs. low tolerance for
disorder and ambiguity, seeking out vs. avoiding the unfamiliar, divergent vs.
convergent thinking, critical vs. noncritical thinking, emotional disengage-
ment vs. engagement, willingness to change one’s mind vs. stubbornness,
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, ques-
tioning 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.
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Literature and humor
Alleen and Don Nilsen
Note: Because literary humor is such a broad field, we asked nine contempor-
ary scholars to help us by describing their work and making observations to
be worked into this chapter. Unless otherwise identified, quoted materials
come from what these scholars originally wrote for this primer. We grate-
fully acknowledge the help of Regina Barreca, Jessica Milner Davis, Steven
H. Gale, Paul H. Grawe, D. G. Kehl, Paul Lewis, Daniel Royot, Elaine Safer,
and David E. E. Sloane. Samples of their publications are listed in the “Crit-
ical Works Cited” at the end of this chapter where there are also brief state-
ments describing them and their work.
A matter of analysis
Even though highly respected creators of humorous literature have ex-

pressed 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 in-
nards 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 re-
spect. Essentially it is a complete mystery.” White later compared interpret-
ing 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 con-
solation 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.’”
244 Alleen and Don Nilsen
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 mes-
sage 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 hon-
oring 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 distinc-
tion 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 ex-
ample, 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
Literature and humor 245
in my bed...eating my porridge…),” “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your
house down,” and “Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!”
Many people will argue that these old stories are indeed literature at least
partly because of these famous lines which rely on surprise, succinctness, and
repetition – three common features of humor.
Another characteristic of literary humor is that it is a more extended dis-
course than are individual jokes or witty comebacks. Literary discourses can
be short as with poems, essays, speeches, and short stories, but as shown by
the work of the nine scholars we consulted for this chapter most serious liter-
ary criticism is based on full length novels or plays or on an extended body of
work by a single author as in Elaine Safer’s 2006 Mocking the Age: The Later
Novels of Philip Roth and in Steven Gale’s 2003 Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter’s
Screenplays and the Artisitc Process.
Expectations are higher for literary humor than for stand-up comedy as
shown by letters to the editor published in a July 17, 1995 New York Maga-
zine. They were written as a follow-up to an article on today’s depressing state
of television comedy. One writer answered his own question of “Why were
the Bennys, the Aces, the Allens (Steve and Fred, both), Berles, Benchleys,
Parkers, Woollcotts intuitively brilliant and where are their kind now?” with
the observation that these earlier comedians “were the products of a literate
society, widely read or with extensive cultural experience, which gave them
backgrounds upon which to draw . . . . They knew how to think and were well
edited, either by erudite editors or by perceptive audiences.” Another reader
wrote that the place to look for delightful wit today is not in the comedy clubs
but “in written form, in comic novels and essays.”
Among the reasons that comic novels and essays can more easily qualify
as “literature” than can stand-up comedy is that the authors have space to
include smart allusions and to tie them together. Because of a lack of space,
jokes and cartoons are necessarily filled with stereotypes, while more sophis-
ticated literary pieces are lexically packed, meaning that several strands of
humor are being developed simultaneously. In addition to using such surface
structure techniques as puns and word play, authors of fuller pieces make use
of such deep structure tropes as metaphors, similes, irony, and synecdoche.
They have the space to develop truly humorous characters and to establish and
then break patterns. An example of this kind of variation on a theme are the
several allusions to Girl Scouts that Louis Sachar makes in his 1998 Holes,
a book for young readers that won both the Newbery and the National Book
awards. Stanley, the teen-aged protagonist, is unfairly sentenced to a “tough-
love” camp for juvenile delinquents. When he first arrives, the guard warns
him “You’re not in the Girl Scouts any more.” Throughout the book, this same
guard repeats the idea sometimes by just reminding the boys they aren’t Girl
Scouts, while at other times asking such questions as “You Girl Scouts having
a good time?” Near the end when Stanley’s lawyer and the Texas State At-
torney General drive into the camp to investigate its unorthodox methods, the
Warden wonders who’s coming and the guard tells her, “It ain’t Girl Scouts
selling cookies.” This leads up to the ironic denouement in which the camp is
“bought by a national organization dedicated to the well-being of young girls.
In a few years, Camp Green Lake will become a Girl Scout camp.”
The study of literary humor is in some ways as broad as the whole field of
humor research, plus the whole field of literary criticism, because the litera-
ture of the world covers every aspect of life while also providing the fullest
accounts that we can get from other times and other places, both real and
imagined. This means that literary humor scholars have much in common
with critics of literature in general because of the extensive overlap between
what humor scholars describe as the most common features of humor and the
characteristics that literary critics look for in narratives including ambiguity,
exaggeration, hostility, irony, superiority, surprise, shock, word play, incon-
gruity and incongruity resolution.
Comedy is a term that literary scholars “owned” long before the popular
culture gave it today’s more generalized meaning of something that brings
smiles and laughter. In medieval times, the word comedy was applied to liter-
ary works that were not necessarily created for the purpose of arousing laugh-
ter, but at least had happier endings and less exalted styles than tragedies.
Dante was using this meaning in the 1300s when he named The Divine Com-
edy. Literary comedies typically begin with a disruption of life as it is expect-
ed to be or the breaking of some kind of “law.” The body of the play or story
consists mostly of futile but perhaps amusing attempts to restore a balance,
which is finally achieved as part of the happy ending. By the Middle Ages, the
concept of comedy had developed into different strands. High comedy (what
we now call smart comedy or literary comedy) relied for its humor on wit
and sophistication, while low comedy relied on burlesque, crude jokes, and
buffoonery. The breadth of what is included in comedy is shown in Maurice
Charney’s 2005 two-volume Comedy: A Geographic and Historical Guide,
which includes 38 chapters written by leading scholars. Some are historic-
al (“Middle English Comedy” by Andrew Welsh and “Commedia dell’ Arte”
by Frances K. Barasch), some are defined by their audience (“Children’s
Humor” by Kathryn Douglas and “Queer Comedy” by Ken Feil), some by
their medium (“Television Sitcoms” by Leo Charney and “American Polit-
ical Cartoons and Comics” by Kalman Goldstein), others by ethnicity (“Afri-

can 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 crea-
tors (“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 stor-
ies were exaggerated with the good parts resembling daydreams while the bad
parts resembled nightmares. Many of them told about young heroes embark-
ing on quests in which their success would be rewarded by the love of a beau-
tiful 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 roman-
tic 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 nov-
els 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. Ex-
amples 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 develop-
ment 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 re-
sponds 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
kind.” Later when Jack answers one of her questions by saying, he “doesn’t
know,” she again responds cheerfully, “I am pleased to hear it. I do not ap-
prove anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a deli-
cate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”
Humor and humorous as cover terms for things that make us laugh can be
traced to medieval physiology, in which the bodily fluids, or humours, were
described as yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood. These were thought
to be related to people being bilious, melancholy, phlegmatic, or sanguine,
respectively. If these bodily fluids were out of balance, a person would likely
become emotionally unbalanced. Ben Johnson in 1598 published Every Man
in His Humor and the following year Every Man Out of His Humor. These
two books established the idea that out-of-balance people, those who are ec-
centrics or who are so obsessed with a particular idea that they make normal
people laugh, are humorous characters. From this idea came the meaning of
humor that most people think of today, which is anything that makes them
laugh in enjoyment because of being surprised by something absurd, ludi-
crous, or exaggerated. People’s responses to humorous characters can range
from pleasant amusement to shock and disgust. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
are filled with humorous characters ranging from the energetic Wife of Bath
to the pretentious but little educated Nun and from the overly religious and
hypocritical Monk to the crude rascal of The Miller and the comically roman-
tic Knight. Humorous characters are also at the heart of the humor in William
Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew, Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and Kenneth Gra-
hame’s The Wind in the Willows.
Alazons and eirons are stock humorous characters going back to Greek
drama. Alazons are overly confident braggarts getting their way by blustering
and bullying. At the other extreme, are the eirons, who are sly rogues get-
ting their way through feigned ignorance or dumb luck. Their name comes
from the word irony, because they say one thing and mean something else.
Other archetypal characters who often cause readers to laugh are tricksters
and fools, along with those rulers and destroyers who fall prey to their own
vanity. Rustic, backwoods characters provide much of the humor in region-
al stories, while the slick, streetwise humor of city slickers is the basis for
humor set in urban areas.
Satirical literature is created by writers who have a clear notion of what
is right and what is wrong with the world. Their goal is to portray life in such
a way that readers will be shocked into a new way of thinking and will then
take steps to correct the current wrongs of the world. Writers of satires can
be deadly serious, but they often entice readers or listeners to stay with them
through using sarcasm, and wit, along with humor that makes people feel
wiser than the characters they are reading about. Aesop did this in his Fables
and so did Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels.
Horatian satire is named after Horace, the Roman lyric poet who lived
in 65–68 bc and wrote two books of mild and playful satire. Such books as
C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, John Nichols’s The Milagro Beanfield War,
and George Orwell’s Animal Farm are generally considered to be Horatian
satire.
Juvenalian satire is named after the writer Decimus Junius Juvenalis, who
lived a century later and was brutally frank in his satirical criticism of the
vices of Roman leaders. Such books as Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, An-
thony Burgess’s Clockwork Orange, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and
George Orwell’s 1984 are generally considered to be Juvenalian satire.
Black humor, and its close relatives of absurdist humor and gallows humor,
grew out of satire, but black humorists are not preaching. They are more con-
cerned with tolerating, than with managing, life. A general consensus is that
the black humor of the 1960s was created by intellectuals in reaction to the
helplessness they felt against the atomic bomb and their frustrations over
a society that was becoming so diverse that it was losing its sense of direction.
However, they did not originate the genre out of whole cloth. They honed its
effects by bouncing readers back and forth between laughter and tears, but
certainly there were strands of black humor in some of Mark Twain’s later
writings and in folk humor about death. Books from the 1960s that are often
cited as examples of how black humor is a testament to the human spirit and
its ability to survive and to laugh in the midst of chaos and destruction include
Terry Southern’s The Magic Christian Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and Thomas
Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.
While the above kinds of literary humor revolve around plots and charac-
ters, readers also find themselves smiling and occasionally laughing over the
surprise that comes with clever word play. Some scholars point to word play
as proof that not all humor is a result of feelings of superiority and/or hostil-
ity, but believers in these theories argue that word play is pleasurable because
its creators feel themselves superior to the “rules” of language as used by
everyone else. Levels of sophistication in word play range from obvious puns
and insults found in children’s folklore to the sly wit found in the writings of
Woody Allen, P. G. Wodehouse, S. J. Perelman, and Dorothy Parker.
Fantasies are one of the places where writers feel free to create wordplay,
with prime examples being Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through
the Looking Glass. The writers of fantasy also have the freedom to create
mad premises, grotesque creatures, absurd situations and purely imagined
landscapes. Douglas Adams did all this for his 1980 Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy, which amuses readers not just with its creativity but also with the
way Adams satirizes tax laws, religion, bad poets, critics, and Paul McCart-
ney’s wealth. Other examples of fantasies where the humor is tinged with sat-
ire include C. Collodi’s Pinocchio, Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy
Hollow,” Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, and
James Thurber’s “Walter Mitty.”
Parodies are a form of satire in which a particular genre, author, or work
is imitated and mocked. Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead is a parody of both William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and of Samuel Beck-
ett’s Waiting for Godot. Like Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot,
Rosencrantz and Guildensterm are masters of the non-sequitur, philosophical
illogical reasoning, and surrealistic reactions. Stoppard makes Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern virtually indistinguishable; they even get their own names
confused.
The 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 schol-
ars even though Frye and Koestler were not focusing specifically on humor.
Influential books focusing on humor, although not necessarily restricted to
literary humor, include Charles Praeger’s 1978 20th Century Humor, Louis
D. Rubin, Jr.’s 1983 The Comic Imagination in American Literature, Neil
Schmitz’s 1983 Of Huck and Alice: Humorous Writing in American Litera-
ture, E. Galligan’s 1984 Comic Vision in Literature, Victor Raskin’s 1985
Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, Lawrence E. Mintz’s 1988 Humor in Amer-
ica: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics, Lance Olsen’s 1990 Circus of
the Mind in Motion: Postmodernism and the Comic Vision, Alleen and Don
Nilsen’s 2000 Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor, and James
Wood’s 2004 The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel.
The most common writing activity of literary scholars is to judge and
make recommendations about particular pieces of humor. Reviewers take on
the task of helping readers choose where they can most profitably spend their
reading time. They tell enough about particular books or plays to let readers
know whether the topic will be of interest to them; they usually provide small
samples of the humor found in such books, and finally make a judgment
about the likelihood of readers enjoying the piece. A common assumption is
that creative people who themselves are humorous will be the best ones to
offer such judgments, hence many publications invite successful authors to
serve as book reviewers.
Critics do more than recommend what people should read. They make
observations and lead readers to better understanding and appreciation. At
least this is the implication in the title of the 1990 Oxford Book of Humorous
Prose: From William Caxton to P. G. Wodehouse, a Conducted Tour by Frank
Muir. Because readers want to be guided by someone whose intellect they
admire, the people asked to put together humor anthologies and to write the
introductory material are often respected members of literary circles. Rus-
sell Baker in the introduction to his 1993 Russell Baker’s Book of American
Humor begins his “Introduction” by explaining why Mark Twain would have
been rejected by The New Yorker just as James Thurber would have been re-
jected by the National Lampoon. He then goes on to explain three different
cycles of humor that he observed while preparing his anthology and reading
“everything funny published in America since Captain John Smith said that
people who don’t work don’t deserve to eat.”
Other well received anthologies that include critical commentary by the
collectors include Stephen Leacock’s 1936 The Greatest Pages of American
Humor, Bennett Cerf’s 1954 An Encyclopedia of Modern American Humor,
Kenneth Lynn’s 1968 The Comic Tradition in America: An Anthology of
American Humor, Mordecai Richler’s 1983 The Best of Modern Humor,
Gene Shalit’s 1987 Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor,
Roy Blount’s 1994 Book of Southern Humor, and Regina Barreca’s 2002 The
Penguin Book of Italian American Writing.
Walter Blair, who taught English at the University of Chicago for 35 years,
deserves considerable credit for bringing academic respect to collecting and
studying humorous literature, especially from a historical perspective. He
was born in 1900 and when he died in 1992, obituary articles credited him
with having taught five Pulitzer Prize winners, including Philip Roth, plus
Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow. He wrote or edited more than 30 books, an-
thologies, and textbooks on various aspects of literary humor. With the noted
dialectologist, Raven I. McDavid Jr., he edited The Mirth of a Nation: Amer-
ica’s Great Dialect Humor (1983), while with Hamlin Hill, he put together
America’s Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury (1978). Others of his
books include Native American Humor 1800–1900 (1937), Horse Sense in
American Humor From Benjamin Franklin to Ogden Nash (1942), and Davy
Crocket: Legendary Frontier Hero: His True Life Story and the Fabulous Tall
Tales Told About Him (1986).
Other examples of historical studies include C. L. Sonnichsen’s 1988 The
Laughing West: Humorous Western Fiction, Past and Present, Elizabeth Am-
mons and Annette White-Parks’s 1994 Tricksterism in Turn-of-the Century
American Literature, and Gregg Camfield’s 1997 Necessary Madness: The
Humor of Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Oxford
University Press, 1997). B. A. Botkin’s 1944 A Treasury of American Folk-
lore, Mody C. Boatright’s 1949 Folk Laughter on the American Frontier, and
Carl Withers’s 1948 A Rocket in My Pocket: The Rhymes and Chants of Young
Americans are all over fifty years old but still in active circulation.
Willard Espy, until his death in 1998, was the best-known collector and
commentator on word play. Among his books are An Almanac of Words at
Play (1975); The Life and Works of Mr. Anonymous (1977); O Thou Improp-
er, Thou Uncommon Noun (1978); Say It My Way (1980), Another Almanac
of Words at Play (1980), and Have a Word on Me (1981). He viewed words as
living organisms as shown by the advice he gave humor scholars when he vis-
ited Arizona State University in 1982, “If words frighten you, never let them
know it....if they respect you, they will like you; there is nothing they will
not do for you. For a few people, they will even walk on their hind legs. For
an even tinier number, for the Homers and the Miltons and the Shakespeares,
they soar up to Heaven and play angel, or even God.”
Other well respected books dealing with word play include Stuart Berg
Flexner’s 1976 I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated Treasury of American
Words and Phrases, John Holmes McDowell’s 1979 Children’s Riddling,
John S. Crosbie’s 1980 Dictionary of Riddles, Robert E. Drennan’s 1983 The
Algonquin Wits: A Crackling Collection of Bon Mots, Wisecracks, Epigrams,
and Gags, Walter Redfern’s 1984 Puns, Jonathan Culler’s 1988 On Puns:
The Foundation of Letters, and Don Hauptman’s Cruel and Unusual Puns,
1991. Peter Farb in his 1975 Word Play: What Happens When People Talk
uses an expanded meaning of play to include much more than humor. Richard
Carlson in his 1975 The Benign Humorists, also explores word play, but as
part of mild satire in books by such writers as Beatrix Potter, A. A. Milne, P.
G. Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Ian Fleming. He
describes their out-of-power characters as careening and bumping “delight-
fully off each other.”
Robert W. Corrigan’s 1981 Comedy: Meaning and Form is a good col-
lection of modern writing about the genre of comedy from such critics as
Christopher Fry, W. H. Auden, Susanne Langer, Northrop Frye, Benjamin
Lehmann, Arthur Koestler, Sigmund Freud, Eric Bentley, Al Capp, and L. C.

Knight. The final chapter includes excerpts from four “classics” of comic the-
ory 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 Field-
ing’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 char-
acter, 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 re-
lated kinds of characters in their 1993 Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours,
Contexts, and Criticisms.
Leonard Feinberg in his 1967 Introduction to Satire, says that people who
write satire have a clear vision of what they want society to be. The purpose
of their writing is to reform society by illustrating for readers the evils of par-
ticular ideas or actions. As science fiction writer Ray Bradbury has explained,
“I don’t write to predict the future; I write to prevent it.” Critic Northrup Frye
explains that satire requires at least a token fantasy, a content which the reader
recognizes as grotesque, and at least an implicit moral standard. In the course
of developing their imagined utopias or dystopias, writers often use the same
kinds of humor that are now considered characteristics of black humor. These
include wit, sarcasm, irony, and cynicism. And although satires and black
humor are grounded in reality, they have a degree of distortion, most often ex-
aggeration. Feinberg says that what is exaggerated “is the bad, the foolish, the
hypocritical,” while “the good, the sensible, the honest” are minimized. An-
other good book on satire is Mary Ellen Snodgrass’s the Encyclopedia of Sa-
tirical Literature, published in 1996 as an ABC-CLIO Literary Companion.
She explains in the preface that her goals are to present a timeline of satire,
a listing of primary sources, a bibliography of commentary and other refer-
ences, and a comprehensive index of titles, authors, periods, literary styles
and devices, etc. Other good sources on satire include Arthur Pollard’s 1970
Satire, Frederick Kiley and J. M. Shuttleworth’s 1971 Satire: From Aesop to
Buchwald, John W. Tilton’s 1977 Cosmic Satire in the Contemporary Novel,
and M. D. Fletcher’s 1987 Contemporary Political Satire: Narrative Strat-
egies in the Post-Modern Context.
In 1965, Bruce J. Friedman edited a book entitled Black Humor, which
contained literary samples from his own writing as well as that of Thomas
Pynchon, Joseph Heller, J. P. Donleavy, Vladimir Nabokov, Edward Albee,
Terry Southern, and James Purdy. Friedman said that while the authors whose
works he included each has a private and unique vision, they all:
–– Continue the strong tradition of storytelling in America.
–– Play with the fading line between fantasy and reality.
–– Have a nervousness, an upbeat tempo, a near hysteria or frenzy.
He added that this same frenzy was also happening in music, talk, films,
and theater. Matthew Winston described black humor as a tone rather than
a genre, while Sanford Pinsker said that it provides an angle of vision for
some authors and a comic technique for others.
Related books include Charles B. Harris’s 1971 Contemporary Ameri-
can Novelists of the Absurd; Max F. Schulz’s 1973 Black Humor Fiction of
the Sixties; David Galloway’s 1981 The Absurd Hero in American Fiction:
Updike, Styron, Bellow, Salinger; Alan R. Pratt’s 1993 Black Humor: Critic-
al Essays; and Ronald Wallace’s No Harm in Smiling: Vladimir Nabokov’s
“Lolita,” and The Last Laugh: Form and Affirmation in the Contemporary
American Comic Novel, both published in 1979.
Scholarly work on parodies is often done in connection with anthologies
as in Robert Falk’s 1955 American Literature in Parody: A Collection of
Parody, Satire, and Literary Burlesque of American Writers Past and Present,
Dwight MacDonald’s 1960 Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbo-

hm – 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 Teach-
ings 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 par-
ticular 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, Wil-
liam 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 mate-
rialism, sexual preoccupation, vitriolic quarreling, and scandalous philander-
ing, 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 Faulkn-
er and Humor, Jerome Klinkowitz and Donald Lawler’s 1977 Vonnegut in
America, Louis J. Budd and Edwin H. Cady’s 1987 On Mark Twain: The
Best from American Literature, Sarah Eleanora Toombs’s 1987 James
Thurber: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, Barbara Schaaf’s 1988
Mr. Dooley: Finley Peter Dunne, Steven H. Gale’s 1990 Critical Essays on
Harold Pinter, J. R. LeMaster and James D. Wilson’s 1993 The Mark Twain
Encyclopedia, and Gordon E. Ernst’s 1995 Robert Benchley: An Annotated
Bibliography. One such book, Frederick Kiley and Walter McDonald 1973
A Catch-22 Casebook focuses on a single book. But because relatively few
authors and even fewer books have had enough research done on them to fill
a book, such research guides more commonly focus on particular genres or
time periods.
The purpose of these books is to allow scholars to go to a single source
to find out how much scholarly work has been done and where they can go
to find the primary sources if they need more than the summaries or ex-
cerpts provided by the commentators. Good examples of such books include
M. Thomas Inge’s 1975 The Frontier Humorists: Critical Views, his 1988
Handbook of American Popular Literature, and his 1994 Perspectives on
American Culture: Essays on Humor, Literature, and the Popular Arts. One
of the most useful reference sources is American Humorists, 1800–1950,
edited by Stanley Trachtenberg. It is a two-volume set published in 1982 as
Volume 11 in Gale’s Dictionary of Literary Biography series. Each of the
nearly 100 entries is several pages in length and is usually illustrated by pho-
tos and/or drawings. Several of the authors who wrote the essays regular-
ly contribute articles to humor-related journals. Besides Trachtenberg, they
include St. George Tucker Arnold, Jr.; Pascal Covici, Jr.; Jane Curry; Zita
Dresner; Terry Heller; Mark A. Keller; James C. McNutt; Sanford Pinsker;
Richard Alan Schwartz; Clyde Wade, and many others.
One of the contributors was Steven H. Gale, who later served as Gen-
eral Editor of the Garland Studies in Humor series and went on to edit the
1988 Encyclopedia of American Humorists and Volumes 1 and 2 of the 1996
Encyclopedia of British Humor: Geoffrey Chaucer to John Cleese. Gale de-
scribed his task in the latter book as first deciding on which authors should
be included as subjects, then finding good scholar/writers to prepare the en-
tries, editing each essay for grammatical and factual details, and writing the
introductory material. The completed book is 1,307 pages long and includes
articles on 196 humorists written by 118 scholars from seven countries. He
– and his family – remember the month of headaches when he had over
3,000 3x5 index cards spread over the living room floor while he noted and
checked each page number. When Don Nilsen put together his 1992 research
guide, Humor in American Literature: A Selected Annotated Bibliography,

followed by similar books on Irish and British literature, his biggest head-
aches 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 bibliograph-
ic research easier, but at the same time, scholars and publishers are discour-
aged from devoting their efforts to such projects because interested people
can usually find some information, although it may not be reliable, on virtu-
ally 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. Rowl-
ing, Gary Paulsen, M. E. Kerr, and Daniel Handler (author of the Lemony
Snicket books) use naming as a technique to bring smiles to young readers.
Many literary scholars use humor as a zeitgeist, something to measure the
“spirit of the times” either by or about specific groups. Although these schol-
ars usually look at the whole spectrum of the popular culture, humorous lit-
erature is included, especially in historical studies, because literature is what
has been written down and is therefore what can be found for study. Con-
stance Rourke’s 1931 American Humor: A Study of the National Character
and William Keough’s 1966 Punchlines: The Violence of American Humor
are fairly early examples.
While collectors may publish the humor they find mostly for the fun of it,
they also add commentary as did Leo Rosten in his 1968 The Joys of Yiddish,
Henry D. Spaulding in his 1969 Encyclopedia of Jewish Humor: From Bibli-
cal Times to the Modern Age and his 1985 Joys of Jewish Humor, and Wil-
liam Novak and Moshe Waldoks in their 1981 The Big Book of Jewish Humor
and their 1990 The Big Book of New American Humor: The Best of the Past
25 Years. The emphasis in Sarah Blacher Cohen’s 1987 Jewish Wry: Essays
on Jewish Humor and Avner Ziv’s 1986 edited collection, Jewish Humor is
on exploring and analyzeing the creation and uses of Jewish humor.
In his 1988 The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Lit-
erary Criticism, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. makes a contribution to the study
of humor by showing that when they were slaves African Americans were
denied the use of normal and private communication. This forced them to
develop double-entendre Trickster signifiers. Speakers would say something
that meant one thing to whites and another to blacks. The humor comes from
the realization that simultaneous messages are being communicated and that
the authority figures (usually whites) understand only one message while the
other participants comprehend both. Mel Watkins’s 1994 On the Real Side:
Laughing, Lying, and Signifying extends the concept to the popular culture,
including literature. Donna A. S. Harper looks from a new perspective at
some of the writings of Langston Hughes in her 1995 Not So Simple: The
“Simple” Stories by Langston Hughes.
As time goes on there will probably be increased attention given to His-
panic humor as shown by the formation in the late 1990s of an organization
devoted to the study of Hispanic humor. In 1999, Paul W. Seaver, Jr. ed-
ited Selected Proceedings of the First International Conference on Hispanic
Humor, which included seventeen lively articles, whose topics ranged from
subjects as old as Juan Luis Vives’s 1528 De Anima and Vita and as new as
the latest works of Isabel Allende.
Scholars have also been looking through new lenses at Native American
literature and culture. Vine Deloria, Jr. took the first part of his 1988 title
Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto from a bumper sticker de-
signed to tease missionaries on the Sioux reservation. One of Deloria’s obser-
vations that has been cited as a pan-Indian joke (many are meaningful only to
tribal or family members) is that when the first missionaries came they had
only the Bible while the Indians had all the land; now “they” have all the land
and Indians have only the Bible. Deloria campaigns against the stereotype of
the stoic Indian, a caricature that he says has made it difficult for whites to
understand how humor permeates virtually every area of Native American
life. Very little, he says, is accomplished in Indian national affairs without
humor.
Other books asking people to take a closer look at Native American humor
include Kenneth Lincoln’s 1993 Indi’n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native
America, Andrew Wiget’s 1994 Dictionary of Native American Literature,
Frank B. Linderman’s Indian Why Stories: Sparks from War Eagle’s Lodge-
Fire and Indian Old-Man Stories: More Sparks from War Eagle’s Lodge-Fire,
both published in 1996. Scott B. Vickers published Native American Identi-

ties: 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 jun-
gles” 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 writ-
ers 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 Seri-
ous Thing: Women’s Humor and American Culture (1988), Feminist Alter-
natives: 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 Sche-
herazade’s Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Litera-
ture (1998), Gail Finney edited Look Who’s Laughing: Gender and Comedy
(1994), and Barbara Bennett wrote Comic Visions, Female Voices: Con-
temporary Women Novelists and Southern Humor (1998). In her 2006 Wran-
gling Women: Humor and Gender in the American West, Kristin M. McAn-
drews 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 struc-
tures: Gotcha humor, in which someone thinks he or she is talented but when
acting on the talent “is got”; Word Play, in which words or groups of words
clash with each other’ and Incongruity, in which a word, idea, concept or
thing clashes with another idea, concept, or thing. To these three character-
istics, the Grawes added Sympathetic Pain, which consists of laughing with
someone’s pain rather than at the person. They are looking for correlations
between the kinds of literary humor that individuals respond to and such ar-
chetypal personalities as Crusader, Advocate, Bridge-builder, Consoler, Rec-
onciler, and Intellectual.
D. G. Kehl has analyzed the humor written by many different American
authors, but his most unusual study, “Varieties of Risible Experience: Grades
of Laughter and Their Function in Modern American Literature,” was in-
spired by a comment from James Thurber who noticed that in literature there
are a dozen different kinds of laughter “from the inner and inaudible to the
guffaw,” but that no one had done a careful and extensive analysis of all the
varieties. In starting his research, Kehl found a statement from writer James
Agee who in relation to the language of screen comedians concluded “four
of the main grades of laughter are the titter, the yowl, the belly laugh, and the
boffo.” Kehl found examples in modern American literature of eighteen dif-
ferent grades of laughter, which he organized into six categories ranging from
the incipient or “inner and inaudible” laugh (the simper and smirk) to the
loud and unrestrained howl, yowl, shriek, and Olympian laugh. He discussed
the origins of each example, drew distinctions, considered each in terms of
tenor and intensity, and illustrated their significance. His study demonstrates
an interesting crossover between literature and real-life because in a way it
is measuring the care and the skill with which authors observe and record
people’s actions. He was doing from a literary standpoint what Robert R.
Provine was doing with real people for his 2000 book Laugher: A Scientific
Investigation.
Daniel Royot, a French scholar of American literature, sums up what
he calls his “home-made” humor theory by explaining that comedians don
masks and borrow voices, and it is the interplay of such conflicting masks and
voices that results in open or subtle incongruities. With only masks, the effect
would be simply parodic, grotesque humor as is unfortunately too much of
Jerry Lewis’s stuff and that of other “phunny phellows.” On the other hand, if
they use just voices without the masks, the result is merely satirical. He says
that humorists relying on the innocent pose sometimes make little use of the
comic mask. For example, compare the minimal visual indications of Woody
Allen as opposed to Mel Brooks. Linguists have a similar interpretation with
the signifier and the signified. Since in terms of humor analysis, Royot is
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 dis-
course.
Issues and challenges in the analysis of humor
Practically any theory of humor can be tested and/or illustrated through lit-
erature. In this way the wealth of the world’s literature is a positive, but it is
also a complication because it works against the development of what humor
scholars wistfully refer to as “a unified theory.” D. G. Kehl uses a comment
by Peter De Vries’s Joe Sandwich character from The Vale of Laughter to ex-
plain the problem, “No single theory has yet managed to explain all varieties
of mirth. Nine tenths of what we laugh at answers to Bergson, another nine
tenths to Freud, still another to Kant or Plato, and so on, leaving always that
elusive tenth that makes each definition like a woman trying to pack more into
a girdle than it will legitimately hold.”
Another issue that humor scholars constantly face is the idea that tragedy
or “serious” things are harder to study, or, at the least, are more important than
is humor. This makes it hard to obtain funding for humor-related research and
also to have humor research taken seriously by academic colleagues. Wher-
ever humor scholars gather, there are jokes about everyone having tenure
because only tenured faculty members dare to study something as frivolous
as humor.
Humorous poetry especially suffers from elitist values as shown by those
who reserve the term poet for “serious” writers. Contradicting this attitude is
Ronald Wallace’s 1984 God Be With the Clown: Humor in American Poetry,
but even his title reflects a defense of the genre. The same kinds of critics
who think Shakespeare’s tragedies deserve more attention than his comedies,
refer to the works of such skilled poets as Ogden Nash and Richard Armour
as light verse and to the work of less talented poets as doggerel.
Both verse and doggerel can be written with either serious or humorous
intentions, and with doggerel what a writer intends as serious may be inter-
preted as humorous. Julia Moore’s “death” poetry of the mid-1800s is an
example. She wrote dedicatory poems to be read at funerals. In Huckleberry
Finn, Mark Twain modeled his “Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec’d” on
her work. According to Bradley Hayden, a Michigan scholar who has studied
Julia Moore and her poetry, Twain described her as having a rare “organic tal-
ent” for humor. She could make “an intentionally humorous episode pathetic
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 al-
ways 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 trad-
itions 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 graph-
ic arts. The group sponsors an annual journal, Studies in American Humor,
which publishes articles on subjects ranging from Will Rogers to Southwest-
ern 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 pro-
vides members and others with information about new publications, upcom-
ing 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
Fiction, Morton Gurewitch’s 1994 The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagin-
ation, and Cohen’s 1992 Comic Relief: Humor in Contemporary American
Literature. Gordon and Breach Publishers have a Studies in Humor and Gen-
der series edited by Regina Barreca and Nancy Walker, which includes books
on both literature and popular culture, for example, Barbara Levy’s 1997 La-
dies Laughing: Wit as Control in Contemporary American Women Writers.
University presses regularly publish humor-related titles. Many of the
books published as part of the Studies in Popular Culture series for the Uni-
versity of Mississippi Press relate to humor. Gregg Camfield’s 1994 Senti-
mental Twain, Samuel Clemens in the Maze of Moral Philosophy was pub-
lished by the University of Pennsylvania Press, while Steven Weisenberger’s
1995 Fables of Subversion/Satire and the American Novel 1930–1980 was
published by the University of Georgia Press, and Neil Grauer’s 1995 Re-
member Laughter, A Life of James Thurber was published by the University
of Nebraska Press.
In the study of humor there are obvious carryovers from controversies that
are in the public eye, including the matter of censorship. For example, schol-
ars who study scatological or pornographic writing, hate jokes, and to a lesser
extent, any ethnic or gender-based humor must constantly remind critics that
they are collecting and studying such humor rather than creating and dissemi-
nating it. While taxpayers grow nervous when they find professors talking
about controversial writings in class, David E. E. Sloane has shown how cen-
sorship also works to encourage serious scholarship. He teaches at the Uni-
versity of New Haven and in 1995 when the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
was banned from a New Haven classroom, he worked with the Mark Twain
House in nearby Hartford to mount a summer teacher institute on the theme
of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Race.” While the summer’s debate
centered around Huck Finn, questions of caricature, parody, ethnocentrism,
and reader-response all figured in the discussion of such writers as George
Ade and Langston Hughes, American cartoon art, minstrel traditions, and
stage caricatures. Discussions were not limited to race, but included study-
ing Jewish, Irish, and various other immigrant groups of the 1800 and 1900s.
Following the colloquium, Sloane compiled a set of classroom-oriented ma-
terials laying down a trail of Twain’s use of language and ideas related to his
intent. One result is a 2001 Student Companion to Mark Twain, plus a 2002
CD-ROM produced as part of the Buffalo and Erie Country Library Adven-
tures of Huckleberry Finn. It is Sloane’s opinion that genuine debate is likely
to continue as shown by Jocelyn Chadwick’s The Jim Dilemma and Jonathan
Arac’s Huck Finn as Idol and Target,” as well as Harry Wonham’s article
“‘I Want a Real Coon’: Mark Twain and Late-Nineteenth-Century Ethnic

Caricature.” This latter piece is about Twain’s working in the highly ambigu-
ous 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 writ-
ings of Petroleum V. Nasby and others, “the question of what comic por-
traiture 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 censor-
ship 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 combin-
ing 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 disserta-
tion written in the mid 1970s, he studied the role of mystery in gothic nar-
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 re-
sponses and gothic sub-genres including didactic gothic, speculative or am-
biguous gothic, and mock-gothic. He found himself arguing that “the erup-
tion 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 popu-
lar 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 sociol-
ogy, 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 ap-
proach 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 analy-
sis of the films. He found that, “Timing is extremely important in humor, yet
in film there are often no words between which pauses can be used to elicit
laughter a la Jack Benny. Thus, I had to look at a combination of dialogue,
timing, sound, and especially the employment of visuals as illustrated by the
unexpected, climactic action of Cantinflas as Passepartout.” The best part is
when “He leans down from the hot air balloon and scoops a goblet-full of
snow from the mountain top that he and his master Phineas Fogg have barely
cleared.” Only through studying each shot individually, did Gale discover that
Passepartout calmly uses the snow to cool the champagne.
For Gale this crossing over into film criticism was a positive because it
led to new insights and new things to watch for in written work. But crossing
boundaries doesn’t always have such positive effects. Humor scholars are al-
most forced to have two fields because most have their own academic area to
which they add the study of humor. Then when they extend themselves further
to a third or fourth academic area they sometimes make naive assumptions,
which adds to suspicions their colleagues may already have about a lack of
rigor in humor studies. Among the questions that arise from these suspicions
include asking whether professors of literature should get as much credit for
presenting papers at meetings of the Popular Culture Association as at the
Modern Language Association. Another is whether the kind of pop culture
writings which Susan Sontag includes in her essay “Notes on Camp” should
be considered literature? Are comic books “literature”? How about television
sit coms? And how about the “little stories” that are told in commercials and
the “big stories” that are told in extended video games. A new interdisciplin-
ary book that Paul Grawe recommends is V. Ulea’s A Concept of Dramatic
Genre and the Comedy of A New Type: Chess, Literature and the Film.
As the study of literary humor continues, the most interesting results are
probably going to come from scholars who are crossing boundaries both in
the approaches they take and in the material they look at.
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
and Breach, 1988). More recent books include “Don’t Tell Mama!” The Pen-
guin Book of Italian American Writing (Penguin 2002) and A Sit Down with
the Sopranos: Watching Italian American Culture on TV’s Most Talked-about
Series (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Contact her through the English Depart-
ment at the University of Connecticut.
Jessica Milner Davis co-ordinates the Australasian Humour Scholars
Network from the University of Sydney as Honorary Associate in its Fac-
ulty of Arts. Her latest book, Understanding Humor in Japan, won the 2008
AATH book-prize for humor research. She has twice been President of the
International Society for Humor Studies (1996 and 2003) and is Associate
Book Review Editor for Humor: International Journal of Humor Research.
Contact her at jessica.davis@usyd.edu.au.
Steven H. Gale holds a University Endowed Chair in the Humanities at
Kentucky State University. Besides the books listed in the end-of-chapter
bibliography, he has published articles on humor in the writings of Francis
Beaumont, Miguel de Cervantes, John Gay, Simon Gray, Joel Chandler Har-
ris, Ronald Harwood, Henry Livings, David Marmet, H. L. Mencken, Ha-
rold Pinter, Stephen Potter, Harry Secombe, H. Allen Smith, Peter Simple,
and James Thurber. He has also worked with humor in film and in African
folk tales, and was interviewed about S. J. Perelman for the PBS Think Tank
program. He was the general editor of the Garland Studies in Humor series,
and his 2003 Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter’s Screenplays and the Artistic Pro-
cess was chosen as a 2003 Choice magazine “Outstanding Academic Title.”
Contact him at DrStevenHGale@aol.com
Paul H. Grawe is Professor emeritus of English at Winona State Univer-
sity in Minnesota. At Northwestern University, where he worked with Moody
Prior and Gerald Graff, he wrote a dissertation defining sombre comedy as
a specific sub-genre within comedy. In 1983, he published a general theory
of comedy, Comedy in Space, Time, and the Imagination. In a forthcoming
book with Robin Jaeckle Grawe, Paul and Robin draw on 17 years of empir-
ical research to explore the humor textures of American film comedy. Contact
him at pgrawe@hbci.com.
D. G. Kehl is Professor Emeritus of English at Arizona State University,
where he taught American Literature and worked with graduate students who
wrote theses and dissertations on various aspects of literary humor. In add-
ition to the articles listed in the chapter bibliography, he has written “Thalia
Meets Tithonus: Gerontological Wit and Humor in Literature” (The Geron-
tologist, Fall, 1985: 539–544), “All Gall Is Divided into Three Parts: Amer-
ican Literary Humor of Francophilophobia” (Thalia: Studies in American
Humor, Summer, 2000: 67–79), and “Humor in the Novels of Gish Jen: From
Confliction to Connection,” MELUS: Journal of the Society of the Multi-
Ethnic Literature of the U.S. (forthcoming). Topics he is currently working
on include the ethics of humor, clerical humor in modern American novels,
academic humor in modern fiction, and the dry humor of his home state of
Arizona. Contact him at dgkehl@asu.edu.
Paul Lewis, professor of English at Boston College, is the author of two
books – Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Humor in Literature
(S.U.N.Y. Press, 1989) and Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Con-
flict (University of Chicago Press, 2006) – and of articles on gallows humor,
Woody Allen, gothic fiction and American literature and culture: 1790–1860.
A member of the editorial board of Humor: International Journal of Humor
Research and a columnist for Tikkun magazine, he has published op-ed and
humor essays in such places as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New
York Times, International Herald Tribune, Globe and Mail, and Crazy Maga-
zine. He is currently working on a third book, tentatively titled Laughing
Dangerously: Tact and Humor in America Today. Contact him at lewisp@
bc.edu.
Don and Alleen Nilsen are professors of English at Arizona State Univer-
sity where Don works with students in linguistics and Alleen works with high
school English teachers and librarians. They are founding members of the
International Society of Humor Studies, and from 1987 through 2004 Don
served as ISHS Executive Secretary. Their Encyclopedia of 20th-Century
American Humor was chosen by the American Library Association as one of
the twenty best academic books of 2000. Contact them at Don.Nilsen@asu.
edu and Alleen.Nilsen@asu.edu.
Daniel Royot is Professor Emeritus of American Literature and Civiliza-
tion at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. His co-authored book Histoire et Civi-
lization des Etats-Unis was published in six editions, while his Anthologie
de la Littérature Américaine is in its third edition. He has been president of
France’s American Humor Studies Association, and in addition to scholarly
books and articles, writes and speaks about American humor in the French
popular press where he makes use of Art Buchwald’s comment, “Why should
the French like Americans, they already hate each other.” An extensive article
on “Poe’s Humor,” was published in 2002 in The Cambridge Companion to
Edgar Allan Poe edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Contact him at danielroyot@wa-
nadoo.fr.
Elaine Safer is a professor of English at the University of Delaware. Her
recent book, Mocking the Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth, was published
by SUNY Press 2006. She also is known for The Contemporary American
Comic Epic: The Novels of Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis and Kesey, Wayne State
University Press, 1988. She has published papers on such Jewish American
writers as Jonathan Safran Foer, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, and Saul
Bellow and on the comedic elements in the postmodern American works of
writers including John Hawkes, Joseph Heller, William H. Gass, William
Gaddis, and Thomas Pynchon. She is currently writing The Comic Imagin-
ation in Recent Jewish American Fiction. Contact her at safer@udel.edu.
David E. E. Sloane is professor of English and education at the Univer-
sity of New Haven, where he has taught since 1976. In 1987, Greenwood
Press published his American Humor Magazines and Comic Periodicals as
part of its Historical Guides to the World’s Periodicals and Newspapers. Sev-
eral more recent books are listed at the end of the chapter. He was the Execu-
tive Director of the American Humor Studies Association from 1989 to 2002.
Contact him at dsloane@newhaven.edu.
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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 dif-
fers 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 ma-
terial 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 litera-
ture, 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 certain-
ly 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. More-
over 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 in-
clude it in the essay. Quite a bit of American popular culture is significant
worldwide anyway. American comedy films for instance, can be found wher-
ever 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 instruc-
tive for purposes of comparison and contrasting.
282 Lawrence E. Mintz
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 con-
tradiction, 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 ne-
cessity to distinguish “high” or elite cultural expression from the “low” or
commonplace. Indeed a very familiar classification system goes one step fur-
ther, 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 para-
phrase a legal distinction used for a now-defunct definition of pornography),
“Low” culture is tarred as carrying all sorts of negative functions from pro-
vided 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” cul-
ture 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 inadequa-
cies 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
Humor and popular culture 283
any useful sense of the term. The range of entertainment product considered
“low” or popular culture is so broad, so varied as to shred any generalizations
about its motives, functions, and cultural significance. “Middlebrow” seems
to work to define the Broadway musical comedy, and “The Nutcracker.” Other
than that, the category is largely worthless. Clearly we should abandon the
entire distinction between popular and any other kind of culture, and sim-
ply discuss culture – the learned pattern of belief and/or behavior shared by
a group, or more narrowly defined the arts and entertainments available in
a given society.
But alas we cannot do this. For one thing, the distinction is widely accept-
ed in its basic outline, if not its specifics, and the designation of “good” versus
less respectable cultural product and experience is so solidly entrenched that
no call for abandoning it would have the desired effect. For another, the aca-
demic disciplines that govern the serious study of culture leave us no choice
but to look at “popular culture” as separate from the tip of the iceberg they
deem worthy of attention. So if we want to look at popular novels and short
fiction, for instance, we will not get much help from “English” departments
and scholars who study “literature.” There may be the odd course in feature
writing in a school of journalism, but the very important genre of the humor
column in newspapers and the humorous short pieces in magazines are simply
not studied except as popular culture. Similarly there are now “performance
studies” programs, and serious studies of film, or “cinema,” and even televi-
sion studies can sometimes sneak into a communications department’s cur-
riculum. But if you want to study standup comedy, movie farces and romps,
television situation comedy and talk show humor, you really do need to retain
the category and the concept of popular culture.
There isn’t much of a literature that addresses humor and popular culture
per se. There is no book length study of the topic, and the only essay that
focuses specifically on it is my own “Humor and Popular Culture” in the
Handbook of Humor Research, Volume II, edited by Paul McGhee and Jef-
frey Goldstein in 1983. The histories of American humor such as Jesse Bier’s
The Rise and Fall of American Humor (1968) and Walter Blair and Hamlin
Hill’s America’s Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury (1978) cover
a lot of the territory, and thought they emphasize literary examples, they are
indispensable. Collections of critical essays such as Arthur Dudden’s Ameri-
can Humor (1987), Nancy Walker’s What’s So Funny?: Humor in American
Culture (1998), and Joe Boskin’s The Humor Prism in 20th Century Amer-
ica (1997) are invaluable, addressing comics, standup comedy, film and tele
vision humor as well as the more frequently visited territory.
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 Imagin-
ation 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 particu-
lar 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 fo-
cused 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 hand-
outs so graciously made available on request. Any attempt here at singling
out particular works would be dangerously, misleadingly eccentric and lim-
ited. My answer to requests that I get several times a week for bibliographic
suggestions on topics in popular culture humor is always “check the bibliog-
raphies, 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 consump-
tion. 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 cre-
ate popular culture humor, and at least as importantly, with the people who
are responsible for its production and distribution. One can find some biog-
raphies of and interviews with artists and authors, and a very few examin-
ations of the industries that support or more accurately that allow the creation
of popular culture humor exist. But for the most part, we are ignorant of the
roles of the publishers of books, editors of magazines, newspaper feature sec-
tions, cartoon and comic strip pages, producers and managers of performance
opportunities, and the powers-that-be for film and television humor. Who de-
cides what humor will be available? How is it promoted? What input besides
that of the identified author affects content? What is the role of the critic in
engineering its reception? The commercial factors alone are enormously im-
portant, and whether Robin Williams performs at the Met in New York or
a small club in Peoria may be as significant as the content of his comedy. Re-
cently I directed a Ph.D. dissertation, by David Zurawik, that studied the ap-
pearance of Jewish characters in prime-time television from its earliest years
to the present. What made Zurawik’s dissertation virtually unique as well
as tremendously valuable is that, as television critic for the Baltimore Sun
newspaper, he had access to decision makers in the industry who were will-
ing and able to give him insights that could never be gleaned from examining
the texts themselves, no matter how diligently it was performed. For instance
Zurawik was able to track down a claim that CBS had research that indicated
that audiences did not want to see Jews (and people with moustaches, and
divorced characters) in shows, “research” that turned out to be non-existent
and alleged as part of a conspiracy that could be traced to the predilections of
one particularly powerful television mogul. Unless we train more research-
ers to employ the techniques of social science research and oral history, the
crucial elements of the story of who is responsible for what themes encoded
in the texts and what texts are made available to the public will continue to
be ignored.
Similarly, there is very little study of audience reception. Communica-
tions studies and sociology do some survey work, and some raw data exists
that helps us form a sketchy picture of who is laughing at what. Looking at
the text by itself does not tell us if the audience is male or female, young or
old, rich or poor, black or white, rural or urban, educated or not, and so forth.
Moreover we have no idea how something is received much less why it is
received as it is. There are almost no accounts, even for live performance,
that explore how audiences related to a text, what they laugh at, of what they
approve or disapprove, and what it means to them, ultimately. Ethnographic
research promises to address this need, but there is precious little to show for
it thus far, applied to humor in popular culture, even as a model for new re-
search. The majority of us study the texts themselves, and thus are limited to
our own reading, decoding, and assessment. We make what are often rather
flimsy guesses as to what appeals to whom, why, but the bottom line is that
we do not know and are entirely ill equipped to find out. Humor, as readers
of this essay surely know, is illusive and complicated. Trying to discuss its
social and cultural significance from isolated textual reading is like trying to
analyze the phenomenon of baseball from trading cards.
It is neither possible nor useful to attempt a definitive survey of humor in
popular culture. Even a basic listing of significant sources in the genres that
make up the core of our arts and entertainments would be exhausting, and it
would not be particularly interesting or insightful. Rather, the remainder of
this essay will single out a few sources for mention to help describe the gen-
res and topics, and one or two for discussion as an example of where examin-
ing popular culture humor texts might go. The selections are of some things
that interest me; they are no more prominent or significant than many others
one might choose.
The earliest example of popular culture using humor for an important,
interesting purpose is the exploration, for the most part in journalism, of “na-
tive” American character or identity and through it, the viability of democracy
itself. Almanacs, newspapers, and early magazines were loaded with brief an-
ecdotes, humorous proverbs and sayings, character sketches, and witticisms
comprising a sort of pseudo-folklore introducing the common man as citi-
zen. Humor directed at the common man as rude, barbaric, ill-mannered, and
foolish came from English and European observers, but it was also not rare
from the pens of concerned educated, more sophisticated, snobbish, or polit-
ically conservative Americans. Yankee Doodle was originally intended to be
derisive, directing ridicule at the silly and ignorant American. But the portrait
soon became much more ambiguous, ambivalent, and even positive. Brother
Jonathan was an important comic character whose name, from a character in
Royall Tyler’s 1789 play, “The Contrast,” became virtually generic. Jonathan
could be painted in negative term, laughed at for his ignorance, bumbling
ways, lack of sophisticated manners and understanding. But perhaps influ-
enced by a very old, perhaps even universal cultural tradition of the Wise
Fool, he was at least as often the naïf, still ignorant and in a sense unintel-
ligent as well, but innocent, good hearted, and following in the tradition, an
accidental purveyor of truth and wisdom. Taken a step further, he could be the
common sense philosopher – Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard Saunders for
instance – dispensing sound, solid, down to earth advice from the perspective
of experiential rather than academic or intellectual knowledge.
There are many fine examples of this brand of popular humor. One good
one is Seba Smith’s character, Jack Downing. Smith originally intended using
the character to mock the ignorant Jacksonian supporter, and to be sure, when
Jack wanders into the state legislature (“Jack Goes to Portland”) his misun-
derstanding of the proceedings (he wonders why there is a fight over who
deserves a seat in the legislature when clearly there are enough chairs to go
around. He thinks the members of the body should follow their leaders as
militia members would their captain. However many of his innocent observa-
tions expose the politicians as much as they do the voter. When he concludes
that he has little use for people who let a crop of hay spoil in the field while
arguing politics, the common sense redeems him.
James Russell Lowell was perhaps the most educated American at mid-
19th century. He was a Dean at Harvard, spoke several languages, and was as
socially and politically sophisticated as anyone around. When he wanted to
write against the Mexican War, and later against slavery and southern defec-
tion from the union, he knew better than to write in his own voice. He created
a wise fool character, Hosea Biglow, whose observations such as “what’s the
use of meetin’ goin’/every Sabbath wet or dry/if its right to go a-mowin’/
fellow men like oats and rye” put the anti-war sentiment in terms that could
be associated with popular attitudes rather than direction from above. Lowell
created another character, Birdofreedum Sawin, a more humorous invention,
to represent popular thought gone awry, but even Birdofreedum returns from
service in the Mexican War with important lessons learned from his wounds
and inadequate reward or compensation (“at any rate, I’m so used up I can’t
do no more fightin’/The only chance thet’s left to me is politics or writin’.”)
Other characters like Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s Sam Slick employed
the Yankee as con man to expose the vulnerabilities of the middle class and
the dangers of “putting on airs,” and wise fools of every stripe became a sta-
ple of our national popular humor. On the western frontier, wise fools, con
men, and tricksters like Johnson J. Hooper’s Simon Suggs and George Wash-
ington Harris’s Sut Lovingood were employed to portray the rough and unso-
phisticated American as an ironic hero. Suggs was lazy and dishonest, but he
knew it was “good to be shifty in a new country,” and his victims were more
often the targets of the humor than the wise-guy that preyed upon them. Sut
Lovingood expressed a rude racism and sexism, but his “pints” on the mean-
ing of life that emphasized drinking, sex, roughhousing, and a deep mistrust
of preachers, widows, and other guardians of civilization were exemplary of
a freedom, joy of life, and cynicism that popular culture supported at least as
a necessary counter-culture or brake on the relentless demands of the growing
respectability.
The device of the wise fool was used to deal with topical concerns, par-
ticularly the issues surrounding the civil war, and they fed the popular theater,
comic lecture circuit, and even graphic arts as well as journalism. The motif
was taken to its height, of course, by the genius of Mark Twain. Twain’s per-
sona was the common sense philosopher and good old boy personified. He
used the tall tale for the same humorous effects achieved by his peers (see
Thorpe’s “Big Bear of Arkansas” for perhaps the best example), but he also
took the genre a step further. In a story such as “Baker’s Blue Jay Yarn,” for
instance, we are amused by the comic futility of the bird trying to store acorns
by dropping them down a chimney, but Twain sets us up to make the allegori-
cal connection between the bird’s dogged but misguided labor and capital-
ism, the work ethic, and perhaps the ultimate futility of life itself. In this way
his light, amusing, popular humor anticipates some of the deepest, darkest,
and most powerful humor of post WWII literature.
Another interesting example of humor in popular culture is the newspa-
per comic strip. Histories of the genre usually begin with a “pre-history”
that traces the comic strip back to cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphics,
the Bayeux Tapestry, and various graphic arts including illustrations and car-
toons. For our purposes, the newspaper comic strip begins in the late 1890s
when Sunday color comics supplements were used to help sell cheap, mass
market oriented papers. The early strips such as “The Yellow Kid” for instance
were curious combinations of down-to-earth slapstick, topical joking, and ra-
ther abstract referencing. In the hands of a Windsor McCay (“Little Nemo in
Slumberland,” “The Adventures of the Rare-bit Fiend,”) they were creative
indeed, and could border on the surreal and handle social satire at the same
time. The genre was clearly aimed at a popular audience, but it also flirted
with serious art and expression. Soon the dictates of pop culture won out,
however, and while some strips, e.g. George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat”, could
hold up the experimental art end, most settled for a domestic humor involving
marital conflict and bratty kids.
The themes fit in perfectly with the era known as “the golden age of humor”
(sometimes rendered as the 1920s but more properly roughly from the end
of WWI to the early 30s). The “little man” Casper Milquetoast, Andy Gump,
Jiggs, A. Mutt, et al. battled various mild threats to their serenity, and more
significantly their sense of importance and power, in the face of stronger,
more focused women and “naughty” youngsters (e.g. “The Katzenjammer
Kids”). A later example, “Blondie,” was transformed from a satire on “the
roaring twenties” into a consummate ‘little man strip’ in which the vulnerable
Dagwood loses battles to the illogic of his wife, Blondie, his kids, the dog,
his boss, and the neighborhood bridge club (intruding on his bath). His de-
fense is napping as often as he can, eating everything in sight, knocking down
the mailman as he rushes off to work in the morning, and in his refusal to be
thrown by his failures and the disasters that constantly befall him. This sort
of fare dominated the strips until the mid-1930s when it was overshadowed,
but not replaced entirely, by adventure and soap opera strips. Its significance
is not in its artistic merit. In fact it represents a failure of sorts, a backsliding
from an art form that had much more promise in its earlier manifestations.
But its cultural significance is large. Along with silent film, it helped establish
the humorous answer to more inflated, ambitious portraits of the American
citizen and his world. It was a comic counter-balance to American arrogance,
self-confidence, and unrealistic self-understanding.
Humorous strips were revived after the Second World War. Earlier comics
strips, particularly Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” and Al Capp’s “Little Abner” proved
that the popular culture audience could receive comic strip art that was both
accessible and containing a second, deeper level of communicative signifi-
cance. Kelly’s swamp fables were allegorical “swamps” themselves, loaded
with social and political commentary lurking behind the antics and interac-
tions of the familiar cast of animal characters. He experimented with creative
artistic technique such as using typescripts to suggest tone of voice, and more
significantly perhaps, he produced a rich text of various meanings. Capp, too,
hid a lot of communication in a relatively simple fable. His “hillbillies” were
interesting and amusing by themselves, but readers who cared to think about
the strips for more than a few seconds had access to Capp’s views on topical
events, government, and American values.
Perhaps the most important breakthrough in the humorous comic strip
was Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts.” This strip gained enormous worldwide pop-
ularity by using kids to reflect adult neuroses. Every character has his or her
angst or method of coping with harsh reality. Lucy uses her meanness to
compensate for the unrequited love she has for Schroeder (who keeps trying
to play Beethoven on a toy piano with painted on black keys), Linus has his
blanket to comfort him when his childhood fears and fantasy gets in the way
of his intellect, and the dog, Snoopy, deals with the limitations of his “dog-
ness” by pretending to be the Red Baron, or a lawyer, writer, hockey player,
detective and resident of a deluxe doghouse complete with a pool table and
rare paintings. His fantasies allow him to escape his dependency on his owner
for the meals that are really his only interest, and the boredom of being a dog.
Charlie Brown, the consummate loser, little man character, reflects all the
fears, weaknesses, and failures of modern man. He is constantly bemoaning
his fate and circumstance. Yet he never gives up. He knows that Lucy will
pull the football away from him when he tries to kick it, yet every year he
tries again, kind of like Sisyphus rolling the stone up to the top of the hill
again and again, because it is, after all, his (and our) destiny to do so. This
strip is simple, yet profound. It has provoked as much analytic commentary
as much serious literature, but unlike belles lettress, it doesn’t seem to require
it. Readers usually understand and appreciate the strip without the aid of the
critics.
A look at the contemporary comic section of a major newspaper such
as The Washington Post (exception being The New York Times where all the
news is printed to fit) shows how incredibly healthy the genre is today. There
are dozens of humorous comic strips ranging from simple domestic humor
such as “The Family Circus” to the sophisticated social and political satire
of Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” and Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks.”
Strips like “Cathy” take on the problems of single professional women, “Tank
McNamara” goes after big time sports in America, and strips like “BC,” “The
Wizard of Id,” “Broom Hilda,” “Zippy” and many more offer the combination
of simple amusement and allegorical meaning that the genre has allowed for
more than a century now.
Stand up comedy performance can also be traced to a “pre-history” that
establishes its universality and importance. Surely clowns, fools and jesters,
and various social shamans are the progenitors of today’s professional com-
ics. In American popular culture, the genre should be connected with roots in
the medicine shows, tent shows, and the early popular theater such as minstrel
shows, vaudeville, burlesque and the Broadway variety show. These enter-
tainments featured stand up comedy mixed with skits, magic acts, juggling,
and other performance, and helped shape acts that were more complex than
mere joke telling or comic antics. The more modern history of stand up begins
with performers in resorts in the Catskill Mountain region of New York State.
This so-called “Borscht Belt” is notable for providing venues for numerous
Jewish comedians and entertainers who went on to form a sort of core for the
popular entertainment community of the twentieth century, influencing mov-
ies, radio, theater and television, particularly in comedy. These comedians
became polished professional joke-tellers in nightclubs, other resorts, and at
the top of their game, in concert performances all around the U.S. Most of
them employed gag writers. Comedians like Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Henny
Youngman, and Alan King exemplify a pure form of stand up comedy. while
others lean more toward the theatrical traditions using costumes, props, and
stage personas.
In the late 1950s, a brand of stand up comedy, sometimes called “new
wave” stand up comedy, emerged. This comedy is called ‘new’ because it
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 sev-
eral 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 mix-
ing 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, sa-
tiric, 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 col-
lege auditoriums and other concert venues made it possible for a tour of co-
medians 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 signifi-
cant 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 per-
formance comedy and stand up is almost impossible to draw precisely, but
the former is more theatrical, more scripted, more elaborate, and more fully
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. Per-
haps 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 ori-
ginally 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, comedi-
ans from vaudeville, burlesque, and the comic theater were employed to do
physical comedy. Filmmakers learned how to use the properties of the cam-
era 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 perform-
ance. 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 con-
structed 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 direc-
tion as well. In order to get a wider audience – i.e. to add women and to ap-
peal 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-
dians and directors was married to the romantic plots and themes, “screwball
comedy” was able to satisfy just about everyone. The formula developed in
the 1930s was strong enough to become the staple of film comedy through the
1950s (with an influence on films continuing to the present), and other strains
of comedy such as those provided by the Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Mae
West, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, and Bob Hope ensured that there would
be plenty of comedy in the popular culture during the years of the Great De-
pression and Second World War.
Since the mid-1960s, “serious” social comedies have competed with farces
loaded with sight gags and sure-fire laughs. Comedies like “Dr. Strangelove,”
“Catch-22,” “ M*A*S*H,” Robert Altman films such as “Nashville” and
Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” provide social and political satire. Wildly funny
movies such as “Airplane,” “Police Academy,” “National Lampoon’s Animal
House,” the Pink Panther films, and the offerings of Mel Brooks are there
to entertain. Together, comedies comprise one third of the Hollywood films
produced in an average year. Successful directors like John Hughes, crea-
tor of teen comedies like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Pretty in Pink,”
Spike Lee (“She’s gotta have It,” “School Daze”), John Waters (“Hairspray,”
“Polyester”), Barry Levinson (“Tin Man,” “Diner”), Susan Seidelman (“Des-
perately Seeking Susan,” and of course the above mentioned Mel Brooks and
Woody Allen develop formulas that carry their unmistakable stamps. Comic
stars, often veterans of television or standup comedy, also build a corps of
significant film humor around their personae. Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy,
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and John Belushi are just some of the alumni
of Saturday Night Live who scored numerous successes. Robin Williams,
to single out another important comedy star, has moved from standup and
television success to a very considerable canon of more than a dozen films
including “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and “Patch Adams”
among them.
Of course the farces are not without social and cultural commentary, and
the more ambitious films are often very funny. Parodies and farces go for
the big laughs, but often the gags reference significant social issues. To cite
just one case, sight gags in “Airplane” and “Police Academy” offer humor-
ous takes on oral sex, defying a public taboo on mentioning that controver-
sial and divisive topic. Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” is an important look at
modern relationships. It turns the romance comedy formula upside down,
tracing the devolution of a relationship from “love at first sight” to unten-
able rather than the course of a troubled pairing to a somehow inevitable
happy ending. Is “Annie Hall” then a comedy? It can be argued that the film
ends happily, despite the breakup of Annie and Alvy Singer, since both are
where they want and need to be – she in LA to pursue her career and he in
New York where he can protect his neuroses. The comedic message is that
sometimes a “happy ending” or comic resolution can require the breakup of
a romance rather than the expected, often forced uniting of a couple. It is an
important statement for contemporary male–female relationships in modern
society. “Annie Hall” is also a very funny film with good sight gags and ver-
bal humor. Interestingly, another film was produced at about the same time,
“The Goodbye Girl,” in which the conventional romance formula holds up
just fine. Boy meets girl, their relationship is instantly troubled and conten-
tious, growing worse as misunderstanding is added to their obvious differ-
ences. But in the end, they commit to marriage and family, and their bicoast-
al separation at the end is promised to be merely temporary. These films, and
still more recent comedies, affirm that the basic formulas for film comedy
have held up into the 21st century.
Radio, and then television, provided a repository for just about all humor
in popular culture that went before it. Broadcast programming has become
the most powerful and significant base for American humor. In contempor-
ary television, humor rules from the banter of the anchors and news, weather
reporters on the early morning shows to the late night talk shows. In addition
to shows more definitively labeled as humor or comedy, humor can be found
on news and talk shows and other “reality” programming, in advertising,
sports coverage, game and quiz shows, televised movies, and just about eve-
rywhere else.
In the early years of radio and television, variety show formats borrowed
from vaudeville and the popular theater, mixing standup comedy with skits
and other types of humorous performance. Stars like Fred Allen, Milton
Berle, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton, and Jerry Lewis were cru-
cial in establishing broadcasting as the dominant form of popular culture.
The variety show lasted well into the twentieth century, with later performers
such as Carol Burnett, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, and the Smothers Broth-
ers proving that the format was resilient long after the theater comedy that
established it was forgotten. The variety show also strongly influenced made-
for-TV comedy such as provided by Ernie Kovacs, originally, and later by
shows like “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” “That was the Week that Was,”
and “Saturday Night Live,” among others.
However the core of television comedy has always been the situation com-
edy. Sit-com started in radio, but it starred on television as early as the late-
1940s and early 1950s adapting the ethnic comedy of Molly Goldberg and
“Amos and Andy.” Sit com uses comedy and humor in many ways to gener-
ate laughter and entertainment, and to carry social and cultural messages. Its
basic format is important. Shows begin with a situation of “normality,” i.e.
a familiar cast of characters in their expected setting. From week to week,
with only gradual changes that are usually necessitated by cast turnover or
other challenges, the basic unit faces new challenges and opportunities. Re-
gardless of the nature of these challenges and opportunities, at the end of the
episode, everything and everyone is back in its “normal” and proper place,
with no significant change having resulted. The comic ending, resolution of
the problem or dissolution of the opportunity for change, suggests that true
happiness is in stability, continuity, and contentment with the status quo. It is
an interesting counter to the other American Dream of growth, change, suc-
cess, achievement, and mobility. This version of the Dream, closer to Jeffer-
son’s vision of “forty acres and a mule” for every citizen, pitches acceptance
of middle class values and status and the omni-powerful appeal of “family.”
Family may defined in many creative ways that are alternative to the nuclear,
biological unit (single parent families often including an employee of one
sort or another, groups of friends and neighbors who function like family
members, and even work-place communities with family-like ties), but the
message is always that everything is ok as long as the stability of the group is
not threatened.
Within the over-arching family structure, many premises can be accom-
modated. In addition to shows that are essentially about family activities and
situations, there are military sitcoms, school based shows, comedies that
feature aliens from abroad as far as Mars and Ork, to ethnic shows, urban
and rural settings, and work-place comedies. All the familiar character types
of American humor from the wise fools of the colonial and early national lit-
erature to the “little men” of comic strips, silent film, and journalism, to con
men and tricksters are featured in sitcom. These premises allow for some
variety within the basic format, but they cluster around familiar motifs, al-
ways respect the basic structure, and rarely if ever seek uniqueness. In add-
ition to the premises, the plots of particular episodes can also carry messag-
es and meanings. For instance, an episode of “Mork and Mindy” involved
Mork aging himself considerably to teach Mindy’s grandmother the lesson
that growing old is not necessarily a bad thing as long as one thinks young
and remains cheerful and lively. An episode of “Different Strokes,” hard-
ly a cutting edge vehicle for social teaching, involved a teen-aged girl who
thought she might be pregnant. After plot twists that hinted at the possibility
of abortion, the show settled into promoting its main theme, the necessity
for teens to involve their parents in their crises and the necessity for parents
to be understanding, gentle, and sympathetic to guarantee that they will be
kept informed of what is going on in their kids’ lives. The young lady turns
out not to be pregnant after all, thanks to the intervention of the writers, and
the overt message masks some covert ones including the lack of criticism
of the sexual activity that led to the possibility of the crisis in the first place,
and a more interesting double entendre possibly directed at a then current
government policy initiative aimed at restricting abortion for teenagers (as
her friend suggests to the troubled teen considering abortion, “you’d better
do it while you still can.”
In the 1970s, a number of shows made more overt efforts at social com-
mentary. Norman Lear’s “All in the Family” led the way, and his other shows,
mostly spin-offs, shows like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “MASH,”
and many others dealt with race, ethnic conflict, infidelity, drug use, sex-
ism, and just about every other social and cultural concern. Humor was in-
jected through the antics of the characters, physical and verbal gags, and
other devices, but in some cases, “The Bill Cosby Show” for one, comedy
was often decidedly secondary to the moral message delivery. Later shows
like “Friends,” “Frazier,” “Cheers,” and of course the celebrated show about
“nothing,” “Seinfeld,” in a way reverse this process. Deceptively mundane,
they focus on well-written comic scenarios and shtick, but their view of the
contemporary reality is often a humorous interpretation of significant ten-
dencies in our common culture.
It is impossible, in an overview chapter such as this one, to cover all
of televised comedy, even as a survey. Shows like “The Daily Show” and
“South Park,” developed for the Comedy Central network or Fox’s popular
hit “The Simpsons” have had important impact on the genre. Late night talk
show hosts, particularly Jay Leno and David Letterman, are considered by
some critics to be the bellwethers of the state of comedy in the country, so
that after the events of September 11, 2001 they were watched closely to
see when and if it was safe to laugh again and whether the tragic events and
the circumstances surrounding them such as the war against terrorism and
anthrax attacks might be the subject of comedy. There can be disagreement
over the state of television comedy, its quality and centrality, but there can
be no dispute that it is very much an omnipresent, omnipotent part of the
popular culture and a major source of our humor.
There are a few more areas of humor in the popular culture that remain
to be mentioned and discussed briefly, if not really explored. As I suggested
at the beginning of this essay, some definitions of popular culture are nar-
row, limiting it to the arts and entertainment media. Others are broader and
include what might be designated as folk or material culture. This essay will
not consider jokes in public discourse to be a part of popular culture. Jokes
are rightfully left to the study of folklore. Of course they are collected into
popular, best-selling paperback books and transmitted to internet subscrib-
ers, and that is surely a spillover. Nevertheless, we will leave them for an-
other chapter. Bumper stickers, tee shirts with humorous messages, comi-
cal posters and stickers, funny products, toys and games like pet rocks and
Garfield tails to stick in car doors are also at a cross-roads of popular, com-
mercial culture, material culture, and folk life. The bumper sticker debates
– “my kid is an honor student” vs. “my kid beat up your honor student” or
“Jesus saves” vs. “Moses Invests,” or the fish with legs and the legend “Dar-
win” in response to the religious fish icon – are part of the popular culture
for certain, but the turf battles of academic study allow me to leave them for
another investigator.
The broad field of the internet as popular culture also demands at least
a comment. As an interactive endeavor, a lot of the humorous activity on
the web can be considered to be folklore. But there are also many humorous
web sites, not a few of them commercially oriented that must be consid-
ered to be a major source of popular humor today. As a judge for the annual
Webby awards given by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sci-
ences (that I am a member is a humorous reality that can only be appreciated
by those who know of my internet illiteracy), I view dozens of humorous
sites every year. Some like The Onion, which has won the award for the
past three years in a row (www.theonion.com) or the National Lampoon site
(www.nationallampoon.com) among others are spin-offs from humor maga-
zines. Others like FuckedCompany.com are devoted to a particular topic, in
this case referentially to dot.coms that have crashed. Still others are main-
tained by individuals with a particular humorous axe to grind, for instance
www.landoverbaptist.com, an hilarious attack on organized religion.
Humor in advertising might also be a part of popular culture, but it is sim-
ply too broad a topic to be handled adequately in an essay of this scope. In the
broader definition described above, popular culture is just about everything in
our daily lives. Humor is everywhere in our daily lives from the morning talk
show banter to the newspaper columns and comic strips we read on the way
to work to the funny web site our colleagues at work e-mail us to check out,
to the magazine we read on the way home, the sitcom we watch in the evening
and Leno’s monologue at 11:35 pm. It is available to us in the theater and
nightclubs, at the movies, on the radio, in CDs, and everywhere we look or
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. Mod-
ern scholarship includes the perspectives of the social sciences – anthropol-
ogy, sociology, communications, and psychology – as well as those of the
humanities – history, literary and artistic criticism, rhetoric and linguistics.
The literature includes theoretical discussion of what humor is and how it
functions, historical and cultural analysis of what is funny for whom, when
and where, and aesthetic appreciation of the art of comic communication.
In recent years there have been professional associations, national and inter-
national conferences, journals and newsletters, and numerous publications,
both books and scholarly articles, devoted to humor studies. These sugges-
tions for further study are by no means advertised as definitive. Rather they
are starting points, bibliographies, basic studies which frame various genres,
topics, and approaches, and works which contain good summary of scholar-
ship to-date and current thinking.
Modern scholarship grows so geometrically that printed bibliographies
are almost obsolete, at least as definitive accounts of the literature, as soon
as they are printed. Indeed even the traditional index sources for periodi-
cal literature strain at serving their intended, original function. Computer
databases for humor studies are attempting to address this problem by pro-
viding on-going collection of pertinent sources (so far with limited success,
since even keeping up the data base is a slow and imperfect process). The
International Society for Humor Studies, Humor: International Journal for
Humor Research, and the Art Gliner Center for Humor Studies maintain web
sites with bibliographic and other information helpful to the student. They
can be accessed through links from: amst.umd.edu/humorcenter.
Don Nilsen has also published a bibliography, Humor Scholarship: A Re-
search Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. There are two
journals of humor research, Humor: International Journal of Humor Research
(associated with the International Society for Humor Studies) and Studies
in American Humor (associated with the American Humor Studies Associ-
ation), and two newsletters, one published in Humor and the other, edited by
Cameron Nickels, separately published and available with a subscription to
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 Law-
rence E. Mintz, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. There are at least two
encyclopedias of American humor, confined principally to literature, one pub-
lished in the Dictionary of Literary Biography series, a two volume set ed-
ited 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 pub-
lished 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 sum-
maries 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 Bed-
ford Clark and W. Craig Turner, Critical Essays on American Humor. Bos-
ton, 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 over-
views, 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
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 come-
dy. 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 Vi-
sions (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.
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 Min-
nesota Press, 1988. Also interesting are books by Regina Barreca includ-
ing 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, Blooming-
ton, 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 Schus-
ter, 1994. Joseph Boskin’s Humor and Social Change in Twentieth Century
America, Boston: Trustees of the Boston Public Library, 1979, is an import-
ant 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, top-
ical 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 confer-
ences publish abstract volumes and maintain websites with program informa-
tion. 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 medi-
cine, humor and laughter have elicited discussion. Viewed alternatively and
sometimes simultaneously as healthy and devilish, humor and its physical
manifestation laughter have long been the subject of discourse and debate,
of business and pleasure, of entertainment and scorn. Recently, however,
humor and laughter have become a focus of the health fields, both physical
and psychological. This chapter traces the conceptualizations of humor and
laughter from their early references in antiquity through the present day, high-
lighting and underscoring the importance of the social facets and functions of
humor and laughter. So let us look first at the social nature of humor and then
at some of the approaches to humor, from its earliest mentions to the present
time, including an examination of some of the major theories of humor and
inquiry into the universal human phenomenon we know as humor.
Humor as a social activity
As a social activity, humor has been examined by a number of theorists in-

cluding, 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 partici-
pants share their social backgrounds” (1985: 16). Mahadev L. Apte, an an-
thropologist, discusses “joking relationships” (1985: 29–66), which he calls
“patterned playful behavior that occurs between two individuals who recog-
nize 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 inter-
actional than Raskin’s as Apte’s emphasis is on “joking relationships.” Ac-
cording 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
304 Amy Carrell
acknowledgement by both the joke teller and the audience of the common
ground between them (the “special kinship or other types of social bonds”)
that the joke teller and his or her audience build their joking relationship.
Apte’s discussion both illustrates and demonstrates the social nature of jok-
ing relationships from pre-literate to industrialized societies.
Sigmund Freud describes the social nature of humor by enumerating six
aspects that contribute to and accompany the humor event:
(a) The most favorable condition of the production of comic pleasure is a
generally cheerful mood in which one is “inclined to laugh.” ...
(b) A similarly favorable effect is produced by an expectation of the comic,
by being attuned to comic pleasure.
(c) Unfavorable conditions for the comic arise from the kind of mental ac-
tivity with which a particular person is occupied at the moment.
(d) The opportunity for the release of comic pleasure disappears, too, if the
attention is focused precisely on the comparison from which the comic
may emerge. ...
(e) The comic is greatly interfered with if the situation from which it ought
to develop gives rise at the same time to a release of strong affect. ...
(f) ... the generating of comic pleasure can be encouraged by any other
accompanying circumstance. (1976 [1905], 282–285)
In essence, Freud has, with his first five conditions, provided a checklist,
a sort of laundry list, for the humor event. The last of Freud’s conditions is
virtually a wastebasket or catch-all category intended to account for every-
and anything for which his preceding conditions do not or cannot account.
John Y. T. Greig observes, “Nothing is laughable in itself: the laughable
borrows its special quality from some persons or group of persons who hap-
pen to laugh at it” (1923: 71) and notes that the joke teller must “know a good
deal about this person or group” (71) in order to make them laugh. Clearly,
Greig’s contention about the social aspect of humor comes very close to my
own theory, that a joke text is not inherently funny, that a joke text is not suc-
cessful unless and until an audience finds it amusing. It is in this way that
Greig underscores the integral nature of the role of the audience to the humor
event, to humor itself.
Like Greig, David Viktoroff acknowledges the importance of membership
in social groups to the existence of humor. Viktoroff avers, “One never laughs
alone – laughter is always the laughter of a particular social group” (1953:
14). For Viktoroff, then, one must be a member of a social group in order to
laugh, to laugh within that group, or to elicit laughter from within that group.
Historical views of humor 305
Viktoroff’s assertion of laughter, and therefore humor, as a communal, social

event underscores the notion that humor is a social activity, a social phe-
nomenon. Viktoroff seemingly views laughter as the end result of the humor
event, proof positive that humor has been elicited in the audience, presum-
ably 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 “correc-
tive...intended to humiliate” (1899: 187); directed against someone, laugh-
ter 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 ag-
gression 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 rela-
tionship 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 be-
tween 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 relation-
ship, none of which have been demonstrated to be conclusive. (1963: 31)
306 Amy Carrell
Here Fry has provided a brief summary of some of the early research into
the social nature of humor. In the first part, Fry echoes Bergson’s assertion
that humor is based on aggression or malice. Fry then presents the anthropo-
logical view on joking relationships developed later by, among others, Apte.
While these theorists do acknowledge, in one way or another, that humor is
a social activity, they do not delve deep enough to show how or why.
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 de-
fine. 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 syn-
onymous 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 speak-
ers 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
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 surpass-
ing 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 collec-
tion 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 asser-
tion 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 Lu-
dovici, 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. Can-
tor 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).
308 Amy Carrell
Also recall Fry’s observation that some claim that humor “embodies an
attack by one individual on another” (1963: 31). When play mimics or takes
on an aggressive or hostile nature, for instance, it is easily viewed as an evo-
lution of that which had been described by the Ancients.
Not everyone throughout history viewed humor and laughter so nega-
tively. Some took a different approach to the subject of humor and laughter.
In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant called wit “the play of thought”
(1790: 176, emphasis in original). He asserted that laughter follows from
something absurd and “is an affection arising from sudden transformation of
a strained expectation into nothing” (1790: 177, emphasis in original). Kant
continued, “the jest must contain something that is capable of deceiving for
a moment” (1790: 179). In short, Kant located humor and laughter in incon-
gruity. The key to Kant’s definition of laughter and wit, and therefore humor,
is the word sudden. Were the transformation not sudden, but rather slowly
built, and deceptive, there would be far less – and perhaps no – incongruity
as the incongruity would have been resolved during the construction of the
joke text or jest. After all, a joke “gotten,” that is, one which has “fired” for
the audience, is generally far more enjoyable to an audience than a joke ex-
plained, though it is possible for an audience to judge humorous a joke that
has been explained.
A typical manifestation of Kant’s “sudden transformation” is the punch
line of a joke text. According to Fry, the punch line is “a highly specialized
article ... [which] presents a seemingly irrelevant idea, or it may seem incon-
gruous with respect to the main body of the joke. Or it may seem to open up
an entirely new trend of thought. Or the punch line may be an unexpectedly
rational statement” (1963: 33–34). James C. Humes draws an analogy be-
tween joke texts and their punch lines and balloons: “you pump [a joke text]
up with details and then puncture it with a punch line” (1975: 5). For Elliott
Oring, the punch line “... triggers the perception of an appropriate incongru-
ity ... [and] must bring about an abrupt cognitive reorganization in the lis-
tener” (1989: 351). And for Attardo and Raskin, the punch line is the pivot on
which the joke text turns as it signals the shift between the scripts necessary
to interpret the joke text (1991: 308).
For Arthur Schopenhauer, the cause of laughter and, therefore, humor
is “simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and
the real objects which have been thought through in some relation,” and
the ensuing laughter is consequently “the expression of this incongruity”
(1957 [1819], 76). James Beattie, writing more than two hundred years ago,
observed,
laughter [or humor] arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuit-
able, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in complex
object or assemblage, or as acquiring a sort of mutual relation from the pecu-
liar manner in which the mind takes notice of them. (1776: 602)
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 re-
lief 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 dis-
covery 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 bet-
ter 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 heal-

ing 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-
310 Amy Carrell
nying what he calls “mirthful laughter” are “increases in arterial blood pres-
sure” which are then “followed by pressure decreases below resting pressure
levels” (Fry and Savin 1988: 49). Hence, Fry and Savin suggest “that this
phenomenon contributes to physiologic survival by its enhancement of cir-
culatory efficiency” (1988: 49).
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 devel-
oped 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 psycho-
analytical or release/relief. Keith-Spiegel lists eight categories – biologic-
al, 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 Ver-
bal 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 em-
pirical research into the physiological and psychological responses to humor
(see, for instance, Ruch 1993b, a guest-edited special issue of HUMOR de-
voted to psychological humor research, and see below). Still other areas of
humor research include examinations of gender differences in the apprecia-
tion 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
1989; Ramani and Varma 1989; Kushner 1990; Morreall 1991; Franzini
and Haggerty 1994; Gibson 1994; Ehrenberg 1995; Unger 1996), children’s
humor and children’s uses of humor (see, for example, McGhee 1974,
1976a, 1976b; McGhee and Chapman 1980; Masten 1986, 1989; Sherman
1988; McGhee and Panoutsopoulou 1990; Mowrer and D’Zamko 1990;
Mowrer 1994; Holt and Willard-Holt 1995; Alves 1997), the therapeutic and
healthful/healing powers of humor (see, for instance, Cousins 1979; Fry and
Salameh 1987; Fry and Savin 1988; Haig 1988; Klein 1989; White and Ca-
marena 1989; Lefcourt, Davidson-Katz, and Kueneman 1990; McGhee 1991;
Martin et al., 1993; Gelkopf and Sigal 1995; Derks, et al., 1997; Ryan 1997),
ethnic humor (see, for example, Bermant 1986; Ziv 1986, 1988, 1991; Bier
1988; Schutz 1989; Spencer 1989; Davies 1990a, 1990b, 1997; Epskamp
1993; Mbangwana 1993; Draitser 1994; Kazanevsky 1995; Fry 1997),
cross-national and bilingual humor (see, for instance, Ruch 1991; Ruch, et
al., 1991; Leeds 1992; Ruch and Forabosco 1996), and women’s humor (see,
for example, Barreca 1988, 1991; Walker 1988; Walker and Dresner 1988;
Kaufman 1991; Warren 1991; Radday 1995; Thorson and Powell 1996).
Incongruity theories
Incongruity-based theories, which virtually dominate contemporary psycho-

logical 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 poten-
tial threats, which is, in Morreall’s words, “cognitively limiting” (1989: 12).
Morreall claims that because human beings can both perceive and enjoy in-
congruity, 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 Mor-
reall, 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).
312 Amy Carrell
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 partici-
pants 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 incon-
gruity 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 diffi-
culty 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 inher-
ent 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.
Disparagement theories
A second class of humor theories, whose roots lie in classical Greek and
Roman rhetorical theory, includes those theories of humor based on malice,
hostility, derision, aggression, disparagement, and/or superiority. Included
in this group are ethnic, racial, and “dumb” jokes. Scholars, theorists, and
researchers who espouse theories of humor based on hostility or malice fre-
quently cite the similarities in bodily positions between aggressive behavior,
such as fighting, and laughter to substantiate their claims (Kallen 1911; Crile
1916; Ludovici 1932; Rapp 1947, 1949, 1951).
Jerry M. Suls defines this group of humor theories as “based on the ob-
servation that we laugh at other people’s infirmities, particularly those of our
enemies” (1977: 41) and easily include the views of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,
Hobbes, Hegel, Bain, and Bergson cited above.
Disparagement-, malice-, hostility-, derision-, aggression-, or superior-
ity-based theories characterize the attitudes between the joke teller (or the
joke’s persona) and the target of the joke text, which may or may not be the
audience. But, cautions Keith-Spiegel, “[n]ot all theorists who include the
element of superiority as part of humor believe that laughter is always con-
temptuous or scornful. Sympathy, congeniality, empathy, and geniality may
be combined with the laughter of superiority” (1972: 7; also see Hunt 1846;
Bain 1859; Carpenter 1922; McDougall 1922; Rapp 1949). In this way, those
scholars, theorists, and researchers who espouse theories of humor based on
superiority, aggression, or malice, for instance, may view or employ humor
and laughter as the means by which to temper the aggression and aggressive
behavior they examine. But the superiority, aggression, and malice neverthe-
less remain.
Release/relief theories
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 inhibi-
tions 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.
314 Amy Carrell
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 seman-

tic 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 “incor-
porates, 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
to fire for another. Humor does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, it has four nec-
essary constituents which make up the humor event: the joke teller, the joke
text, and the audience all existing within a particular situation which contrib-
utes to each of the other three constituents in the humor event. It is important
to note that the joke teller and audience can, in fact, be the same person or, in
the case of two – or more – people, can alternate roles. No single constituent
of the humor event is any more or less necessary – or important – than any
other, and each is related to and dependent on the other three constituents.
Because of the pervasive nature of the situation, however, and the significance
of its contribution to each of the other constituents of the humor event, it is
impossible to discuss situation as a discrete component of the humor event. In
other words, the situation encompasses everything that occurs in, or is a part
of, the humor event – including the individuals involved – by establishing the
context for joking or, at least, for attempts at joking.
Psychological inquiry into humor
Humor has also been approached empirically by psychologists and physi-

ologists, 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 diam-
eter, skin conductance, and heart rate, while Lambert Deckers, falling clear-
ly in the incongruity camp, has developed a weight-judging paradigm (WJP)
“to investigate the conditions necessary for incongruity, degree of incongru-
ity, ... and detection of incongruity” (1993: 43). Peter Derks and Sanjay
Arora have looked at the effect of the sequencing of cartoons in the percep-
tion of humor; that is, following the results of a study by Jeffrey Goldstein,
Jerry Suls, and Susan Anthony (1972) who, according to Ruch, “demon-
strated that the repetition of a joke theme makes this theme salient and that
subsequent jokes are found funnier when the same theme is continued ra-
ther 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).
316 Amy Carrell
In Israel, Ofra Nevo and her colleagues have examined the relationship be-
tween humor and pain tolerance and found a positive relationship “between
tolerance of pain and sense of humor, especially with the capacity to produce
humor” (1993: 71). They also posit, based on the results of their study, that
those subjects who perceived the film presented by the researchers as humor-
ous tolerated more pain induced by the cold pressor test administered by the
researchers, which suggests to the authors “that humor helps [in tolerating
pain] only when perceived as such” (71). In Canada, Rod A. Martin and
his colleagues have investigated the relationship between, as their title sug-
gests, “humor, self-concept, coping with stress, and positive affect” (1993:
89). Their findings indicate that humor “may also play an important role in
enhancing the enjoyment of positive life experiences” (89). Essentially, Mar-
tin and his colleagues confirm their hypothesis that humor does help to re-
duce stress and that humor has a positive effect on an individual’s outlook
and health (see also Fry and Savin 1988; Cousins 1979; Lefcourt and Martin
1986; Martin 1989; Martin and Dobbin 1988; Martin and Lefcourt 1983;
Kuiper and Martin 1993).
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 en-
tirely to humor scholarship, HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Re-
search), Apte observes, “[n]ot only does humor occur in all human cultures,
it also pervades all aspects of human behavior, thinking, and sociocultural
reality; it occurs in an infinite variety of forms and uses varied modalities”
(1988: 7). It is because of this “infinite variety of forms and ... varied mo-
dalities” that the study of humor must be and is a multidisciplinary, interdis-
ciplinary, and cross-disciplinary field of inquiry. Its boundaries are indistinct
and blurred by the many researchers and scholars who investigate and have
investigated humor from a variety of different perspectives, many looking for
and at very different aspects of the same subject.
Most, if not all, humor scholars, theorists, and researchers come to and
at the subject from different backgrounds, angles, and perspectives. Some
seek to explicate the humor in particular works of literature (for instance,
Ross 1989; Risden 1990; Greenfeld 1993; Takahashi 1994; Hopkins 1997)
or the humor of a particular author or artist (for example, Meyerhofer 1988;
Scott 1989; Tanner 1989; Barrett 1991; Batts 1992; Hallett 1992; Holcomb
1992; Gehring 1993; Fisher 1995; Olson 1996). Others investigate humor by
attempting to explain what is meant by a sense of humor and/or how to meas-
ure it (for instance, Mindess, et al., 1985; Raskin 1992; Ruch and Rath 1993;
Ruch 1994; Craik, Lampert, and Nelson 1996; Köhler and Ruch 1996; Martin
1996; Ruch 1996; Ruch, Köhler, and van Thriel 1996; Svebak 1996), and still
others look more broadly at the psychology of humor (see below). There are,
of course, other areas of inquiry into humor research, some of which will be
discussed and/or referenced below. The important point here, however, is that
research into humor provides an enormous, fertile field of inquiry for schol-
ars, theorists, and researchers.
In the article cited above, Apte calls for the establishment of humorology
as a discrete and distinct academic discipline and then looks at and suggests
possible disciplinary boundaries in an effort to streamline and codify the field
he calls humorology. Apte (1988) also examines the schizophrenic nature of
research into humor and defines humorology, a term he claims to have coined
in 1984, as “the study of the causes, nature – that is, form and substance – and
functions of the phenomenon labeled humor” (1988: 9). It is no wonder, then,
that this phenomenon – and attempts to define, classify, and explain it – has
fascinated scholars since ancient times.
In the past few decades, research into humor has become recognized as
a valid area of inquiry, though the preponderance of humorologists, to use
Apte’s term, have come to the field of humor research both through and from
other disciplines. (Apte himself, for instance, is a linguist-turned-anthropol-
ogist-turned-humorologist.) In other words, humor research, as an organized
field of inquiry, is still in its infancy. To date, but one degree has been granted
in humor in the United States, and that at the undergraduate level. A decade
ago, however, the University of Reading (England) instituted a Master of Arts
degree under the direction of sociologist and humorologist Christie Davies
(Nilsen 1990: 463–465).
One early attempt to bring together humor scholars, theorists, and re-
searchers as well as their work, which predates Apte’s (1988) article, was
the commencement of the International Conferences on Humor, the first of
which was held in Cardiff, Wales, in 1976 and was hosted by Antony Chap-
man and Hugh Foot. Three years later, Mindess hosted the Second Inter-
national Conference on Humor in Los Angeles, and in 1982, Rufus Browning
hosted the Third International Conference on Humor in Washington, D.C.; the
Workshop Library World Humor (WLWH) and the American Humor Studies
Association cohosted the Third Conference. Other International Conferenc-
es on Humor were held in Tel Aviv, Israel (1984, Avner Ziv), Cork, Ireland
318 Amy Carrell
(1985, Des MacHale), and Tempe, Arizona (1987, Don L. F. Nilsen). (The
International Conferences on Humor have since merged with the conferences
of the International Society for Humor Studies.)
In 1982, Don L. F. Nilsen organized a humor conference at Arizona State
University as part of the Western Humor and Irony Movement (WHIM), an
organization founded by Nilsen as an affiliate of the WLWH. Nilsen and his
wife, Alleen Pace Nilsen, hosted annual WHIM conferences at Arizona State
University from 1982 until 1987. The following year, in 1988, WHIM VII, the
last of the WHIM conferences, was held at Purdue University and was hosted
by Victor Raskin (Mintz 1988: 91–92).
At the Seventh International Conference on Humor in Laie, Hawaii, in
1989, an organization called the International Society for Humor Studies
(ISHS) was formed as an evolution, or perhaps mutation, of WHIM and has
joined forces with the International Conferences on Humor. Since the incep-
tion of the organization, annual ISHS conferences have been held in Shef-
field, England (1990), St. Catharines, Ontario (1991), Paris (1992, in con-
junction with CORHUM, l’Association francais pour le developpement des
researches sur le Comique, le Rire et l’Humour), Luxembourg (1993), Ithaca,
New York (1994), Birmingham, England (1995), Sydney, Australia (1996),
Edmond, Oklahoma (1997), Bergen, Norway (1998), Oakland, California
(1999), and Osaka, Japan (2000). The 2001 conference will be held at the
University of Maryland.
Humor has also become big business. As the theoretical interest in humor
has grown, so, too, has interest in the practical value of humor (Morreall
1991). Morreall has examined the veritable explosion of research into humor
and the applications of that research to the workplace. He cites the fact that
“[t]here are...dozens of humor consultants working with corporations, gov-
ernment agencies, hospitals, and schools” (1991: 359). Morreall also cites
the successes of Joel Goodman and John Cleese (of Monty Python and Fawlty
Towers fame); the former has presented programs on the importance of humor
in the workplace to more than a quarter million people, and the latter has pro-
duced ninety training films (359). Most important, observes Morreall, is the
fact that “[a]ll this interest in the value of humor in the workplace represents
an important swing away from the traditional assessment of humor as frivo-
lous and unproductive” (359). According to Morreall, humor belongs in the
workplace because it promotes “health, mental flexibility, and smooth social
relations” (359). Apparently, corporate executives and administrators agree.
Clearly, the field of humor research is taking on a shape of its own. Mem-
bership in the ISHS is growing, and its conferences are well attended by
humor scholars and researchers as well as humor practitioners and other “just
interested” individuals. Submissions to HUMOR, distributed to every ISHS
member as a benefit of membership in the organization, are growing, humor
specialists are being sought out and hired by major corporations, hospitals,
and schools all over the world, and Apte’s call for disciplinary boundaries is,
at long last, being heard and heeded.
Summary
Since Apte’s (1988) call for legitimizing the field of humor research, for-
ays into the area have expanded and multiplied. Humor research is being
conducted all over the world, from the United States and Canada to Europe
(for instance, Attardo and Chabanne 1992, and references there; Ruch 1990,
1991, 1993a, 1993b; Ruch, Ott, Accoce, and Bariaud 1991) to the Common-
wealth of Independent States (for example, Zelvys 1990) to Israel (for in-
stance, Rosenheim, Tecucianu, and Dimitrovsky 1989; Ziv 1986, 1988, 1991,
and references there; Ziv and Gadish 1990; Tsur 1989; Elitzur 1990a, 1990b;
Zajdman 1991; Nevo, Keinan, and Teshimovsky-Arditi 1993) to Australia
(for example, Deren 1989) to Turkey (for instance, Karabas 1990) to Japan
to Poland. Students of and researchers into humor are writing not only art-
icles and books but dissertations (for instance, Attardo 1991; Carrell 1993)
on various aspects of humor. Moreover, in addition to the ISHS, the Modern
Language Association and the Speech Communication Association are de-
voting colloquia, symposia, and workshops to the phenomenon of humor,
and new organizations are being formed, including, for instance, the Japan
Society for Laughter and Humor Studies and the American Association for
Therapeutic Humor.
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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 charac-
teristic 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 language-
based human-computer interaction. Finally, an additional benefit of study-
ing computational humor can be reaped for those interested in humor, as it
requires formalization of humor’s key components in order to make them
334 Christian F. Hempelmann
p alatable to the dumb machine: Teach the computer to create humor and it
will be a step towards our understanding of humor.
Computational linguistics
Computational linguistics is the home discipline contributing to computa-

tional 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 com-
puters. Despite its name, computational linguistics is often expressly anti-
linguistic 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 discip-
linary 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 ap-
proach sometimes called Computational Linguistics (CL) to distinguish it
from the other approach of Natural Language Processing (NLP). This sec-
ond, and until recently dominant, approach treats natural language like any
other non-random collection of data and processes it with the help of statis-
tical 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-driv-
en approach is the attempt to not have to do that work. Because of this ra-
tionale, 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 underly-
ing production and comprehension systems are modeled into an NLP system
based on linguistic theories.
A second dimension, theoretically orthogonal to the first, but correlat-
ing 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-
Computational humor: Beyond the pun? 335
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 com-
paring these proofs-of-concept and toy applications. While they are com-
parable among each other, the performance data derived in that way have no
meaning, because they don’t reflect performance in relation to an implemen-
tation.
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 fash-
ion, it sits on a complete NLP system, but plays a role centrally at the follow-
ing 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 consump-
tion. Both types of computational humor should be based on humor theory
and a model of humor, namely on theories of the humor competence that un-
derlies 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 gen-
eration.
Since Apple’s joke teller, progress has been achieved in computational
humor, both in humor analysis and humor generation, but mostly in gen-
eration. The reason is that even an unsophisticated intelligence, human or
artificial, can parrot a dumb joke, because it doesn’t even have to under-
stand 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 ver-
sion 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
ordplay as the most frequent type of humor used in humor generation. Fi-
w
nally, I will briefly propose an improved system based on ontological seman-
tics and integrated into a full natural language generation system.
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 consid-
er computer systems with humor “more likable and competent” (1999: 215),
which leads to an enhancement of customer acceptance for such systems,
for example in information assurance and security systems (Raskin 2002:
33–34).
At a more general theoretical level, emotive – or affective – computing
integrates theories of emotion into models of embodied computational agents
(ECAs; Cassell et al. 2000, Luck et al. 2004) that interact with humans (Nij-
holt 2002, Nijholt et al. 2003, Nijholt 2005). Humor not only covers specific
stimulus properties that are discussed in the majority of this chapter on the
basis of linguistic theory (see also chapter 3). It also covers a range of emo-
tional responses to such stimuli, as well as states and traits usually described
with the concept of “sense of humor” (cf. chapter 2, Ruch 1998) that fall
into the purview of psychological theories. Several research groups provide
their HCI programs with such emotive components, aimed at both detecting
emotions in human users and expressing emotions in a theory-based fashion
in their computational interfaces. These interfaces started purely text-based
in the good old ELIZA4 fashion, added spoken output and/or input, gave the
agent a face, and, finally, full embodiment. Again the general rationale is to
help computers interact with humans in a fashion resembling that of humans
interacting with humans, namely through these anthropomorphic agents that
are now given humorous capabilities.
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 accept-
ed in ECAs, where the face is often modeled as a three-dimensional sur-
face 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 be-
fore (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 avail-
able 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 gener-

ation are LIBJOG (Raskin and Attardo 1994) and JAPE (Binsted and Ritchie
1994, 1997), implemented by Loehr (1996). JAPE’s joke analysis and pro-
duction 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.
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 The-
ory 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 sub-
sequent widespread emulation of LIBJOG’s lack of intelligence or insight
with similar systems, such as JAPE or AUTEUR,6 developed by computer
scientists with little expertise or interest in either NLP or humor research, was
a totally unexpected and unintended effect.
Specific purposes for humor in HCI have been addressed by McDonough’s
(2001) system for easier memorization of random passwords by associating
them with a funny jingle. The main problem with passwords is that users
want passwords that are easy to remember, and passwords that are easy to
remember are easy to guess by people other than their owners, also known as
‘the bad guys.’ Passwords that are existing words or names in any language
can easily be remembered, but also be cracked by simply trying all words
from a machine-readable dictionary or by going through a list of names.
McDonough argues that in order for users to accept the safer passwords, like
WDhpuD53, these should be made easier to remember. His method for that
hinges on the assumption that humor facilitates memory and transforms pass-
words by assigning to each letter and number words that form a syntactical-
ly well-formed and funny jingle. For example, the password “WDhpuD53”
might result in the mnemonic sentence, “Walesa Desired heston’s pole, while
ulster Doubted FISCHER’s TEST.”7 Humor is attempted to be in the system
based on contrasting, potentially incongruous, verb classes, one being posi-
tive and one negative, and the use of politicians’ names.
Another system loosely based on the SSTH and designed towards an im-
plementation is the HAHAcronym generator (Stock and Strapparava 2002).
Using WordNet8 Domains, like Medicine or Linguistics, antonymy relations
between the Domains, like Religion vs. Technology, as well as some several
other supporting resources, they create funny interpretations for acronyms:
MIT becomes “Mythical Institute of Theology.” Typically, WordNet is aug-
mented for this project to the degree that its own contribution to the system
becomes marginal, while the domain and antonymy relations created for HA-
HAcronym are the crucial components.
Exploring largely the phonological component of a pun generation sys-
tem, Hempelmann (2003) presents a formalized model for the complex phe-
nomenon of punning, and heterophonic punning, at all levels of linguistic
and humor-theoretical relevance. It started from the assumption of Optimal-
ity Theory (OT), but discards it largely in the process of setting up its own
system, capturing the phonological component with a classic edit-distance
model. The phonological analysis of possible puns for a given target – in most
circumstances, “dime” can pun on the target “damn,” but not on the target
“dune” – is automatized and refined as part of a generator. This method to
evaluate and select phonologically possible and better imperfect puns can thus
be integrated into larger natural language processing projects as a module to
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 Tay-
lor 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 gen-
erator 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 com-
plex 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. STAND-
UP 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 im-
prove humor analysis, not generation, and are often limited-range imple-
mentations 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 recur-
ring patterns in the surface structure of a text that correlate with underly-
ing text properties, in order to classify texts as humorous or non-humorous
on the basis of these patterns. In particular, Mihalcea and Pulman postu-
late that humorous texts frequently show words from classes that signify hu-
man-centric vocabulary (e.g., pronouns), use negations and negative polar-
ity words (“wrong,” “error”), mention professional communities (lawyers,
programmers) and negative human traits (“ignorance,” “lying”). Grouping
these classes under Human Centeredness and Polarity Orientation, Mihal-
cea 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
were violent.” Were the cops or the demonstrators violent? The problem they
focus on is the distinction between humorous and non-humorous instances
of anaphoric ambiguity. They based this distinction on the SSTH and find
possible antecedents that are in a relation of opposition using the Concept-
Net database. Here “demonstrators” are linked to the concept “rowdy” which
is marked as an antonym to “orderly,” which in turn is a property of “cop.”
While this is a theory-based scalable system, it suffers from low performance
because it uses low-performing external components for anaphora resolution
and concept analysis.
Finally, while it is not computational humor in the sense discussed here,
JESTER (Gupta and Goldberg. 1999), the application of the collaborative fil-
tering system, EIGENTASTE (Goldberg et al. 2001), to humor should briefly
be mentioned. Here, humor serves as a field of application for an algorithm
that establishes preferences of users on the basis of their ratings of jokes from
a large database and the ratings of previous users (see http://shadow.ieor.
berkeley.edu/humor/). For real results relevant to humor researchers, the ac-
cumulated data of the project should provide a gold mine, both for work on
stimulus properties and on responses in relation to humor as trait dimensions.
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 car-
ries the humor-relevant elements (not a logical, implied, etc., element). Puns
are assumed to represent jokes and humor prototypically and provide a field
of application for all subdisciplines of linguistics and are apparently a con-
veniently simple type to provide a paradigm analysis for humorous texts. But
for puns as well, meaningful research is only possible with a sophisticated
model, such as the one of the GTVH (see chapter 3), not least because puns
are a very condensed type of textual humor. That is, while they have all neces-
sary elements for a text to be funny – after all they’re considered humorous –
these elements are carried by few textual units. So the seeming advantage can
easily become a disadvantage, because many essential elements and mechan-
isms overlap in punning and are prone to be confused.
Let’s highlight the relevant issues right away: The parts of the model most
crucial for the present discussion are the two knowledge resources highest in
the hierarchy of the GTVH, namely script opposition (SO) and logical mech-
anism (LM), maybe more appropriately called pseudo-logical mechanisms,
since it is often not logical at all. In the following discussion, punning will
be explained mainly in terms of these two parameters, which, in turn, will
receive a more exact definition.
One central and controversial assumption of the GTVH is that the LM
can be conceptualized as a function of SO. I intend to show how this is in-
deed fruitful for puns, and very possibly for humorous texts in general. For
this purpose it needs to be emphasized that the main hypothesis of the SSTH
about SO encompasses both script overlap (SOv) and script oppositeness
(SOp) as the necessary and sufficient requirement for a text to be a joke (cf.
Raskin 1985: 99). But when the theory is quoted, exclusive attention is usu-
ally paid to script opposition, while overlap is, at the most, quietly under-
stood to be involved. This dangerously shifted focus away from SOp, to the
degree that it can easily be overlooked. According to the SSTH, the text itself
must contain overlap, as part of it is compatible with both scripts, that is,
they “coexist.” And in the GTHV, the LM is the (optional) function that play-
fully motivates this overlap, in the words of Attardo and Raskin (1991: 309):
“SSTH would view them [LMs] essentially as a mere implementation of the
script opposition,” or, more pointedly, “we can treat LM as the tool for SO”
(1991: 324).
In puns, SOv includes the punning word that triggers the LM, the dynamic
cognitive process (cf. Attardo 1997: 409), which, in turn, playfully resolves
the SOp. This, I claim here, is the sense in which the LM is the tool of the SO
in puns, verbal humor in general, and possibly other humorous text.
On the basis of this brief outline, let us now turn to the analysis of pun-
ning, where the crucial part of SOv is realized in an easily identifiable elem-
ent of the text and for which the LM will be outlined and found to be less
straightforward than usually assumed. The particular focus is on imperfect
puns, where the relevant issues are more apparent than in perfect puns.
Imperfect puns
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)
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 toler-
able heterophony (sound difference). As an illustration, the same example
can be used, when we assume a speaker who does not attempt a French pro-
nunciation 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:
(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 po-

etry as “a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for
these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the mo-
ment, which constitutes poetic faith” (1907 (1817): 169; my emphasis). Ac-
cordingly, 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 in-
congruous concepts, the joke needs the LM that seemingly bridges that un-
bridgeable 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 be-
tween 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 suspen-

sion of disbelief,” that is, faulty logic, albeit of such pervasive power that
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 rea-
soning are taken at face value. This includes religion (e.g., Exodus 20: 7)11
and magic, prominently name taboos, but also kabalistic and similar exeget-
ic exercises, folk etymology and the etymological fallacy, as well as, more
straightforwardly, onomatopoeia (for references, see Hempelmann 2003, At-
tardo 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 systematic-
ally 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 pos-
ition to reconsider the feebleness – and often plain non-humorousness – of
what is called a “bad pun” in general non-technical use. This application will
serve to illustrate and clarify the relation of SO and LM, in particular SOv and
LM (see also Attardo et al. 2002), as well as the difference between verbal
and referential humor.
Raskin claims that the script overlap of these bad jokes is triggered by the
quasi-ambiguity based “on purely phonetical and not semantical relations
between words” (1985: 116). I agree that in bad puns – in German called Ka-
lauer, and in French calembour – the incongruity (SOp) is achieved through
the phonological overlap in the text (SOv). Yet, crucially, this sound simi-
larity alone cannot create the LM required by non-absurd, non-nonsensical
humor, so that a text lacking the playful resolution of the SOp created by
the LM will be mere wordplay rather than humor. In short, the phonologic-
al overlap in punning (part of the SOv) can initiate the cratylistic reasoning
(LM), but without the appropriate constellation (SOp), no scripts that may be
overlapping can be identified, so that the text remains too weak to constitute
a joke, as in the following example:
(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
The only SOp that this text could be conceived of carrying is that of a meta-
joke (cf. Attardo 2001), not local antonymy of cantaloupe and the inability
to elope can be found.
In sum, if a pun in a text is too different in sound from the target to fulfill
function (6a), the punning joke fails completely, no humor is created, the
text is not a joke, and, if the attempt to joke has been detected, the teller will
probably be prompted to supply additional explanations to make the target
recoverable. But if the pun and target are sufficiently similar in sound for the
latter to be recovered, the text may be perceived as a joke. But more crucially,
two scripts triggered by the pun-target pair (SOv) may still lack opposition,
so that the SOp requirement (8) is not fulfilled, and the cratylistic analogy
will not function.
Accordingly, in humorous punning, in addition to the overlap in sound
of the pun-target segment, there needs to be semantic opposition, if of the
feeblest kind imaginable, to support the cratylistic LM. Otherwise the pun-
ning text will not be a joke. For those who fail to see the overlap, it indeed
isn’t a joke, but merely wordplay.12 And given that humans are desperately
good disambiguators with vast semantic networks available to them, as well
as excellent pragmatic interpreters, we seek any kind of semantic overlap to
be able to handle the phonological (quasi-)ambiguity as humor, even if mere
wordplay was intended. What adds to the confusion is that non-humorous
wordplay, like rhyming, can be enjoyed aesthetically, and this enjoyment can
be confused with the enjoyment derived from humor.
In sum, punning includes “word play,” but play with words cannot work
at the sound level alone as mere “Klangspiel” (play with sounds), if it strives
to be humor as well. But it must be accompanied by “Sinnspiel” (play with
meaning; cf. Hausmann 1974: 20) in order for the pun’s weak cratylistic LM
to support the opposite overlapping script constellation that would make it
a joke. The near failure of this latter requirement, that is, the belief on the part
of a joker that he or she can get away with pure “Klangspiel” is what earns
bad puns a pariah status in the family of jokes.
Summary
This section has presented a formal model for the complex phenomenon of
punning, in particular imperfect punning, on all levels of linguistic and humor-
theoretical relevance for the discussion of script opposition, script overlap,
logical mechanism, and, on that basis, the distinction of verbal and referen-
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 in-
tegrated into humor research in its first large application, fully taking the
use of punning in computational humor to the next level, that of meaning.
Meaning has a sad history of having scared researchers in NLP into declar-
ing it an impossibly difficult problem. A major problem, first pointed out
by Bar-Hillel (1960) in his assessment of the first generation of machine-
translation systems, is that humans use their massive knowledge of how the
world works, when they make sense of language, and machines don’t have
such knowledge. The two clauses in example (11) make no sense, unless we
know at least the following: that for humans to go bowling means that they
have to rent shoes and shoes are what humans wear on their feet and feet is
also where fungal diseases can take a foothold and such pedal fungal diseases
can be transmitted through shared footwear.
(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
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 lan-
guages;
• a text-meaning representation (TMR) language, an ontology-based knowl-
edge-representation language for natural language meaning;
• a fact repository, containing the growing number of implemented and re-
membered 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 stereo-
types. 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 formu-
lated by Raskin and Attardo (1994). Raskin (2002) reports the progress in this
direction. The rationale is still “that only the most complex linguistic struc-
tures can serve any formal and/or computational treatment of humor well”
(Raskin 1996: 17). Toy systems don’t produce useful output.
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 value human-1
gender value male
has-social-role value patient
beneficiary value human-2
gender value female
age value <.5
attraction-attribute value >.5
marital-status value married
theme value location-of
theme value human-3
gender 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: Script 1

PATIENT
“Is the doctor at home?” the patient asked in his
bronchioal whisper .
“No”, the doctor’s young and pretty wife whispered
Script 2
whispered in reply. “Come right in.”
LOVER
Figure 1. Joke sample and main hypothesis (cf. Raskin 1985)

has-social-role value doctor
instrument value natural-language
loudness value <.3
time-begin unknown
time-end < deny-1.time-begin
deny-1
agent value human-2
theme value location-of
theme value human-3
time-begin > request-info-1.time-end
time-end < invite-1.time-begin
invite-1
agent value human-2
location value dwelling-1
owned-by value set-1
time-begin > deny-1.time-end
time-end unknown
set-1
element-type human
elements (human-2, human-3)
The current implementations of ontological semantics no longer ignore the

property of effect, which was largely redundant in machine translations. It
will, therefore, note that the patient’s cue has the effect given in (13), while
the doctor’s wife’s cue will not.
(13) examine
agent doctor
beneficiary patient
Thus, the first half of the joke, the setup, puts forward a doctor script, speci-
fying the typical events and objects involved in the training and career of
a medical professional, while the second part, the punchline, disconfirms it.
This will alert the system to the need to search for an alternative script that
will, like the first script, embrace part of the text and will have some compati-
bility with the other part. The second script will be adultery given in (14):
(14) adultery
is-a value sex-event
agent value set-1
has-parts value sex-event
agent value human-1
beneficiary not human-2
human-2
marital-status value unmarried
married
beneficiary not human-1
set-1
element-type value human
elements value (human-1, human-2)
which includes the subscript sex, and a sex/no-sex opposition will be re-
corded.
This opposition is recognized as part of the set of oppositions with humor-
ous potential, first proposed by Raskin as the “few binary categories which
are essential to human life” (1985: 113f, see (15)) and included into the ontol-
ogy as relations under the property grouping:
(15) real vs. unreal

good vs. bad
live vs. death
sex vs. no sex
money vs. no money
high stature vs. low stature
These oppositeness relations have as daughter nodes a number of more spe-

cific relations, e.g., under good/bad we find feces/no feces, while high stat-
ure/low stature subsumes religion/no religion (see below) and authority/no
authority.
A previous implementation (Hempelmann 2004a) focused on the inte-
gration of a phonological punning component into an ontological semantic
humor system. Taken from this approach, the following reverse-engineered

example (16) illustrates the further integration of these components towards
a humor generation system.
(16) What did the egg say in the monastery?

Out of the frying pan, into the friar.
As we have shown above, the two central elements of a joke are the script
opposition (SO) and the related logical mechanism (LM), masking the tenu-
ousness of the necessary script overlap’s false logic (Hempelmann 2004b,
Hempelmann and Attardo, forthcoming). To generate a text with these neces-
sary and sufficient qualities for it to be a joke, we have to describe how those
two elements are arrived at by the computational humor system in the way
described above.
The script-switch trigger in our example of an imperfect pun is “friar”
and the similar sounding target “fire.” Beyond the sound similarity of these
two, the recovery of the target is, of course, aided by the proverb “out of the
frying pan, into the fire.” The identification of this similarity will be the task
of a phonological component (“Ynperfect Pun Selector,” YPS) described in
(Hempelmann 2004a). The SO of this text is that between one script monas-
tery involving the concept monk that is selected as a in a high-stature – low
stature (religion – no religion) relation to the other script food-preparation,
including the concept fire.
If we assume the system has detected the target word “fire” in an input text
produced by a human, it is able to produce the output in example (16). Fol-
lowing the outlined mechanism it will have to work as shown in Figure 2.
First, the target “fire” will be identified as the lexical entry fire that is
mapped onto the concept labeled fire. Among other scripts, fire will be
found to be part of the script food-preparation, or, more specifically, one
of its possible instruments. From its set of humorous oppositeness rela-
tions, the system will choose, inter alia, high/low stature for which it finds
that food-preparation is in this relation to monastery, a relation that both
concepts have inherited from parent nodes. For the latter the system will se-
lect all its slot-filler concepts, including pray, monk, preach.
As the final task for the ontological semantic component of the system,
all words in the lexicon of the target language are mapped onto all the con-
cepts of all scripts that have to be marked to be in one of the relations de-
scribed in the previous section. This is the candidate set P that is passed on to
the phonological module. This will now evaluate the sound similarity of the
Figure 2. Flow chart for pun generation based on ontological semantics
phonological representation of all candidates from P against the phonologic-

al representation of the target “fire.” The selected optimal candidate will be
the output of the system, given as the lexical entry “friar.” This will form the
basis of the full joke text generation.
Summary
This section showed how ontological semantics computes TMRs, full and
close to human understanding. This understanding is directly usable in humor
comprehension. Independently of computational humor, ontological seman-
tics has moved to keeping tab of effects and goals as well as to the use of
complex events, or scripts. Detecting a script opposition is also necessary for
various other current implementations, including semantic forensics (Raskin
et al. 2004). So, just as the SSTH predicted back in 1985, the only uniquely
humor-related extension of ontological semantics is the addition of a tiny new
resource – the list of standard script oppositions. Further improvements of
generative and analytical power will be achieved by integrating the current
research on the more complex issue of LMs besides the straightforward cra-
tylistic analogy of punning described here.
With this fully integratable, knowledge-based approach, we are in a position

to analyze and generate humor, one example of this also having been outlined
in the previous section, not just as built into a limited number of templates,
but on the basis of the substantial resources that ontological semantics has
accumulated. This enables us to create humor that is not only intended, but
also appropriate to the current topic of human-computer interaction, more
sophisticated, and thus perceived to be funnier than that attainable by previ-
ous systems. It certainly brings us closer to modeling the human capacity
for generating situational humor by detecting any two of the three necessary
elements, viz., two scripts which have to be in an opposition relation, and the
trigger (punchline) and providing the third (Raskin 1985: 114).
Conclusion
Much of the material that I have based this introduction to computational

humor on has been elicited by and presented at a small number of influential
events, namely two Twente Workshops on Language Technology (Hulstijn
and Nijholt 1996; Stock et al. 2002), and a workshop on humor modeling
in the interface at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
at the meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery (Nijholt et al.
2003). A more recent collection of articles with little new content was pub-
lished in IEEE (Binsted et al. 2006). It presents updates of the short-range
non-scalable implementations and types of applications surveyed above, as
well as notational variants of the knowledge-based systems introduced in the
last section of this chapter, both without or only limited resources. This, as
well as the restricted number of researchers cited in this chapter, shows that
the field of computational humor is small and underdeveloped. All the more
encouraging are the interdisciplinary efforts that show promise in bringing
together fields of research towards applications of humor theory.
Computational implementations of theories for real applications are an
excellent test bed for the maturity and usefulness of these theories. As men-
tioned above, if you have to formalize an issue, while maintaining descriptive
adequacy, that is, doing justice to the complexity of the issue and not forcing
it into the corset of your pet methodology, you must have a good understand-
ing of the issue: a theory. Symptomatically, much of what statistics-based
NLP has produced in terms of systems does not meet these criteria and is,
not surprisingly, not used for any real purpose. Computational humor has suf-
fered from this when it was approached with these methods. But as a young
field, computational humor is not yet dominated by this parochial approach to
NLP. It is thus at liberty to become a rich field for the application of theories
from all disciplines that contribute to humor research, including meaning-
based NLP. After all, humor is very meaningful.
Notes
1. Part of this chapter is based on earlier work by the author as well as joint work
with Katrina E. Triezenberg and Victor Raskin.
2. “Scalability” is an important issue in software design: Solutions need to be de-
signed in such a way that they do apply to an instance of the problem at hand, but
also to other types of that issue, as well as to the general issue of which the prob-
lem may be an instance. To ensure this, the larger issue must be understood and
the solution designed on the basis of a theory that accounts for that larger issue.
For example, if I need to design and build a retrofitted exhaust control system
for a Ford Galaxie 500, it would make economic sense to make it work on other
vintage cars as well. And to do that I need a theory of car engines in general, and
one of vintage car exhaust systems embedded into that larger theory.
3. This distinction between competence and performance is central in linguistic
theories and should not be confused with non-technical use of the terms or the
use of the terms in other disciplines (see ch. 3). This focus on a specific type
of application of theories makes this chapter strongly connected to many of the
other fields contributing to humor research and brought together in this book, but
in particular those on the linguistics (ch. 3) and the psychology of humor (ch. 2).
References to these chapters will be given where appropriate.
4. ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966) is a simple program that imitates dialogue behav-
ior through analysis of user input and reaction to that input based on templates,
as well as part of the input where possible. Written in 1966 by Weizenbaum to
emulate a psychoanalyst, a typical dialogue looks like this:
Eliza: Let’s talk. My name’s Eliza. Tell me about yourself.
Guest: I’m a computational linguist.
Eliza: Do you believe it’s OK to be a computational linguist?
Guest: No, my work will accelerate the destruction of the human race.
Eliza: Why not?
Guest: I just told you.
Eliza: Are you sure I?
Guest: Very much so.
Eliza: Can you elaborate on that?
Guest: Have you seen the movie “Terminator”?
Eliza: Let’s talk about me some other time. I’d rather hear about you.
5. The joke itself is, of course, the first light-bulb joke:

How many Polacks does it take to change a light bulb?
Five. One to hold the bulb and four to turn the table he is standing on.
6. Auteur (Nack 1996), a system to generate humor for film, claims to integrate
humor theory, but ultimately relies on insufficiently motivated, ad-hoc templates
(“strategies”) as well.
7. “Fischer” begins with “F” as does “five” and “Test” with “T” as does “three.”
8. WordNet (Fellbaum 1998) is a tool used in NLP for many purposes it shouldn’t
be used for. It’s a thesaurus that lists words with similar senses in groups, as well
as their hyponomy relations, e.g., one sense of ‘chair’ is a subconcept of ‘seat,’
which is a subconcept of ‘furniture,’ etc. WordNet is often confused with and
used as an ontology, but an ontology deserves this name only when it has a much
richer set of semantic properties for its concepts (see below).
9. The project ran until March 2007. More information can be found at http://www.
csd.abdn.ac.uk/research/standup/
10. This line of paralinguistic reasoning is named after Kratylos, a participant in the
eponymous Platonic dialogue (Plato 1961 (4th c. bc)), who argues for the nat-
ural, motivated, non-arbitrary relationship between sound and meaning (cf. At-
tardo 1994: 152ff)
11. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will
not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
12. The situation is, of course, different for those who do identify the semantic over-
lap, but find it too feeble. They will be able to identify the pun as a joke (joke
competence), but won’t enjoy it (humor competence; cf. Carrell 1997).
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The sociology of humor
Giselinde Kuipers
1. Introduction
Humor is a quintessentially social phenomenon. Jokes and other humorous

utterances are a form of communication that is usually shared in social in-
teraction. These humorous utterances are socially and culturally shaped, and
often quite particular to a specific time and place. And the topics and themes
people joke about are generally central to the social, cultural and moral order
of a society or a social group.
Despite the social character of humor, sociology, the discipline that stud-
ies society and social relations, has not concerned itself much with humor.
When sociology emerged in the nineteenth century, it focused mainly on the
great structural transformations of the modern times: modernization, indus-
trialization, urbanization, secularization, etc. It was not very interested in the
“unserious” business of everyday life: interactions, emotions, play, leisure,
private life, and other things not directly related to great developments on the
macro-level of society – such as humor. In the course of the twentieth cen-
tury, sociology became more diverse and increasingly concerned with the
micro-reality of everyday life, but it still remained overwhelmingly devoted
to the study of social problems, great transformations, and other serious mat-
ters. As a result, humor came into focus mainly when it seemed problematic
in itself, or was concerned with important social issues: race and ethnicity,
political conflict, social resistance, gender inequalities.
Meanwhile, questions about the social nature of humor were addressed
by many other disciplines. Many of the classical humor theoreticians (Mor-
reall 1983) touch on social aspects of humor. However, these questions were
mostly answered from a more philosophical or psychological perspective.
Anthropologists and folklorists were much ahead of the sociologists in pay-
ing serious and systematic attention to the social meanings and functions
of humor (see Apte 1985; Oring this volume). Only after the 1970s can we
speak of a serious emergence of a sociological interest in humor (Fine 1983;
Paton 1988; Zijderveld 1983).
362 Giselinde Kuipers
In this chapter, I will give an overview of sociological thought about

humor. Sociological thought is defined here broadly (and somewhat imperi-
alistically) as any scholarship concerned with the social functions or social
shaping of humor. Since the authors discussed here have used very different
conceptualizations and definitions of humor, I will simply adopt the vari-
ous notions of humor used by the authors discussed, and leave the matter of
the definition of humor to other authors in this volume. First, I will discuss
a number of theoretical perspectives on humor, roughly in chronological
order: the functionalist, conflict, symbolic interactionist, phenomenological,
and comparative-historical approach. After that, I will discuss a number of
issues central to today’s sociological thought about humor: the relation be-
tween humor, hostility and transgression; humor and laughter; and the social
shaping of humorous media and genres.
2. Sociological perspectives on humor
2.1. Pre-disciplinary history
Superiority theory, relief theory, and incongruity are usually described as the
three “classical” approaches to humor and laughter. These approaches pre-
date academic disciplinary specialization, so most of the classical formula-
tions are subsumed today under the heading of philosophy (Morreall 1983;
1987). The earliest sociologist who discussed humor was the British philoso-
pher/sociologist/political theorist Herbert Spencer. His discussion of laugh-
ter can be placed in the tradition of relief theory: laughter, to Spencer, is “the
discharge of arrested feelings into the muscular system . . . in the absence of
other adequate channels.” (Spencer 1861/1987: 108–109) However, Spencer
connected this energy release with the experience of incongruity: “laughter
naturally results only when consciousness is unawares transferred from great
things to small – only when there is what we may call a descending incon-
gruity.” (ibid. 110, italics in original) The discharge of tension is still one of
the main functions humor is believed to fulfill, and as such the relief theory
has had great influence on modern humor scholarship, mostly via the work of
Sigmund Freud (1905/1976). However, “pure” relief theorists, explaining all
humor and laughter as release of tension or “safety valve”, cannot be found
anymore in humor scholarship these days.
Of the three “classical” approaches, superiority theory is the most obvi-
ously connected with social relations. This tradition can be traced back to
The sociology of humor 363
Plato and Aristotle, and has most famously been formulated by Thomas Hob-
bes: “Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden
conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity
of others, or with our own formerly.” (Hobbes 1650/1987: 20) Superiority
theorists state that humor and laughter are expressions of superiority, which
of course reflects a social relationship. However, on close consideration the
classical theorists describe superiority as an individual experience: the com-
municative or relational aspect of the joking and laughing is generally not
examined in these theories. In other words: while addressing a social event,
superiority theories of humor are not very sociological. As will become clear
in this article, the relation between humor and superiority – although referred
to in other terms, such as power, conflict, or hierarchy – is still central to so-
cial scientific studies of humor.
Incongruity theory – the theory that states that all humor is based on the
perception or recognition of incongruity – is not as obviously related to socio-
logical questions, since it is mainly concerned with the nature of humorous
texts or other stimuli, or with the mental operations involved in processing
these texts. However, as incongruity theory, in several varieties (Attardo and
Raskin 1991; Oring 1992; 2003; Raskin 1985; Ruch 1998), became the dom-
inant perspective in humor scholarship, it has been incorporated in socio-
logical thought in various waysì
The first full-fledged theory of humor was developed by Sigmund Freud.
In his Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905) he integrated
elements of relief and incongruity theory, and combined them with his psy-
choanalytic theory. While Freud’s theories on humor (and other topics) are
much disputed, he was the first to systematically address what I have called
here sociological questions about humor, and his influence on the sociology
of humor has been immense. Without attempting to explain Freud’s entire
humor theory (see Martin 2006: 33–42; Palmer 1994: 79–92), let me note
two important themes. First, Freud discussed the importance of social rela-
tionships between the teller of the joke, his audience, and (when applicable)
the butt of the joke. In other words: he introduced the social relationship into
the analysis of humor. Second, Freud paid attention to the relationship be-
tween humor and – socially constructed – taboos. Jokes, according to Freud,
were a way to avoid the “censor”, or the internalized social restrictions, thus
enabling the expression (and enjoyment) of drives otherwise inhibited by
society. To Freud, these forbidden drives were mostly sex and aggression.
Freud’s theory has been strongly criticized, especially for the claim that all
humor in the end is based on sex and aggression, although, in all fairness,
Freud is more nuanced about this in his discussion of actual jokes than in
the general statement of his theory. Another main point of criticism is the
unfalsifiability of Freud’s theory: the references to underlying drives are, by
necessity, “veiled” and therefore hard to disprove. However, the notion of
jokes as related to, and attempting to circumvent, social taboos has become
very central to humor scholarship.1
The other early theorist of humor with sociological insight was Henri
Bergson. Like Freud’s theory, Bergson’s Laughter (1900/1999) contains
a number of rather untenable and untestable generalizations (for instance,
that all laughter is a response to “something mechanical encrusted on the
living”), alongside insightful contributions. For sociologists, his most rele-
vant observations have to do with the social character of laughter. Bergson
described humor and laughter as essentially social and shared. Laughing at
someone, on the other hand, functions as a means of exclusion, and hence as
a social corrective and form of social control.
After Freud and Bergson, the various disciplines of humor studies branched
out, and in the course of the twentieth century, a number of approaches
emerged that are more or less specific to the social sciences: the functional-
ist approach; the conflict approach; the symbolic interactionist approach; the
phenomenological approach; and the comparative-historical approach.
2.2. Functionalist approach
The functionalist approach interprets humor in terms of the social functions

it fulfills for a society or social group. Especially in older studies of humor,
functionalist interpretations tended to stress how humor (and other social
phenomena) maintain and support the social order. Functionalist studies of
humor are often ethnographic studies, but humorous texts, events, and cor-
pora have also been analyzed from a functionalist perspective.
The earliest functionalist explanations can be found in the work of anthro-
pologists on so-called joking relationships, a “a relationship between two
persons in which one is by custom permitted and in some instances required
to tease or make fun of the other” (Radcliffe-Brown 1940: 195). Radcliffe-
Brown interpreted such relationships, which exist in various non-Western
societies, as a way to manage the strain inherent in specific relationships.
They are “modes of organizing a definite and stable system of social behav-
iour in which conjunctive and disjunctive components . . . are maintained and
combined” (Radcliffe Brown 1940: 200). This obligatory joking is a way to
relieve tension in possibly strained relationships, thus maintaining the social

order. Later, a number of studies were done of non-obligatory joking rela-
tionships in industrialized societies, with similar interpretations about the
tension-relieving function of joking in situations that contained some sort of
structural conflict or contradiction (Bradney 1957; Sykes 1966). Other ritu-
alized forms of humor, such as rituals of reversal (like carnival), and ritual
clowning (Apte 1985) were similarly explained as a safety valve to “blow
off” social tension.
Another function ascribed to humor is social control. Stephenson (1951),
in an analysis of American jokes about stratification, concluded that these
jokes make fun of transgressions of the social order, and in that way “reveal
an adherence to a set of values regarded as the traditional American creed”
(Stephenson 1951: 574). This reasoning is reminiscent of Bergson’s interpret-
ation of humor and laughter as a social corrective: by laughing at something,
it is defined as outside of the normal. A more sophisticated version of this
corrective function of humor was developed by Powell (1988), who placed
humor among other possible responses to things out of the ordinary, and de-
fined it as one of the milder forms of social corrective (stronger forms being,
for instance, declaring someone crazy). Very recently, social control theory
has been revived by Billig, who in Laughter and Ridicule (2005) puts forward
a theory of humor as a social corrective, closely linked with embarrassment,
arguing that “ridicule, far from being a detachable negative, lies at the heart
of humor.” (Billig 2005: 190; see also Billig 2001b)
From a very different angle, Coser also noted the social control functions
of humor. In one of her two influential and oft-cited microsociological stud-
ies of humor in a hospital ward, she looked at the patterns of laughter dur-
ing the staff meetings (Coser 1960). This study showed how the amount and
direction of joking reflected the social hierarchy. By counting the number of
laughs, she discovered that doctors got significantly more laughs than resi-
dents, who got more laughs than the nurses. Moreover, everybody tended to
“joke down”: doctors tended to joke about residents, residents joked about
the nurses or themselves, and the nurses joked about themselves, or about
the patients and their families. According to Coser, this joking helps to main-
tain the social order: it keeps people “in their place”. The hierarchy-build-
ing function of humor, with the associated correlation between status and
successful humor production, has been noted in various other studies (Pizzini
1991; Robinson and Smith-Lovin 2001; Sayre 2001).
In her second paper on humor, on the use of joking by patients in the hos-
pital ward, Coser explored another function of humor, which also contributes
to the social order: social cohesion. In the more egalitarian and less formally
structured life of the ward’s patients, humor served to create solidarity, share
experiences, and build an identity within the group. This cohesive function
may seem at odds with the hierarchy-maintaining function. However, hier-
archical groups need cohesion too. Joking apparently manages, more than
most other forms of communication, to combine the seemingly contradic-
tory functions of hierarchy-building and bringing about solidarity (e.g. at
work, in the military, cf. Koller 1988: 233–260). Moreover, Coser describes
the use of humor in two very different contexts: a formally structured situ-
ation among people who know each other versus a more disorganized and
egalitarian situation, which is likely to affect the functions humor can, and
needs to, fulfill.
In her article on the cohesive functions of laughter, Coser wrote that
“to laugh, or to occasion laughter through humor and wit, is to invite those
present to come closer. Laughter and humor are indeed like an invitation,
be it an invitation for dinner, or an invitation to start a conversation: it aims
at decreasing social distance.” (Coser 1959: 172) One of the reasons for hu-
mor’s cohesive function is that a joke is “an invitation” the acceptance of
which is immediately apparent: a laugh or a smile. There are very few forms
of interaction that are connected as closely with social acceptance and ap-
proval as laughter (Provine 2000). Also, collective joking takes people out-
side of everyday life into a more playful “non-serious” atmosphere, creating
what the anthropologist Victor Turner called communitas (Fine 1983).
Hence, humor not only is a sign of closeness among friends, it is also an
effective way of forging social bonds, even in situations not very conducive
to closeness: it “breaks the ice” between strangers, unites people in different
hierarchical positions, and creates a sense of shared “conspiracy” in the con-
text of illicit activities like gossiping or joking about superiors. The flip side
of this inclusive function of humor is exclusion. Those who do not join in the
laughter, because they do not get the joke, or even worse, because the joke
targets them, will feel left out, shamed, or ridiculed. The excluding function
of humor is often mentioned as the basis for the corrective function described
above (Powell 1988; Billig 2005)
What these three functions – relief, control, cohesion – have in common is
their focus on humor and joking as contribution to the maintenance of social
order. The insistence that all social phenomena maintain the social structure
has become the focus of much criticism leveled at the (structural-) function-
alism of the 1950s and 1960s: it makes functionalist explanations circular
and basically untestable. Social phenomena do not necessarily have the same
function for all concerned, and they may well be dysfunctional, at least from
some people’s perspective.
Despite the demise of functionalism as a theoretical framework after
the 1960s, functionalist explanations of humor still are common in humor
studies. Since the 1970s, sociologists have not employed functionalism as
a complete theory or comprehensive framework, but instead have attempted
to combine functional analysis of humor with analysis of content and context.
Humor obviously fulfills important social functions, but more recent studies
tend to stress the multiple functions of humor, which can be a threat as well
as a contribution to the social order: cohesion, control, relief, but also the
expression of conflict, inciting resistance, insulting, ridiculing or satirizing
others (Holmes 2000; Martin 2006; Mulkay 1988; Palmer 1994).
Martineau (1972), in an early attempt to move away from one-dimension-
al functionalism, constructed a model connecting the functions of humor with
specific social relations. He distinguished esteeming and disparaging jokes,
within and outside a group, targeting people within or outside the group.
Depending on the conditions, he expected humor to solidify social bonds,
demoralize, increase internal or external hostility, foster consensus or rede-
fine relationships. Powell and Paton (1988) edited a volume concentrating
mainly on the complex interplay between resistance and control functions of
humor, summarized under the heading of “tension management”, but illus-
trating a variety of other, positive and negative, functions along the way.
The functions humor fulfills can be psychological as well as social. Black
or sick humor, for instance in disaster jokes, has often been explained as a way
to cope with unpleasant experiences, both individually and collectively, and
more generally to distance oneself from negative emotions such as fear, grief,
or shame (Dundes 1987; Morrow 1987. For a critique, see Oring 1987). So-
ciologist Peter Berger (1997) stressed the psychological effects of humor,
describing (some forms of) humor as consolation, liberation, and transcend-
ence. Thomas Scheff described humor and laughter as catharsis (Scheff 1980)
and “anti-shame” (1990). As in the social functions stressed by humor schol-
ars, psychological functions ascribed to humor tend to be beneficial. Scholars
focusing on the “dark” side of humor will be discussed below.
Robinson and Smith-Lovin (2001), in an excellent recent paper, attempted
to test functionalist explanations by looking at the use of various types of
humor in task-oriented groups in slightly differing social constellations. They
discern four main social functions of humor: meaning making (derived from
the symbolic interactionist perspective described below), hierarchy building,
cohesion building, and tension relief. In their study, which looked at groups
consisting of strangers in task-oriented interaction, they found most support

for the hierarchical and (slightly less so) cohesive functions. They replicated
Coser’s finding that high status group members get more laughs and make
more jokes. The cohesive functions of humor were shown to depend both
on the type of humor (cohesive versus differentiating, outward vs. inward-
directed), on the status of the joker, and on the composition of the group. In
other words, the functions of humor are not fixed, but very much dependent
on type of relation, social context, and on the content of the joke.
2.3. Conflict approach
Conflict theories see humor as an expression of conflict, struggle, or antago-

nism. In contrast with the functionalist theories described above, humor is
interpreted not as venting off – and hence avoidance or reduction – but as an
expression or correlate of social conflict: humor as a weapon, a form of at-
tack, a means of defense (Speier 1998). Conflict theories of humor have been
used especially in the analysis of ethnic and political humor, both cases where
the use of humor has a clear target, and tends to be correlated with conflict
and group antagonism.2
This approach is clearly indebted to the Hobbesian tradition of humor
as “sudden glory”. However, the literature about humor and conflict suffers
somewhat from conceptual unclarity: in writings about the use of humor as
a “weapon” hostility, aggression, superiority, and rivalry are often used in-
terchangibly, and are not clearly distinguished or delineated. Superiority im-
plies the (experience of) a higher position, a form of social ranking which is
not necessarily related to the urge to hurt someone, which forms the basis of
hostility and aggression. As Coser’s findings in the psychiatric ward suggest,
there can be superiority without conflict – although some conflict sociolo-
gists would contest this, claiming that all inequality entails conflict.3 Conflict,
on the other hand, typically implies hostility. However, superiority (power,
hierarchy) is an important moderator of how a conflict plays out.
In 1942, Obrdlik published a paper on the “gallows humor” in Czecho-
slovakia under the Nazi regime (in place at the time of publication). He inter-
preted this form of anti-Nazi joking in two ways: as resistance and “morale
booster” for the Czech (which resembles the relief theory), but also as hav-
ing a “disintegrating influence” on the Germans occupiers. Moreover, Obrd-
lik pointed out that such humor was an index of the strength of the oppres-
sors: “if they an afford to ignore it, they are strong; if they react wildly, with
anger. . . they are not sure of themselves, no matter how much they display
their might on the surface” (Obrdlik 1942: 716). Thus, humor has positive re-
inforcing functions for the ingroup, but in the context of intergroup relations
humor was more like a weapon: an expression of aggression and resistance.
The jokes described by Obrdlik are reminiscent of political humor in many
oppressive regimes, such as the Nazi regime (Stokker 1995) or the former
Communist regimes (Benton 1988; Davies 2007). Typically, the direct voic-
ing of dissent in such regimes is impossible or very dangerous, and even
joking may be a risky enterprise, as was memorably (though unscholarly) de-
scribed in Czech novelist Milan Kundera’s The Joke (1967). While this form
of humor is clearly correlated with conflict and antagonism, there has been
considerable disagreement about the effects of such humor. Humor in repres-
sive circumstances is usually clandestine – they were called Flüsterwitze or
“whispered jokes” in Nazi Germany (Speier 1998). This would imply that
the internal “morale-boosting” functions are more important than the effects
on the powerful “outgroup” that the jokes target. Because such humor “from
below” remains backstage or anonymous, many humor scholars conclude
that the effects of such humor are relatively marginal.
The 1988 collection of Powell and Paton on humor as “resistance and con-
trol” is organized around the interplay of these resistance and control func-
tions of humor. Most of the authors in this volume adhere to some version
of the conflict theory of humor, focusing on conflictive or unequal situations
that range from political humor under Communist rule to the much less dra-
matic example of humor in the workplace. Generally, the authors conclude
that the control function is the more important, and that resistance through
joking provides mostly temporary relief but stabilizes potentially conflictive
situations. As Benton states in his contribution on jokes under communist
rule: “… the political joke will change nothing. It’s the relentless enemy of
greed, injustice, cruelty and oppression – but it could never do without them.
It is not a form of active resistance. It reflects no political programme. It will
mobilize no one. Like the Jewish joke in its time, it is important for keeping
society sane and stable. It cushions the blows of cruel governments and cre-
ates sweet illusions. . . . its impact is as fleeting as the laughter it produces.”
(Benton 1988: 54). Or, as Speier (1998: 1395) succinctly put it: “Accommo-
dation, however much one peppers it with scorn, remains accommodation.”
However, other authors have more faith in the subversive potential of
humor, and have argued that such “weapons of the weak” (Scott 1985) may
be important in making people reflect critically on their situation, allow them
to express hostility against those in power, create an alternative space of
r esistance, or even give people the courage to take up more concrete actions
(Gouin 2004; Hiller 1983; Jenkins 1994; Stokker 1995). Goldstein, in her
provocative ethnography of poor women in a Brazilian shantytown, which
she organized around the subjects and places of these women’s laughter, ar-
gued that “While the humor of the poor may not necessarily lead directly to
rebellions and political revolutions, it does open up a discursive space within
which is becomes possible to speak about matters that are otherwise natural-
ized, unquestioned, or silenced.” (Goldstein 2003: 10).
This debate on the subversive or conservative nature of humor is partly
the result of underlying theoretical disagreements that cannot be resolved
by empirical considerations. However, the dynamics of humor in conditions
of conflict, and hence humor’s revolutionary potential, strongly depends on
the power division and status relations between jokers and their targets. To
illustrate this using the case of political humor: in very repressive or unequal
conditions, the humor of those without power tends to be clandestine and
relatively toothless. “Downward” humor by those in power in such situations
easily becomes aggressive to the point of cruel. A recent example, described
by Paul Lewis (2006) is the cruel joking by American prison guards in Bagh-
dad. Such humor by the mighty has received relatively little scholarly atten-
tion, but as Speier remarked in his essay on “wit and politics”: “Jests ‘from
above’, from those of higher status, rather than those ‘from below’, that is,
jokes born of triumph instead of resistance, may be the prototypical political
jokes.” (Speier 1998: 1353).
In more open societies and conditions power differences tend to be less
marked, and the dynamics of humor and conflict is quite different: there are
fewer restrictions on humor, and joking is more likely to transcend bound-
aries or mobilize people. Open societies generally have a wide range of in-
stitutions, persons, genres and publications devoted (in part) to satire and
political humor (Lockyer 2006; Shiffman, Coleman and Ward 2007; Spei-
er 1998). Such institutionalized humorous genres are “free spaces” where
those in power can be mocked and ridiculed: within their assigned spaces
and clear limitations, much is allowed, and politics can be criticized or ad-
dressed quite clearly (Palmer 2005). On the other hand, political humor in
the private sphere tends to have much less of an edge than political humor in
repressive regimes – a familiar complaint in former Communist countries is
that, while everything else has become better, humor has worsened since the
“fall of the Wall”.
In open societies, the morale-boosting and resistance functions of pol-
itical humor can be played out more openly. Many political organizations,
factions and social movements have used humor to manifest themselves

and make their point, at times forcing politicians to seriously address topics
raised humorously. Political humor in such conditions becomes part of the
political landscape: it highlights social rifts and disagreements because pol-
itical conflicts are performed and dramatized in the humorous realm. And
in such cases, humor can sometimes “spill over” into serious political dis-
course (Lewis 2006, esp. chapter 3; Lockyer and Pickering 2005b; Wagg
1996).
Finally, humor also can play a more direct role in politics when it is used
within political conflict and debate, for instance to criticize or ridicule polit-
ical opponents. This form of humor seems increasingly important in today’s
media democracies, and has again different dynamics: unlike the profes-
sional comic genres, it is not played out in a “free space”, and the connec-
tion with actual, serious antagonisms and disagreements can be very real
(Morreall 2005). Although the way such humor is used varies strongly, such
humor between political adversaries may contain very visible forms of “ag-
gressive” and “defensive” joking – while at the same time, politicians using
such humor play to the public with their wit (Speier 1998).
Besides political humor, the other type of humor frequently analyzed from
a conflict perspective is ethnic humor, which is by far the most contested
form of humor in modern Western societies (Lockyer and Pickering 2005a).
The earliest studies of ethnic humor were done in the United States in the con-
text of racial segregation, which highlighted the relationship between jokes
and acute racial conflict and inequality. Burma (1946), in an article on “the
use of humor as a technique in race conflict”, concluded from his analysis
of jokes Whites told about Blacks, and vice versa: “From the huge welter of
humor, wit and satire which is current today, both written and oral, it is pos-
sible to isolate and examine a not inconsequential amount of humor which
has as its primary purpose the continuation of race conflict. Even more com-
mon is the borderline type: its chief purpose is humor, but it has secondary
aspects which definitely can be related to racial competition and conflict and
the social and cultural patterns which have arisen from them.” (714) This
quotation aptly illustrates the problem of ethnic humor. While some of it
may be geared to the continuation of ethnic conflict, the complicated aspect
is the “not inconsequential amount” of humor that is primarily intended as
humorous, but it is concerned with groups that have a hostile or antagonistic
relation – such as Whites and Blacks in the highly segregated United States
of the 1940s. Burma interprets ethnic humor, even when primarily for fun, as
a “technique”, and hence a weapon in racial conflict.
After Burma, there have been many studies in which corpora of ethnic
jokes, the repertoire of comedians, or other “standardized” forms of humor
were linked with ethnic conflict, hostility, or some other problematic social
relationship (Draitser 1998; Dundes 1987; Dundes and Hauschild 1983; Gun-
delach 2000; Kuipers 2000; Oshima 2000). Generally, these studies attempt
to link the existence of ethnic humor, as well as the particular “ethnic scripts”
(Raskin 1985) about these groups to the – conflictive or strained – relation-
ship between joke-tellers and their targets. However, not all cases are as obvi-
ously related to conflict and inequality as the jokes described by Burma. As
Davies (1990, 1993, 2002) has pointed out, there are many ethnic joke cycles
that are not related to conflict or hostility, whereas there are other very con-
flictive relationships that are not reflected in jokes. Moreover, there are sev-
eral reported cases of groups who very often joke about themselves, the most
famous example of course being Jewish humor. This complicates the notion
that ethnic humor is necessarily the result of inter-ethnic conflict or hostility.
Another approach to the relationship between ethnic humor and ethnic
conflict is by looking at people’s appreciation of ethnic humor, and the way
this is related to their ethnic background or their opinion of the ethnic group
targeted. Middleton (1959) found that, while (as expected) Blacks have higher
appreciation of anti-White jokes than Whites, these groups didn’t differ sig-
nificantly in their appreciation of jokes targeting Blacks. This led him to con-
clude that identification with a superior group (or the social order as a whole)
is more important than ethnic affiliation in the appreciation of humor. A line
of research inspired by Middleton’s findings explores the role between the
appreciation of ethnic humor and identification. The studies conducted by
LaFave (1972) show that people tend to appreciate jokes more when they
target a group that people do not identify with. Such “identification classes”
do not have to correspond to one’s own background, and especially low sta-
tus groups may prefer jokes targeting their own group. For instance, some
studies have reported that women prefer jokes targeting women to jokes tar-
geting men, or that ethnic minorities tend to prefer jokes targeting their own
group to jokes targeting the dominant ethnic group (LaFave, Haddad and
Marshall 1974; Nevo 1985). In a related line of research, Zillmann (1983;
Zillmann and Stocking 1976) explored “disparagement humor”, concluding
that people generally most enjoy humor that disparages groups they dislike or
do not identify with. However, the conclusion that people like jokes more in
the context of conflict or hostility does not mean that humor is conflict or hos-
tility. After all, the same studies also show that people can very well like jokes
that target groups they like and identify with (just maybe not as much).
The conflict approach is by far the most contested approach in sociologic-

al humor studies. It is used mainly to explain and analyze potentially offen-
sive forms of humor, and thus is directly connected with societal controver-
sies about ethnic, sexist, or political humor (Lockyer and Pickering 2005b).
Moreover, debates about the relations between humor and conflict, both in
Academia and the real world, address the very nature of humor: its non-seri-
ousness, which makes every humorous utterance fundamentally ambiguous.
The central criticism leveled at the conflict approach is that it takes humor too
literally, ignoring humor’s basic ambiguity, which means that a joke can be
enjoyed for many different reasons. Also, conflict theories generally cannot
explain why and when people in situations of conflict decide to use humor
rather than more serious expressions of antagonism. Since the matter of jokes
at the expense of others is such a central issue in humor studies (and real life),
the various perspectives on this matter will be addressed further below. The
question why and when people use unserious modes of communication rather
than straightforward serious talk has been taken up by the next two theoret-
ical traditions: symbolic interactionism and phenomenology.
2.4. Symbolic interactionist approach
The symbolic interactionist approach to humor focuses on the role of humor

in the construction of meanings and social relations in social interaction.4
Symbolic interactionist studies generally are detailed studies of specific so-
cial interactions, using ethnographic data or detailed transcripts of conversa-
tions. In this approach, social relations and meanings, and more generally
“social reality” are not seen as fixed and given, but as constructed and negoti-
ated in the course of social interaction. Humor, while not very central to big
social structures and processes, plays an important role in everyday interac-
tion, and its ambiguity makes it well-suited to negotiations and manipulations
of selves and relationships. Within humor studies, the micro-interactionist
approach gave a strong impetus to small-scale ethnographic studies of humor,
as an alternative to the analysis of standardized forms of humor, joke ratings
from questionnaires.
In this approach, whether something is defined as humorous or serious
is not a given, but something constructed in the course of interactions. The
shift from serious to joking conversation becomes an act of conversational
cooperation, which can succeed, be withheld, or fail, and this shift creates op-
portunities for specific types of communication. For instance, people who say
something in jest usually have more freedom to transgress norms and bring
up taboo topics (something also noted in functionalist analyses of humor).
Emerson (1969) analyzed how this shift to joking and the consequent free-
dom to transgress norms is accepted, or challenged. She described this pro-
cess as “negotiating the serious import of humor.”
Goffman (1974) used the notion of “framing” to describe this process of
shifting from one type of interactional logic to another. Humor is one of the
most common forms of framing used in everyday conversation. A humorous
“frame” redefines everything someone says: it is not supposed to be taken
“seriously” anymore. As many conversation analysts have shown, this shift
to serious conversation if often marked by laughter, which often occurs at the
beginning of a humorous utterance. Similarly, listeners may laugh as a sign
of acceptance of this shift of frames (Jefferson 1979; Sachs 1974). This per-
spective has made laughter a central theme in sociological humor studies, not
only as an automatic response to a humorous stimulus, but as a form of com-
munication on its own. Recently, Hay (2001), a sociolinguist, has given a so-
phisticated account of this process, describing it as the garnering of “humor
support” in the course of social interaction.
Symbolic interactionist studies have not only looked at the negotiating,
but also at the conversational effects and uses of this ambiguity or “non-
seriousness” of humor. Humor and joking are important in negotiations over
the meaning of things: the construction of norms, the debate about what is
“going on” in a particular situation (Robinson and Smith-Lovin 2001). As
Emerson noted, humor is used to bring up themes and topics that are taboo;
or to “feel out” other persons (Mulkay 1988). Both Sachs (1974) and Fine
(1983; 1984) noted how among teenagers humor is employed to bring up sex-
ual topics, and can get to function as some sort of test of sexual knowledge.
Among adults, too, sexual humor is very common in flirtation, which also is
a form of “testing” (Fine 1983; Walle 1976). Humor always provides a way
out: both the joker and the audience can ignore any potential serious import
of the joke. Similarly, humor can also be used to bring up and negotiate the
meaning of a wide variety of other possibly sensitive topics, such as political
opinions, money matters, or complaints about bosses or colleagues (Paton
and Filby 1988).
Moreover, conversational joking plays a role in the construction of social
relationships. Fine (1983) described how humor can be used to create and
define a “group culture” – not only by providing social solidarity in the func-
tionalist sense, but by the use of ingroup humor, repeat jokes, and specific
humorous styles and tastes that literally get to define a group, and be used to
demarcate its identity. However, this creation of a group culture also provides
a strong outside boundary: humor includes and excludes at the same time.
Many micro-interactionist studies have highlighted the ambiguous role of
humor in social relationships (Holmes 2000; Kothoff 2000; 2006; Mulkay
1988; Robinson and Smith-Lovin 2001). On the one hand, joking creates
closeness and solidarity and is important marker of “being on the same wave-
length”. On the other hand, humor has a strong power dimension, resulting in
a relation between social status and humor initiation, as well an oft-reported
tendency for people to joke “down” rather than “up”. Norrick (1993) has
pointed out some of the mechanisms at work in the relationship between con-
versational humor and power. He calls humor a form of “conversational ag-
gression”, because it disrupts the regular turn-taking pattern of conversation,
and because the shift from serious to joking conversation means a drastic shift
in the mode of conversation. Thus, any attempt at a joke implies a conversa-
tional “coup” on the part of the joker, who breaks both the serious frame and
the turn-taking pattern.
The relation between humor and gender has emerged as a central theme
in micro-interactionist studies of humor: how are masculinity and feminin-
ity formed and performed in the course of interaction? Until recently, most
studies found that men joked more and initiated more humor, which con-
firms older findings, such as Coser’s, that those in high status tend to joke
more. More generally, initiating humor seemed to be associated with mas-
culinity, whereas women were expected to laugh at men’s jokes (Crawford
1995; 2003; Hay 2000; Holmes 2006; Kothoff 2006; Kuipers 2006a). Many
studies in the symbolic interactionist tradition have analyzed the way people
“perform gender”, thereby creating and reinforcing gender roles as well as
power divisions. These studies on gender and conversational joking also il-
lustrate the larger implication of small-scale interactions: showing how social
differences on a macro-level are created and perpetuated in interaction. Also,
changes in society at large manifest themselves in small-scale interactions: as
Kothoff (2006: 13) observes, recent studies increasingly show women initiat-
ing jokes, which “marks historical changes in the cultural role of humor in
communication” (cf. Holmes 2006).
In the small-scale studies of symbolic interactionists, humor, joking, and
laughter are no longer marginal and frivolous. Rather, they are at the heart
of social analysis, crucial to the shaping of meanings, situations, selves, and
relationships. Critics of this approach have pointed out that symbolic inter-
actionist studies tend to be overly descriptive and particular, and hence hard
to generalize. In sociology, symbolic interactionism appears to have gone out
of fashion after the 1980s. Since then, this line of humor research has been
very successfully explored by sociolinguists (many of whom are cited here).
Within sociology, symbolic interactionist understandings of humor have
been incorporated in phenomenological studies of humor, described below,
and in the sociology of emotions, which will be discussed in the section on
laughter.
2.5. Phenomenological approach
The phenomenological approach to humor conceptualizes humor as a specif-

ic “outlook” or “worldview” or “mode” of perceiving and constructing the
social world. This humorous outlook is generally considered to be one option
among several in the “social construction of reality”. This approach to humor
emerged after the 1970s, and is eclectic in terms of methodology, combining
textual analysis, historical data, and micro-interactionist studies to show how
humor constructs and at the same time entails a particular worldview. The phe-
nomenological approach to humor builds on a much older philosophical trad-
ition about humor and laughter, which never made it into the canon of “three
classical theories”. However, the notion of a humorous outlook on the world,
or “laughing at the world”, dates back to irreverent ancient philosophers like
Diogenes, and can also be discerned in the philosophical writings of Friedrich
Nietzsche or in the postmodern embrace of irony and ambiguity.
The sociologist Zijderveld (1982; 1983) defined humor as “playing with
meanings” in various domains of social life. To Zijderveld, such playing
with meanings is not trivial, but essential to the construction of meaning
and everyday life, because it enables social experimentation and negotiation.
Moreover, it allows people to become aware of the constructedness of social
life itself: humor is a “looking glass” allowing us to look at the world and our-
selves in a slightly distorted, and hence revealing, way. He likens humor to
sociology: both “debunk” and denaturalize the world, showing us the relativ-
ity and sometimes even the ridiculousness of what we do. Davis (1993), tak-
ing this argumentation a step further, sees in this capacity of humor to expose
the underlying structure of reality a strong subversive potential, concluding
that humor can be “an assault” on reality.
In his 1982 book Reality in a Looking Glass Zijderveld applies his per-
spective to a particular form of humor: the traditional folly of carnivals and
court jesters. According to Zijderveld, this folly was not just a humorous style
or institution, but a full-fledged worldview, seen in many cultures around the
world, based on turning upside down the rules and conventions of life. In the
early modern era, it functioned as a counterpoint to the process of rationaliza-
tion, but eventually, traditional folly was fully eclipsed by this process.
Bakhtin (1984, but writing in 1930s Communist Russia) also looked at the
thriving humorous traditions of the early modern period to understand humor
as an alternative conception of the world that exists alongside everyday modes
of interpretation (and behavior). Taking as his point of departure the raucous
humor of early modern France, exemplified in the work of Francois Rabelais
(c. 1490–1553), Bakhtin analyzed “the carnivalesque” as a space of freedom,
community, and equality, denoted by laughter, humor, and more generally
by corporeality, physicality, and the “grotesque”. In Bakthin’s view, carnival
can function as an alternative sphere of freedom and resistance. Theorist of
the public sphere Habermas (1992) acknowledged Bakhtin’s carnavalesque
as possible alternative to the bourgeois public sphere, allowing for a different
mode of “popular” civic participation. Phenomenological approaches diverge
from functionalist and conflict theories: because they see humor as a separate
sphere or perspective, they see more potential for humor as an agent of social
resistance and change (see also Goldstein 2003).
The most complete and sophisticated exposition of the social functions
and consequences of the humorous worldview is Mulkay’s On Humour
(1988). In what he calls the humorous mode “the rules of logic, the expect-
ations of common sense, the laws of science and the demands of propriety
are all potentially in abeyance. Consequently, when recipients are faced with
a joke, they do not apply the information-processing procedures appropriate
to serious discourse” (Mulkay 1988: 37) According to Mulkay, this enables
people to communicate about the many incongruous experiences that make
up (social) life, and to convey meanings and messages that are as ambiguous
as most of everyday life. As a result, humor can be used to expose and ex-
press the contradictory aspects of life, and to communicate and share this ex-
perience with others. However, in contrast with Bakhtin and Davis, Mulkay
concludes that in the end, humor mostly serves to maintain social equilibrium
and consolidate the social order. For instance, in an extended discussion of
sexual joking (drawing on Spradley and Mann 1976), Mulkay relates sexual
humor to the contradictory expectations and norms governing gender and
sexual relations. In his view, the content and the strongly gendered usage
patterns of sexual humor reconcile and neutralize these contradictory expect-
ations and norms.
The phenomenological approach generally contrasts the humorous
worldview with the “serious” worldview. Berger (1997) set out to compare
humor with another competing perspective on life, the religious. He starts

out with an understanding of the comic very much resembling that of Zij
derveld and Mulkay: “the comic conjures up a separate world, different
from the world of ordinary reality, operating by different rules.” (Berger
1997: x; Italics in original) But in Berger’s view, there is a transcenden-
tal element to this separate world: “The experience of the comic is, final-
ly, a promise of redemption. Religious faith is the intuition . . . that the
promise will be kept.” (ibid.: x) Berger’s humor theory, while starting out
from a constructivist premise similar to Zijderveld’s and Mulkay’s, ends up
resembling something more like the psychological relief theory of humor,
with a theological twist. While Berger’s perspective on humor resonates
with fashionable views on “healing humor” (Lewis 2006), its reliance on
the liberating, redeeming aspects of humor and laughter makes for a rather
one-sided theory of humor.
Critics have pointed out that phenomenological approaches to humor
(much like conflict theory, but on a more positive note) tend to essential-
ize humor: by focusing on humor as “worldview”, they neglect other mean-
ings of humor, including negative or dysfunctional effects, and overstate the
importance of humor. Also, phenomenological sociology is said to be hard
to operationalize: it provides inspiring insights but it is not clear how its
notions and concepts are to be used in actual empirical research. However,
unlike many other studies, phenomenological sociology takes into account
the peculiarities of humor: its ambiguity and non-seriousness are central to
the theories described above. The accounts of Zijderveld, Davis and Mul-
kay are quite successful in tying together various functions and characteris-
tics of humor. For instance, they explain the relation with laughter, manage
to combine micro- and macroperspectives of humor, and offer reasons why
people would use humor rather than more straightforward communication.
2.6. Historical-comparative approach
The historical-comparative approach attempts to understand the social role

of humor through comparisons in time and place. Comparative-historical
studies of humor are conducted in various scholarly fields, and draw on dif-
ferent theoretical traditions: there is no central theory or school of thought
in comparative-historical humor studies. Still, most sociological work on
humor done since the 1990s is probably best captured by this rather vague
umbrella term.
Comparisons across time and space generally show great variations as

well as some universalities. Constants in humor across cultures are primar-
ily the preferred topics for joking: sexuality, gender relations, bodily func-
tions, stupidity, and strangers (Apte 1985). In other words: people joke about
taboo topics and deviance. This underlines the relationship between humor
and the drawing of boundaries between “the normal” and “the abnormal”
(Powell 1988). Other constants are the existence of specific delineated hu-
morous roles and domains; humorous forms and techniques such as reversal,
imitation, slapstick, wordplay; and the existence of rituals and ritual per-
formances associated with humor – which suggests a more or less universal
separation of “serious” and “non-serious” domains, although the nature of
this boundary may differ.
But even within these constants, there are great variations: in humorous
forms, genres and techniques as well as in humorous content. Each culture,
nation, community and era is supposed to have specific humorous styles and
forms. This “local” sense of humor is widely believed to a sort of index for
the deepest nature of a group, place, or age. Sociology has generally relegat-
ed studies of the humorous Zeitgeist of a place or age to folklore, history, or
the humanities; when sociologists have made qualifications about a culture’s
sense of humor, this is usually in the context of a wider theory of societal
dynamics. The book on folly by Zijderveld (1982), discussed above, is an
example of this approach: he connected the rise and demise of a particu-
lar humorous style with the much wider development of rationalization and
“disenchantment of the world”. Similarly, in the edited volume by Paton,
Powell and Wagg (1996) many articles bring up the theme of “postmodern”
humor: reflexive and intertextual styles of humor that mirror a wider soci-
etal turn towards reflexive modernity or post-modernity (cf. Gray 2006).
In such studies, humor is not the index of an essential group culture, but
a particular manifestation of a wider social phenomenon. Implicit in this ap-
proach is a comparison: between humor and other phenomena manifesting
the same trend.
The most explicit comparative research program in humor studies is the
work of Davies on jokes (1990; 1998a; 1998b; 2003). In his 1990 book,
Davies compared patterns of ethnic joking around the world. Although eth-
nic humor is probably universal, who is targeted, and how, varies significant-
ly, as Davies shows by looking both at the groups who are targeted, and the
humorous “scripts” about these groups. Davies convincingly establishes that
the same jokes are told in many parts of the world. The most common hu-
morous script worldwide is stupidity, but there are also transnational corpora
of jokes about such themes as dirtiness, stinginess, cowardliness, or eating

habits. Davies’s comparative approach makes visible a cross-cultural pat-
tern: stupidity jokes are generally told about slightly “backward” versions
of one’s own group, such as recent migrant groups (the Poles and the Irish
in the US) or peripheral, often rural, communities in or close to one’s own
country (the Belgians for the French and the Dutch, Ostfriesen in Germa-
ny). Jokes about canny and stingy groups, on the other hand, are told about
groups that are successful, notably in trade or the money business, and that
have more central and dominant position: the Scots, the Jews, the Genovese
in Italy, and the Dutch in Belgium.
Davies points out that these jokes not only reflect ethnic relationships, but
also central moral categories, such as rationality, courage, or cleanliness. The
stupid–canny dichotomy not only mirrors status relations, but also of the im-
portance of rationality in the modern era: the “stupid” people exhibit a lack of
rationality, whereas the canny are overly rationalized. Thus, Davies summar-
izes the globally popular genres of the stupidity and canniness jokes as “jokes
from the iron cage” (1998a: 63), referring to Max Weber’s classical descrip-
tion of modern rationality as an “iron cage”. This analysis of ethnic humor
has been extended to jokes about other categories, such as blonde jokes or
political jokes (Davies 1998a; 2003), always showing how transnational joke
genres, with mostly transnational moral themes, get applied to local condi-
tions. Central to this comparative analysis is the question which genres and
scripts do not diffuse or have a more limited regional spread (such as dirti-
ness jokes, which are popular in North-West Europe but not in Anglo-Saxon
countries), since such divergent patterns enable the isolation of variables de-
termining the viability of a joke genre or script in a specific country (Davies
1998b).
As Davies’s work illustrates, a cross-comparison of humor often ends up
telling us as much, or maybe more, about the groups being compared as it
tells us about humor. Whom people joke about tells us something about the
relationship between the jokers and their butt – although comparative so-
ciologists usually tend to interpret these relations more broadly than con-
flict scholars, and often in terms of status or inequality rather than conflict
or hostility (Kuipers 2000; Oring 1992; 2003). And what people joke about
reflects what they find important and what is a source of concern to them.
Sometimes these concerns are similar across cultures: Davies’s global com-
parisons uncover worldwide preoccupations with modernization and ration-
ality. In their analysis of the blonde joke, another transnational genre, both
Davies (1998) and Oring (2003) have argued that the rise of these jokes in
many Western countries are related to changing gender relations. Some local
color is often added to such global jokes: in the UK, blonde jokes are told
about Essex girls, adding a working-class connotation these jokes don’t have
elsewhere.
The preoccupations reflected in humor may be more specific, and some-
times quite local. For instance, lawyer jokes are a typical American phenom-
enon, which is an index of the strong position of lawyers and the centrality
of the legal system to American politics and society (Galanter 2004). Folk-
lorist Oring (2003: 97–115) argues there is a particular brand of humor spe-
cific to frontier societies: Australian, American and Israeli humor all show
a fondness of tall tales and practical joking, and mock sophistication. Ac-
cording to Oring, such “colonizing humor” expresses the frontier experience
of starting anew, away from civilization, and helps to forge a new identity
based in this experience. A more detailed case study of this type of humor
by Shiffman and Katz (2005) analyzed the Israeli jokes told in the 1930s by
Eastern European old-timers at the expense of the formality, rigidity, and
general maladaptedness of well-bred German Jews (“Yekkes”), arguing that
these jokes reflect a very particular episode in Jewish migration history: the
ethnic superiority in these jokes turns the tables on earlier migration epi-
sodes in Germany and the US, in which Jewish immigrants from Eastern
Europe were denigrated by German Jewish immigrants.
Not only who, and what people joke about; but also how they joke about
this differs between cultures, as Kuipers (2006a) has demonstrated in her
study of humor styles in the Netherlands and the US. Starting out from the
appreciation of one particular humorous genre, the joke, she showed how
humor styles in both countries demarcate salient social boundaries. In the
Netherlands, joke telling is most popular among working or lower middle
class men, corresponding to a humor style that favors sociability, exuber-
ance, and performance skills. The college-educated upper middle classes
generally dislike jokes, since for this group, a good sense of humor shows
intellectual originality, deadpan restraint, and sharpness – qualities they do
not see in joke-telling. In the United States, humor styles are not as strongly
connected to class background, but gender differences tend to be stronger,
and Americans evaluate humor less in terms of intellect or sociability, more
in moral terms. This study shows that different social groups have different
criteria for good and bad humor, which means that they joke not only about
different subjects, but also in different ways. These standards are related
more to style than to content, and they are linked with broader communica-
tion styles, taste cultures, and notions of personhood.
A final comparative question, brought up by historians such as Dekker

(2001) and Wickberg (1998) deals with the social standing and meaning of
humor in different societies. Dekker intriguigingly suggests there are “con-
junctural” fluctuations in humor, with some eras and cultures being more
friendly to humor than others. He described the Dutch Golden Age, in the
seventeenth century, as a very humor-friendly period, and the eighteenth and
nineteenth century as more hostile to humor, noting the rise of Calvinism,
a religious affiliation notoriously suspicious of non-seriousness and play, as
one of the factors in his shift. As Wickberg (1998) shows in his book The
Senses of Humor, having a sense of humor became increasingly central to
the American understanding of the self in the course of the twentieth century.
The high social standing of humor has caused a veritable industry of humor
promotion and development, especially in the US, discussed critically and
hilariously by Lewis (2006). Billig (2005) has written a scathing criticism of
the positive view of humor in current society as well as humor studies. These
recent studies, while not explicitly comparative in their approach, give rise to
intriguing comparative questions about social and cultural conditions condu-
cive or prohibitive to humor.
3. Issues
In the next section, I will discuss some issues which have recently been the
topic of special interest in humor sociology: the interpretation of humor at the
expense of others and more generally the “dark side of humor”; the relation
between humor and laughter; and the study of humorous forms and genres,
including mediatized forms of humor.
3.1. The “dark side” of humor: Humor, aggression, and transgression
After many centuries in which humor and laughter had a bad reputation,
modern humor studies have tended to stress the beneficial character of humor,
both for society and for the psyche. However, within humor studies there has
been a consistent concern with the transgressive, aggressive, and conflictive
functions humor can have. This matter ties in to the more general question of
the “dark side” of humor.
Much humor is based on the transgression of societal boundaries, and
such transgression can cause offense as well as amusement. And while not
all humor has a butt, many jokes have some sort of target: groups, persons,
objects, ideas, or the world at large. The various theoretical traditions have
suggested different interpretations of transgressive or deprecating humor:
conflict theories stress its relation with conflict and hostility; functionalist
analyses interpret it as safety valve or social corrective; phenomenological
and symbolic interactionist stress its ambiguous and manifold meanings, and
its role in negotiating meanings and worldviews; and comparative-historical
studies tend to stress its connection with larger social and cultural concerns.
The present-day descendents of superiority theory take the dark side of
humor most seriously. Gruner (1978) and more recently Billig (2005) have
taken the position that humor and laughter are correlates of social superior-
ity: every joke is basically a putdown or an act of social exclusion. Gruner
has expounded the view that humor is a game with “winners” and “losers”,
and Billig (2005) argues, in his “social critique of humor” that humor and
laughter are social control mechanisms, based in ridicule and embarrassment.
Other authors have argued that humor, while not intrinsically connected with
hostility, aggression, or transgression, often overlaps with negative emotions:
people often joke about what they dislike or feel superior to, and dislike or
superiority adds to the liking of humor (see above). Oring (2003: 41–57) and
Billig (2001a) have shown that groups that are openly racist tend to underline
and express this both with serious and joking expression of ethnic hostility
and stereotyping. Ford and Ferguson (2004) showed that humor, because of
its non-seriousness and playfulness, can diminish barriers to the expression
of negative emotions, and thus facilitate hostility. Recently, Lewis (2006),
looking at American humor from talk radio to horror movie jokes, has argued
convincingly that humor (while not necessarily a force of darkness) reflects
the darker tendencies in American society: it highlights social rifts, exposes
shared cultural fears, and is an outlet for hostility, for instance in the rather
vicious humor of some “talk radio” hosts.
The meaning of transgressive humor is not only debated in Academia, but
a source of concern in everyday life as well. Transgressive humor is gener-
ally controlled by the “unwritten rules” of informal regimes (Kuipers 2006b;
Palmer 2005), and also – less frequently – by formal censorship (Davies
1988). Both in Academia and in society at large, the most heated debates have
been around ethnic and sexist humor, the most contested forms of humor in
modern Western societies. This issue has been the subject of various debates
in the HUMOR journal (Davies 1991; Lewis 1997; 2008; Oring 1991) and of
a 2005 book by Lockyer and Pickering (2005a), all revolving around the same
question: When, why, and under what conditions is humor targeting persons
or groups “just a joke”, and when does it have a more serious meaning or con-
sequences? With the exception of some die-hard superiority theorists, humor
scholars generally concede they cannot solve the issue of ethnic and sexist
humor by simply pinning down the one true meaning of jokes. Rather, they
stress how the meaning of a joke is created within a specific context: whether
it is a private conversation or a public situation; what the position and back-
ground of the joke-teller is; what the relationship is between the joker and
his audience (and the butt); whether it is mediated or conversational humor
(Lewis 1997; Lockyer and Pickering 2005a; Palmer 1994).
Theorists of ethnic humor Davies (1990; 1991) and Oring (2003) have
stressed the inherent ambiguity of humor. Davies, especially, tends to down-
play the seriousness of humor, stating that humor is merely “playing with
aggression”, although he notes that in some cases ethnic joke scripts overlap
with actual ethnic hostility, which considerably changes these jokes’ serious
implications. Oring (2003: 65) argued: “Joke cycles are not really about par-
ticular groups who are ostenstibly their targets. These groups serve merely as
signifiers that hold together a discourse on certain ideas and values that are of
current concern. Polish jokes, Italian jokes, and JAP jokes are less comments
about real Poles, Italians, or Jewish women than they are about a particular
set of values attributed to these groups. These attributions, while not entirely
arbitrary, are, for the most part not seriously entertained.”
The contributors in Lockyer and Pickering’s volume take a more critical
view. Howitt and Owusu-Bempa (2005: 62), in the most explicitly critical
contribution, conclude that “no only [do] racist jokes provide ready oppor-
tunities to give expression to ideas of ‘racial’ superiority. . . they continually
reinforce the use of race categories”, leading them to denounce even jokes
mocking racism on the grounds that they reinforce racial thinking. However,
most other contributions attempt to carefully balance what the editors call
“the self-defeating, regulatory, left-wing arguments associated with political
correctness, and the opportunistic, unreflexive, right-wing denunciations of
its practice” (Lockyer and Pickering 2005b: 24).
In the insightful introduction to their book, Lockyer and Pickering, dis-
cussing what they call the “ethics” of humor, portray joking as a process
of “negotiation” about the line between funny and offensive. Billig (2005)
coined the concept of “unlaughter” – the pointed non-acceptance of an at-
tempt at humor – to make a similar point about humor’s processual nature and
uncertain outcome. This perspective on humor as the negotiation of boundar-
ies allows the authors to bring out the power dimension of humor. However,
it also illustrates how joking, when the negotiations are completed success-
fully, is about the creation of community. As Lockyer and Pickering put it:
joking is about the construction of a “we”, which implies inclusion as well as
exclusion.
3.2. Humor and laughter
In humor studies, there has been a tendency to exclude laughter from the an-
alysis, because there is no necessary one-on-one relationship between humor
and laughter. There are other possible responses to successful attempts at
humor (smiling, another joke, a verbal acknowledgment, groaning in re-
sponse to a lame pun); and laughter can be related to several other moods
and emotions, ranging from friendliness and play to nervousness and ridicule
(Provine 2000; Ruch 1998).
As we saw earlier, symbolic interactionists and phenomenologists brought
laughter to the center of sociological humor studies, describing laughter as
a marker of the shift to the humorous mode and of the acceptance of a joke, an
important signal of social acceptance, the expression of a humorous world-
view (Bakhtin), and as “the language of humor” (Zijderveld 1983). Recent-
ly, several authors have argued for inclusion of laughter in the sociology of
humor. Billig (2005) made laughter central to his theory of humor and em-
barrassment, seeing laughter basically as derision. On a more positive note,
Kuipers (2006a: 7) defined humor as the “successful exchange of jokes and
laughter”, arguing that while laughter may not be a necessary corollary of
humor, it is the ideal and most sought-after response to any attempt at humor,
and hence essential to the understanding of the social meanings of humor.
Outside of humor studies, sociologists have increasingly been paying at-
tention to the role of emotions in social life. This has led several of them
to take up the theme of laughter, generally without much awareness of the
insights from humor scholarship; while on the other hand, insights from the
sociology of emotion have not yet has much impact in humor research. One
of the challenges for sociological humor scholarship is to integrate develop-
ments in the sociology of emotions into humor studies (and, reversely, to
“sell” humor studies to the sociology of emotions).
Scheff, in his sociological theory of emotions, sees shame and pride as the
basic emotions of social life. In his work on catharsis, he described laugh-
ter as form of relief from social pressure (Scheff 1980). In later work on the
e motional foundations of social life (1990) he described laughter more spe-

cifically as the absence of shame, or “anti-shame”. Billig (2001a; 2005), in
his work on ridicule and embarrassment, is influenced by Scheff’s work on
shame in social life. However, he sees laughter not as the freedom of embar-
assment in the self, but rather as causing embarrassment – and hence con-
formity to norms – in others.
Another sociologist of emotion, Katz (1996), did a highly innovative study
of laughter in a Parisian funhouse. He examines the “metamorphosis” from
a sober disposition to laughter, followed by a second transformation from
“doing laughter” to what Katz calls “being done by” – giving oneself over to
– laughter. This metamorphosis is brought about by the shared watching, gen-
erally with family members, of the incongruous images in the funny mirrors,
tying family groups together in a strongly embodied bond of laughter and
playfulness. Katz’ study pays great attention to the bodily aspect of laughter
and the way this contributes to the forging of social bonds, making his study
an interesting corrective to the rather instrumentalist and very verbal image of
social life emerging from conversational analysis, which locates the creation
of relationships primarily in talk. Also, Katz pays careful attention to the na-
ture of the humor provoking all this laughter: he analyzes in detail the way
the distorted (incongruous) image in the mirror is collectively constructed as
funny by the family group.
Finally, Collins’s theory on interaction ritual chains (2004), a widely
praised integration of Durkheimian theory and Goffmanian micro-sociology,
is probably the first sociological theory to give a central place to laughter.
According to Collins, social life is built on “emotional energy”, emerging
in small-scale interactions, but “congealing” in larger networks and cultural
symbols with a strong emotional content. Emotional energy emerges in inter-
action, through the physical co-presence with other people in so-called inter-
action rituals (to Collins, all interactions are rituals). All interactions, but es-
pecially successful, high-energy interactions, lead to the mostly unconscious
rhythmical coordination or actions, movements and speech that Collins calls
“attunement”. Laughter is a clear example of the rhythmically attunement
of a successful high-energy interaction, and hence, the generation of laugh-
ter, typically through humor, becomes one of the central signs of closeness
and social understanding. However, while laughter is central to Collins’s the-
ory, he hardly addresses humor. Extrapolating his reasoning, we can assume
that in Collins’s view, humor is a culturally specific form of bringing about
successful high-energy interactions and attunement – and as such: a central
dimension of social life.
3.3. The social shaping of humor: Genres and mediated forms of humor
Most sociological humor scholarship has been concerned with a limited

number of humorous forms: conversational humor, and most notably jokes,
the “fruit flies” of humor scholarship. The joke has been the favorite genre
of humor scholars because jokes are easily available, very clearly intended
to be humorous, and it is clear where the humor is located: in the punchline.
However, as Martin and Kuiper (1999) have shown, canned jokes make up
a very small percentage of the humor people enjoy on a day-to-day basis.
Moreover, genre is likely to affect the meaning and the appreciation of a hu-
morous utterance. Kuipers (2006a) has shown that the joke, as a genre,
does not have the same connotation to different social groups: it is consid-
ered a male genre (cf. Crawford 1995), and in the Netherlands (and prob-
ably other Western-European countries) it also class-coded. Also, as Davies
(2003) has illustrated, the joke is not a universal genre, and some cultures do
not have jokes.
The study of humorous forms and their consequences has been relatively
marginal in humor sociology – as usual, the folklorists are way ahead. But
sociologists are becoming increasingly aware of this, especially because of
the growing importance of the media in the creation and dissemination of
humor. People increasingly enjoy humor not in face-to-face interaction but
through a variety of media: print, television, the Internet. This “mediatiza-
tion” of humor has the potential to affect the interpretation of humor, and
has resulted in the emergence of new, mediated, humorous forms.
New media have always given birth to new humorous forms: Dekker
(2001) argued that the short humorous anecdote received an important boost
in the seventeenth century as a result of the increased possibility of cheap
printing. Wickberg (1998) argues that the joke is essentially a nineteenth cen-
tury genre, reflecting processes of industrialization and commodification dur-
ing this period. Also, older genres can incorporate elements from new genres:
Oring (1987) suggested that disaster jokes are a response to media discourse
on disaster, noting that this oral genre incorporated many references and frag-
ments of media culture. More recently, television created several new humor-
ous genres (incorporating of course fragments of older genres), most notably
the sitcom. Mills (2005), in his excellent recent study of this genre, has been
the first to look specifically at the humor of sitcom. The rare studies of the
genre so far have investigated the sitcom mainly in terms of its politics, and
especially its politics of stereotyping and representation. Finally, in the past
decade, the Internet has led to the proliferation of a wide variety of humorous
genres, many of which are derived from earlier folk genres and office lore
with a strong do-it-yourself flavor (Kuipers 2005; Shifman 2007).
The consequences of genre and form for the interpretation and apprecia-
tion of humor is another understudied field in humor scholarship. Reception
studies of mediated humor are few and far between. Despite the centrality of
humor to popular media, media and communication studies have paid little
attention to humorous forms such as comedy, cartoons or humorous adver-
tising. The scarce reception studies of comedy mainly focus on racial issues
(Coleman 2000); there are two full monographs dedicated to the reception
of 1980s hit The Cosby Show (Fuller 1992; Jhally and Lewis 1992). These
studies seem more concerned with issues of race and representation than with
the humorous aspect of comedy shows. In his recent book on The Simpsons,
Gray (2006) presents a small reception study as part of a longer and percep-
tive study of this highly intertextual and media-savvy cartoon/sitcom hybrid,
interpreting the humorous aspect of this show mostly as parody.
Finally, the increasing prominence of mediated humor also sheds new
light on old questions about the meaning of humor. Lockyer and Pickering
(2005a) note that mediated humor seriously complicates negotiations over
the meaning of a joke, because mediated humor is not firmly located in one
context anymore, making mediated jokes even more polysemic and ambigu-
ous. The 2005–2006 controversy surrounding the Muhammad cartoons, ori-
ginally published in a Danish newspaper but leading to worldwide protests,
is a dramatic illustration of how an attempt at humor can lead to different
responses in different contexts (Lewis 2008).
4. Conclusion
Sociology is a discipline with weak boundaries and a contested core: there

is no central framework, theoretical perspective, or methodological approach
that all sociologists adhere to. Many central ideas in sociology have been bor-
rowed from other disciplines, and many ideas from sociology have diffused to
other disciplines. This is especially visible in the small and interdisciplinary
field of humor studies: there has been much “boundary traffic” between so-
ciology and related disciplines. For this reason, this overview of sociological
humor studies has featured many anthropologists, folklorists, linguists, and
psychologists. To some, this may reek of sociological imperialism.
As I hope to have shown in this contribution, this openness often is the
strength of sociological contributions to humor research. If done well, sociol-
ogy provides the tools to connect small-scale interactions with larger societal
developments; cultural conditions with individual amusement; and the social
functions of humor with its form and content. However, sociology’s weak
boundaries and its eclecticism also entail considerable risks: undertheorized
empiricism and overgeneralization from a single case or limited findings;
a proclivity to the “scavenging” of loose concepts, fragments of theories, and
isolated findings from other disciplines; the tendency to reduce all humor to
a single function or meaning; or more generally lack of theoretical or meth-
odological rigor. However, in the past decades, sociological humor scholar-
ship appears to have matured. Recent studies are generally more sophisti-
cated and rigorous: when theoretical, their claims are notably less brash, and
when empirical, the findings have a clear connection with wider theories.
Having reviewed the various sociological approaches to humor, it is clear
there is no one sociological theory of humor. The scholars and theorists dis-
cussed have very different perspectives on humor, generally derived from
a more general social theory. Hence, despite its openness to other disciplines,
the development of humor sociology looks a lot like the development of so-
ciology as a whole; while insofar as it resembles the development of humor
studies, this is mainly in its increasing rigor and sophistication. The connec-
tion between humor sociology and general humor theories, such as the vari-
ous versions of incongruity theory, and (with notable exceptions) superiority
theory, is still quite weak. So far, sociologists have not joined in the attempts
by linguists and psychologists to integrate their findings into a general theory
of humor. In my view, this is not a bad thing. The best sociology of humor,
both theoretical and empirical, has been firmly rooted in sociological theory:
incorporating insights from humor scholarship at large, with a sensitivity to
the ambiguities and specificities of humor, but basing its interpretive frame-
work and methodological approach in the author’s social theory of choice.
Notes
1.. Oring (1994), in a highly original variation on psychoanalytic humor theory,

transferred Freudian theory to the present, suggesting that humor in modern day
America is used to vent and express sentiment, an emotion increasingly tabooed
and suppressed in modern Western societies.
2. Too late for extended discussion, but just in time for favourable mention in
a footnote, the International Review of Social History published a special issue
on humor and social protest (’t Hart and Bos 2007), containing many insightful
contributions and interesting case studies that directly address the issues dis-
cussed in this section.
3. This conceptual unclarity is partly caused by the theoretical background of
many conflict scholars of humor. Sociologists using this approach often adhere
to Marxist or Marxist-inspired traditions where society is conceptualized as
a struggle, which means that all forms of inequality necessarily imply conflict
and superiority and conflict are very much the same thing. Moreover, in humor
studies there has been a strong Freudian influence, which also leads to interpret-
ations of “unconscious” drives and motives in humor. Both Marxist and Freud-
ian theories, while very insightful at times, tend to facilitate interpretations of
humor in terms of conflict or aggression even when the concerned parties do not
agree with this interpretation and even disagree vehemently (blaming it on “false
consciousness” or “denial”, respectively).
4. I am using “symbolic interactionism” as an umbrella term for a variety for some-
times antagonistic schools in social research focusing on the construction of
meaning in everyday interaction, from the work of Erving Goffman (who re-
fused to be called symbolic interactionist) and ethnomethodologists (who also
refused to be called symbolic interactionists) to more recent work in sociology
and sociolinguistics by scholars who are not as particular about these labels any-
more.
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Beyond “Wit and Persuasion”: Rhetoric,
composition, and humor studies
Tarez Samra Graban
1. Introduction
To comprehensively locate the study of humor in rhetoric and composition is

beyond the scope of this chapter, which merely tries to identify – and direct
scholars towards – key intersections between humor studies and the discip-
line. By treating the topic “rhetoric and composition” as more than “rhetoric”
plus “composition,” invariably, some voices will get left out, some complex-
ities will be glossed, some historicizations will seem woefully incomplete.
Like many areas of its focus, rhetoric and composition is a dynamic field ex-
isting at the convergence of ancient traditions with contemporary issues. Its
principal emphases include histories and theories of rhetoric as they come to
bear on composition studies; public and professional practices in writing; and
questions of gender, culture, race, identity, language, and technology in the
teaching and learning of writing. Broadly conceived, “rhetoric and compos-
ition” is that domain which deals with how the evolving rhetorical tradition
(Graff 2; Gross 31) comes to bear on the teaching, learning, and performing
of writing and written discourse in academic and real-world contexts. This
chapter discusses the role that humor has played – and continues to play – in
the formation of our discipline, focusing primarily on verbal humor and on
rhetoric in the western tradition.
Though it is not the first documented mention of humor in western rhet-
orical treatises, the earliest discussion of comedy as a mode of production
may possibly be Plato’s 360 BCE Philebus in which three characters – Pro-
tarchus, Socrates, and Philebus – consider one interlocutor’s affective supe-
riority of understanding the pleasurable at the expense of another, though it
isn’t until Aristotle’s Rhetoric that the conditions for humor are considered
to have a reproducible effect. Thus, rhetorical studies of humor typically get
attributed to an Aristotelian notion of superiority (Gruner 1978; cf. Morreall;
Machline) that comes of using it as a “gentlemanly ornament” in the epilogos
or conclusion of a speech (Rhetoric III.19.5; Kennedy 281), which was one
400 Tarez Samra Graban
mark of an orator’s good breeding and intellect over another. Aristotle began
for us what we might today call a serious study of “wit” and what would reap-
pear in treatises on stylistics and discourse through the twentieth century as
linked principally to concerns of ethos (the nature and character of the rhetor
as portrayed in the speech) and pathos (an appeal made to alter the judgment
of an audience).
But beyond the study of historicized “wit,” humor has invited – no, en-
ticed – a growing number of rhetoric and composition scholars to consider
its bearing on cultural production and inquiry. In investigating how these
scholars draw on humor studies, I have seen three dominant topic areas
emerge, which I attempt to explicate in this chapter:
1. the role of humor in historical studies of rhetoric, especially rhetorical
studies of irony, parody and satire in the texts of women writers;
2. the place of humor in composition pedagogy, both as a mode of instruc-
tion and as a form of enculturation into the first-year course, including its
use in writing textbooks; and
3. the role of humor as cultural production in contemporary (mostly polit-
ical) written discourse.
It makes sense, then, that rhetoric and composition’s interfaces with humor
would overlap with areas already covered by this book, including linguistics,
communication studies, history, philosophy, and education. I don’t mean to
suggest that no projects can be called distinctly “rhetoric and composition,”
merely to explain why the scholarship I discuss in this chapter will consider
humor as genre and methodology, intention and outcome, and linguistic and
cultural phenomenon.
1.1. The role of humor in historical studies of rhetoric
Tracing the role of humor in the development of rhetorical study reveals

much about how our tradition has evolved around changing notions of ethos,
pathos, logos (an appeal to logic or to discourses of reasoning), inventio (the
systematic discovery of argument), and techne (the learned art or craft-like
knowledge of oratory). With his delineation of rhetorical canons and his tax-
onomy of logical structures and persuasive modes, Aristotle’s system of rhet-
oric became known as reproducible and representative of the more practical
arts. Aristotle’s skilled rhetor showed a mastery of the full subject of oratory;
knew the different types of speech occasions and how to choose suitably for
Rhetoric,composition, and humor studies 401
the occasion (e.g., judicial, deliberative, or epideictic); knew the different top-
ics relevant for particular audiences; and had the ability to adjust the speech
to the audience’s needs, knowledge, and desires (Rhetoric II.22.10; Rhetoric
II.1.2). This includes his treatment of wit, stemming from the practice of
“dissimulating,” “understating,” or “hiding” a rhetor’s underlying intentions
(called eironeia). Like Plato, Aristotle suggested using humor to draw the au-
dience’s attention to aspects of the speaker’s or subject’s character. But where
Plato saw humor occurring somewhat uncomfortably in the mixed pleasure
and pain that came from responding to comical situations, Aristotle believed
that the educated wit could draw attention to that failing or a piece of ugli-
ness without producing pain, for the young audience are “fond of laughter”
(Rhetoric II.12.15) and of a certain “good taste” in playful social behavior
(Nicomachean Ethics IV.8.1), so long as it does not go to “excess in ridicule.”
In Rhetoric and Irony, Swearingen specifically notes Plato’s inherent mistrust
of irony because it was a “false discourse” (Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony
73), while Aristotle’s rhetorical tradition counted on suasive discourse occur-
ring in some part due to speaker, audience and situation, not solely based on
ethical truth. He was, therefore, more tolerant of double meaning and humor-
ous forms (Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony 125).
For Aristotle, the speaker’s reputation was enveloped in the truthful con-
tent of the speech and in the skillful way he established goodwill with the
audience. Thus, he persisted in differentiating between eironeia – which was
how a capable rhetor could ethically reveal the “ludicrous” by constructing
audience that looked down on subjects of lesser virtue – and “comedy” as
a mode of discourse appropriate for listeners “of a lower type” (Poetics I.5;
Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony 127). Although the Greek eironeia is the
closest origin of the English word irony, Aristotle used it to describe a kind of
intelligent “mock modesty” and juxtaposed it with more overt and ludicrous
buffoonery (Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony 127).
A fuller treatment of Aristotle’s humorous discourse may have existed at
one time. In Book III.18.7 of the Rhetoric, Aristotle refers to an earlier work
on eironeia, which George Kennedy describes as existing “in the lost second
book” (Kennedy 280). Though very little of the Rhetoric and the Poetics ac-
tually dealt with the employment and placement of humorous devices in the
speech, Aristotle’s system did distinguish between causes of humor, includ-
ing language embellishments such as ambiguity, synonyms, and diminutives;
and topical subjects or actual events such as deception, violation of laws, irra-
tional behaviors, and the “marvelous” (or the unexpected). While Aristotle’s
rhetor could not control external events, he could control how he portrayed
himself in relationship to these events and he could control his language and
manner of delivery.
Aside from Aristotle’s references to understatement and mockery, An-
tiquity left us with two prominent treatments of humor in oratory situations
– Marcus Tullius Cicero’s dialogical de Oratore (c. 46 BCE) and Quintil-
ian’s Institutio Oratoria (c. 95 CE). For Cicero, humor was one way that the
speaker could undermine his opposition, revealing his opposition’s weak-
nesses while concealing his own (Volpe 322–323); thus, he advocated using
humor selectively in various modes of oratory to create pleasantries for the
audience and to reflect positively on the orator’s character when they carry a
“concealed suspicion of ridicule” and when they are uttered by a person who
is “not morose” (de Oratore II.69; Hughes). Cicero’s facetiae – a term used
to denote the two classes of humor as they are introduced into his dialogue
– relied on some shared presuppositions between the speaker and hearer, but
could be principally considered an appeal to ethos (a reflection of the speak-
er’s character) and, if used carelessly, extravagantly, or indecently, it would
more often function as a kind of insincerity or deceit (de Oratore II.67).
Ironical dissimulation is “an elegant kind of humor, satirical with a mixture
of gravity, and adapted to oratory as well as to polite conversation” (de Ora-
tore II.67).
The purposes governing the successful use of facetiae were slightly more
complex, and each is exemplified in another of Cicero’s texts, Pro Caelio
(The Defense of Caelius). The Caelius is discussed in greater detail in Bowen,
Graban (“Expecting the Unexpected”), Wisse, and in Chapters V and VI of
Geffcken, but is worthwhile mentioning briefly here. In this speech, Cicero
creates humor on a number of levels, appealing immediately to the audi-
ence’s psychological needs, revealing Roman values “more profoundly than
conventional political oratory” (Volpe 311), and constructing jests that rep-
resent political dissoi logoi, as described by Poulakos, in the way they reflect
“an awareness at once cognizant of its own position and of those positions
opposing it” (Poulakos 60).
De Oratore offers us one of the first significant classifications of humor
in the western rhetorical tradition, most likely as a way of arguing for its
teachability, although it isn’t until Quintilian’s responses to Cicero that the
notion of teaching humor will be made explicit. To be clear, in de Oratore
the character called “Caesar” demonstrates the difficulties of teaching humor
as an art, in so much as it is difficult to grasp the notion of what it means to
be funny (de Oratore II.54). However, Caesar also offers concrete ways of
recognizing the witty, even if its production cannot be clearly mapped. To
better define it as an oratorical phenomenon, and in response to the charac-

ter Antonius’s claim that there is no art involved in its inception (rather, that
humor begets a naturally talented orator), Caesar classifies “laughter” into
five subjects of consideration (or causes): what [laughter] is; where it origin-
ates; whether it serves the orator’s ethos; to what degree it is; and kinds or
notions of “ridiculous” (de Oratore II.58).
Caesar further classifies the “ridiculous” into two types: joking in re
(where excitement is raised by things or subject matter) and in verbo (where
excitement is raised by words) (de Oratore II.59). By “things,” Caesar refers
to extended examples of humor in longer narratives like anecdotes. As an
illustration, in his popular “fig tree” example, a Sicilian requests some clip-
pings from the fig tree of a friend whose wife recently hanged herself from it,
implying that the Sicilian doesn’t care for his wife, and hopes he too could
grow a similar tree (de Oratore II.69). Though he attests to “infinite var-
ieties” of jesting in re, Caesar reduces them to a few categories: “deceiving
expectation,” “satirizing the tempers of others,” playing, “comparing a thing
with something worse,” “dissembling,” “uttering apparent absurdities,” and
“reproving folly” (de Oratore II.72). He leaves it up to the rhetor to appropri-
ate them correctly and considers joking in re to be more challenging rhetori-
cally since it may rely on upholding a lengthy narrative. By “words” Caesar
indicates puns and witticisms, and classifies them into three main types with
a number of divisions therein. The first type to excite laughter originates
either in thought or in language, or in both. If from both, the same topics
can be used either seriously or jokingly. The difference lies beyond the topic
of the joke, in the nature or character of the subject. For example, lameness
earned by a nobleman in public service gives rise to seriousness, but earned
of a disreputable man gives rise to ridicule. The second type of jest, ambiguity
from play on words, elicits more surprise than laughter, and is “commended
as jests of elegance and scholarship” (de Oratore II.72). Jests in verbo have
many more categories than jests in re, thus it becomes important that the
gifted orator appropriate the joke to suit the situation, rather than memorize
all the different categories and forms.
This practice of controlling and tempering humor does position Cicero-
nian “wit” as a talent that is linked closely to the nature and character of
the orator, its manifestation showing in “thought and expression” rather than
in foolishness (de Oratore II.62). Yet when Antonius claims that a “jocose
manner and strokes of wit” are merely “gifts of nature” rather than “taught
by art” (de Oratore II.49), Caesar claims that such a manner can be taught
(Wisse 199). Caesar advocates that the ultimate suasive purpose can be
achieved by a “good” orator learning to use humor selectively, i.e., to “excite

laughter”; to “attract favor”; to encapsulate a clever attack; to “overthrow”
or “refute” an adversary; to prove oneself to be a “man of taste, learning, or
polish”; and ultimately to “mitigate and relax gravity and severity” by break-
ing the force of agonistic remarks (de Oratore II.58). A learned deftness of
wit might satisfy the sophistic requirement of kairos, or the orator’s ability
to respond spontaneously to the situation at hand (Poulakos 63). Therefore,
while humor can be used to provoke laughter, it is not restricted to the do-
main of pathos in de Oratore. Hughes (“‘Dramatic’ Ethos”) takes up this
discussion in more instructive detail.
Approximately 150 years later in the Institutio Oratoria, Quintilian also
treats facetiae as distinct from other pathetic appeals, though he places his
long treatment on laughter in Book VI near his discussion of audience, per-
haps because the practice of observing public oratory was becoming more
common and Quintilian found himself writing for the self-studied pupil
(Gwynn 133). This pupil had to learn new ways to “adapt his art to the re-
quirements of the audience,” not just to persuade “but to please” (Gwynn
247–248). Where Quintilian’s predecessors linked laughter with other emo-
tional acts, Quintilian made clear distinctions between comedy and tragedy
(Institutio VI.2.20), separated truth value from the outcome of the oration,
and offered instruction on which types of jests were situationally appropri-
ate, including irony, metaphor, and allegory as types of argument (Institutio
VI.3.65). He discouraged using jest as an overt attack or to create too much
ambiguity, and above all he admonished the rhetor to practice so that he
could learn to use it “elegantly” (Institutio VI.3.57). Throughout his twelve
volumes, Quintilian classified wit as urbanitas (sophistication), venus (grace
and charm), salsus (salt), and facetiae (Institutio VI.3.20). Quintilian’s ora-
tor might show any combination of these qualities and be considered witty.
The practiced use of facetiae in oratory most likely responded to a “new
rhetoric” well suited for humorous discourse in the way it allowed for an ora-
tor to effectively lie (by using ambiguity, presupposition, and irony) while
still remaining vir bonus (with good character). While there is much in Quin-
tilian’s Institutio to reflect Ciceronian ideals, including numerous direct refer-
ences to wit and irony in Pro Caelio (Geffcken 1), his “new” system modeled
a techne (learned art), most likely in order to compensate for Cicero’s lack of
pragmatic or pedagogical advice, and insisted that rhetorical practice could
be readily acquired given the proper character and mental capacity of the
orator. Like all other aspects of practical arts, good wit is achieved through
a combination of nature and practice or “methodical training” (Institutio
I.prooemium.27). Laughter’s principal role is to dispel the “graver emotions

of the judge” and divert “his attention from the facts of the case,” and even
“refresh him” (Institutio VI.3.1). Thus, the orator must be allowed to picture
for himself the facts he wants to convey, feel for himself the emotion he wants
to convey, and be himself moved in order to move the judges.
Contrary to Cicero’s intricate classification and divisions, Quintilian of-
fers a more straightforward treatment of laughter in the Institutio: instigating
laughter at the inappropriate time can be more detrimental to the outcome of
the speech than failing to elicit pity (Institutio VI.1.41); and well-placed humor
should optimally occur in the introductory remarks to dispel the judges’ pity
towards “a consideration of the justice of the case” (Institutio VI.1.46). To il-
lustrate failed humor, Quintilian cites one occasion of an advocate who, when
speaking in a woman’s defense, procured a portrait of her husband hoping to
sway the court’s emotions to pity but instead swayed them towards laugh-
ter precisely because it was shown at the wrong time, after the introductory
remarks, and in hideous effect (Institutio VI.1.41). To illustrate persuasive
humor, Quintilian recalls seeing the exaggerated actions of another counsel
carrying his client’s opposition (a child) around the court, and drawing atten-
tion to that exaggerated behavior by exclaiming to his own physically robust
client: “What am I to do? I can’t hump you around!” (Institutio VI.1.47). The
difference between persuasive humor and mere theatrical effect is the ora-
tor’s eloquence, referred to in Little’s translation as “intelligence.” Obviously,
Quintilian believes that, when used appropriately, humorous insults can get
an orator out of a tight place.
While aligning humorous devices with ethos helped it to gain importance
in rhetorical systems prior to the Middle Ages, this same alignment may also
explain why humor occupied a much narrower place in medieval and Ren-
aissance treatises on rhetoric (circa 425 CE to 1550 CE). There is recurring
evidence that it was employed as a literary device during these periods, yet
rhetors were by and large cautioned against it given its detrimental effects on
their character. Bishop and teacher Augustine’s emphasis on using rhetorical
persuasion to teach and disseminate religious texts – in fact, his belief that
rhetoric should serve the conveyance of scriptural truth – made clear distinc-
tions in rhetoric between cooperative persuasion and “mendacity,” or a habit-
ual deceitfulness that was imparted by formal training in rhetoric (Swearin-
gen, Rhetoric and Irony 176). According to Augustine in his de Doctrina
Cristiana (c. 426 CE), just as it was the author’s responsibility not to use
language in order to deceive, it was also the reader’s responsibility not to
enjoy deceit and instead to seek truth within it. For this reason, he would call
irony and other forms of linguistic diversion “didactic indirections,” or forms

of moralizing misdirections (Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony 202), and he
would justify their use in the sermon only as a way of revealing one’s literal
sense of scripture. Swearingen’s explication of “intent” in Augustine’s texts
raises the key question of whether irony represented wisdom or eloquence,
reminding us of a quintessential and ongoing debate in rhetoric’s history.
Double-minded discourse with any other intent could serve no purpose but
to distract in this tradition, thus prohibiting humor from being seen as an au-
thentic invention strategy.
Only one of three influential treatises produced near the end of the Ren-
aissance shed significant light on the persuasive value of humor in that new
historical context. In his 1553 Arte of Rhetorike, Thomas Wilson included
a brief section on laughter under his discussion of invention in Book Two
(Bowen 413). Although Wilson represented the Renaissance tendency to sep-
arate out invention strategies from rhetoric, he did suggest that rhetors could
use humor (or “dry mocks”) to prove a point so long as they did so without
compromising their manners (Wilson 168). This may have been in response
to Leonard Cox in his 1530 Arte or Crafte of Rhetoryke and to Peter Ramus
in his 1543 Dialecticae. Ramus, in an almost Aristotelian system of division
and classification, authored a treatise representing the separation of rhetorical
truth from logical probability or dialectic, aligning such concepts as inventio
(invention) and dispositio (arrangement) with the latter, and such concepts as
elocutio (style) and pronuntiatio (delivery) with the former. Excessive use of
facetiae in this system would no doubt reflect its diminished status as a kind
of buffoonery – aligned more with superficial eloquence than with substan-
tive wisdom.
Yet humor does play a role in Wilson’s rhetoric insofar as its textual repre-
sentation (rather than its semantic or pragmatic significance) engages the au-
dience. Wilson mentions Cicero’s five concerns of laughter as “pleasant talk”
(Wilson 165), draws almost verbatim from Caesar’s treatise on laughter in
Book II of de Oratore, and refers to several of Cicero’s anthologized jests and
puns. In the following example, humor resembles Cicero’s in verbo, formed
by the manipulation of words or by taking words at their literal meaning to
derive an unexpected answer: “Sometimes it is delightful when a man’s word
is taken and not his meaning. As when one had said to another, ‘I am sorry,
sir, to put you to pains,’ the other answered: ‘I will ease you, sir, of that sor-
row, for I will take no pains for you at all’” (Wilson 171). In fact, Wilson uses
Cicero’s very distinction, though he relegates humor to appeals of emotion in
his Book II by placing its discussion between “Moving Affections” and “The
Division of Pleasant Behavior” (Wilson 173). As with the other persuasive

modes, the rhetor’s successful use of humor while speaking suggests his apt
awareness of audience, even if it does not directly suggest an invention of his
character (Wilson 164).
Cautionary approaches to using humor are reflected into post-Enlight-
enment rhetorical treatises, though with a renewed attention to how humor
classifications could inform a still-evolving tradition. I will discuss only
one of them here. George Campbell’s 1776 Philosophy of Rhetoric advo-
cated that if the rhetor must use wit, he limit himself to cool reasoning and
he confine ridicule (i.e., mockery or exorbitant jest) to situations of much
lesser importance in the sermon. According to Campbell, wit was a skillful
rhetorical diversion that had a limited place within the oration and church
(Philosophy of Rhetoric 152; Holcomb, “Wit” 285). Holcomb shows us that,
although Campbell’s ideas surrounding eloquence, wit, humor and ridicule
weren’t new in themselves, these ideas helped him to complete a “new” sys-
tem of rhetoric that still relied heavily on mechanical schemes (Campbell,
“Of Wit”).
Gleaned largely from notes and papers he had delivered while a mem-
ber of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society in the 1750s, Campbell’s act of
matching separate functions of discourse with various operations of the mind
was a significant contribution to rhetorical theory, in part because his devel-
opment of familiar schemes again allowed a place for humor in rhetoric and
renewed the importance of modes of discourse – serious and colloquial –
whose respective ends were to “affect the different operations of the mind”
(Holcomb, “Wit” 283). The four ends included “enlightening the understand-
ing; pleasing the imagination; moving the passions; or influencing the will”
(Holcomb, “Wit” 283). Naturally, the eloquent orator could adapt a discourse
to its appropriate end. But by classifying rhetorical discourses according to
the mental operations underlying them, Campbell made way for us to consid-
er “eloquence” beyond mere style and delivery (Holcomb, “Wit” 288).
Campbell’s further clarification of colloquial discourse into wit, humor,
and ridicule represents another positive contribution to the rhetorical trad-
ition and enables rhetoricians to consider humor’s effects on logos or the
content and/or logical arrangement of the speech. In Campbell’s scheme wit
is directed to the audience’s imagination by one of three ways – debasing
pompous or “seemingly grave” things, aggrandizing frivolous things, or set-
ting ordinary objects in an anomalous or uncommon point of view (Holcomb,
“Wit” 286). According to Campbell: “Sublimity elevates, beauty charms, wit
diverts” (Campbell 152).
1.2. Rhetorical studies of irony, parody, and satire in the texts of women

writers
As evidenced by Anderson and Zinsser, Theibaux, Glenn (Rhetoric Retold),

Clarke, Elshtain, and a growing number of anthologies such as those com-
piled by Donawerth, Lunsford, Ritchie and Ronald, Sutherland and Sutcliffe,
and Wertheimer, women’s participation in the western rhetorical tradition
began long before the Scottish Enlightenment, and in fact long before the
European Renaissance. However, the rise of the English vernacular with its
ensuing movements such as Christian humanism, the Protestant Reformation,
and English Imperialism, would notably affect the ways in which women
participated in rhetoric’s formation as a discipline. It is also in this era that
studies of how women employed specific humorous forms for personal or
political gain seem to emerge.
Perhaps this is because of rhetoric’s great reliance on Renaissance lit-
erature to engage the emotions and to model persuasion through figurative
language, thereby becoming a powerful influence in cultural formation. But
perhaps it is also because key texts like Quintilian’s Institutio were “redis-
covered” and translated into the vernacular, thereby reintroducing both Cic-
eronian and Quintillion persuasion back into the public sphere. Bowen re-
minds us that Cicero’s facetiae theory would reappear in medical books on
the physiology of laughter, notably Laurent Joubert’s on its causes and effects
in France in 1579, and Nicolas Nancel’s on the difficulties of defining facetiae
as a physiological phenomenon in France in 1587 (Bowen 417).
Yet while de Oratore filtered into mainstream rhetorical instruction among
Christian humanists and other prominent groups in the English Renaissance,
there is still no clear evidence that their rhetorical training encouraged the
conscious use of wit. If we take such socially vital texts such as Vives’s 1523
de Institutione Feminae Christianae (The Education of a Christian Woman:
A Sixteenth-Century Manual) as any indication, then we know that even in
the process of acquiring universal education for women resulted in their being
guided away from wit (or eloquence or anything that distracts) in favor of
“the study of wisdom” (IV.28), excepting Quintillion eloquence that can lead
to pious understanding (IV.28); Vives references Poggio’s Facetiae among
a list of forbidden titles (V.31). Thus, Bowen questions not only the humor
value in Cicero’s original texts but also the solid success of its resurgence in
the Renaissance (Bowen 427).
Put purely as a question of kairos or timing, Bowen is probably right to
question Cicero’s “modern” appeal, given that Renaissance sources make it
difficult to generalize on what was the acceptable nature of the comic (Bowen
428). She wonders why such adaptations of Ciceronian humor as jokes, rid-
dles, or moral fables would remain so popular into the sixteenth century if
Cicero didn’t have certain tropes in mind when he first discussed facetiae
(Bowen 429)? I extend Bowen’s question to wonder why women would em-
ploy facetiae when their status as public rhetoricians hadn’t yet been firmly
established?
The answer may lie in its appropriation as a kind of dissoi logoi (con-
trasting words or figures of opposition) by women in high-stakes situations,
given irony’s noted complexity (Ritchie, “Frame-Shifting”; Sperber and Wil-
son, Relevance; Kaufer, “Understanding Irony”), specifically in their use of
irony to simultaneously uphold while overturning discourse conventions that
restricted them and to forward their critiques in a somewhat uncertain trad-
ition. Beyond serving as a logical reasoning exercise, Walzer re-presents and
recasts the dissoi logoi tradition as something that has historically provided
rhetors with a way to “generat[e] a critique – all as a means to coming to the
best decision in situations of uncertainty” (“Teaching” 122). Barreca exam-
ines British women’s literary humor as functioning differently than men’s –
whereas male humor is reformist, female humor is strategist (to gain power,
cause revolutions, and instigate change) (Untamed and Unabashed).
Bilger notes that humor has historically served as a simultaneous psycho-
logical survival skill and emancipatory strategy for women in sexist societies
(Laughing Feminism 10). Politically, women have used humor as a method
for conservation of community principles and a subversion of community
expectations. While nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women were
seen as “lacking” a sense of humor, twenty-first century women who use it
must strike a particularly sensitive balance so as not to be seen as too cerebral,
forward, frivolous, or antagonistic (“Laughing” 50). Sanborn’s 1885 The Wit
of Women represents one of the earliest anthologies of U.S. women’s humor,
linking their employment of humor to the formation of social attitudes, in-
cluding understatement and “tact.”
A brief historical trace of rhetorical humor helps illustrate its various
alignments with character, empathy, truth, and logic, but a closer look at what
humorous devices recur in the writings of women helps explain why they
may have persisted with inventive humor even when mainstream rhetorical
instruction discouraged their use. Bilger says we should more systematically
study women’s use of humor because, unless we recognize the efforts that
were made to control their behavior, we are in danger of misunderstanding
the specific forms their humor takes and of overlooking their most trenchant
social criticism (Laughing Feminism 16). Taking Bilger’s assumption one

step further, we observe a growing interest in rhetoric and composition study-
ing women’s irony and ironic devices to determine how they display that
criticism, and whether their art extends beyond it. To this end, most scholar-
ship has contributed two ways: recovering sophistication devices in women’s
texts; and distinguishing between “feminine” and “feminist” humor.
1.2.1. Recovering Sophistication in Women’s Texts
It is not new or unusual that educated women have used parody to convey
their messages to mixed audiences, such as in “Jane Anger’s” anonymous
letter directed towards the better treatment of women (c. 1589), Bathsua
Makin’s 1673 Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, and
Maria Edgeworth’s 1795 An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification.
And irony as a broader rhetorical and linguistic register has been noted in the
writings of Hildegard, Christine de Pizan, Anne Askew, Anne Hutchinson,
Maria Edgeworth, Margaret Cavendish, Sojourner Truth, Helen Gougar, and
Mary Harris (Mother) Jones to name only a few prior to 1900. Yet although
we have a long history of being interested in the workings of irony, we have
a shorter history of understanding what it has offered women, beyond perpet-
uating stereotypes of self-deprecation, or why – in light of other possible un-
derstandings – the self-deprecation stereotype persists. I examine this issue
here, briefly.
Self-deprecation has become an acceptable script in women’s political
humor because it mirrors stereotypical assumptions about women’s inferi-
ority to men that are still prevalent in the political sphere, though more and
more women politicians are learning to use it to their advantage (“Laughing”
53). In “Humor, Intellect, and Femininity,” Walker traces American women’s
significant humorous writing from Sanborn’s 1885 Wit to Bruére and Beard’s
1934 Laughing Their Way to illustrate some of the earliest organized resist-
ance to women’s public humor before examining the changing post-Freudian
attitudes towards what makes a woman’s public sense of humor acceptable
(A Very Serious Thing). Walker argues for women’s public sense of humor
as intrinsically tied into cultural assumptions about her intelligence, com-
petence, and role (A Very Serious Thing 98). What Walker calls women’s
“double texts” represent the ways they use humor to manipulate these dom-
inating stereotypes so as to appear to accept them while actually indicting
their values.
Even in non-political contexts, rhetorical theorists studying irony have

defined it in many ways regarding the nature of the speaker, audience, and
situation; they have drawn and do draw on discourse theorists to understand
irony as an instrument of deferral (Gans 66), a device that highlights the in-
congruity between what is expected and what is presented (Gibbs and Izzett
145), and “not a discrete linguistic phenomenon, but rather a family of atti-
tudes” (Brown 111). Yet these definitions have done more to reinforce diffi-
culties in distinguishing between “truth” and “deceit” as a way of classifying
irony when women use it, particularly by enabling us to ask such historically
relevant questions as What is the role of speaker characteristics and audi-
ence in interpreting the irony event? (Pexman 209; Gibbs and Izzett), Can
we pinpoint some shared logical structure in ironic utterances? (Brown 112),
and What more is required than literal oppositeness to determine whether
something is ironic? (Kaufer “Understanding”). In other words, these defin-
itions raise the possibility that women have used it knowingly, systematical-
ly, and possibly for non-humorous ends.
Other significant works also attend to the question of whether female
irony and satire are effectively silence, subversion, or resistance (Glenn “In-
scribed”; Walker). Most notably, Judith Drake’s anonymous 1696 An Essay
in Defence of the Female Sex invents what Haskins calls an “early feminist
discourse that borrows its stylistic and argumentative features from two con-
flicting traditions of writing: an age-old genre of the controversy over women
and the egalitarian argument of seventeenth-century rationalism” (Haskins
289). In her Essay, Drake parodies a debate about women’s character by
portraying comic portraits of men, but moves beyond perpetuating gendered
controversy by portraying men’s faults as universally human. Using satire
as a primary form of attack, Drake aligns herself with seventeenth century
rationalism by criticizing the genre’s main appeals (Haskins 291), and dem-
onstrates what Haskins calls a “hybrid genre” that transcended the stylistic
constraints of the tradition it mocked while also applying its principles to
advocate a new line of reasoning for women (Haskins 298).
Barreca, Bilger and others argue that highly incongruous forms, like irony
and parody, have historically supplied women with enough linguistic power
to reinvent themselves, or to become mediating subjects rather than medi-
ated objects in their texts. It may be in this realization that our history of how
women use it expands. Booth helpfully reviews the historical debate about
whether irony is irony for itself, whether it should be a means to an end,
whether it can exist beyond instrumental aims (Booth 139). And he differen-
tiates – in rhetorical terms – between whether something is ironic according
to its authorial intentions or the intentions constituting the act, and whether
it seems ironic according to how much the author discerns the clues to that
intention (Booth 91). In fact, its relationship to humor is complicated by
shifting notions of intention (Lang 2–3) and truth (Lang 42), i.e., irony is
determined based on primary and originary intention regardless of whether
the audience “gets it,” while humor needs only to “diverg[e] from truth.” At-
tardo’s discussions of verbal irony as relevant inappropriateness (“Irony”)
have provided a more nuanced understanding of irony beyond simply “saying
the opposite of what one means” and as a linguistic phenomenon determined
more by context than bound by the speaker’s (or writer’s) singular intent.
Warnick reminds us that, in her signature work Le Comique du Discours,
Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca offered a method for analyzing comedic discursive
structures that Warnick identifies as “rhetorical” examination – particularly in
knowing how such phenomena as irony, parody, and the burlesque make use
of values, language, quasi-logical connections, and other aspects of “reality”
(audience-adherence) in order to be effective (“Olbrechts-Tyteca’s Contribu-
tion” 72). Olbrechts-Tyteca’s multilayered discourse analysis, and Olbrechts-
Tyteca’s and Perelman’s positing of irony as a rhetorical device realizes the
importance of audience in the successful outcome of ironic communication
and explains how some ironic exchanges can be theorized as lying, or seen
as more sophisticated devices for positioning and interaction even when they
miss the mark of their intended audience. Perhaps because of its linguistic
and cultural richness, women’s irony is ripe for examination as a way of
broadening the rhetorical tradition, beyond dissoi logoi.
Graban (“Feminine Irony”) and Bilger (Laughing) argue that women’s
employment of irony demonstrates their ability to participate in fairly so-
phisticated persuasive acts in religious and political spheres. Graban argues
that the ways that Renaissance women rhetors have used irony in their oppo-
sitional discourse can shed light on the ways they have implicitly challenged
established linguistic and rhetorical traditions, opening up new possibilities
in gendered communication beyond “silence,” “resistance,” and rhetorical
refusal (“Feminine Irony” 410). And Bilger suggests that the most successful
women’s use of public or political humor has historically been demonstrated
by those who knew how to play the strong-yet-properly-feminine persona
(“Laughing” 51).
Other theorists demonstrate how satirical irony has been put to pragmatic
use by women, as a way of gaining them subversive power over a speaking
or writing situation, especially in regards to equal rights in religion, suffrage,
and abolitionism (Browne; Dresner; Wright). Browne examines the use of
satire as a mode of insinuation against women preachers by men in eight-

eenth-century England, due to cultural assumptions that women’s speech was
“perverse,” “lacking in morality,” and “meaningless” (Browne 20). Though
Browne’s argument deals squarely with oratory and, hence, speech commu-
nication, its ties to historical studies of women writers and the bearing of
humor on their perceived roles as producers of public-sphere texts is still
clear: he reveals an interesting double-standard in satire – when practiced by
Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift it carries a moral tone; when practiced
by women it “divests them of their characteristical softness and amiable deli-
cacy” (The European Magazine and London Review, 1783, p. 272, as qtd. in
Browne 25).
Dresner illustrates the ways that African-American author Alice Childress
used satire to disrupt “conventional wisdom” and overturn the racial and
gendered expectations put on her and women like her (Dresner “Alice Chil-
dress”). And Wright pinpoints irony as nineteenth-century American news-
paper columnist Fanny Fern’s principal strategy for upholding while eliding
culturally dominant messages regarding suffrage and women’s equality. Re-
sponding to Jedediah Purdy’s lament that irony is “really used for protection
from fear, betrayal, and humiliation” (Purdy; Wright 91), Wright re-examines
Fern’s irony via Wayne Booth’s “normative function” and via Linda Hutch-
eon’s “signification” as a way of retrieving power from those who might not
otherwise accept her words (Wright 92). Fern’s strategy creates a “double-
voiced discourse,” allowing her audience to interpret as ironic (or untrue)
what they themselves don’t ascribe to; and literal (or true) what they assume
she agrees with (Wright 96), both sophisticated acts.
1.2.2. Distinguishing between “feminine” and “feminist” humor
An interest in how women use humorous forms need not lead to essentializing
women’s humor. While some scholars do posit that women’s irony, parody,
and satire can either reverse sex roles or “act differently” than men’s (Barreca,
Unashamed), it is important to note that role reversal and sex difference are
not the only ways that women use these forms to disrupt social orders or cre-
ate cultural subversion. Neither does an explication of what makes “woman’s
humor” in writing necessarily undermine their desires for equality.
In her introduction to Last Laughs, Barreca challenges what she views
as “universal” standards for presencing and identifying humor, not to essen-
tialize “feminine” forms of humor, but rather to argue that we should not
overlook humor produced by women when it doesn’t conform to established

standards, a sentiment that is echoed by Glenn (Rhetoric Retold), Clarke,
and Elshtain about women’s written discourse in general. For Barreca, the
absence of critical study on women’s humor – specifically comedy – prior to
1990 points more to our inability to deal critically with humor in women’s
texts than it does to their lack of producing humorous texts (Barreca, Last
Laughs 20). To fully understand women’s use of humor as cultural produc-
tion, Barreca argues that we need new definitions for assessing their comic
productions and for valuing their role as “de-centering, dis-locating, and de-
stabilising” (Barreca, Last Laughs 15) cultural authority. For this reason, Bar-
reca elides such taxonomical distinctions as are typically used.
Gillooly finds this principle to be significant for describing what is amus-
ing in women’s writing. That is, what occurs in women’s writing to amuse
should be understood as intercategorical, complex, subtle, adversarial, and
oppositional rather than referred to according to traditional functions such
as “ironic,” “comic,” “witty,” or other formulations (Gillooly 477). Gillooly
claims that to assume a woman’s text ironic under these formulations is to pre-
sume a traditional male perspective, to “affirm by negation prevailing cultural
attitudes,” and thus overlook other purposes in her humor (Gillooly 479).
Similar preoccupations with the historical distinctions between “femi-
nist” and “female” humor appear in the works of Walker, Finney, and Mor-
ris, inasmuch as they allow rhetorical scholars to consider how these labels
apply to the vernacular as well as the formal (Morris), and inasmuch as they
encourage us to consider the linguistic (perhaps embedded) manifestations
of female humor when it occurs in unexpected forms (Finney). In her chap-
ter on “Feminist Humor,” Walker categorically examines the differences that
subtlety, overtness, decorum, motivation, and style have made and continue
to make in public acceptance of women’s humorous practices (A Very Seri-
ous Thing).
These realizations about textual humor as a kind of discursive and rhet-
orical empowerment for women serve other related areas of study, including
historiographic readings of texts by marginalized writers (Gordon; Lowe)
as a way of helping us to appreciate humor’s socially transformative effects
(Ganter). Certainly when it comes to understanding (or re-understanding,
or changing our notions about) how women and other marginalized groups
have participated in what we know as the rhetorical tradition(s), we do well
to heed Ward and others who encourage us to question what we mean by
“participation” and “tradition” – that is, in what sense, with what frequency,
on what pragmatic or idealistic basis, for whom, with what credentials, with
what effects, and how were their practices understood at the time (Ward 121).
Because of its complexity as mode and manner of discourse, humor offers us
just such a venue for this questioning.
2. The place of humor in composition pedagogy
In spite of its nascent history in the development of rhetorical practices,

humor has a long history of being aligned with cultural traditions that can
lead to discursive awareness and create a sense of belonging to an implied
community. Humor has been linked with critical expression and argumenta-
tive writing since 18th-century social and political satire (Reeves). Research
into the language of humor suggests that many comic forms are effective
means of supporting risk-taking behavior (Tower), recognizing and reversing
power structures (France), challenging social orders (Smith), allaying fear,
and promoting dialogic resistance (Greenbaum). Furthermore, our ongoing
testimonials about using humor in rhetorical pedagogy to promote critical
thinking (Weber; Daiute), build community, and encourage intellectual play
(Holcomb “Class of Clowns”) point to humor’s prevalence as a kind of inven-
tion strategy. For these and other reasons, humor persists in the composition
classroom.
It also persists in our enactment of the field. “Humor Night” at the annual
Conference on College Composition and Communication has resulted in the
edited collection by Guth, et al, entitled The Rhetoric of Laughter: The Best
and Worst of Humor Night. Intermittently, our principal journals might fea-
ture something like a rire du jour. Our use of funny poems, funny titles, and
humorous polylogs in publications like PRE/TEXT, WOE: Writing on the
Edge, College Composition and Communication, College English, and Com-
position Studies points to humor’s prevalence as release tactic (Hansen; Led-
erer; Vitanza “Open Letter”) and disciplinary positioning. Furthermore, the
way we often parody our own approaches to pivotal or dissonant topics, such
as error (Williams), grammar (Hartwell), institutional assessment (Levy), and
students’ right to their own language, points to a form of conscientization in
our pedagogy.
While Don Nilsen’s enumerative bibliographies help us to interpret hu-
mor’s role in writing instruction from Antiquity to the present (Nilsen
“Humor Studies”; Nilsen “Humor Scholarship”), it may still be a worthy ob-
servation that we have done too little theorizing of humor explicitly for or
about rhetoric and composition in rhetoric and composition itself, aside from
D. Diane Davis’s landmark work linking disruptive laughter to a kind of

rhetorical sophistication (Breaking Up (at) Totality), and Mary Ann Rishel’s
comprehensive, analytical guide to comedy writing (Writing Humor). It is
also worthwhile to note that, even while certain facets of humor have been
used to illustrate argument and social critique in writing instruction, most
explorations of textual humor have been conducted on literary genres such as
poetry, prose, or drama (Frater). In spite of these facts, the range and scope of
our interests in humor is vast, especially for challenging traditional notions of
“writer,” “reader,” and “text,” and for promoting disciplinary enculturation.
2.1. Humor as enculturation into first-year composition
Postmodern challenges to traditional notions of authorship, audience, and

genre notably turned composition studies to a renewed interest in how con-
cepts such as kairos (Kinneavy), “voice” (Murray), authentic “self ” (France),
social activity (Miller; LeFevre; Russell), collaboration (Lunsford and Ede),
feminism (Worsham), the theory/practice binary (Bourdieu), and rhetorical
motives (Burke) could reposition students as members of discourse commu-
nities by helping them to become more sophisticated users of language.1
Porter’s “intertextuality” illustrates one such concept that results from
poststructuralist negotiations between discourse as “text” and discourse as
écriture (i.e., an interdependent “web” of symbolic activity). Comprised of
two types – iterability (or explicit references to discourse, i.e., quotations
or citations) and presupposition (or referential assumptions) (35) – Porter’s
intertextuality positions the student writer as discourse analyst, and proves
to be a key concept in the development of writing instruction and rhetorical
analysis for its contribution of “forum” knowledge, wherein a student writ-
er interprets texts for their acceptability in a disciplinary forum according
to how deeply they reflect that community’s common interests (“Intertex-
tuality” 39). Beyond superficial indicators of textual or generic acceptabil-
ity, “forum” relies on the notion that audiences are conscious actors in or
targets of certain exchanges, that readers are co-producers of the exchange,
that writing is a multilinear movement, and that texts are written to produce
change (40).
Exposing classroom discourse to such rethought notions of language ac-
tivity and participation may have contributed to humor’s prevalence as an
enculturation tool in the writing classroom. At the post-secondary level, hu-
morous instruction has been used as a non-adversarial tactic for encouraging
social critique and argumentative writing. Ross (Language of Humour) de-

vises a linguistic construct to help students analyze literature and stand-up
comedy, and Pepicello (“Pragmatics”) has studied grammatically based rid-
dles and analytical joke structures as simultaneous exercises in formal logic
and “rehearsal[s] of social norms and cultural categories” (34). Reeves fur-
ther advocates for comic and satiric forms as vehicles for classroom-based
social critique, by allowing students to “choose their own victims,” to em-
ploy a variety of forms of expression (that they may use inside and outside
of the academy), and to engage in their own critical pursuits (“Students as
Satirists” 15). Greenbaum (“Stand Up”) has identified a link between comic
narratives and rhetorical argument in the genre of stand-up comedy as a Ba-
khtinian dialogical resistance, showing the relationship between linguistic
play and cross-cultural situations.
Beyond disciplinary critique, humorous instruction has also been linked
with building disciplinary (rhetorical) knowledge for the novice writer, and
equipping them to participate in argumentative traditions that are culturally
bound (Cattani; Muller; Myers; Nilsen and Nilsen; Lunsford and Ruszkie-
wicz). Nilsen (“Implication”; “Wheat and Chaff”) posits instruction in inter-
preting verbal humor as a precursor to understanding metaphorical discourse
and the categories of rhetorical argument, while Bete (“Humor Writing”) and
Smith (“Humor as Rhetoric”) anecdotally suggest humor’s effects on learn-
ing fundamental argumentation skills. Smith positions humor as an “insu-
lated means of argument to challenge the dominant view of the social order”
(“Humor as Rhetoric” 51), while Berger (“Rhetoric of Laughter”; Art of
Comedy Writing), Ross (Language of Humour), and Frater (“Humour and
Satire”) provide something like rubrics for analyzing and constructing hu-
morous genres, indicating the intrinsic pedagogical value of humor for devel-
oping as readers and writers.
Greenbaum argues that comic narratives are consistent in their rhetoric-
al design to “persuade audience members to adopt certain ideological pos-
itions” (“Stand Up” 33). Her findings raise several questions pertinent to the
study of rhetoric: What or whose ethos (comic authority) is represented in
these humor instances (37)? What agency is given a rhetorically effective co-
median, and in what dialogic style is humor most effective (38)? How much
of the comic act depends on ethos and how much on kairos (situational tim-
ing) (40)? Peterson and Strebeigh demonstrate that teaching students to con-
struct parody and travesty is useful for helping them learn about placement
of rhetorical elements within a text, understand social criticism, and uncover
value terms (“Teaching” 206). Finally, Huffman promotes using humor as an
academic positioning strategy for at-risk students, while Jordan (“Humor”),

Sherwood (“Humor”), and Hall (“Silliness”) all discuss humor’s potential
as a powerful tool to break down barriers in peer response and to negotiate
power in writing tutorials.
Even when it is not explicitly theorized as enculturation, humor also rep-
resents a recurring trend in the learning environment of the pre-college writer.
Tower (“Making Room”), Bradford (“Place of Humor”), McMahon (“Having
Fun Yet?”), and Kyrston, et al (“Humor and Sarcasm”) anecdotally correlate
classroom humor and humorous pedagogy with students’ sophistication in
English studies. Tower suggests that humor is an affective experience, not
merely a cognitive phenomenon, calling it a “means into a culture” (12), and
demonstrating that humor as wordplay (i.e., manifested in the double mean-
ings of riddles and puns) gives students enough of an appreciation of the so-
phistication of language that they can gain social competence (13).
2.1.1. Parody as Sophisticated Social Critique
Most significantly, humor has been linked with students’ successful ma-
nipulation of academic conventions and discourse through their deliberate
attempts to reflect on and/or parody those conventions. Irony, in particular,
allows student writers to experiment with forms that “highlight the difference
between expectation and reality” (Gibbs and Izzett 132). Booth argues that
teaching students to note and understand such stable forms as satire and par-
ody would enable them to “discover how their embodied intentions lead us
to go so far – and no farther – in seeing ironic meanings” (Booth 91), and in
understanding how styles are imitated and distorted (Booth 123). For Booth,
context describes the “range of inferences about what the author would most
probably mean by each stroke, and to our range of possible genres” (Booth
99), thus it leads to sophisticated generic understandings. Furthermore, such
reading of ir/relevant contexts in order to uncover evidence and unspoken
assumptions has argumentative value, inasmuch as students being to more
systematically recognize and cope with ironic deception (Booth 106). Purdy
argues that ironic forms in general represent one way for Generation X to
handle the postmodern condition of doubt and uncertainty, because they ac-
commodate “initiating while questioning,” “enacting while overturning,” and
“challenging while sublimating” (For Common Things).
Parody, in particular, tends to perpetuate as a kind of enculturation of
students into the first-year composition course, the WID (Writing in the Dis-
ciplines) course, and the introduction to the discipline course because it re-
lies on interpreting and functioning within multiple levels of meaning. For
example, Rose and Kiniry construct a parody assignment to enhance the stu-
dent writer’s movement through several of their six stages of critical thinking
in the writing classroom (“What’s Funny?”), Peterson and Strebeigh teach
parody as one of two critical methods for understanding stylistics and “ver-
bal dress” (“Teaching” 210), and Bergmann examines first-year college pa-
pers for accidental humor, jokes and anecdotes that demonstrate how student
writers position themselves as emerging participants in a social community
(“Funny Papers” 21). Hutcheon advocates using parody as a way of popu-
larizing the academic and questioning subject positions, i.e., “why does X
appear now in this text?” or “what makes this funny to audience X by abomi-
nable to audience Y?” All of these practices reflect an understanding of levels
of exaggeration and juxtaposition, where students may initially mimic textual
forms but soon be called upon to determine how little or much and in what
discursive capacity their texts will depart from the original (Peterson and
Strebeigh 207).
Bergmann likens the parodic classroom to Mary Louis Pratt’s notion of
“contact zone” (or linguistic sites of “colonial encounters”) and Susan Mill-
er’s “textual carnivals” to describe a place where students can demonstrate
their ability to challenge and contend with several communities at once – that
is, beyond just serving as academic socialization, Bergmann says humor has
the potential to subvert values of complex academic communities (“Funny
Papers” 25). Analyzing some of her own students’ progress in using humor
deliberately, Bergmann discusses how, on one level, a “playful manipulation
of discourse” can gain students confidence in writing within, from, and about
certain “codes” (28). But it is also possible (and preferable) for them not to
stop at figuring out and expertly utilizing a discursive code, but rather to find
and generate humor beyond the code itself. Thus, on another level, parodying
the actual discourse of a class or a discipline can help student writers more
closely identify what they are opposing within that discourse community and
why it should be opposed, and further positions them as critics who are work-
ing through inequalities (29).
For example, the student creating an advertisement for The Gospel Ac-
cording to Bill (a Shakespearian rendition of the Bible) demonstrates a com-
plex understanding of a number of levels of discourse: on a concrete level,
this advertisement parodies the assignment by presenting a playful rendition
of a serious topic within a visual framework more colorful than a formal
paper. On an intermediate level, the student pokes fun at both classical and
Renaissance discourse, representing the ideals of one in the voice of another.

On an abstract level, it “interrogates the ‘Great Books’ approach” by implying
a convenient and/or marginalized canon where the value of each text lay in its
presentation and purpose. Such assignments embody “critical play,” where
students become initiated into a community at the same time questioning its
values and precepts (Bergmann 30). Thus, the progression from naïve to de-
liberate employment of humor reflects their coming into expert use of such
discourse, their ability to make social commentary on discourse, and their
critical capacity to subvert one discourse to another in Bakhtinian heteroglos-
sia (“turn it upside down, inside out, peer at it from above and below … lay
it bare and expose it”) (Bakhtin 23).
2.2. Language play, disruption, and empowerment (or power, performance,

and play)
While Bergmann offers an explanation of and argument for how “funny pa-
pers” can enhance this awareness through generic subversion on a number of
levels, other scholars argue its potential to reveal or challenge logocentric (or
truth-centered) discourse on a more fundamental basis. This seems to be the
case especially with our understanding of humor as incipient to dialogical
play, and of play as representative of how the writing classroom can embody
broader cultural moments. Geoffrey Sirc writes extensively on the dissonant
and paralogic use of humor in first-year composition to help students un-
derstand that knowledge of how to produce authentic texts can and does go
deeper than genre. Influenced by Lyotard’s paralogy (or moving against es-
tablished ways of reasoning), Sirc advocates for a “new academic urbanism”
to replace the “simplistic, arbitrary, and constrictive” classroom situations
and spaces that students are expected to design and invent in with an eye
towards real-world applications of their work (Sirc, “Writing Classroom”).
Sirc locates student writers’ verbal heritage largely in the physical objects
they interact with day to day, like textile branding and logos (“Writing Class-
room”). Though not a “humorist” in any strict sense, Sirc frequently draws on
parody to relocate student composing in the more avant-garde “happenings”
of American abstract painter Jackson Pollock and French-American artist
Marcel Duchamp, rather than in more modernist textual practices of analysis
and interpretation (“English Composition”), thus mirroring rethought notions
of invention, authorship, and play.
The concept of dialogical or rhetorical play has evolved from theories of

metaphysical play (from pre-Socratic to post-Hegelian understandings), and
it continues to evolve as we revise our understandings of humankind’s lin-
guistic and authorial involvement in the world.
For rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke, humor was one of those linguistic
forms of human activity that helped define man as a “symbol-using animal,”
specifically because its appearance in such complex generic forms as puns
and poems impels the literary critic towards symbolic interpretation, thus
illuminating his deeper motivations for textual activity. The principal func-
tion of Burke’s comic perspective seems to be raising a consciousness of con-
sciousness because of its ability to reflect incongruity and to “enable people
to be observers of themselves” (Attitudes 171). His comic frame in general
symbolizes a rhetorical move towards the “good” life (Betts Van Dyk). In
a similar argument, Johnson calls laughter “part of the pleasure of writing”
and ascribes to it a kind of rhetorical power that can “penetrate or lay open or
show the inroads into [monolithic] institutions” (“School Sucks” 637). And
for D. Diane Davis, students doing rhetorical analysis are best empowered by
considering how laughter can help deconstruct the logical binaries that have
resulted from a long tradition of locating language in stable traditions.
A deeper investigation into Chapters 3 and 4 of Davis’s project demon-
strates how she links laughter – as a physical embodiment of relocation and
anti-fixation – to an instructive, Foucauldian shattering of stable frameworks.
It both promotes and proceeds Sophistical counter-traditions in discovering
the “extra-logical” impulses of language, i.e., helps us to overturn neat lin-
guistic categorizations so as to better grasp the temporality and contingency
of rhetorical truths. For Davis, this disruption occurs not in learning to make
the weaker side of the dialectic stronger (which is a common practice of dissoi
logoi) but rather in locating alternatives to the dialectic altogether, and it oc-
curs only in the “excesses” of incongruity, such as linguistic polysemy. With
incongruity comes instability of authorial voice, of narrative history, and of
rhetorical tradition in so much as authors realize they are made by the same
histories they write and written by the same languages they employ. Davis
draws on Michelle Ballif, Hélène Cixous, Judith Butler, Gregory Ulmer, and
Victor Vitanza, as co-enactors of this rhetorical/philosophical tradition.
Albert Rouzie would agree that English studies has historically enacted
a work–play bifurcation in the divisions between rhetoric and poetic, and
between instrumental and literary writing. He argues that the synchronous
computer conference can overcome this bifurcation by fostering conflict and
play together, and he theorizes “serio-ludic” discourse as a technologically-

motivated linguistic behavior that “combines or alternates between serious
and playful purposes” (“Conversation” 255). By examining a series of stu-
dent transcripts, Rouzie demonstrates how serio-ludic discourse provokes
and mediates conflict by yielding productive moments of carnivalesque,
through which students move to critique and negotiate power relations and
gendered subject positioning. He further argues that the way in which com-
position instructors approach computer-mediated communication can either
productively challenge or inadvertently reinforce this arhetorical work–play
split.
Not all such scholarship occurs exclusively in the context of higher or
post-secondary education, though much of it is eventually appropriated to
help rhetoric and composition studies consider its role in the college curricu-
lum or work towards rhetorical sophistication. Focusing primarily on child-
centered approaches to writing, Colleen Daiute advocates for pedagogical
play in the form of collaborative projects, peer discussion, team story writing,
and songwriting (“Play as Thought”). By studying a number of transcripts
of children’s dialogues and written texts, Daiute argues that “play is critic-
al to a more complex and representative understanding” of how they learn
because it hones and develops the diverse skills and strategies they already
bring to the learning table (3). In response to the contemporary notion that
children are “good players but bad thinkers” (1), Daiute argues that, if devel-
oped early on a form of thought for children, play will prove a more valuable
critical heuristic for their intellectual maturation than will cognition models
that are traditionally associated with adult thinking (3). Daiute has observed
in pedagogical play such metacognitive behaviors as learning to negotiate the
logical dimensions of a writing task, evaluating other children’s ideas, self-
monitoring, and modeling interpersonal communication (12).
Alan Weber draws on Daiute’s work to better theorize methods for teach-
ing humorous essays to pre-college writers, advocating for linguistic play as
a critical tool somewhere between the “a-ha” of discovery and the “ha-ha”
of laughter (“Playful Writing” 562). Weber argues that assignments which
use playful topics as structure or context can heighten students’ awareness
of divergent ways of thinking, encourage them to combine ideas not typical-
ly associated under usual norms and codes, and equip them to write in more
demanding, formal structures later on. More specifically, the linguistic play
in limericks, riddles, and puns can potentially help students to derive seman-
tic value in such examples as the following: “What do trees and dogs have in
common? – They both have barks” (Weber 563). Furthermore, the pragmatic
challenge of putting a serious topic to a playful form helps students become

more sophisticated negotiators of genre by considering alternate modes of
expression. Converting Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech
into a rap song, for example, requires that they understand the central mes-
sage of the original text, interpret the generic conventions of the transmitting
text, and recognize the conflict or disparity that comes from communicating
the original message via these new conventions (Weber 565).
2.2.1. Use of humor in writing texts
While each of the above dimensions I discuss is understudied, undertheo-

rized, and can hardly be called “complete,” two additional topic areas come to
mind in need of at least as systematic an explanation of why and how humor
persists in shaping our understanding of invention, authorship, or text. These
include our use of humor in rhetorics, writing texts, and handbooks; and our
use of humor as professional positioning in business, technical, and profes-
sional writing situations.
Given humor’s potential for discursive enculturation and social critique,
we might be tempted to assume that irony and parody – highly incongruent
but targeted registers – show up more frequently in introductory-level writing
handbooks where disciplinary ground is first being established than in upper-
level texts where disciplinary accuracy is being sought. While this seems to
be the case, still too little is known about the place that humor occupies in the
rhetoric of composition (if it does) to accept this as a representative trend or
a logical assumption. As well, too little is known about the role these humor-
ous texts play in successfully initiating writers into various communities of
discourse.
We see humor explicitly used in the narration and examples of books on
argument and style, such as Paul Roberts’s Understanding English, William
Zinsser’s On Writing Well, Edward P. J. Corbett’s Elements of Reasoning, Ri-
chard Lanham’s Revising Prose, Joe Williams’s Style: Lessons in Clarity and
Grace. We see it even more explicitly in popular handbooks such as Edward
Goode’s A Grammar Book for You and I – Oops, Me!, David Williams’s Sin
Boldly!, Constance Hale’s Sin and Syntax, and Lynn Truss’s Eats Shoots and
Leaves, and in books celebrating the craft of writing, such as Ann Lamott’s
Bird by Bird. Even in more mainstream composition “rhetorics” such as Ede
and Lunsford’s Everything is an Argument, and Behrens and Rosen’s Writ-
ing and Reading Across the Curriculum, humor is mentioned as a mode of
a rgumentation in limited forms, often encouraging student writers with neo-

phyte status to parody or mock a genre as they learn it, or to equip them to
better read such public or literary ironic displays as Jonathan Swift’s Gul-
liver’s Travels.
We even capitalize on (for pedagogical demonstration) the gaffes that
writers make inside and outside the classroom (Lederer Anguished English),
and we employ irony in our own theorization of the field, often to traverse
ideological divides regarding the role of grammar in writing instruction, con-
ceptions of “error” in grammar, and the place of writing in the university
(Connors, “Mechanical Correctness”; Hartwell, “Grammar, Grammars”;
Williams, “Phenomenology”). However, in rhetoric and composition we
haven’t looked enough at the outcome, at the equity and agency humor either
prevents or provides (for writer and for reader), or at the kinds of institutional,
disciplinary, ethnic or gendered identifications that might influence the use of
humor in a particular texts. We know our understanding of what is “funny”
and “acceptable” in the writing classroom has evolved, but more can be de-
termined about how our textual practices have evolved with it – that is, how
the number, nature, and type of humorous examples in these texts to help us
discern appropriate cultural and discursive indicators over time.
Such systematic study is certainly made possible by the articulation of key
methodologies in rhetorical and discourse analysis, such as Selzer’s explica-
tion of textual and contextual analysis, Fahnestock and Secor’s rhetorical
rubric of analytical characteristics, Barton’s analysis of linguistically “rich”
features, and other paradigms generally made accessible in such collections
as Bazerman and Prior’s What Writing Does and How it Does It (2004), and
Barton and Stygall’s Discourse Studies in Composition (2002). As scholars
interested in technical and science writing, Killingsworth, Steffens and Gross
have further honed their methods for textual analysis as a kind of disciplinary
knowledge building, for example, Killingsworth and Steffens demosntrate
how policy statements can persuade through authentic audience construction
(“Effectiveness”), and Gross (Starring the Text) and Fahnestock (“Rhetorical
Life”) demonstrate the power of semantic shifts in revealing the populariza-
tion of scientific discourse. Scholars in linguistics and discourse studies have
even traced the use of specific humorous examples in writing texts whose
overall bent isn’t humorous, such as Hegelson’s explication of sexist and
chauvinist tendencies in beginning writing instruction (“Prisoners of Texts”),
and Macaulay and Brice’s examination of gender bias and cultural stereotyp-
ing in syntactical exercises in linguistics texts (“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”;
“Don’t Touch My Projectile”).
Systematic study has also been made possible by recent developments

in linguistic studies of verbal humor, especially Raskin and Attardo’s Gen-
eral Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), which is already well covered in this
volume, and Attardo’s ongoing theorization of irony as contextual inappro-
priateness (“Irony”; “On the Pragmatic”). Attardo’s application of GTVH
to longer non-joke texts especially allows discourse analysts to demarcate
humorous plots by punch lines, metanarrative disruption, and other central
complications that help us to consider its pragmatic function beyond the most
general categorizations and uses (Humorous Texts). Analytical modeling has
also been done by Kaufer’s forensic discussions of the rhetorical nature of
irony (“Understanding Ironic Communication”; “Irony”), Davis’s semantic-
syntactic examination of farce (“Structure Approach”), and Crawford (“Gen-
der and Humor”) and Michell’s (“Women and Lying”) analysis of understate-
ment in gendered talk.
These methods offer rhetorical analysts much in determining the richer
range of purposes for humor in writing texts, not least of which includes de-
termining where humor appears (i.e., in syntactical construction or stylistic
devices), whom it addresses (i.e., the student, the “teacher,” the “reader”),
and with what apparent purpose or frequency (i.e., to demonstrate fundamen-
tal discourse conventions or to call them into question). By way of a brief
case study, I demonstrate how the GTVH and its applications have informed
a verbal coding scheme that can be used by analysts like myself who are inter-
ested in the cultural and disciplinary implications of verbal humor in writing
guides. I devised this coding scheme by drawing on rubrics already presented
in Ross (1998) and Attardo’s marking protocol (2001), which includes a hier-
archy of constructs that examine Script Opposition (SO), Logical Mechanism
(LM), Situation (SI), Target (TA), Narrative Strategy (NS), and Language
(LA) (Humorous Texts 22). I have broadened these constructs to consider
greater interactions with audience and context and devised the following cod-
ing scheme:
1. POS – humor’s position in the text (i.e., in the content narration, sup-
porting examples, writing prompts, non-verbal illustration, pull-quotes,
or other text elements);
2. PUR – the apparent purpose of the humor instance (i.e., to announce con-
ventions, establish or challenge orders, elicit reader response, invite self-
disclosure of the author);
3. RD – the rhetorical device used to convey the humor (i.e., canned joke,
anecdote, question and answer, rhetorical question, conversation, mono-
logue);
4. LR – the linguistic register responsible for the humor (i.e., irony/sarcasm,

ambiguity, paradox);
5. SUB – the subject matter of the humor (i.e., social/cultural, intellectual,
psychological);
6. TAR – the identifiable target of the humor (i.e., teacher, student, course
material, discipline, other power holder, other non-power holder).
Because I am at the moment interested in preliminarily classifying a vast cor-

pus, this coding scheme functions on a fairly superficial scale, designed to
identify and categorize appearances and functions of humor in certain types
of text. For the first pass, “Narrative Strategy” can become “Rhetorical De-
vice” so as to include nonverbal forms, in the same way Ross defines “rhet-
orical device” as styles of writing, or different ways of balancing phrases
(44). My use of “Linguistic Register” relies on broader notions of register
as “a linguistic variety defined by subject matter, social situations (of the
speakers), and discursive functions (of the exchange)” (Attardo, Humorous
Texts, 104). “Linguistic Register” also implies that humor is created in the
realization of an unexpected element, which Ross (1998) positions along-
side ambiguity, polysemy, contradiction, and allusion. Because both irony
and sarcasm refer to forms of humor that communicate obliquely, I make
no clear distinction between them on the level of this verbal coding scheme,
though elsewhere I argue vehemently for theorizing their difference in rhet-
orical terms. The nature of verbal coding schemes is that they can be con-
strued so as to operate on finer levels of granularity; this one is intended to
do a general “first pass.”
Applying this verbal coding scheme to three brief examples from two
different texts begins to show its potential for discerning how enculturating
humor has shifted in rhetorics and writing guides over time. I focus on two
writing guides, partly because of the insularity of this genre to academic writ-
ing in English, and partly because of the dated nature some of their humor-
ing. Paul Roberts’s 1958 Understanding English represents his explicit goal
of giving “practical advice on matters of concern to the freshman English
course, whether these are touchable by the rigorous procedures of linguistic
science or not, and many of them are not” (ix). His is a textbook in linguistic
science, but one that offers the first-year college writer a series of principles
and steps for approaching the academic paper – principles and steps which,
by today’s standards, seem archaic and conveyed in highly racist and sexist
language. Similarly, Richard Lanham’s Revising Prose represents a process-
oriented (circa 1980s) approach to elucidating the “Official Style” of writing
without forcing upon students another college primer. It functions as a style

manual that encourages decision-making tactics, reinforcing the “shoulds”
and “should nots” of clear writing in a democratic fashion. To accomplish
this task, Lanham revolutionizes what he calls his “paramedic method” to
fixing writing, commonly opposing WRITING and MEDICINE as its se-
mantic scripts (cf. Raskin 1994). Implicit in this method is every English
teacher’s presumed desire to ambulance America’s current epidemic verbal
ineptitude, although Lanham aims to do so by empowering the student to-
wards “preventative” medicine. First, then, they must learn crisis interven-
tion.
Throughout their guides, Roberts and Lanham both employ humor in three
common ways: they use sarcasm and self-reflexive irony early in their texts
as a way of bringing the reader into confidence (example 1); they parody the
syntactical awkwardness of their own “rules” (example 2); and they generally
invite institutional critique of the curriculum, the teacher, or some other entity
as a way of promoting conscientization in the writer (example 3).
Example 1: Paul Roberts, Understanding English (1958)

“One trouble commonly faced by students in a course in writing is the fact
that they do not enjoy writing. Indeed, not to put too fine a point on it, they
hate writing” (Roberts 1).
POS – content narration

PUR – establish orders, invite self-disclosure
RD – monologue
REG – irony/sarcasm
SUB – social/cultural
TAR – students, course
Roberts’s third-person narrative strategy helps subjectify the “student” and

the writing act in non-threatening ways, perhaps to compensate for the fairly
prescriptive and critical tone of a number of his rules. In this example we
see one way the narrative strategy particularly works in his favor to target
not only the “student” (i.e., by making “student” the explicit subject), but
also by targeting the way students expect teachers might stereotype them.
By inviting self-disclosure about the fact that teachers know students “hate
writing,” Roberts may succeed in actually establishing orders by reinforcing
the need for such a text (especially a text that purports to understand the stu-
dent’s psyche).
Example 2: Paul Roberts, Understanding English (1958)

On not ending sentences with prepositions: “We may as well quote Sir Win-
ston Churchill at once and get it over with” (Roberts 331).

PUR – announce convention, challenge orders
RD – monologue
REG – paradox
SUB – intellectual
TAR – course, other power holder
In this example, Roberts parodies the syntactical awkwardness of one of

“their” rules, implicit in the way he positions himself with the student writer
via “we”. In fact, by employing Churchill as both an authority and critical
essayist who publicly defied the preposition rule, Roberts at once announces
convention and challenges orders, targeting other public entities beyond the
writing task. By drawing students into his confidence, Roberts also demon-
strates that he expects them to share in the paradox, i.e., he positions them as
co-intellectuals in interpreting the parody.
Example 3: Richard Lanham, Revising Prose, 2nd Edition (1987)

On various motivations for and methods of writing: “[P]ray for the muse,
marshal our thoughts, find the willpower to glue backside to chair – these may
be idiosyncratic, but revision belongs to the public domain” (Lanham vi).

PUR – invite self-disclosure
RD – monologue
REG – irony/sarcasm
SUB – social/cultural
TAR – course
In this example, Lanham mirrors several of Roberts’s tactics regarding audi-

ence construction and co-creation of the humor, especially by deferring in-
stitutional critique onto the course or the act of writing in a forced situation
and by employing a plural first-person. While this kind of self-disclosure
and writing empathy obviously promotes co-identification, it also promotes
a kind of conscientization in the writer, i.e., by positioning the writer to see
him or herself as player of an idiosyncratic game.
It is unlikely that these particular texts and examples would act as relevant
cultural influencers in contemporary rhetoric and composition pedagogy.
However, there is still cultural and disciplinary value in understanding how
we have used humor has promoted and represented what we consider to be
rhetorically “acceptable” on the one hand and influential on the other, and
how those understandings and representations shift over time. Understand-
ing how we seek to commodify certain pedagogical aims, and then determin-
ing in what way humor reflects them (i.e., do we use it to demonstrate fixed
principles or to negotiate unstable ideals?) helps us to more fully reflect on
whether and how our use of humor actually promotes the pedagogical aims
we think it does. Furthermore, attending to questions of who uses the humor,
to what degree, in what contexts and forms, and at whose expense can tell us
much about how our notions of discursive agency and disciplinary power act
as shaping forces in the public sphere.
2.2.2. Humor in business, technical, and professional writing
I run the risk of presenting this section as a disciplinary “add-on” by men-

tioning it last, when in reality much of the vital theorizing in profession-
al writing practices aligns with rhetorical scholarship some might consider
more “mainstream,” especially inasmuch as rhetoric and composition en-
compasses the serious study of the visual and the technical. For some of the
same reasons it persists in first-year and upper-level composition, the use of
humor still persists – rhetorically, discursively, linguistically – in the busi-
ness writing classroom, the seminar in visual literacy and document design,
and even in extra-academic contexts such as the community writing class,
the technical writing workshop, and the site-specific professional practices
course that instructs a company team in the analysis and production of crit-
ical documents.
Practically speaking, these may be the writing classes in large universities
that draw the largest number of students from varying disciplinary, cultural
and linguistic backgrounds. In other venues these may be the classes that act
as “contact zones” between academic and workplace preparation, or between
academic and professional goals. They may occur in alternative forms and
contexts, act as service-learning or “town-and-gown” bridge courses, or even
serve as sites for “pure” rhetorical theory building inasmuch as that theoriz-
ing attends to how the public and the visual come to bear on historical trad-
itions in academic contexts.
Though they are not all described in this way, a fair number of business,
technical and professional communication guides are authored for disparate
writing communities or created based on research into extra-academic con-
texts (Bridgeford, et al., Innovative Approaches; Cox, et al., “Male Female
Differences”), while others are designed for the classroom but with an extra-
academic focus (Berk, “Professors are from Mars”; Hurley, Humor and Tech-
nical Communication; Pieper, “The Scoop”). It may be this mixed – some-
times dissonant, typically extra-academic – trajectory that makes humorous
practices persist in professional writing, and that invites us to broaden our
understanding of humor in rhetoric and composition beyond insular notions
of “writer,” “reader,” “text,” or even “situation,” and beyond fixed notions of
how rhetoric functions in the public sphere.
3. Current future directions: Humor as cultural production in

contemporary (mostly political) written discourse
In addition to considering how historical shifts in humor have changed our

valuation of its practice in rhetoric, in addition to examining its pedagogi-
cal uses and implications for the writing classroom, and in addition to not-
ing where its use in non-traditional contexts has contributed to opening up
our pedagogy to postmodern considerations, another way humor has inter-
faced with rhetoric and composition is in heightening the distinction between
cultural formation and cultural production. To explain this interface as I see
it emerging, I draw on three theorizations related to audience (Olsen and
Olsen), invention (Atwill, “Introduction”; Atwill, Rhetoric Reclaimed), and
performativity (Holcomb, “Anyone”) and beg forgiveness from these theo-
rists if I have over-extended their work.
There is no dearth of scholarship about humor as cultural formation, espe-
cially when it comes to considering humor in politics or in justifying humor
as a mode of persuasion in jokes (Hols; Stein). Much of this scholarship
considers humor’s public role in these cultural genres – that is, how it con-
tributes to identity formation, inquiry, and critique, whether that involves
satirizing social injustice (Ganter, “He Made Us Laugh Some”; Lockyer and
Pickering, “Dear Shit-Shovellers”) or understanding humor in the context of
genteel rhetorical instruction (Holcomb, “Painted Garment”; Smith, Sydney
Smith). Humor’s role has also been traced and valuated in the writings of
major political figureheads and landmark addresses (Dahlberg, “Lincoln, the
Wit”; Bendix and Bendix, “Politics and Gender”; Bostdorff, “Vice-Presiden-
tial Comedy”). We understand how politicians have used humor (Charland);

how Aristotelian appeals can be applied to humor in American political cul-
ture (Rowland and Womack); and even how these same appeals illuminate
verbal and visual political humor in other cultures (Feldman). Beyond fun-
niness, this body of scholarship has proposed, examined, then re-proposed
rhetorical characterizations of humor, offering explanations of how humor
has shaped or challenged particular traditions in public discourse.
For example, Ganter demonstrates Frederick Douglass’s “transgressive”
ethos by explicating how he used irony and satire to exercise mastery over
his opponents while at the same time promoting cultural formation of rhet-
orical attitudes (Ganter 547). In some of his public address aimed at critics
of abolition, Douglass capitalized on juxtaposition and incongruity in order
to undermine accepted notions of community, i.e., by laughing at the way
he ironically distances himself from plantation humor, Douglass’s audience
might rethink the funniness of that cultural genre. In Ganter’s analysis, Doug-
lass often positioned his audience as cultural targets of the humor by inviting
them to laugh at his mockery of it. He became the other and urged them to-
wards social reform by reflecting on their treatment of “other.” Beyond treat-
ing humor as merely a subject of textual study, Ganter’s analysis allows us to
consider how public and political humor can instigate change in the way of
cultural re-formation.
But cultural formation and cultural production are not synonymous – one
relies on “of ” and “how” considerations, while the other may open up more
active investigation of “whether” and “why.” And there is evidence that even
as we analyze the former, we move towards the latter, towards a creation of
cultural knowledge by way of what humor applications allow us to imagine
differently.
Consider it telling that we evolve from Booth’s 1974 A Rhetoric of Irony
to Swearingen’s 1991 Rhetoric and Irony, implying that – in lieu of demar-
cating a literary system with rhetorical indicators, as Booth does when he
builds a series of tropes for rhetorical irony based on the principle of stable
forms – we find it more relevant to understand irony’s place as a cultural
force alongside (and within) broader questions of ethics, intention, and liter-
acy. For Booth, “rhetorical ironies” are those designed by one human being
deliberately to be shared with at least one other human being (234), and op-
erationally classified according to: (1) degree of openness or disguise (i.e.,
covert or overt); (2) degree of stability in the reconstruction; and (3) scope of
the “truth revealed” (i.e., local or infinite) (234). While Booth has significant-
ly introduced audience and authorial intention into his theorizing – moving
rhetorical theories of irony beyond the purely ideal or aesthetic – he has also
succeeded in limiting irony’s linguistic and rhetorical context. But in revising
rhetoric’s reliance on and evolution alongside irony, Swearingen asks, to what
extent do beliefs about the nature of language shape how language is used?
I extend this question here to ask: To what extent do beliefs about the nature
of humor shape our beliefs about rhetorical culture? What is humor’s role (or
set of roles) in rhetorical production, i.e., beyond a cultural phenomenon to
which rhetorical analysis can be applied?
One possibility is in how humor studies cause us to rethink audience as
producer of the rhetorical culture, rather than as recipient or follower of it.
For example, Olson and Olson argue for a more nuanced understanding of
how readers bring significant extra-textual information to irony that allows
us to consider irony’s purpose beyond authorial intention and beyond the
practical/aesthetic binary. By paying more attention to what the reader brings
to the ironic event, writers, rhetoricians, and rhetorical theorists are better
poised to argue for contingencies as worthwhile aims (Olson and Olson 32).
Another possibility is in understanding rhetorical invention as shaping or
influencing – rather than being shaped or influenced by – the principles that
govern public discourse, which in turn raises questions about shaping new
rhetorical cultures, or new rhetorical questions about shaping culture. For ex-
ample, in reclaiming classical notions of inventive art from the knowledge bi-
naries that have traditionally limited them (i.e., theory vs. practice, aesthetic
vs. utilitarian, subjective vs. empirical), Atwill invites us to rethink what it
means that rhetorical invention is “concerned with practice, but … aim[ed] at
creating arts that can inform practice across situations” (“Introduction” xvii).
In other words, her theorizing urges us to understand invention not as creat-
ing static, normative, or even representative knowledge but as always redefin-
ing knowledge boundaries (Atwill, Rhetoric Reclaimed 48). We might extend
this idea to imagine a rhetorical humor beyond purely productive or purely
aesthetic aims by eliding simplistic classifications of humor in rhetoric and
composition, or by reconceiving their categories of use.
A third possibility is in considering the performative dimensions of rhet-
orical humor in the public sphere. For example, Holcomb’s study of how
Stephen Colbert enacts a Bush-era “presidential discourse” on Jon Stewart’s
The Daily Show by using tricolon and anaphora, represents one way of using
the analysis of political humor not merely to understand tricolon and anaph-
ora as rhetorical devices, but rather to know the rhetoricity of such devices
when employed in this ironic political context. This means knowing how they
complicate our classifications and understandings of rhetorical device, just as
Gant would likely want us to interrogate certain notions of “oppression” and

“comic imitation” as aspects of cultural production when Frederick Doug-
lass employs them. According to Holcomb, such a complication occurs when
Colbert “breaks frame,” or establishes critical distance between himself and
the devices in order to model a stylistic analysis of what he is trying to mock
(Holcomb, “Anyone” 94). What is complicated is how the devices convey
power. In much the same way that Douglass imitated sermon discourse and
plantation humor, Colbert employs two discursive forms that he didn’t ori-
ginate but that, when employed together in an unexpected cultural context,
yield the same kind of emotional result or cultural power as when they are
used by the president (Holcomb, “Anyone” 74). This power occurs as a per-
formative happening that Stewart is not able to successfully imitate when
he tries using tricolon and anaphora himself (Holcomb, “Anyone” 75). This
cultural power “creates and manages” two sets of relationships – Colbert to
Stewart’s viewers, and Stewart to his own viewers.
Recent advances in linguistic theories of humor, again, equip us to con-
sider these possibilities. Giora and Fein underscore that irony works beyond
a semiotic one-way interaction by positing graded salience as a fuller explan-
ation of how audiences can process meaning. Attardo (2000) fortifies prag-
matic understandings of irony as determined by contextual inappropriateness
– both intentional and unintentional. Ritchie’s application of “frame-shift-
ing” to irony interpretation underscores the possibility of subversion between
initial and alternative frames (277). These are only a few and they focus on
irony, but they represent richer definitions of register humor for rhetoric and
composition that rely less on stark contrasts between what the audience ex-
pects and what the audience discerns, and even less on stable definitions of
“audience” and “context.”
Beyond new ways of questioning these concepts, we can aim to identify
new concepts to question. Beyond the study of humor’s role in persuasion –
as wit, as social critique, as pedagogical tool, as cultural formation – some of
the most salient theorizing for rhetoric and composition may be that which
extends the limits of our theorizing even as it adds to it, i.e., “breaking frame”
with the principles that drive it.
Notes
1. For a more comprehensive understanding of landmarks and movements in the

development of composition studies – including some identification of the nature
and kind of classroom pedagogies and texts – the reader might consult Berlin’s
Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges, Lindemann and
Tate’s An Introduction to Composition Studies, or Bloom, et al’s Composition
Studies in the New Millennium. These are only three of several dozen worthwhile
overviews.
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Applications of humor: Health, the workplace,
and education
John Morreall
Introduction
Over the last three decades humor researchers, largely in psychology and the
behavioral sciences, have found that humor has many benefits for individuals
and groups. In the last twenty years, hundreds of people have been apply-
ing these findings in such fields as medicine, business, and education. A new
profession has been created – the humor consultant. The most successful of
them, Joel Goodman of the Humor Project, has done presentations for over
one million people worldwide.
A growing number of psychotherapists use humor with their patients. One
bills himself as a “Mirthologist and Clinical Psychologist.” Organizations
like the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor get larger with every
convention. Hundreds of hospitals have created “comedy carts” with funny
books, audiotapes, and videotapes, or whole “humor rooms” for their patients
and their families. In New York City clowns from the Big Apple Circus have
formed Clown Care Units to visit hundreds of patients and their families
every day. Many nursing and healthcare conventions now feature lectures and
workshops on humor. Before the untimely death of its editor, the Journal of
Nursing Jocularity had over 30,000 subscribers.
In the business world, companies like IBM and AT&T regularly hire humor
consultants to conduct programs on how humor reduces stress, improves re-
lations with customers, and promotes creativity. For five years IBM’s pres-
tigious Advanced Business Institute, which conducts 3-day “colleges” for
business leaders from outside IBM, has integrated presentations on humor
and new styles of management into many of its programs. Sessions on humor
can also be found throughout the world of education, from Head Start confer-
ences, to school districts’ “in-service” days, to lectures in medical schools.
A handful of those applying the benefits of humor to healthcare, business,
and education have academic credentials in humor research. Dr. William Fry,
M.D., the pioneer of both humor research and its applications, is emeritus at
450 John Morreall
Stanford University’s medical school. Paul McGhee, now a full-time humor

consultant, received his Ph.D. in developmental psychology and has published
eleven books on humor. John Morreall, a professor with four books in the phi-
losophy of humor, does humor seminars in North America and Europe.
Unfortunately, such experts in humor research are a tiny minority among
humor consultants, and so some claims coming from the speaker’s platform
are not backed up by scientific research. For twenty years speakers have been
saying that laughter stimulates the release of endorphins in the brain, for
example, although this has not been demonstrated. Claims about laughter
and the immune system often cite the research of Lee Berk and Stanley Tan,
although critics like Rod Martin (2001) have argued that this research has
methodological shortcomings.
To compound the problem of amateurs talking about the nature of humor
and its benefits, humor consulting is a business, not a branch of higher edu-
cation. As consultants sell the benefits of humor, there is a natural tendency
for them to exaggerate the value of their wares. Humor consultants routinely
charge $2,500–$5,000 for a keynote talk, and so many of those who hire them
want to hear that humor will solve a multitude of problems.
Alternatively, many organizations hire a humor consultant merely as a mo-
tivational speaker to “pump up” their stressed-out, overworked employees.
For them “humor consultant” is just an inflated title for “comedian.” As long
as their employees enjoy the presentation, they do not care if the speaker’s
claims about humor are exaggerated.
In the competitive marketplace of public speaking, too, the popularity of
the “humor movement” has encouraged speakers who used to just do funny
talks to add a few comments about the benefits of humor to their funny talks
and change their job title to “humor consultant.”
All of these tendencies push humor consultants toward making exagger-
ated claims about the benefits of humor, and toward emphasizing the enter-
tainment value of their presentations. Both reduce their credibility. I recently
purchased an expensive video of a professionally trained psychologist with
a Ph.D. addressing an audience of 500. She brought a woman from the audi-
ence onto the platform, and then spent five minutes laughing heartily to get
the woman to laugh, and so to make the audience laugh. While mildly enter-
taining to watch, all this laughter made no point.
A recent internet search for “humor in the workplace” turned up over
96,000 items, many of them speakers’ web sites. A number of those feature
pictures of consultants dressed in funny costumes. The signature “bit” of one
consultant who gets $5,000 an hour is putting on a 22-inch crab hat and say-
Health, the workplace, and education 451
ing, “I’m feeling a little crabby today. Does it show?” Many of these people
distribute adhesive-backed red foam clown noses for the audience to put on.
Some bring a basket of props and sight gags onto the platform and spend most
of their presentation demonstrating them. A few of these consultants sell props
as “humor supplies” on their web sites. When such people have a message, it
is usually that being more playful and humorous will reduce stress. Their con-
cluding advice is often “Keep this clown nose in your pocket or purse and put
it on the next time you are feeling stressed-out.” Like the owners of old-fash-
ioned “joke shops,” these consultants have a limited understanding of what
humor is and how it can be beneficial.
Adding to the lack of accountability among humor consultants is the fact
that they are seldom a long-term part of the organizations they speak to, and
they do not conduct follow-up studies with their clients. If they have recom-
mended techniques to incorporate humor into the workplace, for example,
no one checks to see if the techniques are put into practice or if anything im-
proved.
Review of the literature and the humor movement
For all of the claims being made about the benefits of humor, there are remark-
ably few research studies. The vast majority of books published in this area,
even the medical and management books, are more “self-help” than science,
and include many more anecdotes and tips for using humor than reports of
scientific data about humor. Even authors who know something about humor
research tend to downplay it to avoid “turning off” the average reader. Despite
decades of humor research, there is still a common assumption that a book
about humor has to be a humorous book, and scientific data are not funny.
Most books and articles on the benefits of humor fall into one, or oc-
casionally two of these categories: Humor and Health, Humor in the Work-
place, and Humor in Education. We can consider them one at a time.
Humor and health
The humor and health movement is often traced to the 1979 publication of
Norman Cousins’ Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflec-
tions on Healing and Regeneration, a book in which Cousins tells of his
recovery from a life-threatening disease (ankylosing spondylitis) through
452 John Morreall
regular doses of self-administered humor. Watching funny movies, Cous-

ins laughed heartily. That brought him relief from pain, and so allowed him
much-needed sleep. Soon the inflammation was going down, and eventually
he recovered.
A year before Cousins’ book, Raymond Moody, MD, had published Laugh
after Laugh: the Healing Power of Humor. Moody gives a sketchy overview
of the physiology, psychology, and social aspects of laughter, and a history
of the idea that it has health benefits. He also argues that the medical profes-
sion needs to integrate humor into the treatment of patients. Early in the 20th
century, James Sully had briefly mentioned some medical benefits of laugh-
ter in An Essay on Laughter. And in 1922 William McDougall, a one-time
professor of psychology at Harvard, wrote “A New Theory of Laughter,” an
article claiming that the biological function of laughter was to help maintain
psychological health.
William Fry, MD, began doing research on the physiology and psychol-
ogy of laughter and humor in 1953. In 1968 he published Sweet Madness:
A Study of Humor, taking a broad look at the psychology and physiology of
laughter and humor. In 1971 he published “Laughter: Is It the Best Medi-
cine?” in Stanford M.D., and “Mirth and Oxygen Saturation of Peripheral
Blood” in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. Since then he has published
many more articles on humor and physical and mental health.
In 1989 Norman Cousins, after working as an adjunct professor of medi-
cine at UCLA Medical School for years, published Head First: The Biology
of Hope. It included a chapter on “The Laughter Connection” which summar-
ized many of the findings of the 1980s about the benefits of laughter. Among
the physical benefits are that laughter reduces pain, raises the threshold of
discomfort, and increases salivary immunogobulin-A, which fights off infec-
tions in the respiratory tract. Psychologically, the ability to summon humor
on demand is correlated with the ability to counteract stress. Cousins also
reported how his Anatomy book had inspired hospitals to create facilities
to bring humor and entertainment to patients and their families. One is the
“Living Room” at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Houston, another the Therapeutic
Humor Room at DeKalb Hospital in Decatur, Georgia. In 1989 there were
over two dozen such hospital facilities; now, according to Patty Wooten, R.
N., of Jest for the Health of It, there are over two hundred.
Dozens of hospitals have also created clown programs to serve not just
children’s wards but the whole hospital population. In Clearwater, Florida,
Leslie Gibson, R.N., started a clown school at Morton Plant Hospital which
trained over 100 volunteer clowns.
Inspired by Norman Cousins, the medical community soon began to re-

search the relation between laughter, emotions, and physiology, especially
the immune system. Thus was born the new field of psychoneuroimmunol-
ogy (psycho = mind, neuro = brain, immuno = immune system). The most
famous work in this field on humor has been done by Lee Berk, DrPH and
Stanley Tan, MD. In their experiments, subjects watching funny videos have
shown an increase in immune system activity, including the number of acti-
vated T- lymphocytes, the number of natural killer cells and their activity, im-
munoglobulin-A, -G and -M, and gamma interferon. One day later, all these
indicators were still elevated.
The research of Berk and Tan has been reported in several journal art-
icles and was summarized in 1996 by Barry Bittman, MD, of TouchStar Pro-
ductions, in an audiotape and a videotape, with accompanying slides and
booklet.
In the medical profession, nurses have embraced the benefits of humor
more quickly than doctors, perhaps because they have more contact with pa-
tients and their families. In 1977 Vera Robinson, a professor of nursing, pub-
lished Humor and the Health Professions: The Therapeutic Use of Humor
in Health Care (2nd edition 1991). Besides presenting information on the
physiological effects of laughter, Robinson suggests ways in which humor
can help medical staff deal with patients: by allowing them socially accepta-
ble ways to release their anger, by relieving anxiety and stress, and by facilitat-
ing their adjustment to the uncomfortable environment of a hospital. She also
discusses ways in which humor can help in psychiatric settings, especially
its ability to give patients emotional distance from their problems while sup-
porting them at the same time. For nurses and doctors themselves, she shows,
humor has similar psychological benefits in allowing them to cope with the
blood and guts and suffering and death in hospitals. Robinson also gives tips
on how different age groups and different ethnic groups – Southwest Indians,
Latinos, and African Americans – respond differently to illness and to humor.
A leader of the humor movement among nurses was the late Doug Fletch-
er with his Journal of Nursing Jocularity. This magazine served over 30,000
nurses as a forum in which they shared stories, jokes, and insights with their
colleagues.
One of the most respected names in the humor and health movement is
Patty Wooten, R.N., who has done programs for over 200,000 people. She has
published Compassionate Laughter: Jest for Your Health; Heart, Humor and
Healing, a collections of funny and inspiring quotations; and The Hospital
Clown, coauthored by the clown ShobiDobi.
454 John Morreall
In Compassionate Laughter, Wooten describes the value of humor in

health care and gives tips for incorporating it into hospitals. She explains the
nature of stress and humor’s opposition to it, and discusses ways in which
laughter enhances the immune system. She gives tips on how to find and cre-
ate humor even in the most disastrous situations. About half the book is de-
voted to the history and function of clowns, with ideas about how to develop
clown personalities for hospital work. Wooten herself does many presenta-
tions through three clown characters – Nancy Nurse, Nurse Kindheart, and
Scruffy, an Emmett-Kelly-type character.
Besides the general books on humor in health care, there are specialized
books in such areas as geriatrics and hospice care. Therapeutic Humor with
the Elderly, by Francis McGuire, Rosangela Boyd, and Ann James, reviews
the literature in the psychology of humor and its physiological benefits. There
is thorough coverage of the literature on therapeutic humor, especially with
the elderly. It discusses the successful use of humor at the Andrus Gerontol-
ogy Center of UCLA. A study done in connection with another gerontology
center found that higher humor scores among participants were correlated
with less worry about health and a general improvement in mood.
Allen Klein’s The Healing Power of Humor and The Courage to Laugh
are written less to present data or even practical tips than to edify and inspire.
Both have lots of anecdotes about the power of humor in coping with serious
illness and the prospect of death. As an example, a friend of Klein’s was the
caregiver for his aging mother. As her Alzheimer’s disease advanced, he sat
down with her to discuss her wishes for final arrangements. “Would you like
to be buried, or cremated?” he asked. “Surprise me,” she said.
While the humor movement has spread in the medical world generally,
it has been accepted more slowly in psychotherapy. This might seem puz-
zling since Freud himself wrote an entire book on Jokes and Their Relation
to the Unconscious (1905), and an important essay on “Humor” (1928), and
he used humor in his therapy. Nonetheless, traditional psychiatry frowned
on therapists using humor. Martin Grotjahn was the first psychoanalyst to
advocate humor in therapy (in the late 1940s) and still retain his professional
reputation. But in a colloquium honoring Dr. Grotjahn in 1971, Lawrence
Kubie presented the most widely cited paper on humor in this area – “The
Destructive Potential of Humor in Psychotherapy,” subsequently published
in the American Journal of Psychiatry. In the first two decades of the be-
havior therapy movement 1950–1970, there was not one mention of humor
in that literature. And though the rise of humor in psychotherapy is gener-
ally traced to the humanistic tradition, the patriarch of that movement, Carl
ogers, never mentioned humor in his writings on client-centered therapy.

R
Harold Greenwald did recall participating in a panel discussion with Rogers
in which Greenwald said that he thought psychotherapy was fun. “I saw the
red start at his collar and spread up and go over his face,” Greenwald reported,
“and finally he burst out, ‘I think it’s hard work, and if you think it’s fun, then
to hell with you.’”
In the last thirty years, as psychotherapy has become more eclectic,
humor has been accepted more widely. Viktor Frankl gave it a push with his
1967 article “Paradoxical Intention: A Logotherapeutic Technique” An ado-
lescent patient was so embarrassed by his stuttering in school over the letters
” b” and “p” that he refused to speak in class. Frankl told him to try to stutter
at every letter instead of only “b” and “p.” The student did that, laughed, and
stuttered no more. A woman came to Frankl because she was paralyzed with
the irrational fear that she would have a heart attack. After none of his stand-
ard therapeutic methods worked, he called in the woman’s husband and told
the couple to “Go downtown and pick out a nice coffin – what color should
the lining be?” The woman laughed and was cured of her fear.
In 1978 Allen Fay published Making Things Better by Making Them
Worse, building on Frankl’s “paradoxical therapy,” For a client with feel-
ings of inadequacy, for example, the therapist might respond to the patient’s
comments about being incompetent and undesirable by agreeing in an exag-
gerated way. “Of course, no one likes you – you have absolutely nothing to
offer anybody!” As patients hear their own problems or complaints magni-
fied to absurdity, they come to see them as funny. That allows them some
emotional distance to see their problems more objectively, and thus to deal
with them.
An early book devoted solely to humor in therapy was Dan Keller’s
Humor as Therapy. Written in a non-technical style, it argues for the value
of humor in psychotherapy and gives many examples of how humor can help
both client and therapist. Humor allows clients to express repressed feelings.
It can also provide “a welcome relief from the intense doses of transfer-
ence and hostility to which the therapist is inevitably exposed.” The method
may be as simple as asking the client to describe a moment of laughter from
childhood. Keller describes some of his own techniques, such as sharing
embarrassing moments, role-playing, writing ee-cummings-style verse, and
fortune cookie therapy. A colleague of his has been successful with the tech-
nique of drawing cartoons of clients’ predicaments in a nonthreatening way.
The end of Keller’s book is “In the Loose Ends of Myself,” in which he com-
ically psychoanalyzes himself.
456 John Morreall
Thomas Kuhlman’s Humor and Psychotherapy gives a broad vision of

what humor can accomplish in therapy. He discusses both therapist-initiated
humor and client-initiated humor. In the short term, Kuhlman says, humor
can reduce tension in the client and the therapist; in the long term, it can
shape and change their relationship. It can produce insight into a problem or,
as with sarcastic humor, avoidance of a problem. His explores Frankl’s para-
doxical intention, using humor to overcome resistance, humor in systematic
desensitization, and self-actualization through humor. The simplest summary
of the value of humor in therapy is Gordon Allport’s comment that “the neu-
rotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management,
perhaps to cure.”
In discussing the work of well-known therapists, Kuhlman covers gentle,
sympathetic humor, such as the satirical impersonations of Harold Green-
wald and the banter of Harvey Mindess, and also the aggressive putdowns
of Albert Ellis in Rational Emotive Therapy. For many therapists, the client’s
experience of humor is a means to a therapeutic goal such as insight. For
therapists like Mindess and Walter O’Connell (Natural High Therapy), how-
ever, having patients see humor in their situations is an end in itself. Kuhlman
also devotes a chapter to presenting the risks and dangers of using humor in
therapy and explaining how to minimize them. At the end is a chapter on
humor in child therapy, family therapy, and group therapy.
In 1987 and again in 1993 therapists William Fry and Waleed Salameh
published collections of current essays. The first is Handbook of Humor and
Psychotherapy. Besides its fourteen contributed chapters, it has an introduc-
tion, conclusion, and comprehensive bibliography. Each chapter is organized
into six sections: theoretical perspectives, techniques, pertinent uses, clini-
cal presentation, synthesis, and references. The lead contribution is by Jef-
frey Goldstein, who with Paul McGhee published The Psychology of Humor:
Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues and the two-volume Hand-
book of Humor Research. Other chapters were contributed by Albert Ellis on
humorous songs in Rational Emotive Therapy, Walter O’Connell on humor
in Natural High Therapy, Frank Farrelly and Michael Lynch on humor in pro-
vocative therapy, Rhoda Lee Fisher and Seymour Fisher on therapeutic strat-
egies with the comic child, W. Larry Ventis on humor in behavior therapy,
Sidney Bloch on humor in group therapy, and Waleed Salameh on humor in
integrative short-term psychotherapy.
Fry and Salameh’s second anthology is Advances in Humor and Psycho-
therapy. The contributions, by less well-known names in the field, are struc-
tured in the same six sections as in the first volume. Echoing Allport’s com-
ment quoted earlier, Paul Watzlawick says in the Foreword that “From our
work we know that people are half over their emotional problems once they
manage to laugh at their predicament.” Topics in the eleven chapters include
humor in therapy with adolescents, using favorite jokes in child therapy,
humor in substance abuse treatment, humor as a religious experience, humor
in relation to obsessive compulsive disorders, humor in a college mental
health program, humor and spirituality, and the implications of Kierkegaard’s
humor for indirect humorous communication in psychotherapy. The volume
also has a 25-page Comprehensive Research and Clinical Bibliography on
Humor and Psychotherapy (1964–1991) with abstracts of each item from the
American Psychological Association’s Psychological Abstracts.
A shorter, less well-known anthology is The Handbook of Humor:Clinical
Applications in Psychotherapy by Elcha Shain Buckman. Along with a re-
view of the literature, this book has nine chapters on such issues as humor
in children’s and adolescents’ therapy, humor as communication facilitator
in couples therapy, humor in family therapy, the use of absurd statements in
therapy, humor in treatment of the elderly, and humor with cancer patients.
Though the authors do not break much new ground, they often illustrate their
points with good cases. As an example, one of the authors met with a potential
client for an intake session in which he seemed suspicious and hesitant. The
therapist told him what she saw as main problems, how she would proceed
with therapy, and what the fees would be. He asked, “Do you really think you
can help me?” ”No,” she said, “but I do want your money.” The man laughed,
realizing that she had intuited his concerns, and he committed to therapy.
Humor in the workplace
In the early 1980s, as the medical community was getting interested in humor,
business was too. This was a time of huge changes in the workplace. The In-
dustrial Age had given way to the Information Age.
Traditional approaches to management had grown out of the practices of
factory managers in the early twentieth century. The classic text here was
Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management, in which workers were presumed
to be lazy and irresponsible. The manager’s job was to divide the work into
small, repeated, easily monitored tasks. Taylor himself did time-motion stud-
ies at a steel mill in Pittsburgh to determine exactly how many pounds of
458 John Morreall
coal the workers should lift on their shovels and exactly how many times per
minute they should toss the coal into the blast furnace. That style of manage-
ment was also applied to office jobs. It created mechanical jobs and bored
workers, but also made businesses profitable.
In the 1980s, however, as simple mechanical tasks were taken over by ro-
bots, and the jobs left for humans required more judgment, decision-making,
and cooperation with other workers, the old management techniques were
not working. To add to managers’ headaches, increased foreign and domestic
competition put pressure on companies to be more productive and innova-
tive, to “do more with less.” They had to produce more varied products and
services and change often to satisfy shifting markets. Quality control had
to improve, too, and so workers had to be more involved in the work they
were doing. New computer-driven technologies had to be implemented more
quickly, so workers had to go through lots of training. All of these changes
created anxiety in workers and managers. To make work even more stressful,
companies started watching their bottom line more closely, and laying off
workers in unprecedented numbers. Kodak, IBM, and other firms that had
never before laid off workers, did so to increase quarterly profits. The workers
left standing after waves of downsizing, had more work to do and wondered
whether they would survive the next wave.
In the 1980s health-claims prompted by stress increased 700% in Califor-
nia. By the end of the decade, the American Academy of Family Physicians
estimated that 65% of visits to the family doctor were prompted by stress, and
stress was estimated to cost American employers $200 billion per year.
Business leaders saw the need to change traditional Taylor-style manage-
ment practices in order to preserve the sanity and productivity of their work-
ers and managers. Led by consultants like Tom Peters, the most successful
business of the last two decades, they “flattened” their organizations, that is,
reduced the number of levels of management. They empowered workers by
giving them more discretion and more input into decisions affecting them.
They also looked for ways to change employees’ attitudes towards their work,
and even their emotions, not just to reduce workplace stress but also to make
workers more adaptable to change and less risk-aversive. They wanted to
boost morale and teamwork, too, and foster creative thinking. Because humor
was linked to all of these goals, it began showing up in training strategies and
even in company philosophies.
A good example is the philosophy of New England Securities, rewritten
by a new president who at his first meeting with employees read a Dr. Seuss
story, Oh the Places You’ll Go. The philosophy has 13 points:
1. Take risks. Don’t play it safe.

2. Make mistakes. Don’t try to avoid them.
3. Take initiative. Don’t wait for instructions.
4. Spend energy on solutions, not on emotions.
5. Shoot for total quality. Don’t shave standards.
6. Break things. Welcome destruction. It’s the first step in the creative pro-
cess.
7. Focus on opportunities, not problems.
8. Experiment.
9. Take personal responsibility for fixing things. Don’t blame others for
what you don’t like.
10. Try easier, not harder.
11. Stay calm!
12. Smile!
13. Have fun!
Except perhaps for the line about total quality, all of these directives would be
easier to implement in an environment where humor was encouraged.
Several studies showed that business leaders recognized the potential of
humor to help in the management revolution of the 1980s. In the middle of
the decade, Robert Half International conducted a survey of 100 of the larg-
est American corporations and found that 84% of vice presidents and human
resource directors thought that employees with a sense of humor are more
effective than those with little or no sense of humor. The organization’s re-
port concluded that “People with a sense of humor tend to be more creative,
less rigid and more willing to consider and embrace new ideas and methods.”
In a Hodge-Cronin survey polling 737 CEOs of major corporations, 98% of
respondents said that humor was important in the conduct of business, that
most executives did not have enough humor, and that in hiring they gave pref-
erence to people with a sense of humor.
One director of human resources, Nancy Hauge, of Sun Microsystems,
comments that in job interviews she notes how soon job candidates laugh.
“How long does it take the interviewee to find something funny, tell me some-
thing funny, or share his or her sense of humor? Because humor is very im-
portant to our corporate culture.”
A 1994 article in Human Resources magazine called for human resource
managers to start programs to show employees how to lighten up. Soon humor
consultants were doing workshops on humor as an antidote to stress. Compa-
nies around Chicago, and even the University of Chicago’s MBA program,
460 John Morreall
hired instructors from the Second City comedy troupe to conduct improvisa-
tional comedy exercises with their people, to increase their creative thinking,
ability to work in teams, and communication skills.
Humor was also touted for its association with innovation and the ability
to recover from mistakes. Tom Peters had this comment in his 1988 Thriving
on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution: “Urgency and laugh-
ter go hand in glove. ‘Get going’ and ‘try something’ are among this book’s
central tenets. To speed action-taking, we simply must learn to laugh at our
own (personal, organizational) bureaucratic, action-delaying foibles; and we
must learn to laugh at interesting and useful mistakes.” On the back cover
of his 1994 book The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Or-
ganizations, he appears dressed in a gray suit from the waist up and in loud
orange-print undershorts from the waist down. Above the photo is this quote
from Peters, “Welcome to a world where imagination is the source of value in
the economy. It’s an insane world, and in an insane world, sane organizations
make no sense.”
By the mid-1990s most Fortune 500 companies were listening to the mes-
sage that humor and fun could help boost their bottom line. Eastman Kodak
was operating a “humor room” at its headquarters in Rochester, New York;
Hewlitt-Packard, Price-Waterhouse, and dozens of other companies had simi-
lar facilities. One branch of Digital Equipment had created a “Grouch Patrol,”
whose members would respond to sour faces with “bat faces.” To make a bat
face, push the tip of your nose up, flick your tongue in and out quickly, and
make a high-pitched “Eeeee” sound.
The new “play ethic” supplementing the old “work ethic” encouraged not
just humor but fun generally. In 1996, Karen Donnalley, head of IBM’s Inside
Sales Center, a 75-member sales team selling mid-sized computers to 17,000
customers, got together colleagues who played musical instruments to form
a pick-up orchestra of tubas, accordions, and anything else anyone brought
in. The group also began recording sales in fun ways. When team members
made their first sale of the day, they smashed a gong and moved race horse
icons with their pictures on them out of a starting gate. Within a year Don-
nalley’s unit’s sales figures were up 30 percent.
Academic studies in psychology and management backed up the new ap-
proach. David Abramis did a study in which small groups who laughed to-
gether were more productive in thinking up anagrams (in Pollio and Bainum
1983). Alice Isen of the Department of Psychology and Johnson Graduate
School of Management at Cornell University reported that groups who en-
gaged in a humorous task and then did a brainstorming exercise came up with
more ideas and a greater range of ideas than control groups.
David Abramis studied 923 adult workers from a wide range of jobs. He
had 678 fill out a detailed questionnaire about humor and fun at work, and
347 were interviewed at length. Those who reported that they enjoyed more
positive humor at work were also more involved with their jobs, had greater
job satisfaction, and higher mental health scores. They were less anxious and
depressed, and more satisfied with their lives in general.
According to Abramis, there are six ways in which work quality and men-
tal health may increase where fun is encouraged. Fun relieves boredom and
fatigue, fulfills human social needs, increases creativity and willingness to
help coworkers, fulfills needs for mastery and control, improves communica-
tion, and breaks up conflict and tension.
In trying to get their employees to relax, many companies relaxed their
dress codes at least once a week. In 1994 the Campbell Research Corpor-
ation did a survey of 750 major companies, in which 66% of the companies
reported that they had casual dress days. 81% of those companies said that
these days improved morale, and 47% said that it improved productivity.
Several management studies also showed the importance of humor in man-
agement. A survey of more than 350 alumni from Salisbury’s Perdue School
of Business found that women managers who used humor in the workplace
were viewed by their staffs as more effective than those who did not use
humor (in ”Humor on the job – avoid it to your detriment”).
By the late 1980s there were a dozen books on humor and fun in the
workplace. While they sometimes referred to the psychology and manage-
ment literature, they were intended mostly as practical guides rather than as
research reports. Usually they were shelved under Psychology or Business or
Self-Help. Virtually all of them were written by humor consultants and, like
the oral presentations from which they were developed, they are light on the-
oretical studies and heavy on entertaining examples.
One of the earliest entries in this field was Esther Blumenfield and Lynne
Alpern’s The Smile Connection: How to Use Humor in Dealing with People.
Based on a popular course the authors taught at Emory University, this book
presents ideas and stories about workplace situations where humor can help:
getting attention, presenting new information or risky opinions, criticizing,
bringing people together, building morale, announcing unpleasant surprises,
and training. There are chapters on humor in speeches, humor in dealing with
difficult people, humor in friendship and romance, and humor in families.
462 John Morreall
Blumenfeld and Alpern followed up in 1994 with Humor at Work: The

Guaranteed, Bottom-Line, Low-Cost, High-Efficiency Guide to Success
Through Humor. This expanded book has individual chapters on humor
with employees, humor with co-workers, and humor in secretarial work,
sales, teaching, and health care. One special value of the book is its female
perspective. The authors tell how a group of women who held weekly meet-
ings handled a male coworker who would routinely drop his pencil on the
floor so that he could look under the table at their legs as he bent down to
retrieve it. Instead of filing a formal complaint, or even mentioning the prob-
lem to him, they simply prepared for their next meeting by printing on their
knees, one letter per kneecap, “H-I - R-A-L-P-H.”
Bob Ross’s Laugh, Lead and Profit examines the benefits of humor in the
new work environment of the Information Age. Humor fosters open commu-
nication, reduces stress, and supports a consultative and participative man-
agement style, he says. In 1998, Ross followed up with a more practical
book, Funny Business: The Art of Using Humor Constructively. It has many
examples and tips about enhancing one’s sense of humor, and using humor
to boost one’s image, lead, persuade, defuse hostility and confrontation, and
solve problems. There are also chapters on humor in friendships and romance,
and a concluding chapter, “Master the Art of Living and Laughing.”
In 1989 Terry Paulson, Ph.D., published a short “workbook,” Making
Humor Work: Take Your Job Seriously and Yourself Lightly. It reviewed fa-
miliar points about humor’s impact in communications and its ability to cre-
ate rapport, persuade, defuse anger, and help workers cope with rapid change.
There are separate chapters on health and creativity.
The Light Touch: How to Use Humor for Business Success was written
by Malcolm Kushner, a former lawyer who bills himself as “America’s Fore-
most Humor Consultant.” The chapters on humor in speeches and presenta-
tions emphasize the importance of developing funny stories from one’s own
experience. Kushner even offers a checklist of common situations to help the
reader get started. He also presents short excerpts from effective speeches.
There is a chapter on “Seven Types of Humor Anyone Can Use” (quotes,
cartoons, funny letters, lists, analogies, definitions, and observations) and
a chapter on telling jokes. Kushner stresses the value of self-deprecating
humor, especially in handling embarrassing situations and difficult people.
Other themes include using humor as a positive motivational tool and hand-
ling workplace conflicts with humor. To make the book appealing to human
resource directors, Kushner provides exercises for developing humor skills,
offers suggestions on using humor as a barometer of organizational health,

and encourages the creation of a Humor Action Plan.
John Morreall published Humor Works after researching and writing
about humor for twenty years, and after doing presentations on humor for
eight years. The book is grounded in the Incongruity Theory, and it shows
how humor is physically and mentally healthy, how it counteracts stress, and
how it promotes mental flexibility. In a chapter on humor as social lubri-
cant, he explores the use of humor in situations such as criticizing, handling
complaints, and making requests. He also shows how humor is essential to
such features of the new management as empowering workers, team building,
and encouraging critical thinking. A chapter on positive and negative humor
explores women’s cooperative humor and men’s competitive humor. In the
final chapter, “How’s Your Laugh Life?”, Morreall shows how humor can be
a philosophy of life.
Although most books on humor in the workplace have focused on Ameri-
can business, there is an excellent book about humor in European business
by Jean-Louis Barsoux, Funny Business: Humour, Management and Busi-
ness Culture. Based on first-hand observations and interviews with top-level
European executives, it shows how humor can be a sword – to influence and
persuade, to motivate and unite, to say the unspeakable, and to bring about
change. It can also be a shield – to deflect criticism, cope with failure, and
defuse conflict. For businesses as a whole, too, humor is useful in reinforc-
ing shared values, bonding teams, and defining and perpetuating corporate
cultures. The use of humor even defines national management styles.
In addition to books on humor in the workplace, there are also a number
on fun in the workplace. They tout fun activities as having many of the same
benefits as humor – relaxing people, allowing them to interact in enjoyable
ways, building morale and team spirit, and spurring creative thinking. The
simplest of these books is Ron Garland’s Making Work Fun. After a short
introduction in which he mocks the idea of providing any theory or data
about fun in the workplace, Garland describes 101 fun things to do at work,
including an art contest, computer tag, playing harmonicas, Nerf basketball,
an office treasure hunt, a slogan contest, a talent contest, theme days, videos
at lunch, a weight loss contest, and playing with yo-yos.
This Job Should Be Fun: The New Profit Strategy for Managing People
in Tough Times, by Bob Basso and Judi Klosek, also suggests lots of fun ac-
tivities to spice up work, but does so within a cheerleading rhetoric for the
New Economy. In writing the book, the writers claim, they interviewed 2,700
464 John Morreall
managers. Their mantras are “M-I-B” (Make It Better) and “I Care – You
Matter – This Job Should Be Fun.” The text consists mostly of bulleted lists,
checklists, motivational quotations, etc.
Steve Wilson’s The Art of Mixing Work and Play is about incorporating
laughter, playfulness and humor into the experience of work. The author
of Eat Dessert First, ”Joyologist” Wilson got interested in humor through
his practice as a clinical psychologist. In human babies, he says, the neural
substrates for laughter are in place at birth, and laughter is our birthright.
When we see ourselves and the world with a sense of humor, we acknow-
ledge the human condition, that we are born vulnerable, valuable, imperfect,
dependent, and immature. In his chapters on play in the workplace, Wilson
discusses how play keeps people motivated, upbeat, and productive; and he
suggests 89 fun activities.
Matt Weinstein’s Managing to Have Fun: How Fun at Work Can Motivate
Your Employees, Inspire Your Coworkers, Boost Your Bottom Line is based
on the author’s work for over twenty years with Playfair, Inc., a company that
runs workshops on incorporating fun into workplaces. Having fun activities
at work, Weinstein says, is an effective way of rewarding and recognizing
workers. He divides his 52 fun activities into those carried out by one per-
son, those carried out by teams, company-wide initiatives, and fun rituals and
celebrations. His closing chapter is “Having Fun in Difficult Times.” Wein-
stein has four principles for introducing fun into the workplace: think about
the specific people involved; lead by example; if you’re not getting personal
satisfaction from what you’re doing, it’s not worth doing; and change takes
time. Here are some representative ideas: Pay for the car behind you at the
toll gate. Play “Happy Birthday to You” on the telephone keypad (4 4 5 4 9
8). Arrange an Ugly Tie or Ugly Shoe Contest. Have casual dress days. Ar-
range a monthly outing. Reverse Roles. Distribute stuffed animals. Post baby
pictures of employees on a bulletin board.
Education
As the humor movement picked up momentum in the early 1980s, it was

embraced by many teachers and trainers. Several of the books on humor in
the workplace discuss its special values in teaching and training, and there
are also books devoted just to education. The three books described below
explain the importance of humor and play in education, and suggest ways of
bringing them into the classroom. They show how humor can foster analytic,
critical, and divergent thinking; catch and hold students’ attention, increase
retention of learned material, relieve stress, build rapport between teacher
and students, build team spirit among classmates, smooth potentially rough
interactions, promote risk taking, and get shy and slow students involved in
activities.
Marilyn Droz and Lori Ellis’s Laughing While Learning: Using Humor in
the Classroom has two parts. The first, Understanding Humor, covers humor
and cognitive development, the general benefits of humor, and humor in
school. Droz and Ellis have read the psychology material and deal with issues
like gender differences in humor and teasing. The second part, Putting Humor
to Work for You, applies humor to the classroom. It offers many suggestions
for working humor into the curriculum for reading (with joke analysis), writ-
ing (making up tall tales), math, spelling, science, and history. There are also
chapters on class clowns, shy students, using humor in discipline, and teach-
ing students with disabilities.
The Laughing Classroom: Everyone’s Guide to Teaching with Humor and
Play, by Diane Loomis and Karen Kolberg, is similar to Laughing While
Learning, but has more exercises and tips. The authors relate humor to posi-
tive thinking and to self-esteem. Ideas for humor in discipline include ask-
ing students to add to a running list of “Exceptional Excuses.” There are
many imaginative exercises adapted from Edward de Bono, Victor Borge, and
Jonathan Winters.
Fred Stopsky’s Humor in the Classroom: A New Approach to Critical
Thinking is written by a former social studies teacher, and has dozens of tips
and exercises to bring critical and divergent thinking into the social studies
curriculum. Among them are designing “Wanted” posters and scripting tri-
als for Hitler and Cortez. The exercise “Ludicrous Laws” has students study
odd laws like the one in Brooklyn, New York which made it illegal to let an
animal sleep in a bathtub, and then make up similar laws. In another exercise,
students discuss famous bad predictions such as Lord Kelvin’s “Heavier than
air machines are impossible,” and Harry Warner’s 1927 comment, “Who the
hell wants to hear actors talk?” There are also interesting menus from history
and song lyrics like “No Irish Need Apply.”
The best known advocate of the educational value of humor is John Cleese,
formerly of Monty Python, who in 1973 started the Video Arts company to
produce training videos for business. The company is now the largest and
most successful of its kind. By getting trainees to laugh, Cleese says, you
get them to both pay attention and relax, an optimal combination for learn-
ing. Humor is especially useful in promoting a non-defensive attitude toward
466 John Morreall
mistakes. Most of Cleese’s videos show mistakes in an exaggerated way to

create humor. In his most popular, “Meetings, Bloody Meeting,” for example,
everything that could go wrong at a meeting does go wrong. Trainees laugh
and in doing so can admit to themselves that they make some of those mis-
takes too. In that way, they can correct them. Another example, not from
Cleese, is the manager who had made a big mistake and had to call a meeting
to correct the problems it had caused. He walked into the meeting wearing
a t-shirt with a large red bulls-eye on the front. Everyone laughed, relaxed,
and could begin to work on the problems.
Many corporations are now using humor in similar ways. Chase Manhat-
tan Bank, for example, started a program for handling often repeated mis-
takes by tellers. Instead of scolding them, the bank had a graphic artist make
funny posters illustrating the trouble caused by the mistakes. The posters
were placed on the walls of the banks. Tellers saw them, laughed, and in 95%
of the cases, quickly corrected their mistakes.
Another application of humor to reduce defensiveness and foster learn-
ing can be found in the driver education business. In the 1980s several driv-
ing schools in California found that their most successful instructors were
part-time stand-up comics. Their humor allowed students to relax, and when
students made mistakes, their humorous reactions allowed them to learn in
a non-defensive way. One of the largest driving schools in the state, Lettuce
Amuse U, now has only comics as instructors, and many of their clients are
referred by the DMV as first-time traffic offenders who choose the training in
place of having the offense go on their driving record.
General benefits of humor
In addition to books specifically on health, the workplace, and education,

there are some general books on the benefits of humor. C. W. Metcalf and
Roma Felible’s Lighten Up: Survival Skills for People Under Pressure uses
many anecdotes to explore the nature of stress and how humor overcomes it.
Their thesis is that humor “is a set of survival skills that relieve tension, keep-
ing us fluid and flexible instead of allowing us to become rigid and break-
able, in the face of relentless change.” The three Humor Skills they discuss
are the ability to see the absurdity in difficult situations, the ability to take
yourself lightly while taking your work seriously, and a disciplined sense
of joy in being alive. They explore humor not only in counteracting work-
place stress, but in handling depression and in recovering from alcoholism.

Among their original techniques are “Photo Funnies.” Visit a photo booth
and have several pictures taken with your face outlandishly distorted. Then
keep these photos in your wallet or purse. The next time you face a major
problem, take out the photos and “Think. You are not just the problem you
are having; you’re this too.”
Another humor consultant with a comprehensive vision of the benefits of
humor is Paul McGhee, who earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology
and was published widely in humor research before becoming a humor con-
sultant. His self-published 1991 book, The Laughter Remedy: Health, Heal-
ing, and the Amuse System, reviews traditional theories of humor and outlines
its health benefits, especially the reduction of pain and the increased activity
of the immune system. One chapter examines the nature of stress, especially
the loss of a sense of control, and the following chapter describes humor as
a remedy for stress that gives us perspective and feelings of control.
Humor is a subjective experience that requires a playful attitude, McGhee
says, and it can be developed as a set of skills. So one third of the book is de-
voted to diagnostic tests of sense of humor, and techniques to increase humor
skills. Among the tips for humor development are: Become more playful,
Surround yourself with humor you enjoy, Begin telling jokes and funny stor-
ies, and Laugh at yourself.
McGhee expanded these ideas in his 1994 book How to Develop Your
Sense of Humor: An 8-Step Humor Development Training Program, with its
accompanying Humor Log. The basic advice is that humor, as a set of intel-
lectual, emotional, and social skills, can be practiced in non-threatening and
mildly disturbing situations, so that it becomes habitual. Then when big prob-
lems come along, you will be better able to see the humor in your situation,
and thus counteract potential stress.
The attitude of taking yourself lightly that McGhee recommends includes
recognizing that you are not the center of the universe and that your perspec-
tive is just one among many, refusing to carry around heavy feelings when
you make a mistake, and seeing the funny side of your own behavior and cir-
cumstances.
In 1999, McGhee revised these earlier books into Health, Healing, and
the Amuse System: Humor as Survival Training. In this book he adds many
applications to the workplace, with detailed real examples from American
business.
468 John Morreall
Issues
In each of the three applied fields we have discussed – health, business, and
education – the basic question is what benefits can be expected from humor.
We will consider that question in each field separately, adding other important
issues where appropriate.
Health
Many physical health claims have been made for humor. Several of these
come from the research of William Fry and colleagues. For the muscles of the
upper body, it is said, laughter provides moderate exercise. Twenty seconds
of hearty laughter, Fry has often been quoted as saying, gives the heart and
lungs a workout equivalent to three minutes on a rowing machine
Laughter increases the circulation of the blood, as heart rate and blood
pressure increase. The rapid inhaling and exhaling in laughter ventilate the
lungs and increase the uptake of oxygen (six times the rate during quiet con-
versation). Laughter replaces residual air in the lungs with fresh air, which
may reduce the level of water vapor and carbon dioxide in the lungs, and thus
the risk of pulmonary infection.
When laughter stops, heart rate and blood pressure drop to below normal,
and remain below normal for up to 45 minutes. Muscles throughout the body
relax.
In the blood, humorous laughter lowers the level of stress hormones
(epinephrine, cortisol, dopac, and growth hormone). In the brain, catecho-
lamines are secreted, which may increase alertness, reduce inflammation,
and trigger the release of endorphins, the brain’s natural opiates. This may
account for the reduction of pain often reported after laughter.
The most encouraging claims about laughter and humor in recent years
have been in the area of psychoneuroimmunology, the study of the mind’s
relation to the immune system. In the research of Lee Berk and Stanley Tan,
several indicators of immune system activity increase when subjects laugh at
a funny video, and that boost lasts for at least a day.
While all of these claims have been warmly received by popular and medi-
cal audiences alike, a few critics warn that not all have been verified with
sufficient rigor to be announced as scientific truth. At the 1999 meeting of
the International Society of Humor Studies in Oakland, California, Professor
Rod Martin argued that claims for the benefits of humor “are often simplistic,
exaggerated, and unsubstantiated.” He was especially critical of methodo-

logical weaknesses in the research on humor and the immune system. Drs.
Berk and Tan have done few experiments, he said, and those with a small
number of subjects. While everyone likes the idea that humor can cure many
of our ills and protect us from more, he argued, we need more research. Mar-
tin (2001) makes similar points.
Claims about the mental health benefits of humor are even more wide-
spread than claims about its physical benefits. Countless speakers, articles,
and books have said that humor reduces anxiety, fear, anger, and stress, and
increases joy, optimism, and a sense of control over our lives. In psychother-
apy, humor is said to relax clients, create rapport with therapists, and facili-
tate communication. It is also said to overcome clients’ resistance to therapy,
allow them to overcome repressed feelings, and give them perspective and
emotional distance from their problems. All these effects can yield insights
for clients and progress in their therapy.
Some of these claims have been empirically tested. Rod Martin and Her-
bert Lefcourt, for example, have done several experiments showing the ap-
parent buffering effect of humor on negative emotions when people face po-
tentially stressful situations. That is, people who have a greater appreciation
of humor do not suffer as great downswings in mood and are better able to
cope with potential stressors. Other claims about humor and mental health,
however, are not as well verified. How should we understand optimism, for
example? Do those who laugh easily have different beliefs about the future?
Rod Martin, Willibald Ruch, and other are continuing empirical research in
this area.
Critics of the Humor and Health movement have asked about the many
correlational studies touted as showing that people with a good sense of
humor are healthier or enjoy some other benefit. The question they ask is
how we know what is cause and what is effect. In studies showing a cor-
relation between humor and positive mood, is it the sense of humor which
causes the increase in positive mood, or might the increase in positive mood
(from other sources) cause a heightened appreciation of the humorous stim-
uli in their environment? Or might there be some third characteristic causing
both the sense of humor and the other variable?
In the field of psychotherapy, as mentioned earlier, traditional experts
were wary of using humor. And even the therapists who now advocate it warn
that it is a complex phenomenon which can be misinterpreted, especially by
people with severe mental problems. It can also have unintended negative
consequences. If, after all, professional comedians using well-honed material
470 John Morreall
have difficulty controlling the thought patterns of normal people, how much
harder it must be for therapists to predict just how a client will respond to
some funny line that comes to them spontaneously. Many therapists, there-
fore, use only the safest and gentlest humor, so that even if it fails to amuse
the client, at least it will not hurt the therapy. Others, such as some in Rational
Emotive therapy, routinely use more risky confrontational humor.
Workplace
Humor consultants are in general agreement about the benefits of humor in

the new Information Age workplace. First, humor is physically and psycho-
logically healthy, especially in its reduction of stress.
Secondly, it fosters several forms of mental flexibility. By blocking nega-
tive emotions such as fear, anger, and depression, it helps workers keep their
cool and think more clearly. Because humor is based on enjoying what is un-
expected, it helps workers stay out of mental ruts and think more creatively.
That helps them adjust to new situations and thus cope with change. Because
humor often involves switching perspectives, too, it increases tolerance for
ambiguity and uncertainty.
Especially important here is people’s ability to laugh at themselves. To
see the humor in our own situation, especially in our mistakes, involves see-
ing ourselves more objectively than usual, more “from the outside,” as we
see other people. That makes us less defensive and more able to learn from
mistakes.
Thirdly, humor is essential to the new team-based workplace because it
creates rapport between people and serves as social lubricant. Companies
which intentionally foster a spirit of humor and fun have found that their
workers have higher morale, feel closer to their fellow workers, and are more
loyal to the company than workers at other companies.
In all forms of communication, humor can get attention, help persuade,
and increase memory of the message. Humor is especially useful in situ-
ations where people might otherwise feel negative emotions towards each
other. Laughing together – either about the potential source of friction or
about something extraneous – brings them together, blocks negative feelings,
and promotes cooperation rather than confrontation. Consider the situation
of a person collecting a debt. No matter how clear it is that the debt is owed,
the natural inclination of the debtor is to feel defensive and hostile toward
the person asking for payment. Indeed, many debt collection letters work by
intimidation. But consider how everything changes when the debt collector
gets the debtor to laugh, as in this middle paragraph from a debt collection
letter:
We appreciate your business, but, please, give us a break. Your account is
overdue 10 months. That means that we’ve carried you longer than your
mother did.
Humor has been shown effective in managing difficult people, even in situ-
ations of physical hostility. After completing a humor training course, one
California police officer was called to a family fight. As she pulled up to the
house, she heard loud noises and screaming. As she approached the front
door, a portable TV set came crashing through the front window. When she
knocked loudly on the front door, a voice bellowed, “Who is it?” “TV Re-
pair,” she answered. The couple stopped fighting, laughed, and came to the
door. Now they could begin to sort out their problems.
One indicator of the importance of humor in the new workplace is the
number of corporate leaders who are showing humor in their public personae.
Instead of acting omnipotent and omniscient, as old authoritarian leaders did,
they are friendly and even playful with subordinates. Renn Zaphiropoulos,
CEO of Versatec, a Silicon Valley firm, for example, hosts an annual cer-
emony for all employees announcing the bonus. One year he arrived at the
festivities on an elephant accompanied by the Stanford University Marching
Band. The year before he had announced the bonus by singing a country song
he had written himself.
Part of the new style of leadership is soliciting input from everyone in the
organization, encouraging critical thinking, and sharing knowledge to em-
power others. Here playfulness and humor are a big help. An example is the
CEO of a large Canadian bank who appears in the monthly corporate video
shown to all employees. He comes on camera to discuss recent issues and
plans, but part way through his presentation, a hand puppet appears to ask
him questions about recent problems in the bank and even to poke fun at him.
This playful criticism encourages bank employees to think critically and to
figure out solutions for current problems.
The critical side of humor, of course, is not always so good-natured. Much
of the humor circulating in the workplace today is negative and sarcastic. The
website WorkingWounded.com is a forum for disgruntled workers to mock-
ingly complain about how they have been mistreated. The site toxicboss.com
lets people vent their feelings about how bad their bosses are. An even more
472 John Morreall
negative approach can be found at the website whyworksucks.com, whose

subtitle is “And What You Can Do about It (nothing).”
The runaway success of Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” comic strip is testament to
the power of humor to express negative feelings about work. “Dilbert” themes
include downsizing, heavy work loads, micromanagement of budgets, hu-
miliating small cubicles, the accelerating pace of change, corporate gobble-
degook, management fads, cruel bosses, annoying colleagues, and red tape.
One assessment of American business comes from Guy Kawasaki, a man-
agement expert at Apple Computer: “There are only two kinds of companies,
those that recognize that they’re just like ‘Dilbert,’ and those that don’t know
it yet.”
Adams makes no apologies for his dark humor and the hopelessness of
the office world he skewers. The ideas for many of his strips, he says, come
directly from true stories he receives in his email. Adams finds “Dilbert”
humor more authentic than the humor sanctioned by corporations in humor
seminars.
Some corporations are uncomfortable with humor that is critical of the or-
ganization, and others find some of it constructive, but there is another kind of
humor that all organizations are trying to eliminate – sexist, racist, anti-gay,
and any other humor intended to demean a particular group. Such humor not
only fosters prejudice and negative feelings between groups, but is illegal as
well. If an aggrieved worker goes to court, the organization can be held ac-
countable if it knew about the offensive humor but did nothing to stop it.
Education
Among healthcare, business, and education, the slowest to join the humor
movement is education. Traditional teachers, from first grade to graduate
school, usually suppressed humor in the classroom unless they were initiating
it. “What’s so funny, Mr./Miss Smith?” was one of their strongest putdowns.
It was during our first week at school that most of us learned to suppress our
natural urges to play and to be funny.
Today there are many primary and secondary teachers trying to overturn
this traditional prejudice against humor and playfulness. They agree on the
central benefits of humor in the classroom, that it makes the teacher appear
fully human, relaxes the students, creates an open and non-threatening atmos-
phere for learning, gets and holds attention, increases retention of learned ma-
terial, promotes critical thinking, and promotes divergent or creative think-
ing. Humor is especially useful in skills-oriented classes where students need

a playful way to handle false starts and mistakes.
Primary and secondary school curricula have been developed for incorpor-
ating humor into social studies, literature, and even mathematics, as the three
books discussed earlier show.
Those not comfortable with humor in the classroom usually cite the critic-
al side of humor and its disrespect for authority. But humor’s defenders point
out that questioning authority is part of a well-rounded education too. More-
over, many say that when handled properly, humor does not encourage anar-
chy in the classroom. It is students who are not allowed to express their play-
fulness and humor that act up in class, they contend. Students whose humor
is expressed and worked into the flow of discussion are likely to respect and
cooperate with the teacher. Some humor is inappropriate in the classroom, or
anywhere else, of course – nasty teasing, racist and sexist humor, for example.
But that is no reason to suppress all humor and thereby lose its many benefits.
Favorite case study
If I had to pick a single organization that embodies the applications of humor

discussed in this chapter, it would be Southwest Airlines. Since its found-
ing in the late 1960s, Southwest has always made humor and fun part of its
corporate culture, largely because of the vision of its CEO, Herb Kelleher.
A cover of Fortune magazine in 1994 featured Kelleher dressed in a WWI-
style leather aviator’s helmet and goggles flying with just his arms. The cap-
tion: “Is Herb Kelleher America’s Best CEO? He’s wild, he’s crazy, he’s in
a tough business – and he has built the most successful airline in the U.S.” The
story explains how Kelleher’s sense of humor, his quick mind and business
savvy, and his ability to create an enthusiastic team are interrelated.
From the first job interview, anyone who works for Southwest has to show
what Kelleher calls “an insouciance, an effervescence.” One of the items in
the interview is “Tell me how you recently used your sense of humor in
a work environment. Tell me how you have used humor to defuse a difficult
situation.” “What we are looking for, first and foremost, is a sense of humor,”
Kelleher explains. “We don’t care that much about education and expertise,
because we can train people. . . . We hire attitudes.”
Southwest employees are encouraged to be playful with passengers. When
there are delays at the gate, for example, ticket agents will award prizes to the
passengers with the most unusual items in the pockets or purses. A few years
474 John Morreall
ago the Federal Aviation Administration asked Southwest to stop singing the
flight safety announcements to the tune of the theme song from the Beverly
Hillbillies TV show. Such antics, along with the best records for on-time ar-
rival and baggage handling, have earned the airline top ratings from custom-
ers for many years.
The spirit of fun also creates unparalleled camaraderie in Southwest em-
ployees, who often speak of the airline as a family. Although it is an 80%
union shop, the company has the lowest turnover rate in the industry. And
they have never laid off workers, even after the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attack. Alan Boyd, retired chairman of Airbus North America, has said that
“at other places, managers say that people are their most important resource,
but nobody acts on it. At Southwest, they have never lost sight of the fact.”
Understandably, Southwest regularly appears at or near the top in rankings of
the best companies to work for.
Kelleher’s own leadership style is nicely illustrated in an event held at the
Dallas Sportatorium in March 1992. Southwest began running its “Just Plane
Smart” advertising campaign but quickly learned that another company, Ste-
vens Aviation, had been using “Plane Smart” as its slogan for over a year. In-
stead of taking the matter to court, Kelleher and Stevens CEO Kurt Herwald
agreed to an arm-wrestling match. The winner of best two out of three would
get to keep the slogan and the loser would donate $5,000 to the winner’s fa-
vorite charity.
Herwald, a beefy 37-year-old weight lifter, strode into the ring in a dark
muscle shirt. Keller, then 61, a long-time smoker and afficionado of Wild
Turkey bourbon, came down the aisle in a white t-shirt and gray sweat pants
under red boxer shorts, to the trumpet blasts from Rocky. He had his right arm
in a sling (an injury he said he got saving a little girl from being hit by a bus)
and a cigarette dangling from his lip. His handler wore a bandolier holding
rows of airline-size bottles of Wild Turkey.
In one sense, Kelleher lost the contest – and he blamed that on a stub-
born case of athlete’s foot and having accidentally overtrained by walking
up a flight of stairs. But in a wider sense he won. The stands were full of
Southwest people chanting, “Herb, Herb, Herb,” who still tell the story of that
night. The publicity Southwest received was inestimable. And at the end, the
head of the other airline laughingly told Kelleher that he could keep using the
slogan anyway.
Of the many accounts of Kelleher and Southwest Airlines, the most com-
plete is Nuts! Southwest Airline’s Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal
Success by Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg.
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Humor and health
Rod A. Martin
A sense of humor and the ability to laugh have long been viewed as import-
ant sources of both physical and psychological health. Since medieval times,
a number of physicians and philosophers have suggested that laughter has im-
portant health benefits, such as improving blood circulation, restoring energy,
counteracting depression, and enhancing the functioning of various organs of
the body (for reviews see Goldstein 1982; Moody 1978). In the past century,
various psychologists and psychotherapists such as Sigmund Freud (1928),
Abraham Maslow (1954), and Rollo May (1953) have also discussed the im-
portance of a benign sense of humor for mental health.
Belief in positive health benefits of humor and laughter has become in-
creasingly popular in recent years. Public interest in therapeutic benefits of
humor and laughter was particularly stimulated by the publication of Norman
Cousins’ (1979) account of his recovery from ankylosing spondilitis follow-
ing a self-prescribed treatment regimen involving daily laughter and massive
doses of vitamin C. The development of the field of psychoneuroimmunology
and the popularization of alternative and complementary approaches to West-
ern medicine provided a context that further fostered such ideas. These popu-
lar beliefs have been further bolstered by media reports of scientific research
purportedly showing evidence of beneficial effects of laughter on health. As
one example, a recent issue of Reader’s Digest (Rackl 2003) reports claims of
scientific evidence that humor can alleviate allergy symptoms, increase pain
tolerance, strengthen the immune system, reduce the risk of stroke and heart
disease, and even help diabetics control their blood sugar.
Stimulated by these ideas, a burgeoning “humor and health movement”
has developed, made up of nurses, physicians, and other health care pro-
viders, psychotherapists, educators, clowns, and entertainers, who enthu-
siastically promote the therapeutic benefits of humor through conferences,
seminars, workshops, books, videotapes, Internet websites, and organiza-
tions such as the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH).
In recent years, the growth of the “laughter club movement,” whose adher-
ents promote laughter as a form of yogic exercise (Kataria 2002), has further
added to the chorus of claims for beneficial effects of even non-humorous
480 Rod A. Martin
laughter on physical, mental, and spiritual health, as well as its potential for
resolving conflicts at both the personal and the international level.
The aim of this chapter is to provide an introduction to empirical research
methods and findings regarding the role of humor and laughter in both phys-
ical and psychosocial health. I will begin by discussing some of the concep-
tual issues relating to the potential mechanisms involved in the humor–health
relationship, and the definition and measurement of humor. I will then selec-
tively review the existing research, summarizing the major findings, pointing
out questions that remain unanswered, and noting some of the strengths and
weaknesses of different research approaches (for more detailed reviews of
this research, see Martin 2001; 2007; Lefcourt 2001). This overview of the
literature will include a discussion of directions for future research, suggest-
ing potentially fruitful avenues to pursue, as well as pitfalls to avoid.
Besides offering suggestions for those interested in conducting research in
this area, it is hoped that this chapter will be useful to practitioners who are
interested in applying humor in health care settings and psychotherapeutic
interventions. In addition to providing information about what we know and
what we don’t know about the effects of humor and laughter on health, this
chapter emphasizes the need for practitioners to be clear about what aspects
or components of humor they are targeting in their interventions, and the
mechanisms by which these interventions are expected to have their benefi-
cial effects.
Conceptual issues
Theoretical mechanisms
There are several potential mechanisms by which humor and/or laughter

may be hypothesized to have beneficial effects on physical or psychosocial
health. Martin (2007) conceptualized humor as a distinct positive emotion
(i.e., mirth), which is elicited by a cognitive appraisal process (the percep-
tion of playful incongruity), is expressed interpersonally by means of laugh-
ter, and plays an important role in social communication and influence. This
multifaceted conceptualization suggests several different pathways by which
humor might potentially affect health, each of which lends itself to different
research approaches, and each suggesting different implications for health
care interventions (Martin 2007). Advocates of health benefits of humor and
laughter often seem to confuse these different mechanisms when promoting
Humor and health 481
humor interventions, and researchers often are not specific about which hy-
pothesized mechanism they are testing in a given investigation. Systematic
research is needed to investigate each of these potential mechanisms individ-
ually, and to determine which, if any, are supported by the data. Only when
we have gained such knowledge can practitioners begin to design effective
therapeutic interventions based on these findings.
First, health benefits may potentially result from the respiratory, musku-
loskeletal, vocal, and cardiovascular activity associated with laughter. For ex-
ample, it has been suggested that frequent hearty laughter might reduce blood
pressure or confer some of the cardiovascular benefits of aerobic exercise. In
this hypothesized pathway, hearty laughter is the crucial component in the
humor-health connection; humor and mirth without laughter would not be ex-
pected to provide any health benefits. Indeed, laughter might even be expect-
ed to have beneficial effects without humor and genuine mirth (e.g., feigned
or forced laughter), as advocated by leaders of the laughter club movement
(e.g., Kataria 2002). From this perspective, the person with a “healthy” sense
of humor is the one who laughs uproariously as often as possible, rather than
the one who enjoys dry humor accompanied only by the occasional chuckle
or smile. In this model, humor interventions should be aimed particularly at
encouraging people to engage in frequent and intense laughter.
To test this hypothesis, researchers need to be sure that participants in
their studies actually laugh (although this has not always been done in past
research), and to examine whether differences in the duration and intensity
of laughter account for differences in health-related outcomes. In addition,
to ensure that any observed results are due to laughter and not the underly-
ing positive emotion of mirth, they should compare participants who laugh
with those who are also amused but do not laugh. The Facial Action Coding
System (to be described below) should be used to distinguish between genu-
ine and forced smiles and laughter, and their correlations with the outcome
variables can then be examined to determine which, if any, account for any
health-related effects.
A second, alternative mechanism by which humor may potentially influ-
ence both psychological and physical health is through the positive emotion
of mirth which is associated with humor. Like other positive emotions, mirth
may enhance feelings of well-being and counteract negative emotions such
as depression or anxiety. Consequently, individuals who frequently engage
in humor may be less prone to various forms of emotional disturbance. Also
like other emotions, mirth is associated with a variety of biochemical pro-
cesses in the brain and other parts of the body, including changes in the levels
482 Rod A. Martin
of various neurotransmitters, cytokines, opioids, and hormones (Ruch 1993).

Such emotion-related biochemical changes may have beneficial effects on
physical health, such as increasing pain tolerance (Bruehl, Carlson, and Mc-
Cubbin 1993), enhancing immunity (Stone, Cox, Valdimarsdottir, Jandorf,
and Neale 1987), or undoing the cardiovascular consequences of negative
emotions (Fredrickson 1998).
According to this model, overt laugher may not be necessary for health
benefits to occur, because humor and amusement may induce the positive
emotion of mirth without the need for laughter. Here, a “healthy” sense of
humor would involve a generally cheerful temperament characterized by
mirth, happiness, joy, optimism, and a playful approach to life (cf. Ruch and
Kohler 1998). To test this model, researchers should examine the degree to
which positive emotion, measured via self-report, observational coding, or
physiological measures, mediates any experimental or correlational effects
of humor and/or laughter on health outcomes. A useful self-report measure
for this purpose is the state version of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inven-
tory (Ruch, Kohler, and van Thriel 1996). If this model is correct, therapeu-
tic interventions should aim at increasing people’s experience of mirth and
other positive emotions by a variety of means not limited to the promotion of
laughter.
Third, humor might benefit physical and psychological health through
cognitive mechanisms. By being able to shift perspective and to avoid taking
things overly seriously, individuals who maintain a humorous outlook on life
may be less likely to become stuck in the kinds of cognitive distortions that
give rise to anxiety and depression (Kuiper, Martin, and Olinger 1993). This
humorous perspective-taking may also be an important way of coping with
stress. There is a large body of research evidence that stressful life experi-
ences can have adverse effects on various aspects of physical and psycho-
logical health, such as increased risk of depression, anxiety, and psychotic
episodes (Dohrenwend 1998), suppression of the immune system (Adler and
Hillhouse 1996), and increased risk of heart disease (Esler 1998). According
to Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) transactional model of stress, appraisal and
coping styles can influence the degree to which potential stressors lead to
such adverse health outcomes (Taylor and Stanton 2007). Thus, a humorous
outlook on life and the ability to see the funny side of one’s problems may
enable individuals to cope more effectively with stress by allowing them to
gain perspective and distance themselves from stressful situations, enhanc-
ing their feelings of mastery and well-being in the face of adversity (Lef-
court and Martin 1986; Martin, Kuiper, Olinger, and Dance 1993; Martin and
efcourt 1983). As a consequence, these individuals may experience less of

L
the adverse effects of stress on their physical and psychosocial health.
According to this stress-moderator view, the cognitive-perceptual aspects
of humor are more important than mere laughter, and the ability to maintain
a humorous outlook during times of stress and adversity is particularly im-
portant: humor and laughter during non-stressful times would be less relevant
to health. This view also introduces the possibility that certain styles of humor
(e.g., perspective-taking humor) may be more adaptive and health-enhancing
than others (e.g., excessively self-disparaging humor). If this view is correct,
therapeutic humor interventions should be viewed as a component of stress
management training, focusing on teaching individuals ways of using humor
(along with other strategies such as relaxation and cognitive reframing) to
cope with stress in their daily lives.
Fourth, humor may benefit physical and psychological health through
a social or interpersonal mechanism by increasing one’s level of social sup-
port. Individuals who are able to use humor effectively to reduce interperson-
al conflicts and tensions and to enhance positive feelings in others may conse-
quently enjoy more numerous and satisfying social relationships. In turn, the
greater levels of social support resulting from these relationships may confer
stress-buffering and health-enhancing benefits (Cohen and Wills 1985). In
this model, the focus is on interpersonal aspects of humor and the social com-
petence with which individuals express humor in relationships, rather than
the frequency with which they engage in laughter. Here, a “healthy” sense of
humor would involve the use of humor to enhance relationships with others in
an affiliative and non-hostile manner. If this mechanism is correct, therapeutic
humor interventions may be seen as an adjunct to social skills training, teach-
ing individuals to develop a socially facilitative sense of humor.
Finally, a fifth possible mechanism by which humor could conceivably
have a beneficial effect on health is by promoting a healthy lifestyle. For ex-
ample, one could speculate that people with a better sense of humor, because
of their presumably higher self-esteem and more optimistic outlook on life,
are more likely to engage in healthy behaviors such as obtaining regular phys-
ical exercise, eating healthy foods, maintaining an appropriate body weight,
and refraining from smoking and excess alcohol consumption. However, al-
though the research evidence relating to this hypothesis is quite limited to
date, it actually suggests that, if anything, the effects are the opposite: high
humor individuals seem to be more likely to engage in unhealthy lifestyles.
For example, in a longitudinal study of humor and physical health in Finnish
police officers, Kerkkanen, Kuiper, and Martin (2004) found that higher
484 Rod A. Martin
scores on some humor scales were associated with greater obesity, increased
smoking, and factors associated with greater risk of cardiovascular disease.
Similarly, the well-known Terman life-cycle study, which followed a large
sample of highly gifted individuals over many decades, found that those who
were rated as being more cheerful as children (higher sense of humor and
greater optimism) were more likely to smoke and consume alcohol as adults
(L. R. Martin et al. 2002).
These possible associations between humor and unhealthy lifestyle be-
haviors may be due in part to the more extraverted personality traits of high-
humor individuals (Ruch 1994). Past research has shown that extraverted
individuals, in comparison with introverts, are more likely to drink alcohol
(Cook et al., 1998), more likely to smoke cigarettes (Patton, Barnes, and Mur-
ray 1993), less likely to quit smoking (Helgason et al., 1995), and more likely
to be obese (Haellstroem and Noppa 1981). Although findings of an associ-
ation between sense of humor and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors are in need
of further replication, the evidence to date provides further support to the
contention that humor may have deleterious as well as beneficial health con-
sequences.
Conceptualization and measurement of sense of humor
The foregoing discussion suggests that researchers who are interested in stud-
ying the relationship between humor and health, as well as practitioners seek-
ing to develop humor-based interventions, need to be clear about their con-
ceptualizations and operational definitions of humor. If humor and/or laughter
are beneficial for physical and psychosocial health, then people with a greater
sense of humor should be happier and better adjusted, enjoy better physic-
al health, live longer lives, and so on. But what aspects or components of
“sense of humor” are likely to be health-enhancing? As we have noted, humor
is a very complex phenomenon, involving cognitive, emotional, behavioral,
physiological, and social aspects (Martin 2007). These different components
of humor are also reflected in different conceptualizations of sense of humor,
which refers to a set of humor-related personality traits or individual differ-
ence variables (Ruch 1998). Indeed, no single dimension or measurement
instrument can adequately capture the whole concept of sense of humor.
For example, sense of humor may be conceptualized as: (1) a cognitive
ability (e.g., ability to create, understand, reproduce, and remember jokes;
Feingold and Mazzella 1993); (2) an aesthetic response (e.g., humor appre-
ciation, enjoyment of particular types of humorous material; Ruch and Hehl

1998); (3) a habitual behavior pattern (e.g., tendency to laugh frequently, to
tell jokes and amuse others, to laugh at others’ jokes; Craik, Lampert, and
Nelson 1996; Martin and Lefcourt 1984); (4) an emotion-related tempera-
ment trait (e.g., habitual cheerfulness; Ruch and Kohler 1998); (5) an atti-
tude (e.g., bemused outlook on the world, positive attitude toward humor;
Svebak 1996); (6) a coping strategy or defense mechanism (e.g., tendency
to maintain a humorous perspective in the face of adversity; Lefcourt and
Martin 1986); and so on. These different facets of humor lend themselves
to different measurement approaches, including maximal performance tests
(e.g., humor as cognitive ability), funniness ratings (e.g., humor as aesthetic
response), and observer ratings (e.g., Q-sort techniques for assessing humor-
ous behavior), as well as self-report scales. Research has shown that these
diverse components of sense of humor are not highly intercorrelated, and it
is unlikely that all of them will be related to physical or psychosocial health.
The challenge for researchers is to identify which components or aspects of
sense of humor may be beneficial to which components or aspects of phys-
ical or psychological health, as well as which components may be irrelevant
or perhaps even detrimental to health. Based on such research findings, prac-
titioners can then develop humor-based interventions that target the specific
aspects of humor that are found to be important for health.
Some early studies on humor and health made use of measures of humor
appreciation, which is assessed by having participants rate the funniness of
a number of jokes and cartoons that are categorized in various ways (e.g.,
hostile, sexual, or nonsense humor). However, this research generally did not
reveal meaningful relationships between these types of humor appreciation
measures and health-related variables, suggesting that this aspect of humor
may not be very relevant to health (e.g. Safranek and Schill 1982; Scogin and
Merbaum 1983).
Since the early 1980s, most of the research on humor and health has made
use of self-report measures designed to assess individual differences in a var-
iety of humor-related traits, such as the degree to which individuals tend to
laugh and smile in a wide variety of situations (Situational Humor Response
Questionnaire – SHRQ; Martin and Lefcourt 1984), use humor as a coping
strategy (Coping Humor Scale – CHS; Martin and Lefcourt 1983), notice and
enjoy humor (Sense of Humor Questionnaire – SHQ-6; Svebak 1996; Mul-
tidimensional Sense of Humor Scale – MSHS; Thorson and Powell 1993),
and so on. A considerable amount of validation has been found for several
of these measures (e.g., Martin 1996). However, although they purport to
486 Rod A. Martin
easure different aspects of humor, factor analytic studies indicate that these
m
self-report measures all tend to load on the same basic dimensions (Kohler
and Ruch 1996; Ruch 1994). Moreover, similar patterns of results are typ-
ically found with these different measures, with correlations being stronger
sometimes for one measure and sometimes for another, but no consistent
evidence of differential relationships with different components or aspects of
health or well-being.
Beyond the fact that sense of humor is multifaceted and that different com-
ponents may or may not be related to health, it is also important to recognize
that humor may actually be used in ways that are detrimental to health as well
as beneficial. Although it can be used to enhance relationships and reduce
interpersonal tensions, humor also can be used in ways that are aggressive,
domineering, and manipulative. It can be a healthy means of gaining perspec-
tive on a stressful situation, but it also can be a form of defensive denial to
avoid dealing constructively with problems. It can be self-deprecating, but it
also can be excessively self-disparaging. One could perhaps even make the
case that there is nothing inherent in humor that makes it particularly healthy:
whether or not it is healthy depends on how it is used.
Prior to the twentieth century, the word “humor” had a narrower mean-
ing than it has today, and it was used to refer only to a sympathetic, tolerant,
and benevolent amusement at the imperfections of the world and the foibles
of human nature generally (Wickberg 1998). Humor was distinguished from
wit, which referred to more aggressive forms of amusement such as sarcasm,
satire, and ridicule. When Freud (1928, p. 6) spoke of humor as being the
“highest of the defense mechanisms” and a “rare and precious gift,” he was
referring only to humor in this narrow and special sense. Over the past cen-
tury, however, humor has taken on a much broader meaning in popular usage,
and has now come to be an umbrella term covering all forms of laughter-re-
lated phenomena, including jokes, stand-up comedy, television sitcoms, pol-
itical satire, teasing, and ridicule. In this sense, humor now can be aggressive
and hostile, as well as benevolent and philosophical (Ruch 1996).
Recognizing this broadened meaning of humor, psychologists such as All-
port (1961), Maslow (1954), and Vaillant (1977) have been careful to define
what they consider to be “healthy” humor, noting that healthy psychologic-
al functioning is associated with distinctive uses or styles of humor (e.g.,
affiliative, self-deprecating, or perspective-taking humor), and that other
forms (e.g., sarcastic, disparaging, or avoidant humor) may actually be del-
eterious to well-being. They noted that the funniest humor is not necessarily
the healthiest, and that much of the comedy shown in the popular media is
not likely to be particularly psychologically healthy. Maslow (1954, p. 222)

suggested that a healthy sense of humor involves “rather thoughtful, philo-
sophical humor that elicits a smile more usually than a laugh.” Some early
researchers also recognized the importance of making these sorts of distinc-
tions between healthy and unhealthy forms of humor in their measurement
approaches (e.g., the Wit and Humor Appreciation Test; O’Connell 1960).
Unfortunately, however, this distinction between potentially healthy and
unhealthy forms of humor was absent in most of the research on humor and
health until quite recently. For example, most of the self-report measures
of humor were developed on the assumption that all forms of humor and
laughter are healthy. Similarly, laboratory studies of the effects of humor
on health tended to make use of comedy manipulations with little attention
given to the content of the comedy or type of humor involved. This failure
to distinguish between potentially beneficial and detrimental forms of humor
may have resulted in weaker and less robust findings than might have been
obtained with more careful measurement approaches, and potential negative
relationships between some forms of humor and health variables may have
been missed.
More recently, however, Martin and colleagues (2003) have developed
a new humor measure, the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), which in-
cludes scales for two potentially detrimental styles of humor (aggressive and
self-defeating humor) as well as two potentially beneficial ones (affiliative
and self-enhancing humor). The research evidence to date indicates that these
four humor styles produce quite distinct patterns of correlations with various
health and adjustment measures, including inverse relations for some styles
of humor (for a review of this research, see Martin 2007). The HSQ has been
translated into numerous languages, and is now one of the most widely used
measures in research on humor and health.
In addition to the measures discussed so far, there is a need for further de-
velopment and refinement of other types of measures to assess distinct com-
ponents or types of humor that may be related to health outcomes but have
not received much research attention. For example, little research has exam-
ined the relation between ability measures of humor creativity and aspects of
mental health (e.g., problem-solving ability in coping with stress or dealing
with conflict in interpersonal relationships). In addition, one measure that has
not been widely used in humor and health research, but which has consider-
able promise, is the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI; Ruch, Kohler,
and van Thriel 1996). It defines sense of humor as an emotional tempera-
ment (i.e., the tendency to be habitually cheerful and playful), which seems
488 Rod A. Martin
quite consistent with the way humor is often conceptualized in the humor and
health literature (e.g., Lefcourt 2001).
Besides the different components of sense of humor, it is also important
to recognize that there are different forms of laughter that may have differ-
ential relevance to health. For example, although laughter can be a largely
involuntary expression of genuine amusement and mirth, it can also be forced
or feigned, and can include a blend of emotions, including hostility, fear, or
sadness. The Facial Action Coding System (FACS), developed by Ekman
and Friesen (1978), can be used to distinguish between genuine enjoyment
(“Duchenne”) smiles and laughter (characterized by symmetric involvement
of the zygomatic major and orbicularis oculi muscle groups) and faked or
non-enjoyment smiling or laughter (characterized by the absence of the or-
bicularis oculi action, asymmetrical facial displays, involvement of muscles
indicating a mixture of emotions, and/or unusual intensity or timing of muscle
actions). A number of studies have found differential health-related outcomes
for these two different types of facial displays, suggesting that genuine en-
joyment laughter may be associated with positive outcomes, whereas forced
laughter may not be (e.g., Bonanno and Keltner 1997; Zweyer, Velker, and
Ruch 2004). Researchers should distinguish between these different types
of laughter in investigations of the association between laughter and health.
In addition, practitioners need to consider the types of laughter that they are
promoting in their interventions.
Humor, laughter, and physical health
The remarkable range of bodily functions that are supposedly benefited by

laughter and humor, according to contemporary claims, is reminiscent of the
cornucopia of benefits often claimed by patent medicine manufacturers and
health food fanatics. Laughter is said to provide exercise for the muscles
and heart, produce muscle relaxation, improve blood circulation, reduce the
production of stress-related hormones such as catecholamines and cortisol,
enhance a wide range of immune system variables, reduce pain by stimulat-
ing the production of endorphins, reduce blood pressure, enhance respira-
tion, regulate blood sugar levels, and remove carbon dioxide and water vapor
from the lungs (McGhee 1999; Fry 1994). As such, humor and laughter have
been said to provide some degree of protection against cancer, heart attacks,
stroke, diabetes, pneumonia, bronchitis, hypertension, migraine headaches,
arthritis pain, ulcers, and all sorts of infectious diseases ranging from the
common cold to AIDS. As with all types of complementary and alternative

medicine, it is important to conduct systematic, well-controlled research to
determine whether the claimed benefits of humor and laughter are anything
more than placebo effects (Bausell 2007).
Some of the claimed physical health benefits of humor and laughter are
highly speculative and essentially unfalsifiable, and therefore of little scien-
tific merit. An example is the claim made by Fry (1994) that laughter reduces
the risk of bronchial infections and pneumonia by expelling moist residual air
from the lungs, resulting in a reduction of excess moisture that would other-
wise encourage pulmonary bacterial growth. The difficulty with this claim
(apart from the fact that there is no empirical evidence that laughter actually
reduces moisture levels in the lungs) is that one could make an equally con-
vincing argument for health-enhancing benefits of laughter regardless of the
direction of its physiological effects. If it turned out that laughter somehow
increased, rather than decreased, the pulmonary moisture level, one could
come up with an equally plausible-sounding argument that it is beneficial
because it keeps the lungs from drying out and shriveling up. Thus, regard-
less of what effect laughter may have on a particular system of the body, a
“just-so story” can be concocted to explain why this effect is beneficial. It is
interesting to note that one curmudgeonly nineteenth-century author (Vasey
1877) actually used similar kinds of arguments to support his contention that
laughter is harmful to physical health!
Other frequently-claimed health benefits of laughter, while testable, have
been subjected to little or no scientific investigation. For example, the often-
cited muscle relaxation effects of laughter have not yet been demonstrated in
physiological data. In addition, although it is frequently reported in the media
that laughter stimulates endorphin production, there is currently no research
evidence for this. Indeed, two studies have examined blood levels of beta-
endorphins in subjects exposed to comedy, and neither of these found sig-
nificant changes (Martin 2001). In addition, Fry (1992) asserted that several
minutes of intense laughter produce physiological changes similar to those
experienced during intense exercise, comparable to exercising on a rowing
machine or stationary bicycle for 10 to 15 minutes. Only one published study
has investigated the amount of energy expended during laughter, and it found
that, although laughter is associated with some increase in calorie consump-
tion over a resting state, this is far less than that found with physical exer-
cise (Buchowski et al., 2007). In fact, we currently have only limited under-
standing of many of the physiological processes associated with mirth and
laughter, and much more research is needed in this area before we can have
490 Rod A. Martin
confidence about the effects of mirth and laughter on the brain, muscles, en-
docrine system, and immune system (see Ruch and Ekman 2001, for further
discussion of research on laughter).
Immune system
A number of experimental studies have investigated the effects of mirth and

laughter on various components of the immune system by taking saliva or
blood samples from participants before and after exposing them to humorous
stimuli (typically videotapes or audiotapes of stand-up comedy routines). The
majority of these studies examined only salivary immunoglobulin A (S-IgA),
a component of the immune system that is involved in the body’s defense
against upper respiratory infections. The reason for this focus on S-IgA was
not that it is a particularly important aspect of immunity or a particularly like-
ly candidate for laughter-related influences, but that it is found in saliva and
is therefore much easier for non-medical researchers to obtain than blood.
Assays for S-IgA are also relatively inexpensive compared to some other
components of the immune system. However, a handful of studies have taken
blood samples from participants, and these have been assayed for a wide
variety of hormones and immunity-related variables such as cortisol, natural
killer cells, helper and suppressor T-cells, immunoglobulins, and so on. Most
(but not all) of these studies have reported significant changes in at least some
components of immunity following exposure to comedy. For example, vari-
ous studies have reported comedy-related increases in S-IgA, natural killer
cell activity, T-cell helper–suppressor ratio, interleukins, and so on. However,
numerous methodological problems with the studies make it difficult to draw
firm conclusions.
These difficulties are well exemplified by a study by Berk and associates,
which has received a great deal of attention in the media and has been fre-
quently cited in the humor and health literature. Only a few of the results of
this study (having to do mainly with stress-related hormones) were reported
in a peer-reviewed journal article (Berk, Tan, Fry et al., 1989), while the
remaining analyses were reported in conference presentations, only the ab-
stracts of which were ever published. The participants were 10 male medical
personnel, five of whom (the experimental group) were assigned as a single
group to watch a 60-minute comedy video (“Gallagher: Over Your Head”),
and the other five (the control group) sat quietly in a room together for 60
minutes. Blood was collected via IV catheters in the forearm at a number of
intervals before, during, and after the stimulus conditions. Of 19 immunity

and endocrine-related variables assayed, significant experimental effects were
found in nine variables. Participants in the humorous video group had signifi-
cantly lower levels of cortisol and dopac and higher levels of growth hormone
following the videotape as compared to the control participants. In addition,
in the experimental group, assays taken after the video revealed significant
increases from baseline in the T cell helper–suppressor ratio, blastogenesis,
IgG, IgM, natural killer cell (NK) activity, and complement (C3), suggest-
ing immunoenhancing effects of humor. However, these analyses examined
changes in the experimental group only, and did not compare them with the
control group, so we cannot be sure that similar changes did not also occur
in the control group. No experimental effects were found with a number of
other variables, including norepinephrine, prolactin, beta-endorphin, IgA,
and gamma-interferon levels.
Although some promising results were obtained in this study, there are
a number of methodological limitations that weaken our ability to draw firm
conclusions. Besides the very small sample size of males only, the partici-
pants were informed several days beforehand which condition they would
be in, resulting in evident differences in their mood states upon arrival and
significant baseline differences in two of the physiological variables (epine-
phrine and growth hormone). It is also not reported whether the participants
were randomly assigned to groups. In addition, the no-video control group
does not adequately control for a variety of factors, such as the diversion of
watching an interesting videotape, active social interaction, or general emo-
tional arousal, which might account for the findings. The researchers did not
include standard manipulation checks (e.g., ratings of funniness, interest,
moods, etc.), so we do not know the extent to which the participants actually
found the comedy video to be humorous, or whether the effects were medi-
ated by the emotion of mirth. The researchers also did not monitor the laugh-
ter of the participants, so it is impossible to determine the degree to which the
results may be due to laughter.
Another serious concern is that, given the large number of dependent vari-
ables (nearly twice as many variables as subjects) and the numerous repeated
measures, the researchers were able to conduct a very large number of statis-
tical tests in search of significant findings. With such a large number of anal-
yses, the Type I error rate becomes greatly inflated, and results that appear
to be statistically significant may be unreliable and merely due to chance.
Finally, the fact that most of the results have been published only in brief
abstracts of conference papers leaves many details of the methodology and
492 Rod A. Martin
analyses unknown and therefore difficult to evaluate. Thus, although there

were some intriguing results from this study, it certainly does not provide the
sort of conclusive scientific evidence of immunoenhancing effects of laughter
that have often been claimed for it. Similar weaknesses are apparent in most
of the other immunity-related studies, including inadequate control groups,
small sample sizes, potentially inflated error rates, and failure to monitor
laughter and moods (Martin 2001; 2007).
Adding to the confusion in the immunity-related research is the fact that
the findings are rather inconsistent across studies and across immune sys-
tem variables, with some studies showing immunoenhancing effects, others
showing immunosuppressive effects, and still others showing null effects
with particular components of immunity. For example, whereas Berk and
associates found increases in T-cell helper–suppressor ratio and NK cell ac-
tivity with exposure to comedy, Kamei, Kumano, and Masumura (1997) did
not replicate the T-cell ratio finding and found a decrease in NK cell activ-
ity. Similar inconsistencies are also observed in results pertaining to stress-
related hormones. Berk and associates reported humor-related decreases in
cortisol levels, whereas other studies, using more rigorous methodologies,
have found increased levels of cortisol with exposure to comedy, as well as
positive correlations between funniness ratings and cortisol levels (Hubert,
Moller, and de Jong-Meyer 1993). Thus, although the findings are somewhat
promising, more well-controlled studies are clearly needed before any firm
conclusions may be drawn concerning the effects of humor and laughter on
the immune system.
A further limitation of these sorts of laboratory studies is that they do not
provide evidence of long-term benefits of humor and laughter on immunity.
Even though it may be possible to document statistically significant changes
in immunity-related variables with exposure to comedy in the laboratory, it
is also important to determine whether such changes have any longer-term
clinical significance. If humor and/or laughter have clinically meaningful and
significant beneficial effects on the immune system, then it should be possible
to demonstrate that individuals who engage in laughter and humor more fre-
quently (presumably those with a greater sense of humor) have higher levels
of immunity and are less likely to suffer from infectious illnesses over time.
In other words, there should be a positive correlation between sense of humor
and immunity-related variables and a negative correlation between sense of
humor and rates of infectious illnesses.
With regard to infectious illnesses, McClelland and Cheriff (1997) found
no relations between several self-report measures of sense of humor and the
frequency or severity of colds, either retrospectively or prospectively over

a period of three months. Several studies have also examined correlations
between levels of S-IgA and participants’ sense of humor as measured by
self-report scales. Although two early studies with very small sample sizes
found sizable positive correlations between sense of humor scores and S-IgA
(Dillon, Minchoff, and Baker 1985; Dillon and Totten 1989), a number of
later studies with larger sample sizes failed to replicate these findings (e.g.,
Lefcourt, Davidson, and Kueneman 1990). It should be noted, however, that
immunity levels are likely to fluctuate considerably over time, so that levels
obtained in a single assay may be too unreliable to expect significant cor-
relations with a trait measure of humor. Future research should aggregate
immune measures across a number of assays over a period of time and exam-
ine correlations with humor measures. An alternative approach would be to
look for possible relationships between day-to-day fluctuations in levels of
immunity variables and fluctuations in experiences of humor, laughter, and
mirth in individuals over a number of days, using statistical procedures like
hierarchical linear modeling.
Pain threshold and tolerance
A number of studies have examined potential analgesic effects of laughter

or mirth by testing participants’ pain threshold or tolerance before and after
exposing them to comedy videotapes. Pain threshold is typically defined as
the amount of time elapsed before a participant reports a noxious stimulus
(e.g., immersion of the arm in ice water) to be painful, while pain tolerance
is the duration of time before the individual wishes to terminate the painful
stimulus (e.g., remove one’s arm from the water). These studies have gen-
erally been more carefully controlled and methodologically rigorous than
the immunity research. Most of the studies have had several control groups,
controlling for such factors as distraction, relaxation, and negative emotion.
For example, Cogan, Cogan, Waltz, and McCue (1987) conducted a study
in which college students were randomly assigned to either comedy (audio-
tape of Lily Tomlin), relaxation (progressive muscle relaxation audiotape),
dull narrative (audiotape on ethics), or no-treatment control conditions. The
results showed no difference between the laughter and relaxation groups on
pain threshold obtained following the manipulation; however, thresholds for
both of these groups were higher than those for the dull narrative and no-
treatment conditions. In a second study, these same authors assigned students
494 Rod A. Martin
to either comedy (audiotape of Bill Cosby), interesting narrative (Edgar Allen

Poe story), dull narrative (ethics lecture), active distraction (multiplication
task), or no-treatment conditions. Subsequent pain thresholds were signifi-
cantly higher in the comedy condition than in the interesting narrative, active
distraction, and no-treatment groups, and marginally higher than in the dull
narrative group. Overall, these and other similar studies provide fairly con-
sistent evidence that exposure to comedy results in increases in pain thresh-
old and tolerance that are comparable to the effects of relaxation and that do
not appear to be simply due to distraction.
There is also some evidence that the analgesic effects of humor observed
in the laboratory may extend to clinical interventions, but only with moderate
levels of pain. In a quasi-experimental field study, Rotton and Shats (1996)
assigned hospitalized orthopedic surgery patients to one of three conditions:
a humorous movie group, who watched four feature-length comedy mov-
ies during the two days post-surgery; a non-humorous movie group, who
watched four drama movies; or a no-movie control group. The results showed
lower levels of minor analgesic (e.g., aspirin) usage during the two days post-
surgery in participants watching the humorous movies as compared to those
in the other two groups. However, these effects did not extend to the use of
major analgesics such as Demerol and Percodan. Furthermore, these find-
ings only obtained among patients in the humorous movie condition who
were allowed to choose which movies they would watch: those who were
not given any choice actually showed significantly higher levels of analgesic
usage compared to the control groups. Thus, watching humorous films that
are not consistent with one’s own humor preferences may be aversive rather
than beneficial.
Interestingly, however, studies that have included negative emotion con-
trol conditions have demonstrated similar increases in pain threshold and tol-
erance with exposure to videotapes inducing negative emotions such as dis-
gust, horror, or sadness. For example, Weisenberg, Tepper, and Schwarzwald
(1995) found equal increases in pain tolerance in a group of participants ex-
posed to a comedy film and a group exposed to a disgusting horror film, both
of which showed greater pain tolerance than those in neutral-film and no-film
control conditions. These findings suggest that the observed analgesic effects
may occur with both positive and negative emotional arousal, rather than
being specific to laughter or mirth.
Although these humor-related increases in pain tolerance and threshold
appear to be quite robust, it is still not clear exactly what the mechanisms are.
Weisenberg, Raz, and Hener (1998) found that the increases in pain threshold
and tolerance continued for 30 minutes after exposure to a humorous video-

tape, by which time changes in reported moods were no longer evident. These
authors suggested that this finding indicates that humor and laughter may in-
duce physiological changes that affect the sensory components of pain, rather
than simply altering the cognitive-affective-motivational components of pain,
and that these physiological changes take some time to develop and continue
even after initial mood changes have dissipated.
A study by Mahony, Burroughs, and Hieatt (2001) suggests that humor-
related increases in pain tolerance may be mediated by expectancies. In this
study, participants who were shown a humorous videotape were told either
that humor increases pain tolerance (positive expectancy), or that humor de-
creases pain tolerance (negative expectancy), or they were told nothing about
the effects of humor on pain (no expectancy). The positive expectancy and no
expectancy groups both showed significantly greater increases in pain thresh-
olds as compared to the negative expectancy group. These results suggest
that the analgesic effects of humor may be a sort of placebo effect, although
this does not negate the possibility that they are mediated by physiological
processes. However, as noted earlier, there is no evidence to date that these
changes in pain tolerance are due to mirth-related increases in endogenous
opioids such as endorphins, although this hypothesis remains plausible. One
potential method for investigating the endorphin mediation hypothesis would
be to determine whether humor-associated increases in pain tolerance disap-
pear when participants are given the opiate antagonist naloxone.
Until recently, none of the pain studies had examined correlations be-
tween overt laughter and changes in pain tolerance, and it was therefore un-
clear whether the effects are due to laughter in particular, or to some other
mechanism such as the positive emotion of mirth. A recent study by Zweyer,
Velker, and Ruch (2004) was designed to address such questions regarding
the mechanisms involved in humor-related pain-reduction effects. They ran-
domly assigned participants to three conditions while watching a funny film,
to compare the effects of (1) a mirthful mood without smiling or laughing,
(2) extensive smiling and laughing, and (3) production of humorous com-
mentary. Using the cold pressor procedure, pain tolerance was measured be-
fore, immediately after, and 20 minutes after the film. The researchers also
videotaped the participants during the procedure, and subsequently coded
their facial expressions for genuine and faked smiling and laughter, using the
Facial Action Coding System.
Overall, the three conditions yielded similar significant increases in pain
threshold and tolerance, which were evident immediately after the film and
496 Rod A. Martin
continued 20 minutes later. These findings indicate that neither laughter nor
humor production are necessary, beyond simple amusement, for the pain
reduction effect to occur. Moreover, the observed increases in pain tolerance
were positively associated with genuine enjoyment smiles (Duchenne dis-
play), but not with the frequency or intensity of laughter. In fact, voluntary
efforts to exhibit or amplify laughter-related positive emotions were actually
negatively associated with pain tolerance. Thus, this study casts doubt on the
hypothesis (derived from the case of Norman Cousins) that hearty laughter
is necessary for the increase in pain tolerance. Instead, the results suggest
that the mechanisms have more to do with the amusement-related positive
emotion of mirth. Laughter does not seem to be necessary and, in fact, for-
cing oneself to laugh seemed to have a contrary effect. Although these find-
ings should be replicated before we can draw firm conclusions, this study,
with its careful assessment of different types of smiles and laughter using the
FACS system, provides an excellent model for future experimental research
exploring the mechanisms and parameters of effects of humor and laughter
on health-related variables.
Blood pressure
Although some have speculated that hearty laughter may lead to a reduction
in blood pressure over time, experimental studies indicate that laughter is ac-
tually associated with short-term increases in blood pressure and heart rate,
but no longer-term effects. White and Camarena (1989) conducted a 6-week
intervention study to examine the effects of a laughter intervention on systo-
lic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and heart rate (HR). They ran-
domly assigned participants to a laughter treatment group, a relaxation group,
or a health-education control group, each of which met for 6 weekly sessions
of 1½ hours. The results showed no significant pre- to post-session changes
in DBP, SBP, or HR in the laughter or health-education groups, whereas the
relaxation group showed significantly lower post-session HR and SBP in
comparison with both of the other groups. Thus, this study did not support
the hypothesis that sustained laughter results in lower levels of heart rate and
blood pressure over time.
In a study of the relationship between sense of humor (i.e., trait humor)
and blood pressure, Lefcourt and colleagues (1997) examined the correlation
between participants’ scores on sense of humor tests and their SBP levels dur-
ing a series of stressful laboratory tasks. They found an interesting sex differ-
ence in the pattern of correlations: women showed the expected negative cor-
relations between sense of humor and SBP, whereas the correlations for men
were in the opposite direction, higher humor being associated with higher
SBP. These authors suggested that the findings may be due to differences in
the ways in which men and women express humor, with women engaging in
more tolerant, self-accepting, and adaptive forms of humor, potentially lead-
ing to more beneficial physiological effects. Again, these findings hint at the
possibility that different styles or types of humor may have quite different
health consequences.
Longevity
If humor and laughter have beneficial effects on health, then it should be pos-
sible to demonstrate that, on average, people who laugh more frequently and
who have a greater sense of humor tend to live longer than others. Indeed, this
would seem to be the most important test of the humor-health hypothesis. Al-
though one could still argue that frequently engaging in humor and laughter
can at least improve the quality if not the duration of life, it is difficult to see
how claims for actual physical health benefits of humor and/or laughter can
be sustained if these do not result in greater longevity. However, the research
evidence in this regard, although limited, is not very encouraging. Rotton
(1992), in a series of four separate studies, found no differences in the life
duration of comedians and comedy writers, as compared with that of serious
entertainers and authors. Interestingly, though, he found that both profes-
sional humorists and serious entertainers died at a significantly younger age
than did people who were famous for other reasons. Thus, the ability to cre-
ate humor and to make other people laugh (as epitomized in individuals who
make a living by their comedic abilities) does not appear to confer any health
benefits resulting in greater longevity. If there are any health benefits to hav-
ing a sense of humor, it would appear that it is a different component or aspect
of humor that is involved.
Friedman and colleagues (1993) reported analyses of data from 1178 male
and female participants from the Terman Life-Cycle Study who have been
followed since 1921. A composite measure of cheerfulness was derived from
parent and teacher ratings of sense of humor and optimism that had been ob-
tained on these individuals at the age of 12. Surprisingly, survival analyses
revealed that those individuals rated as having higher cheerfulness at age 12
had significantly higher mortality rates throughout the ensuing decades. Thus,
498 Rod A. Martin
on average, more cheerful individuals were more likely to die at a younger

age as compared to their less cheerful counterparts, and this was true for both
men and women. The authors suggested that these results may be due to more
cheerful individuals being less concerned about health risks and taking less
care of themselves.
Proponents of the health benefits of humor have sought to dismiss this
finding in a number of ways, suggesting, for example, that the definition of
sense of humor was inappropriate, or that the results were due to the op-
timism component of the composite cheerfulness measure rather than the
sense of humor component, or that cheerfulness in this study reflected a lack
of emotional adjustment. However, the item used for rating sense of humor in
this study had at its positive pole the following description: “Extraordinarily
keen sense of humor. Witty. Appreciates jokes. Sees the funny side of every-
thing,” and at its negative pole the following: “Extremely lacking in sense of
humor. Serious and prosy. Never sees the funny side.” It seems difficult to
argue that this description is very different from the way most people today
(including proponents of the “humor and health” movement) would describe
a sense of humor. Moreover, L. R. Martin and colleagues (2002), in a follow-
up analysis of these data, found that the higher mortality rates remained even
when the sense of humor rating was used by itself, and not only in combin-
ation with optimism. In their re-analyses, L. R. Martin and colleagues (2002)
also found that individuals who were rated higher on cheerfulness as children
were no more likely to be neurotic or to have emotional problems later in
life and, indeed, they were better adjusted and more carefree in adulthood,
as well as being more extraverted. On the other hand, their analyses showed
that children who were rated as more cheerful in childhood went on to smoke
more cigarettes, consume more alcohol, and engage in more risky hobbies
as adults, although these more risky lifestyle behaviors did not completely
account for their higher mortality rates. In any case, the existing evidence,
though scanty, does not support the hypothesis that a sense of humor increas-
es longevity.
Illness symptoms
As noted earlier, if humor and/or laughter confer beneficial effects on immu-

nity and other aspects of health, individuals who laugh more frequently and
have a better sense of humor should be less likely to become ill over a period
of time. Several researchers have examined simple correlations between trait
measures of sense of humor and overall health, as measured by self-report

physical symptom checklists. A few of these studies have found significant
negative correlations between these variables, indicating that individuals with
a greater sense of humor report fewer symptoms of illness and medical prob-
lems (e.g., P. S. Fry 1995; Ruch and Kohler 1999). Other studies, however,
have failed to replicate these findings (e.g., Porterfield 1987). Additionally,
some studies have found a stress-moderating effect of sense of humor on self-
reported illness symptomatology (e.g., P. S. Fry 1995), whereas these find-
ings have not been replicated in other studies (e.g., Porterfield 1987). It is im-
portant to note that self-report measures of illness symptoms are notoriously
confounded with negative emotionality or neuroticism, making them some-
what unreliable measures of objective health status (Watson and Pennebaker
1989). Because sense of humor tends to be negatively related to neuroticism,
observed relations with self-reported illness symptoms may be due to this
shared neuroticism component rather than any objective health benefits of
humor. Indeed, research indicates that correlations between sense of humor
and physical symptom measures disappear after controlling for neuroticism
(Korotkov and Hannah 1994).
A recent study by Svebak, Martin, and Holmen (2004) represented
a unique opportunity to include a measure of sense of humor in a large popu-
lation health study that involved the entire adult population of a county in
Norway. Besides completing a three-item humor measure derived from Sve-
bak’s (1996) Sense of Humor Questionnaire (SHQ-6), over 65,000 partici-
pants completed a survey about their illness symptoms in a variety of areas
(e.g., nausea, diarrhea, pounding heart, dyspnea, musculuskeletal pain) and
their overall health satisfaction, and were also assessed for blood pressure,
height, and weight (allowing for computation of body mass index, a measure
of obesity). As such, this is the largest correlational study of sense of humor
and health ever conducted. However, the results provided very little evidence
for a simple relationship between sense of humor and health. After control-
ling for age, no meaningful relationships were found between sense of humor
and either illness symptoms or objective health indicators, although the study
did find a weak relationship between sense of humor and satisfaction with
health (r = .12). These results suggest that, although high humor individuals
do not seem to have objectively better health, they are somewhat more sub-
jectively satisfied with their health.
In view of the very large sample size of this study, the broad age range
of participants, and the unselected nature of the sample, these data provide
quite convincing evidence that people with a greater sense of humor (at least
500 Rod A. Martin
as defined by high scores on such self-report tests as the SHQ) are no more
healthy overall than their low humor counterparts. If a sense of humor does
confer any health benefits, it would appear that either they are too subtle to
be captured by such a cross-sectional design, or the type of humor involved is
not adequately captured by the SHQ. For example, this study did not include
a measure of life stress, so the authors were unable to examine the possibil-
ity of a stress-moderating effect of sense of humor on health. In addition, the
possibility remains that effects of humor on health might emerge over time
in a longitudinal design.
A study by Kuiper and Nicholl (2004) also bears on the relationship be-
tween sense of humor and satisfaction with health. These authors suggested
that it may be important to distinguish between actual and perceived physical
health, and proposed that a greater sense of humor may contribute to more
positive perceptions of physical health than may actually be warranted. Using
a sample of undergraduate students, they found that individuals with higher
scores on sense of humor measures report more positive health-related per-
ceptions, such as less fear of death or serious disease, less negative bodily
preoccupation, and less concern about pain. These results are consistent with
the finding of Svebak, Martin, and Holmen (discussed above) that higher
sense of humor is related to greater subjective satisfaction with health but
not with more objective indicators of health status. These findings may help
to explain the popularity of the idea that humor is beneficial for one’s health.
People with a greater sense of humor may perceive themselves to be healthi-
er, showing less concern about symptoms of illness, even though they are not
objectively healthier. Ironically, this greater health satisfaction and lowered
concern about health problems may actually lead to more risky health be-
haviors and consequently the higher mortality rates found by Friedman and
associates (1993).
Humor and psychological health
As with physical health, there are many different ways of conceptualizing and
assessing psychological health. Various definitions of psychological health
include such components as: freedom from psychological distress and dis-
turbance (e.g., depression, anxiety); presence of positive moods, self-esteem,
self-confidence, optimism, purpose in life, etc.; ability to adapt to changing
circumstances and to cope effectively with stressful events; and ability to
maintain stable, intimate, and satisfying relationships with others. Theorists
have suggested that a sense of humor may have beneficial effects on psycho-
logical health in all of these areas.
Moods and psychological adjustment
A number of correlational studies have found that individuals with higher

scores on various trait measures of sense of humor tend to have lower scores
on measures of depression, anxiety, and other types of mood disturbance,
and higher scores on measures of psychological adjustment such as positive
emotions, optimism, self esteem, morale, quality of life, and well-being (e.g.,
Korotkov and Hanna 1994; Kuiper and Martin 1998; Lefcourt and Martin
1986; Porterfield 1987; Simon 1990; Thorson, Powell, Sarmany-Schuller, and
Hampes 1997). As one example, Kuiper and Martin (1993) examined the
relationships between several sense of humor measures (the SHRQ, CHS,
and SHQ) and several indicators of self esteem in a sample of 100 male and
female university students. Sense of humor measures were significantly posi-
tively related to self esteem as measured by the Rosenberg Self Esteem In-
ventory. The humor scores were also negatively related to scores on the Dys-
functional Attitudes Scale, indicating that high-humor individuals endorse
more realistic and flexible standards for evaluating their own self-worth than
do low humor individuals. In addition, the humor scales were negatively re-
lated to discrepancies between actual and ideal self-ratings on a variety of
self-descriptive adjectives, and negatively related to changes in actual self-
ratings over one month, indicating that individuals with a greater sense of
humor showed a greater congruence between the way they actually viewed
themselves and the way they would ideally like to be, as well as a more stable
self-concept. Overall, these findings indicate that sense of humor (as defined
by these scales) is associated with higher levels of self-esteem and more re-
alistic and stable self-appraisals, although they do not demonstrate a causal
relationship between these variables.
Although these sorts of correlational studies have generally provided
evidence of relationships between sense of humor and various measures of
moods, adjustment, and well-being, it is important to note that the correlations
are often rather weak and are not always significant. For example, Thorson
et al. (1997) found a correlation of only −.18 between the Multidimensional
Sense of Humor Scale (MSHS) and the Center for Epidemiological Studies
Depression scale (CES-D) in a sample of 347 adults, indicating that sense
of humor accounts for less than 4 percent of the variance in depression.
502 Rod A. Martin
imilarly, Nezlek and Derks (2001) found a correlation of only -.16 between
S
the Coping Humor Scale (CHS) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI)
in a sample of 286 college students. With regard to more positive adjustment
variables, Kuiper and Martin (1998), in a series of five studies, found only
modest relationships between four measures of sense of humor and a measure
of optimism (average r = .17). Sense of humor was also related to only one of
the six subscales of the Ryff (1989) measure of psychological well-being (the
Personal Growth scale). Little or no relationship was found between sense
of humor and other well-being constructs such as self-acceptance, purpose in
life, positive relations with others, autonomy, and environmental mastery. In
addition, the correlations between sense of humor and various dimensions of
psychological health and well-being were considerably weaker than those be-
tween optimism and these same well-being measures, indicating that sense of
humor is less strongly related to well-being than is optimism. Thus, although
the research to date provides some evidence of relationships between sense
of humor and psychological well-being, the findings are often weaker than
might be expected.
The generally weak and inconsistent relationships between sense of humor
and well-being variables may be partially due to the fact that the most widely
used sense of humor measures tend to be quite strongly related to extraversion
but only weakly (negatively) related to neuroticism (Ruch 1994), whereas
most well-being constructs load primarily on neuroticism and not extraver-
sion. Research is needed to determine whether there are some forms of humor
that are less strongly related to extraversion (and perhaps even associated with
introversion) and more strongly related (either positively or negatively) with
neuroticism, and therefore more relevant to psychological well-being.
The recently developed Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) represents
a step in this direction. The self-enhancing humor subscale of this measure
seems to be more strongly (negatively) related to neuroticism and less strong-
ly related to extraversion than are most previous humor scales, while the self-
defeating humor scale is actually positively related to neuroticism (Martin et
al., 2003). Thus, these scales may capture some styles of humor that are more
relevant to well-being (both positively and negatively) than are many earlier
measures (Martin 2007; Martin et al., 2003; Kuiper et al., 2004). Interest-
ingly, some previous humor scales, such as the MSHS, have been found to be
positively correlated both with the presumably negative and positive humor
dimensions assessed by the HSQ (Martin et al. 2003). This finding supports
the contention that measures such as the MSHS blur the distinction between
potentially beneficial and detrimental humor styles, and may explain why
correlations between these previous humor measures and well-being vari-

ables have often been quite weak (e.g., Thorson et al. 1997).
It is also important to point out that these sorts of correlational studies do
not allow us to determine causal relationships between variables. The finding
of significant correlations between measures of sense of humor and various
indicators of psychological health do not demonstrate that sense of humor
has a causal effect on well-being. It is equally possible that greater humor
arises as a consequence of increased well-being, or that the correlations are
due to the influence of some third variable, such as neuroticism, which may
have an important genetic contribution. Many of the correlational findings
may simply be demonstrating the tautological truth that generally cheerful
people tend to be happy much of the time. Well-designed experimental stud-
ies are needed, with random assignment of participants to humor conditions
and appropriate control conditions, to provide convincing evidence of caus-
al effects of humor on psychological well-being. Besides laboratory studies
examining short-term effects of humor on moods and feelings of well-being
(e.g., Danzer, Dale, and Klions 1990; Moran 1995), more intensive and long-
term therapeutic intervention studies could be designed to compare interven-
tions aimed at increasing humor with appropriate control conditions, looking
at broader indicators of psychosocial well-being as outcome variables (e.g.,
White and Camerena 1989).
Coping with stress
Many authors have suggested that a humorous perspective on life is an im-

portant way of coping with stress, protecting the individual from the delete-
rious emotional and physiological consequences that typically occur with
stress (e.g., Dixon 1980; Freud 1928; May 1953). Several investigations have
provided evidence for the benefits of humor in coping with particular real-life
stressors. For example, Bizi, Keinan, and Beit-Hallahmi (1988) obtained self-
and peer-ratings of humor in a group of soldiers in the Israeli army under-
going a stressful training course. They found that peer-rated humor (but not
self-rated humor) correlated positively with peer-rated coping, commanders’
ratings of initiative, and final grades obtained in the course. Carver and asso-
ciates (1993) examined the role of humor in a sample of women coping with
surgery at an early stage of breast cancer, and found that those who reported
greater use of humor in coping subsequently reported greater optimism and
lower levels of distress.
504 Rod A. Martin
Other investigations have found evidence of correlations between sense

of humor scales and various coping strategies and other coping-related vari-
ables. For example, Kuiper, Martin, and Olinger (1993) studied cognitive ap-
praisals of university students before and after a midterm examination. They
found that participants with high, as opposed to low, coping humor scores
were more likely to appraise the upcoming exam as a positive challenge ra-
ther than a negative threat, and, following the exam, they were more likely
to adjust their expectations about the next exam in a more realistic direction,
based on their performance on the previous exam. A significant negative cor-
relation was also found between the CHS and perceived stress scores, indicat-
ing that individuals with higher levels of coping humor perceived themselves
as having more control over their lives and felt less overwhelmed, anxious,
and stressed. The CHS was also significantly correlated with two types of
coping assessed by the Ways of Coping Scale, namely confronting and emo-
tional distancing. Rim (1988) has also investigated relationships between
trait humor and coping styles.
A number of investigations have examined the stress-buffering role of
sense of humor using the stress-moderator paradigm. In this approach, re-
searchers assess three types of variables in participants: (1) sense of humor
(usually by means of various self-report scales); (2) life stressors (typically
using life events or “hassles” scales in which participants check off the major
or minor negative events that happened in their lives over a specified period
of time, such as the preceding 6 months); and (3) an outcome measure, such
as depression, anxiety, or physical illness symptoms. These data are analyzed
by means of hierarchical multiple regression to determine whether there is
a significant interaction between the sense of humor and stress measures in
predicting the outcome measure. In an early series of three studies of this
type, Martin and Lefcourt (1983), using a measure of major life events over
the preceding year as the stressor measure and general mood disturbance as
the outcome measure, demonstrated significant stress-moderating effects of
a variety of measures of sense of humor, including the SHRQ, the CHS, one
subscale of the SHQ, and the rated funniness of narratives created by partici-
pants in the laboratory. In each case, participants with higher humor scores
showed a weaker correlation between negative life events and mood distur-
bance. In particular, among subjects reporting high levels of life stressors,
high humor individuals reported less disturbed moods than did those with
lower humor scores. These results were interpreted as providing evidence that
individuals with a greater sense of humor are better able to cope with stress
and are therefore less adversely affected by stressful events.
A number of additional studies have been conducted using the stress-

moderator paradigm with a variety of different measures of humor, stress, and
outcome variables. The results of these studies, however, have been somewhat
inconsistent. Some of them have provided further support for the stress-mod-
erating effects of humor found by Martin and Lefcourt (1983). For example,
Nezu, Nezu, and Blissett (1988), using both a cross-sectional and a prospec-
tive design, found stress-moderating effects of sense of humor in predict-
ing depression but not anxiety. Additionally, in a prospective study of daily
hassles and immunity, Martin and Dobbin (1988) found a stress-moderating
effect of several sense of humor measures in the prediction of salivary immu-
noglobulin A (S-IgA) levels over a period of 1½ months. However, a number
of studies have failed to provide support for the stress-moderating effects of
sense of humor. For example, Porterfield (1987), using a sample of 220 par-
ticipants, did not replicate the stress-moderating effects of sense of humor
in the prediction of either depressed mood or physical symptoms. Similar-
ly, Korotkov and Hannah (1994) failed to find a stress-moderating effect of
humor on illness symptoms in a sample of over 700 participants. To add to the
confusion, some studies have even found significant stress-moderating effects
of sense of humor that were in the opposite direction to predictions, higher
humor individuals showing more adverse effects of stress on outcome meas-
ures (e.g., Anderson and Arnoult 1989; Overholser 1992). Thus, the stress-
moderator paradigm has provided limited and rather inconsistent support for
the idea that a sense of humor is beneficial in coping with stress.
One possible explanation for these inconsistent findings may have to do
with weaknesses in the research paradigm, including reliance on trait meas-
ures of humor, retrospective assessment of stress, and a cross-sectional de-
sign. Consequently, this approach may not be sensitive enough to capture
specific ways in which particular forms of humor are used on a day-to-day
basis in coping with specific stressors. A more promising approach involves
following participants over a period of time using daily diary or on-line re-
porting methods with hand-held computers to examine actual expressions
of different types of humor in the context of particular types of stressful
experiences. Such approaches allow for a more intensive, process-oriented
study of interactions between expressions of humor or laughter, life events,
and health-related variables over time. Such rich and complex data require
more sophisticated analysis methods, such as hierarchical linear modeling
approaches (Bryk and Raudenbush 1992).
As one recent example of this approach, Puhlik-Doris (2004) had partici-
pants report their daily experiences of four different styles of humor (using
506 Rod A. Martin
a daily humor version of the Humor Styles Questionnaire) as well as their

stressful experiences and positive and negative moods on six days over three
weeks, using an Internet reporting system. Analyses of the data employing
hierarchical linear modeling revealed significant stress-moderating effects for
three of the four humor styles. Although these findings are in need of replica-
tion, they suggest that this within-subjects research approach may be more
sensitive to stress-moderating effects of humor than is the traditional trait ap-
proach using multiple regression.
An alternative approach to studying humor as a coping mechanism in-
volves an experimental paradigm in which participants are exposed to a mild
stressor in the laboratory and humor is manipulated to examine the effect
on outcome measures such as self-reported moods or stress-related physio-
logical arousal. Humor manipulations can include providing subjects with
humorous stimuli or instructing them to create a humorous narrative, and
appropriate control conditions are needed. As an example of this approach,
Newman and Stone (1996) had participants watch a stressful 13-minute film
depicting gruesome wood mill accidents resulting from careless safety prac-
tices. Half of the participants were instructed to create a humorous narra-
tive while watching the film, while the other half were instructed to create
a serious narrative. The outcome measures included self-reported moods and
physiological measures of skin temperature, heart rate, and skin conductance.
The study demonstrated a stress-moderating effect of humor, as subjects who
produced a humorous narrative, as compared to those who produced a seri-
ous narrative, had lower negative affect, lower heart rate and skin conduct-
ance, and higher skin temperature (indicative of lower stress reactivity) while
watching the film. Interestingly, this study found no relationship between the
experimental effects and trait measures of sense of humor, suggesting that it
may be more productive to investigate humor as a state rather than a trait in
studies of humor and coping.
Interpersonal relationships
Humor is often seen as an important communication skill, and a number of

authors have therefore suggested that a sense of humor may enhance mari-
tal relationships, friendships, and other close relationships. It has been sug-
gested that humor allows one to discuss potentially problematic topics in
a non-threatening and accepting manner, to engage in creative interpersonal
problem-solving, and to enhance positive feelings of warmth, closeness, and
enjoyment between partners in a relationship (e.g., Lefcourt 2001; Ziv 1984).

In turn, more satisfying and enduring relationships may result in the well-
known psychological and even physical health benefits of greater social sup-
port (Cohen 1988; Cohen and Wills 1985).
Some studies have demonstrated significant correlations between sense of
humor measures and variables relevant to interpersonal relationships, such as
intimacy (Hampes 1992), social competence and assertiveness (Bell, McGhee,
and Duffey 1986), and satisfaction with social interactions (Nezlek and Derks
2001). There is also considerable evidence that people rate a sense of humor
as one of the most desirable characteristics in a potential mate (Lundy, Tan,
and Cunningham 1998; Smith, Waldorf, and Trembath 1990), and couples
who were married for over 50 years attributed their marital longevity in part
to their ability to laugh together (Lauer, Lauer, and Kerr 1990).
Research on this topic has provided support for positive correlations be-
tween relationship satisfaction and perceptions of partners’ sense of humor.
Rust and Goldstein (1989) found that appreciation of one’s partner’s sense
of humor loaded highly on a measure of marital satisfaction. Similarly, Ziv
and Gadish (1989) found that individuals’ marital satisfaction was positively
correlated with their perceptions of their spouse’s sense of humor, but less so
with their ratings of their own sense of humor. A number of studies of marital
satisfaction have employed the Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF; Gott-
man, McCoy, and Coan 1996), which includes a category for good-natured
humor, to code videotapes of married couples engaging in a discussion about
a problem area in their relationship. These studies have typically found posi-
tive correlations between the frequency of observed humor during problem
discussions and individuals’ current marital satisfaction (e.g., Carstensen,
Gottman, and Levenson 1995).
However, in prospective studies that have examined longer-term marital
stability, humor has not fared as well as a predictor. For example, Gottman
and Levenson (1999) followed 79 married couples over 4 years. Although
they found that SPAFF-coded emotional expression during a brief problem
discussion at time 1 accounted for 93% of the variance in marital outcome
(divorce or separation versus stability), humor was not one of the significant
predictors. In a study of newlyweds, Cohan and Bradbury (1997) found that
SPAFF-coded humor predicted marital satisfaction 18 months later in wives
but not in husbands. In fact, a combination of high humor expression in the
husband, along with high levels of life stress for the couple, actually pre-
dicted a greater likelihood of the couple separating within 18 months. Based
on this finding, the authors suggested that, rather than facilitating problem-
508 Rod A. Martin
solving, humor in husbands may be a way of avoiding problems and disen-

gaging from problem solving, resulting in less marital stability over time.
Thus, there is some evidence that humor may be positively related to current
satisfaction in a relationship but less so to long-term stability.
Recent findings reported in a Ph.D. dissertation by Puhlik-Doris (2004)
lead to similar conclusions. In this study, university students who were cur-
rently in romantic dating relationships were asked to complete measures
of relationship satisfaction as well as the Humor Styles Questionnaire. The
couples were followed up 5 to 6 months later to see if the dating relation-
ship was still continuing. As expected, the relationships of individuals with
higher scores on the aggressive humor scale were more likely to have bro-
ken up by this time. However, contrary to expectations, those with higher
affiliative and self-enhancing humor were also more likely to have broken
up, and this was especially true if the partner had expressed some dissat-
isfaction with the relationship. This surprising finding may perhaps be ex-
plained by the fact that high-humor individuals are particularly attractive
to potential alternative partners and are therefore more likely to move from
one relationship to another. Assuming that these findings can be replicated,
they cast doubt on the idea that a positive sense of humor is always associ-
ated with greater relationship stability. Further research is needed to deter-
mine whether this pattern is limited to dating relationships, or if it is also
found among couples in more committed long-term relationships such as
marriage.
Despite the popular belief that a sense of humor is a desirable character-
istic in a partner and is beneficial for close relationships, there is current-
ly very little research on this topic and, as noted, the existing findings are
quite mixed. More research is needed to clarify the role of various types
of positive and negative humor in different kinds of relationships. Besides
looking at correlations between sense of humor measures and relationship
satisfaction and stability, further research is needed to test specific hypoth-
eses about humor in relationships, such as the idea that humor contributes to
better communication skills and a greater ability to solve relationship prob-
lems. Further research is also needed to examine the role of humorous teas-
ing in relationships (e.g., Keltner et al., 1998) and the effects of teasing on
well-being (Janes and Olson 2000).
In addition to correlational designs, researchers should consider experi-
mental methodologies as well as longitudinal studies involving repeated as-
sessments of couples over a period of time. As an alternative to self-report
measures that assess how an individual generally expresses humor (such as
the Humor Styles Questionnaire), researchers should make use of couple-

focused measures that assess the positive and negative uses of humor within
a particular relationship, such as the Relational Humor Inventory (de Kon-
ing and Weiss 2002).
Conclusion
Despite reports in the popular media and claims made by adherents of the
“humor and health” movement, the research findings on health benefits of
humor and laughter are not as strong, consistent, or unambiguous as is com-
monly believed. With regard to physical health, the strongest evidence sup-
ports the idea of humor-related increases in pain tolerance, although the mech-
anisms are still unclear, and there is evidence that similar effects can also be
found with negative emotions. The empirical support for beneficial physio-
logical effects of humor or laughter on the immune system, blood pressure,
stress hormones, muscle relaxation, and so on, is weak and contradictory.
Indeed, there is some indication that a greater sense of humor is associated
with unhealthier lifestyle behaviors and a shorter life expectancy. With regard
to psychological health, there is some evidence that a sense of humor can
play a beneficial role in coping with stress, enhancing interpersonal relation-
ships, and contributing to general well-being, although this research is also
somewhat inconsistent.
As I have attempted to show in this review, it is unrealistic to hold a sim-
plistic view that all forms of humor and laughter are beneficial to a wide
array of physical and psychological health variables. Some types of humor
and laughter may be beneficial to some aspects of mental or physical health,
some may be neutral with regard to health, and some may even be detrimen-
tal. Furthermore, different mechanisms may be involved in different effects,
and some forms of humor may be beneficial in some ways and detrimental
in others. The mixed and weak findings in the research to date may be due,
at least in part, to the fact that researchers generally have not distinguished
different styles of humor that may be more or less relevant to health.
In addition, the inconsistent findings may be due to a number of methodo-
logical weaknesses that are apparent in much of the research. Due in large
part to a lack of adequate funding for such research, many of the experimen-
tal studies (especially those examining immune system variables) have been
small scale, with inadequate control groups, making it difficult to draw firm
conclusions one way or the other. Researchers often seem to have chosen
510 Rod A. Martin
their humor measures and research procedures simply on the basis of what
was readily available, rather than developing measures and methods based
on well-formulated theoretical models. Most investigations in this field have
been single studies, each using a different set of paradigms and measures,
making it difficult to compare results across studies and draw firm conclu-
sions. The field is in need of more systematic and programmatic research,
employing more well-formulated theoretical models, developing rigorous
and sophisticated paradigms and methodologies, replicating findings across
studies, carefully testing competing hypotheses, and thus providing an accu-
mulation of knowledge.
A number of suggestions for future research have been noted at various
points in the preceding review. Rather than reiterate these here, I will make
only a few general concluding comments. Future research should examine
different components and styles of humor and laughter to determine which
kinds of humor are beneficial for which aspects of health through which
mechanisms, as well as which aspects or styles of humor are irrelevant to
health, and which may even be detrimental to some aspects of health. The
Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin et al., 2003) is one attempt to develop
a measure of various styles of humor that may be differentially related to
health variables.
Much of the existing research has taken a correlational approach, using
self-report trait measures of sense of humor. Although some weak to moder-
ate correlations have been found between these humor measures and various
health-related variables (more so for psychological than physical health), this
approach suffers from a number of limitations, including an inability to deter-
mine the direction of causality, reliance on self-report, and a trait approach to
humor which may be insensitive to subtle relationships. To determine causal
relationships, experimental methodologies are needed, in the form of either
laboratory investigations or intervention studies. Such methods of course re-
quire appropriate control groups to rule out possible alternative explanations
of results. To determine the degree to which laughter or the humor-related
emotion of mirth are responsible for any observed effects, these should be
monitored via observational coding (e.g., the FACS system), physiological
measures, and self-report scales (e.g., state version of the STCI), and analyses
should be conducted to determine possible mediating effects of these vari-
ables. Humor intervention studies would be particularly beneficial to exam-
ine the longer-term significance of laboratory findings. Can people be taught
to laugh more frequently in their daily lives, to engage in more healthy forms
of humor, or to use humor as a coping strategy, and do these changes in humor
and laughter result in significant and enduring changes in physical, emotion-

al, and/or psychosocial health variables?
Another promising alternative to simple correlational studies involves
the use of hierarchical linear modeling approaches to study individuals over
time, examining within-subject relationships between various compon-
ents of humor and stress, interpersonal relationships, physical health, and
psychological well-being (e.g., Nezlek and Derks 2001). For example, using
these methods, one could study the degree to which day-to-day fluctuations
in various components or styles of humor or laughter are related to corres-
ponding changes in aspects of psychological or physical health within in-
dividuals over a number of weeks or months. Rather than relying on trait
measures of humor, adjustment, health, and so on, such repeated-measures
approaches require assessment procedures that are sensitive to fluctuations
in behaviors, moods, and health variables over short periods of time, such
as days or even hours. For example, the four subscales of the Humor Styles
Questionnaire have been modified for a daily report format (Puhlik-Doris
2004). Instead of depending on retrospective reporting, data can be collect-
ed in “real time” using Internet websites or hand-held computers. These ap-
proaches may offer the benefit of greater ecological validity than laboratory
studies and also allow for investigation of specific hypotheses regarding var-
ious mechanisms, such as relationships between particular styles of humor,
social support, and health variables. Causal (or at least temporal) relation-
ships can be teased out by examining relationships between time-lagged
data. For example, to determine whether humor predicts well-being or well-
being predicts humor, one could compare relationships between humor and
next-day well-being measures with relationships between well-being and
next-day humor measures.
In conclusion, relationships between humor and laughter on the one
hand, and psychosocial and physiological health on the other, are more
complex than many people believe. More research is needed to disentangle
these complex relationships. Only when a clearer picture has emerged from
the empirical research can health care practitioners design humor-based in-
terventions that are likely to be effective. There is little doubt that humor
and laughter can enhance positive feelings of mirth, but we have only an
incomplete understanding of the ways in which different aspects or styles of
humor may contribute to broader dimensions of mental health and satisfy-
ing social relationships. Similarly, while children and adults who are suffer-
ing from serious, life-threatening illnesses are likely to feel more cheerful
and hopeful if they can find something to laugh about, the jury is still out on
512 Rod A. Martin
whether humor and laughter actually hasten the healing process or protect
one from becoming ill in the first place. Clearly this is a very interesting
field of research, with a great deal of potential for further discoveries.
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Humor in literature
1. Why it’s handy to study humor in literature
The study of humor in literature is akin to the study of biological specimens

that have been dyed, fixed, and mounted on slides: both convenient and, like
most convenient things, unsatisfactory. The thing being studied has been im-
mobilized and clearly laid out for study. Unlike a live specimen that is likely
to be colorless and for many of its parts to be therefore nearly invisible, one
can see every cell wall and organelle in brilliant purple detail – and likewise
one can see every word and every quotation mark, can map every reference
and co-reference and innuendo. One can look for as long as one wishes; in
the same way that a fixed protozoan cannot squirm off of the slide, words
that have been fixed on a page cannot be forgotten, misquoted, or misheard,
and are not lost in the stream of time. Multiple observers can be sure that
they are all seeing exactly the same physical evidence.
These preserved specimens are invaluable tools in research and with-
out them scientists and students would be lost, but they also provide an in-
complete picture of the thing being studied. If one does not see a protozoan
squirm off of the edge of the slide, one hasn’t really seen a protozoan, even
though the stained slide may have made it very easy to pick out every mem-
brane and flagellum. Likewise, humor as represented by words on a page is
only a dry and dead record of what the humor had been when in the wild
– in this case, in the mind of the author and reader rather than in a drop of
pond water.
Fortunately, it is easy to reanimate a piece of fixed and mounted humor: it
happens every time the text is read or thought about. Thus unlike the kind of
everyday social humor that springs into existence and is promptly lost, liter-
ary humor can and does endure for millennia. Hermeneutics aside, audienc-
es today are laughing at the same jokes that amused ancient Greek audiences
more than two thousand years ago. Literary humor is therefore a vast arena
of material for humor researchers that can conveniently be shared, copied,
and referenced, and, because of the hermeneutics question (the question of
how a text can be interpreted differently by every reader based on his or her
524 Katrina E. Triezenberg
world experience, and how each of these readings differs from the author’s
idea of what he meant), every piece of literary humor can be said to become
a new joke every time it is read by a new person at a new time.
Of course, there are at least two possible ways to interpret the phrase “lit-
erary humor”: first, as the preservation of a joke through writing, and second
as an instance of a joke inside a work of literature. The dissection and criti-
cism of what writing is “literature” and what is not is a question not answered
here, though it is easy to find it argued and re-argued elsewhere. For the
purposes of this chapter, “literary humor” shall be defined as anything funny
inside any piece of fiction, drama, or narrative. What is and is not “funny”
depends on what theory of humor is being subscribed to, and these theories
are discussed elsewhere in this primer.
This chapter will first give an overview of some major works of “humor-
ous” literature in the Western tradition, beginning with the Greek playwrights
and ending with 20th century satirists, and will subsequently or simultan-
eously describe literary terminology associated with the study of humor as
well as various historical theories and observations about the qualities of hu-
morous texts, very often made by the same people who produced the texts.
The second part of this chapter will be theoretical itself, focusing on Raskin’s
theory of humor (1985), which will be found to be a summation of most of
the prior discussion of humor in literature, and Raskin and Attardo’s exten-
sion to this theory, which is particularly suited to the study of literature, as
well as Attardo’s own work using linguistic approaches to studying humor-
ous literature. The chapter will then end by discussing two mild challenges
to these theories, first the issue of “humor enhancers” in humorous litera-
ture, and then the interesting instances of literature that seem to conform to
Raskin’s theory but are clearly not humorous.
2. Literary humor: A historical sketch
Before launching into an exploration of early literary humor, it is necessary

to explain some basic terminology regarding humor and comedy. “Comedy”
is popularly used to denote any media that is light-hearted and funny, usu-
ally with a happy ending. Thus funny television shows are called situational
comedies or sitcoms, pleasant romances are called romantic comedies, and
funny people who perform live are called stand-up comedians. This popular
usage of the word comedy and its derivatives (comic, comedian) is often car-
ried over into the discussion of literary humor, where it causes confusion
Humor in literature 525
with the classical meaning of “comedy” as a story about the powerless vs.
the powerful, or the little man vs. the big man, or even about the perils and
pitfalls of social pretence. Thus Dante named his magnum opus “The Divine
Comedy” even though it is not in all parts (most notably the Paradiso, but also
most of the Purgatorio and some of the Inferno) at all funny. Greek comedies,
from the language of which the word is derived, were often bawdy or ribald
and ended happily for everyone. To Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other writers
of the Middle Ages and Renaissance a comedy was a story (but especially
a play, as to the Greeks) with a happy ending, whether humorous or not.
Throughout this chapter, the term “comedy” and its derivatives will be used
in the classical rather than the common sense.
The comedy was developed as a stage play by the ancient Greeks and is
generally divided into three major phases, the Old Comedy of the sixth and
fifth centuries bce, which often makes fun of a specific person and of current
political issues, the Middle Comedy of the fifth and four centuries bce, which
makes fun of more general themes such as literature, professions, and society,
and the New Comedy of the fourth and third centuries bce which typically
revolves around the bawdy adventures of a blustering soldier, a young man in
love with an unsuitable woman, or a father figure who cannot follow his own
advice. Of the Old and Middle comedies, the only that have survived com-
plete are eleven plays of Aristophanes’. The Clouds (of which only a revised
version survives) lampoons Socrates in heaven, in the Old tradition, while
Lysistrata makes fun of human nature in general, and Plutus personifies both
wealth and poverty in Athens, who so distract the citizenry that they neglect
the gods, and is considered to be a Middle comedy.
The author of New comedy whose work has best survived the ages is
Menander, whose complete play Dyskolos (The Grouch) was discovered in
1957. Many other long pieces of Menander’s work have survived in Latin
translations by Terence and Plautus.
The stage was not the only medium of comedy recognized by the ancient
Greeks. Aristotle’s Poetics, written towards the close of Middle Comedy, in-
cludes Homer in his discussion of the comic: “A poem of the satirical kind
cannot indeed be put down to any author earlier than Homer; though many
such writers probably there were. But from Homer onward, instances can be
cited – his own Margites, for example.” The Poetics also includes a beautiful-
ly concise observation of the differences between comedy and its evil twin, or
photo-negative, the tragedy: “for comedy aims at representing men as worse,
tragedy as better than in actual life.” Satire was firmly established in ancient
Greece, and nothing was safe from it – not the gods, not professions, not even
poetry itself. Lucian (120–180 ad) wrote his own Symposium, in which the
diners are rowdy and drunken.
Comedy in the Roman Empire is generally reduced to the works of the
aforementioned Plautus and Terence, the former of whom lived at about the
same time as Menander, the latter about a century later. Both of these men
wrote plays of essentially the Old Greek kind – farces involving the same
stock characters (father, soldier, slave) and which, unlike the plays of Aris-
tophanes, offended no one in particular. More than a dozen plays of Plautus’
have survived. Six plays of Terence have survived, and were enormously
popular through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.
In the Middle Ages, the farces, bawdies, and satires of Greek and Roman
literature continued to be popular. Geoffrey Chaucer is best known for his
Canterbury Tales, some of which (most famously, perhaps, The Miller’s Tale)
are both bawdy and still funny by today’s standards. Chaucer also penned The
Romaunt of the Rose, a satire on love and courtship, and The House of Fame
which seems to spoof Dante’s idea of the narrator and the guide – in Chau-
cer’s version, he the narrator would rather not listen to the guide. The Inferno,
the first installment of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, describes damned souls
engaging in bawdy behavior and word play. Dante and his guide Virgil also
encounter a great many Florentines who sometimes regret their sins and some-
times do not, thus satirizing Florentine society. The second and third install-
ments of the Divine Comedy are however distinctly not funny, and clearly il-
lustrate that by the fourteenth century a comedy need do nothing more than
end happily. Chaucer seems to have also been heavily influenced by another
Italian writer, Bocaccio, whose Decameron is a collection of stories told by
a group of ten nobles who have fled the Black Death by shutting themselves up
in a lonely castle. Many of these stories involve the same themes as New Greek
comedy and Roman comedy before them.
A century after this trio of comic writers, a French monk named Rabelais
published a series of five books collectively known as Gargantua and Panta-
gruel. Gargantua and his son Pantagruel are two giants of unfixed size, who
can sometimes fit into a normal building and sometimes hold whole civiliza-
tions inside their mouths. These books contain satires on the Roman Catholic
church, bawdy stories, and scatological humor as well as plain silliness that
reminds the modern reader of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. These books are
not particularly associated with Comedy, but are undeniably humorous. Rab-
elais’ brand of silliness and freedom from the laws of physics and of logic was
discussed by the critic Bakhtin, who calls this atmosphere the “carnival” world.
More on carnival can be found in dozens of books by Bakhtin and others.
Rabelais is an excellent example of a writer who wrote for the sake of

humor itself, and included some satire only because it is practically unavoid-
able in making jokes. Erasmus (1466–1536), on the other hand, has very
clear political and religious objectives in The Praise of Folly, where Folly is
nursed and instructed by Self Love, Flattery, Intemperance, and a number of
other personified sins, and goes on to criticize the Catholic Church. Oddly
enough, the joke was on Erasmus, who was a staunch Catholic, but whose
work became a major catalyst of the Protestant Reformation.
Shakespeare’s plays are sometimes divided into Comedy, Tragedy, and
History. The history plays are, obviously, those based on historic person-
ages such as Richard III and Henry IV. The difference between comedy and
tragedy is still very much the same as in Greek plays – comedies have happy
endings and tragedies have sad ones; tragic heroes are larger than life, while
comic heroes are flawed. Shakespeare’s comedies are also usually funny, but
unlike the Greek bawdy plays and satires, their humor lies in word play –
puns, allusions, and double-entendres that are very often lost on today’s au-
dience. Careful perusal of an annotated version of Love’s Labours Lost or
All’s Well That Ends Well will reveal the surprising density of jokes in these
plays, which are supposed to have had Elizabethan audiences roaring with
laughter.
Shakespeare’s humor is not limited to his comedies. Falstaff, one of the
great comic (and humorous) characters of all time, appears in Henry IV parts
I and II, where he often embodies or describes something similar to Bakhtin’s
carnival. Shakespeare’s tragedies, too, often include a figure of a clown or
fool. While this figure cannot be said to be the source of much mirth or laugh-
ter, his job is to provide commentary that is sometimes satiric and very often,
according to most theories of humor, funny.
Less than a century after Shakespeare, the philosopher Hobbes briefly
addressed humor in his work Leviathan. He says “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 for-
merly.” Thus Hobbes seems to have subscribed to the aggression theory of
humor, also favored long before him by the Greek and Roman classics.
The eighteenth century saw the rise of a new kind of humorous author: the
wit. A wit is usually a person who can make quick, wry comments in the course
of conversation, but many wits turned their talents to paper. Shakespeare and
many others had, before this time, displayed such word play, but the wit as
a personality seems to first emerge in the public consciousness as the Eng-
lish writer Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) and the French writer Francois-Marie
Arouet, known as Voltaire (1694–1778). Voltaire seems to have dabbled in

every literary form known, from novels to plays, history, poetry, letters, and
essays. His signature wit is present in all, and some are expressly meant to be
satires, especially on the Catholic church, censorship, and French civil liber-
ties (or lack of). Swift is perhaps best known for his novel Gulliver’s Travels,
in which sailor Lemuel Gulliver recounts his visits to strange lands inhabited
by fantastic peoples. Gulliver’s last voyage finds him in a land where horses
are the dominant species, and keep dumb, barbaric humans (called yahoos)
as beasts of burden. This last tale, more than the others, reflects in a humor-
ous way upon the failings of civilization. Swift is also the author of A Modest
Proposal, an essay which suggests that the problems of overpopulation and
starvation in the lower classes would be readily solved if they would eat their
own children.
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) and William Congreve (1670–1729) were
contemporaneous with Swift. If Swift represents satire in eighteenth century
England, then Pope represents satiric poetry of the same time. Imitations of
Horace satirizes policies of George II and Horace Walpole while imitating
the form of a classical poet. His Moral Essays are works more of ridicule
than of satire (and therefore do not necessarily fall under the realm of humor).
William Congreve wrote four comedies that were simultaneously highbrow
and bawdy, and has also left a wealth of letters written to various wits and in-
tellectuals of the era, which received witty replies. He corresponded with the
essayist Lady Mary Wortley Montague, to whom Pope famously dedicated
first love, then hate, and who appears in his Dunciad.
The eighteenth century also saw the birth of the novel as an accepted form
in English literature, and many early novels are humorous. Tristram Shandy
is perhaps too disorganized and strange to be called a proper novel (indeed,
it still seems like a piece of cutting-edge comedy today) but the ridiculous
behavior of all its characters makes it uproariously funny. More in line with
the standard story arc of the novel is Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote,
which tells the story of Arabella, a young woman whose only education and
contact with the outside world has consisted of reading romance novels, and
the adventures she has when she becomes independently wealthy and comes
face to face with the outside world. Tom Jones also follows the criteria of the
Comedy as understood by the Greeks, the medieval storytellers, and Shake-
speare: it is a light-hearted tale of adventure, containing many hilarious epi-
sodes and ending happily for everyone who deserves to so end.
Jane Austen deserves mention as a novelist with enormous powers for
understanding and portraying characters that are simultaneously true-to-life
and ridiculous. Though the substance of her plots is always earnest and could
not have offended anyone, all of her novels can simultaneously be read as
scorching satires of human nature and society manners.
Among the Victorians can be found many instances of humor, as Charles
Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray both became enormously popular
for sympathetic portrayals of eccentric characters and were copied by other
novelists and story writers. Though there are many straightforward jokes and
satire in their novels, and the novels themselves can be considered comedies
because they end well for almost everyone, it is instructive to consider why
precisely a Dickens characterization – of Silas Wegg and Mr. Venus from Our
Mutual Friend, for example – is labeled as being “funny.” These characters
do not tell jokes themselves, and most of their dialogue is not particularly
witty, and yet they make us laugh in delight at the recognition and exaggera-
tion of a “type” of person that we ourselves have met in real life. Perhaps
for this reason, Dickens is rather more successful with British readers than
with Americans, who are sometimes left out in the cold by his humor, while
Americans more readily recognize the same humor in the works of Samuel
Clemens, known as Mark Twain. Twain did very much the same thing that
Dickens was doing, writing stories about characters that are more real than
real life, more true to type than any true person could be.
At the same time in Russia a story writer named Nikolai Gogol was writ-
ing short stories that were as much ahead of their time as Tristram Shandy
was ahead of its own. Gogol’s short stories alternate between being simply
bizarre, almost to the point where humor is lost to wonder and confusion
(such as The Nose, in which a man’s nose goes AWOL and walks about the
city causing trouble), and so dark and horrible that, while the story is most
certainly a joke with a punch line, the reader is loathe to laugh (such as The
Overcoat, in which a poor clerk starves himself to buy a new coat, which is
stolen from him on the first night he wears it).
1890–1900, a period called the fin-de-siecle by students of English lit-
erature, was the golden age of Oscar Wilde, a great comic playwright whose
only joke, it seems, was to contrast the honest, industrious mores of the pub-
lic world with the lazy and selfish motivations of his elegant heroes. Wilde’s
plays exhibit a gift for word play and repartee, as well as cultivation of ridicu-
lous situations, which has become a staple of “comedy” in the 20th and 21st
centuries.
Satire and characterization continued to be popular kinds of literary
humor in the 20th century novel, as exhibited in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22
and Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk. P. G. Wodehouse’s long string
of novels, mostly featuring the nitwit Bertie Wooster and his gentleman’s
gentleman Jeeves, are reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s comedy sans elegance
and with an extra infusion of silliness. Like Wilde, Wodehouse’s works usu-
ally hinge around a ridiculous social situation created by the characters them-
selves, very much in the same line as the late 20th century’s televised situ-
ational comedies, or sitcoms, which are too numerous and too well-known to
list here. Television in general opened up huge new vistas for humor along
with every other kind of performing art. In addition to the sitcom, humorous
variety shows with invited guests (such as Laugh In and Saturday Night Live)
and collections of sketches (such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus) were
popular in the 20th century. Before television, cinema provided a new venue
to perform the same kind of comic plays that had been popular ever since
the Greek theatre, and for comedians to become household names the world
over. Independent of technological innovations, the 20th century also saw the
beginning of the musical comedy in 1943, when Oklahoma! premiered.
Twentieth century authors who are known to have meditated on the sub-
ject of humor include E. B. White, who suggested this chapter’s introduc-
tory metaphor when he said, “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the
thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure
scientific mind” (White and White 1941). Isaac Asimov, better known for
writing science fiction, has published two books of jokes (1971, 1993) that
include commentary on why the jokes are funny and suggestions on how to
successfully tell the jokes. He recognizes that humor comes from an abrupt
change in point of view. Comedian Rowan Atkinson, familiar from his hu-
morous sketch show Mr. Bean, proposes that a person can be funny in three
ways: by being in an unusual place (as Lemuel Gulliver), by behaving in an
unusual way (as Monty Python’s sketch The Ministry of Silly Walks), and by
being the wrong size (as Gargantua and Pantagruel – but is Alice funny after
she drinks potions in Wonderland?) It is suggested that the reader keep these
theories in mind, for discussion later in this chapter. But first, the author has
judged that it would be expedient to include a short glossary of literary terms
commonly used in the discussion of humor.
3. Glossary of pertinent terms
Absurd: aside from the general meaning of illogical or impossible, absurd can
specifically refer to the purposelessness of existence. This meaning comes
from the existentialist writings of Albert Camus.
Adoxography: literature that uses highbrow words and phraseology to de-

scribe something base or common. Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly is an ex-
ample.
Agon: the power struggle between two characters in a Greek comedy, espe-
cially the Old comedy.
Ambiguity: humor scholars both amateur and well-versed agree that humor
has something to do with ambiguity, the state of having more than one
possible meaning. Whether ambiguity is the be-all and end-all of humor,
or just a component, is a debated question.
Anachronism: placing a person or thing outside of its proper historical era.
This is often used to humorous effect, though is not necessarily funny. See
the discussion of script oppositions later in the chapter.
Antaclasis: a pun composed of two homographs or homophones, with dif-
ferent meanings.
Anti-masque: a prelude to a masque, a particular kind of costumed perform-
ance that could include song and dance as well as drama and comedy.
Anti-masques were typically burlesque, often grotesque.
Antiphrasis: the use of a word as its own antonym. A kind of irony.
Bathos: bad poetry written by a poet who is trying too hard. Though bathos
is often funny, the poet never intends it to be so.
Bawdry, bawdy: a piece of funny literature, especially a play, that revolves
around sex.
Black comedy: drama or any kind of humor dealing with subjects that are
usually too serious to be funny, such as war, death, and plague.
Braggadocio: a stock character in Greek comedies who is excessively proud
of himself and lets everyone know it. The braggadocio and the eiron play
off each other.
Burlesque: an undignified parody of a famous piece of literature.
Carnivalization: turning the norms upside down and inside out; from Mikhail
Bakhtin’s book about Rabelais.
Clown: a performer who interacts with his audience, usually in a humorous
way. Clown often wear ridiculous costumes and are sometimes satirists
or social critics.
Comedy: classically, a play about the little man vs. the big man; proponents
of the aggression theory of humor may argue that the eventual triumph of
the little man over the big man arouses a sense of triumph or superiority
in the audience, leading to humor.
Eiron: a stock character in Greek comedies who, through excessive humility,
pokes fun at other characters. Source of the word irony.
Enthymeme: an argument with an unstated premise. This unstated premise is

often the grounds for a humorous conclusion to the argument. Mark Twain
was a particular master of this usage.
Fabliau: a short story, written in verse, in which stock characters have bawdy
adventures. Some of the Canterbury Tales, such as the Miller’s Tale, are
fabliaux.
Farce: a play that derives humor from putting its characters into ludicrous
situations. A form that continues to be popular today, as in most sitcoms.
Flyting: a poet’s duel, in which the opponents exchange insulting verses about
each other.
Fool: can used synonymously with “jester”, but in some cases (notably Shake-
speare’s plays) the fool is not clownish or humorous, but rather a semi-
detached observer and critic. Funny because the insults run against social
norms of politeness, and because the verses are usually witty.
Grotesque: literature that distorts its characters, either physically as in the
masks and hump-backed costumes of commedia del’arte characters, or in
their personalities and actions, as in many Victorian novels.
Humour/humor: from the medieval theory that four fluids (blood, phlegm,
black bile, and yellow bile) in the body controlled the personality, this may
have acquired its modern meaning from “humoural comedies” in which
characters with an excess of one fluid behaved grotesquely.
Humorous triple: a sequence of three statements, the last of which is in hu-
morous opposition to the first two. Much of Woody Allen’s dialogue con-
sists of humorous triples.
Hyperbole: dramatic overstatement.
Irony: humor derived from the inconsistency of a thing with its environment.
Jester: a clown employed by a royal court, most often thought of in the Mid-
dle Ages. Unlike fools and some other kinds of clown, jesters were not ex-
pected to be satirists or to make observations about human nature, society,
etc., but simply to be a target of laughter.
Lampoon: a literary attack upon a person, funny (or not funny) for the same
reasons as flyting.
Limerick: a five-line poem, rhyming aabba. The first two lines set up a situ-
ation, the third and fourth develop it, and the fifth is a punchline.
Malaprop: incorrect usage of a long word, resulting in comic effect. Named
for Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play The Rivals.
Menippean satire: Tristram Shandy is an excellent example of this satiric
genre, which is characterized by continual sidetracks, interruptions, and
leaps of logic. Also called Varronian satire, after the Roman playwright
Varro and the Greek playwright Menippus.
Mime: today’s mimes are a variety of clown whose performances are not ne-
cessarily funny. In Greek usage, a “mime” is a farce.
Mock epic: a satiric spoof of the epic form. Alexander Pope’s Dunciad is an
example of this genre.
Mock heroic: the same as an epic, though not necessarily on such a grand
scale. The grandiosity of language employed is at odds with the low sub-
ject matter, creating humor.
Paraprosdokian: a phrase or list with an amusingly out-of-place ending.
Parody: a humorous work, mimicking the style of another author. While
mock epics and heroics are spoofs on a genre, parodies are usually iden-
tifiable as spoofs of the work of one particular person. Aristophanes’ play
The Frogs is a parody of Euripides; in the modern day, the musician Weird
Al parodies the popular songs of other musicians.
Pun: an expression that has two or more possible meanings all hinging on
one word being polysemous or homophonous with another, or two words
together being phonologically similar to a third word. Also called parono-
masia.
Repartee: rapid, witty dialogue, funny either explicitly through its content or
implicitly because it contrasts so sharply with everyday speech.
Restoration comedy: a particular kind of comedy that hinges around repar-
tee; popular during the English restoration. William Congreve’s plays are
of this type.
Ribaldry: literature that discusses sex in a humorous fashion; the same as
bawdry.
Romantic comedy: a comedy that revolves around the adventures of lovers.
Sarcasm: verbal expression of irony or satire, often with a particular vocal
intonation.
Satire: literature that criticizes individuals or organizations, preferably in
a witty manner. The best satire, with the best picked targets, does not have
to resort to grotesquerie to make its point.
Scatology: literature that discusses excrement and its production. One of
Rabelais’ favorite subjects.
Sentimental comedy: popular in the 18th century, sentimental comedy’s
characters are virtuous if not also attractive, affectionate, and industrious,
and the happy ending is domestic. Noted here because this particular kind
of comedy is not well-known for containing any humor at all.
Spoonerism: a phrase in which the first letters or syllables or two or more

words have been switched, often creating a humorous effect. For example,
“it is kisstomary to cuss the bride.”
Squib: a short satirical attack.
Trope: any phrase that uses a word outside of its normal meaning. Thus irony,
metonymy, and synechdoche are all kinds of trope.
Wit: as discussed in the previous section, wit is the display of quick mental
powers, or even just the possession of them. In dialogue, wit is often hu-
morous. Sigmund Freud dissected humor into three types, one of which
is wit.
4. Study of literary humor
Since the ancient Greeks (or possibly before) writers and philologists have
speculated about what precisely “humor” is, what makes something funny,
why laughter is the response, and what good laughter does. Humor can be
conveyed through an enormous number of media, but because this chapter
focuses on literary humor, it is natural to look for work on literary or verbal
humor specifically. Raskin’s Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (1985) was
written specifically with verbal humor in mind. To sum up the whole book,
Raskin posits that humor occurs when two scripts that shouldn’t be in the
same place, are put in the same place, and somehow made to make sense
within that place. A “script” is the stereotypical understanding of an object or
an event – for example, the script for “doctor” includes ideas like “studied for
a long time, is intelligent, serious, and thoughtful, knows a great deal about
human physiology, growth, and infection, can be trusted to do no harm, and
can be privy to embarrassing secrets and keep them to himself.” This script
for what a doctor should be is in direct opposition to the greedy, careless, and
cold-hearted behavior sometimes perceived by patients. Thus, the following
line is funny:
Doctor to patient: “Well, Mrs. Jones, you’re not quite as sick as we’d
hoped.”
In later work, Raskin includes a list of what he believes are all of the funny
script oppositions, thus narrowing the playing field and quietening some objec-
tors who had claimed that if one looks hard enough, one can find humor in any-
thing, according to his theory. Many of Raskin’s script oppositions are open to
extremely broad interpretation, however, for example reality vs. unreality and
expected vs. unexpected. Others, such as sex vs. religion, are less murky.
Let us compare Rowan Atkinson’s quotation about the three ways a per-
son can be funny, to Raskin’s theory. Atkinson said that a person can be funny
by being in an unusual place, by behaving in an unusual way, and by being
the wrong size. The first two are instances of the expected vs. unexpected op-
position, the third of reality vs. unreality. Mr. Atkinson therefore agrees with
Raskin, but Raskin’s theory wins in breadth of applicability.
Most theories of humor, in fact, can be boiled down to something like the
Script Semantic Theory of Humor. One theory of humor that stands in stark
contrast is the aggression theory, according to which laughter is an aggres-
sive social mechanism, and all jokes must have a butt. A common argument
against the aggression theory of humor is that there are jokes that seem to
have no butt at all, for example the elephant jokes popular in the 1950s:
Q: How does an elephant hide in a cherry tree?

A: It paints its toenails red.
Possibly one could say that the silly elephant is the butt of the joke. Possibly
someone adept at the black magic of literary theory could come up with an
even more interesting target. But really, the joke is funny just because it’s silly
– or according to script opposition, because it pits the elephant’s enormous
bulk against the small size and negligible strength of a cherry tree.
Script opposition is not enough to make a joke even in Raskin’s theory,
however. Not every pair of incongruous things are funny. For example, there
are several literary terms that would seem, at first glance, to qualify as jokes,
but which are not. Here are some of them:
Allegory: a story that has two meanings, that is really about two things. For
example, George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm is on the surface a story
about anthropomorphized farm animals – but it is arguably about the Rus-
sian revolution. Allegories are not usually funny because though the story
means two very different things, they are really the same, and really very
parallel to each other.
Anagogy: a text that has some sort of higher meaning, beyond the literal one
of the text. For example, some medieval theologians believed that the
Bible could be read at several levels, each accessible to people who had
attained a certain level of spiritual enlightenment. To people sufficiently
unenlightened to read only the lowest of these levels, there would be no
script opposition at all – and everyone else would see either an allegory, or
read each level in an entirely different dimension, offering no opportunity

for script opposition to occur.
Conceit: a kind of poetry popular in the Renaissance in which two seemingly
dissimilar things are revealed to be very similar. As in the allegory, this
isn’t funny because in the course of the poem we come to see that there is
no script opposition at all.
Double entendre: a phrase that can be interpreted in two different ways,
one of them usually obscene. These are very common in witty discourse
and humorous literature that plays on words, but they are not necessarily
funny themselves, because the two meanings may have nothing to do with
each other. In the same way, a pun is not necessarily funny (see Hempel-
mann 2004).
Metaphor: the use of one word or situation to denote another, as having the
same qualities. Once again, not funny because the whole point is that the
two things are similar, not opposed.
Oxymoron: a compound word or a phrase consisting of two contradictory
words, like “jumbo shrimp” or “bittersweet.” Some jokes are composed
solely of an oxymoron (“military intelligence”) but many oxymorons
aren’t funny, either because the terms don’t actually contradict each other
(a food cannot be simultaneously sweet and bitter, but an emotion can) or
because we are so used to hearing them that they are interpreted as phras-
als, with no compositional meaning.
Simile: to say that one thing is like another thing. As several times before, not
funny because the two things are different but not opposed.
In 1991 Attardo and Raskin (1991) extended the script opposition theory into
a full-blown theory of verbal humor. In the General Theory of Verbal Humor,
the script opposition (now called SO) is only one of six possible dimensions
of a joke. The others are the target of the joke (TA), the logical mechanism by
which the SO is resolved (LM), the situation in which the joke is set (SI), the
language used to tell the joke (LA), and the narrative strategy used to tell the
joke (NS). Not all of these dimensions apply to every joke; for instance, as
noted during the discussion of the aggression theory of humor, not all jokes
have targets. The language, or diction, used to tell the joke may also vary con-
siderably from telling to telling especially if the humor is verbal rather than
written, and a lot of jokes are really the very same joke put in a different situ-
ation, or as literary scholars would call it, setting. In fact, one can argue from
the perspective of a person who is studying humor and the variety of jokes,
that the only two which are unique to humor are the SO and the LM.
The existence of the LM implies that the SO needs to be somehow “re-

solved” to create humor – that is, one cannot simply juxtapose two incongru-
ous things and call it a joke, but rather one must find a clever way of making
them make pseudo-sense together. Attardo recently published what he con-
siders to be the complete list of LMs (Attardo et al. 2002), and the reader is
referred to this list for further reading on the subject.
Attardo has continued to work in humor and literature since the publica-
tion of the first GTVH article, and the reader who is interested in studying
literature from a linguistic point of view is strongly encouraged to read his
work on the subject. He has, for instance, found that it is useful to chart each
instance of a script opposition or “jab line” (rather than punch line, of which
even a work of humorous literature should have no more than one) and to
graph their occurrence throughout the text. Many authors display distinct-
ive patterns on this kind of graph. O’Henry stories usually display only one
joke, at the very end of the story, for example, while an Oscar Wilde play will
have concentrations of them during particularly hilarious scenes, and a P. G.
Wodehouse novel will have them with delightful – or perhaps stultifying –
regularity.
5. Literary enhancers
GTVH goes a long way towards explaining what goes on inside an isolated
joke, and Attardo’s further work has gone a long way towards applying the
GTVH to literary humor. Such regular, structured theories have been created
to explain all mediums of artistic expression and the student beginning stud-
ies in any particular art will quickly be acquainted with the formal theories he
needs to know in order to take part in the medium’s discourse and evolution.
Just knowing the theories, however, does not an artist make – and nor can the
theories ever fully explain why one artist is successful and another isn’t. It is
therefore inevitable that, while a scholar may agree with the SSTH and the
GTVH (although it should be noted that there are some who agree with nei-
ther), these theories cannot be accepted as the be-all and end-all of humorous
expression, especially not of humorous literature, which combines the craft
of humor with the craft of storytelling. Triezenberg (2004) explored the tech-
niques that a humorous writer or narrator uses to help the audience appreciate
the humor in texts, and found a number of standard techniques (though by no
means an exhaustive list of them) called humor enhancers. A humor enhancer
is a narrative technique that is not necessarily funny in and of itself, but that
helps an audience to understand that the text is supposed to be funny, that

warms them up to the author and to the text so that they will be more receptive
to humor, and that magnifies their experience of humor in the text.
Word choice or diction is listed as one of the six knowledge resources, but
is used by Attardo to catalogue nameable literary entities such as those listed
in the previous section. Diction can also be used as a humor enhancer, how-
ever, when words are carefully chosen to evoke particular scripts in the minds
of the audience. Given that the heart of humor theory is script opposition, it
makes sense that enforcing the desired scripts in the mind of the audience
makes it more likely that they will understand jokes using those scripts. Thus
a joke about lawyers will benefit from being prefaced by legal jargon, and
a joke about farmers will benefit from being prefaced by rustic idioms.
These scripts very often take the form of shared stereotypes. A stereotype
is already familiar to most of the audience, and by using it as a script instead
of painstakingly building up a fresh script in the mind of the audience, the
humorist is able to make his jokes much more compact and elegant than they
would otherwise be. Any joke can be killed by being told in too painstaking
a manner, and literary jokes are no different. It goes without saying that, in
using stereotypes, the humorist must be very careful first to make sure that the
stereotype he is using really is a stereotype that is immediately recognizable
by the majority of the audience, and second that its use is not likely to offend
the audience – unless the aim is to amuse through shock value.
Various cultural factors such as the recognizability or offensiveness of
a stereotype can also be called humor enhancers, because the author must be
so careful to know her audience before she crafts her jokes. An author who
is very well-versed in the prejudices, hang-ups, and taboos of the intended
audience, as well as the history of humor in that audience’s culture, will be
much more successful than one who doesn’t know these things. To use an
unrecognized stereotype is to fail to make a joke; to make fun of an issue that
has rubbed the audience raw is to be at best boring and at worst boorish; to
not know what was funny once, for twenty minutes, in 1965, is to be stale, to
create a complete disconnect with the readers, and to fail utterly.
Familiarity, however, can be used to the humorist’s advantage. If the hu-
morist focuses on an issue that has been focused on before (being careful to
do it in a fresh and original way), then the audience is relieved of the mental
effort of taking in an entirely new idea – which leaves them relaxed and more
apt to recognize humor when it comes along. Many newspaper columnists
choose to focus on old humorous standbys, such as the war of the sexes, or
the disagreeableness of co-workers, because so many people are able to so
easily digest such humor, which makes the columnist appeal to a broader
demographic. An author like Jane Austen has been around for so long that
the literate public is more or less familiar with the way she pokes fun at her
characters’ little foibles and faults, but she does it so cleverly that few authors
have been able to successfully mimic her, and so the person who is reading
her for the first time may have never encountered such social criticism before
and may miss her humor entirely – especially since so much of it consists of
(sexually innocent) double entendres. Familiarity also, for a reason that has
never been satisfactorily explained, can be funny in and of itself. A comedian
who can describe something spot-on elicits laughs, as does an actor who can
do good impersonations.
Repetition and variation can also be used to enhance humor in a piece,
though unlike the other humor enhancers they can be interpreted as actual
script oppositions, because normal language strives to avoid repetition, and
so when it occurs an expected/unexpected opposition occurs. Repetition with
skillful variation allows an author to use the same joke over and over again,
magnifying it each time and also impressing the audience with his inventive-
ness. Good use of repetition makes a good joke even better, takes advantage
of both stereotypes and familiarity to make the humor funnier.
The script opposition structure works very well to describe an individual
joke, and pretty well to describe a piece of humorous literature that depends
on one big punch line near the end, such as many of O’Henry’s short stories
or Gogol’s The Overcoat. It works less well to describe the overall struc-
ture of a piece that is primary literature and, secondarily, funny, such as the
works of Oscar Wilde and P G. Wodehouse (although, if one dissected the
humor out of the average Wodehouse novel, there would be precious little
left). Three of Attardo and Raskin’s knowledge resources are universal to all
literature: the diction or word choice, the setting, and the narrative strategy.
The other three, the target, script opposition, and logical mechanism, are se-
lectively applicable to various works. One could say that Animal Farm for
example had Soviet Russia as its target and that, by extension, all works of
satire or parody have a target.
6. Why mysteries are not funny
Script opposition and logical mechanism are both, interestingly, applicable

to lies as well as to humor. This is perhaps not surprising when one takes
into account Grice’s maxims of bona-fide communication (Grice 1975) and
finds that jokes and lies are both non-bonafide modes of communication, as
is play-acting. One particular genre of literature is very interested in lies, and
that is the mystery novel, the action of which often hinges around lies told
by various characters. Part of the fun of reading a mystery is to try to tease
out what characters are saying truths and untruths, and why they are doing
it. The reader catches lies by catching script oppositions: by discovering that
two incompatible scripts are supposed to be compatible. For example, in
A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie, Dora Bunner calls her friend
Miss Blacklock both Letty and Lotty, alternately. This is a script opposition:
Miss Blacklock’s name is Letty, versus Miss Blacklock’s name is Lotty. The
observant reader (as opposed to the merely voracious reader) will notice this
disparity, and will find a reason to dismiss it: Dora Bunner is a scatty old lady
who can’t keep anything straight in her head. This is a form of logical mech-
anism, from a strictly theoretical point of view. It allows the reader to see two
incompatible ideas, and make them compatible. A similar script opposition
happens later in the novel when Miss Blacklock receives a letter from Julia
Simmons, who asks if she may come to live with Miss Blacklock – and Miss
Blacklock is already sheltering Julia Simmons. Opposition, Julia Simmons
is already living at Little Paddocks vs. Julia Simmons wants to come live at
Little Paddocks. The logical mechanism that resolves this script opposition
is impersonation: the Julia Simmons already living at Little Paddocks isn’t
Julia Simmons at all.
One can begin to build up a list of logical mechanisms used in mystery
novels, and they are different from the logical mechanisms used in jokes.
Experienced comedians have often observed that there are really very few
jokes in the world, by which they most likely mean there is a finite list of
logical mechanisms, and all jokes that use the same logical mechanism are
fundamentally the same (interestingly, Ruch et al. 1993 found that readers of
jokes were the least likely to rate two jokes with the same logical mechanism
as being similar, compared to jokes that shared other knowledge resources
– and yet, one instinctively thinks that all “garden path” jokes must be the
same, and all “figure/ground reversal” jokes too, and one is absolutely sure
that all linguistic deixis joke are the same, because there is an English word
for them – puns. Why precisely the logical mechanism was so problematic
should be explored further, but in the meantime, two explanations are prof-
fered: first, that the logical mechanism lies so deep in the semantic structure
of a joke that the naïve listener may not be aware of it while the experienced
comedian, after hearing several tens of thousands of jokes, begins to make the
connection; second, that at the time the paper was written, the list of logical
mechanisms was insufficiently elaborated). Just as the same logical mech-
anisms are used over and over again in joke after joke, they also begin to be
used again and again by mystery writers. There are, after all, only so many
ways to lie. Script opposition resolution through the two mechanisms given
as examples, faulty memory and impersonation, are very common.
What is particularly interesting about these logical mechanisms for mys-
tery novels is that they can be divided into two different kinds. Both of them
are the explanations that the reader is supposed to accept for the given script
opposition, but while some of them really do represent the true resolution of
the ambiguity in question, others are the lies, linguistic and otherwise, that
characters in the novel have used in order to dismiss the incongruity. The
reader is referred to A Murder is Announced to find out which of the two ex-
amples given is which.
The last question to answer is the one that ought to have been in mind
for several pages now: given that mystery novels seem to follow not only
the GTVH, with knowledge resources, but also the SSTH with script op-
positions, why are they not necessarily funny? The answer to this mystery
is well-hidden in the earlier part of the chapter: the key to making the whole
theory of humor work is the trigger, which alerts the reader to the fact that
not only are two incompatible scripts trying to occupy the same space, but
that there is a way to resolve this incongruity. In a joke, the realization comes
upon the reader all at once, and this sudden reversal – very much what Isaac
Asimov probably meant by “a sudden change of viewpoint” – elicits the ex-
perience of humor. The lies in a mystery novel, on the other hand, are often
realized slowly, as the reader puts the pieces together, and so humor is often
lost. Some of the very best and most famous mystery novels, however, such
as Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, do save the whole
explanation for the very end, and the explanation is skillfully and concisely
enough written that the reader feels like laughing in delight – this is not quite
an experience of humor, but something akin to it.
This part of the discussion has been presented in order to illustrate the
usefulness of humor theory in other types of literature besides the kind that
is strictly humorous. A modified version of the GTVH has been found to
successfully describe many aspects of the standard murder mystery. Further
research may discover (and has in the past discovered, a la Vladimir Propp’s
formula for fairy tales, Propp 1971) that other genres are also amenable to
structural theories.
References
Asimov, Isaac
1971 Isaac Asimov’s Treasury of Humor. A Lifetime Collection of Favorite
Jokes, Anecdotes, and Limericks with Copious Notes on How to Tell
Them and Why. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
1993 Asimov Laughs Again: More Than 700 Jokes, Limericks, and Anec-
dotes. New York: Harper Books.
model. Humor 4 (3/4): 293–341.
and their resolutions. Humor 15 (1): 3–46.
Grice, H. Paul
1975 Logic and conversation. In: Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.),
Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 3: Speech Acts, 41–58. New York: Aca-
demic Press.
2004 Script opposition and logical mechanism in punning. Humor 17 (4):
381–392.
Propp, Vladimir
1971 Morphology of the Folktale. Bloomington: American Folklore Soci-
ety and Indiana University.
Raskin, Victor
1993 Towards an empirical verification of the general theory of verbal
humor. Humor 6 (2): 123–136.
Triezenberg, Katrina
2004 Humor enhancers in the study of humorous literature. Humor 17 (4):
411–418.
White, E. B., and K. S. White (eds.)
1941 A Subtreasury of American Humor. New York: Coward-McCann.
Communication and humor
Dineh Davis
Introduction
Scholars from a variety of disciplines are well represented in this volume

and have traced the origins of humor and its well-established theories de-
veloped through many centuries of philosophizing and conducting field and
experimental research. My task is to focus on the issues of humor as they re-
late to human communication needs and desires. Given our vantage point in
early twenty-first century, I am delighted to have the paradigmatic excuse to
summarize the knowledge in this field from a fundamentally post-modernist
perspective. However, my intention in presenting my findings in this manner
is primarily self-serving and a reiterative reflection of the paradoxes inher-
ent in the topic of humor. Suffice it to say that I believe humor theories tell
us more about the theoreticians’ own perspective on life and their attitudes
toward other humans than they do about humor itself. Humor, therefore, is
simply a manifestation of a person’s outlook on life; and by extension, the
following are my subjective ruminations on this topic and may, therefore, tell
you more about this writer than about humor.
Defining humor
“To define is to exclude and negate.”

– Jose Ortega y Gasset
First, it is helpful to realize that the mere process of defining such a broad
concept as humor has its own drawbacks and dangers. While some authors
have used a variety of words and concepts interchangeably with humor (such
as wit, comedy, risible, mirth, etc.), others have gone to great lengths to dis-
tinguish the nuances evident in such lists. Samuel Butler noted that defin-
itions are “A kind of scratching, and generally leave a sore place more sore
than it was before.” (Webster’s quotable definitions, 1988). Yet, operation-
alizing a definition is instrumental in achieving common ground. At least,
544 Dineh Davis
for the purposes of the current discussion, I must submit to a broader and
more flexible definition than those adopted by some other scholars. McGhee
(1979), for example, defines humor “as a form of intellectual play, (p.42)” He
then suggests that there are two forms of such play, one which is quite serious
and involves knowledge expansion; while the other is intended to be playful
and focuses on resolving fantasy incongruities – which he identifies as the
essence of a child’s sense of humor.
Though I can easily agree with this working definition, I do have a con-
cern with what McGhee has chosen to exclude from his studies: the concept
of mirth. He states, “we are mirthful when we are merry and in a gener-
ally lighthearted mood… Mirthful laughter may result from one’s gay mood
and a sense of fun and amusement, though, without anything being funny in
a humorous sense. (p. 8)” Here, I presume, he is using the term “humorous”
to be limited to obvious and addressable incongruities easily discernible in
a punch-line. It presumes that we all share the same concept of what is “hu-
morous.”
Gruner (1997) has further reduced the concept of intellectual play into a
“game” and further delimits the concept of a game to that which has a win-
ner and a loser. Yet, unlike Gruner, there are many who don’t consider every
humorous episode as a win/lose proposition – nor would some consider any
act of losing as an occasion for grieving. My definition expands to the meta-
level of life as a game – potentially with many winners who are at the same
time losers – given that none of us has yet managed to get out of this life
alive. Therefore, life itself is full of incongruities; yet, for many individuals
and for most of the time, such incongruities are strictly a cause for pain. This
tragicomic view of life is clearly within the greater tradition of communica-
tion as a narrative or story-telling paradigm (Fisher 1978; Fisher 1987) As
such, game-playing may be considered the essence of each human commu-
nication act.
At the risk of getting ahead of myself in the discussion of humor and
gender, I must admit to having read a variety of books and articles on humor
without ever choosing to stop and define the word humor, per se. In fact,
I chose to read and enjoy most of two books by McGhee (1979; and with
Chapman 1980) before retracing my steps and looking more carefully at his
definition of humor. I did so only because I was baffled by some of the gen-
der differences noted in research environments that worked from pre-selected
items of a humorous nature – as defined by the researchers. Once I did submit
myself to the parameters drawn for humor, however, I recognized its exclu-
sionary nature and the artificiality of its limitations.
Communication and humor 545
What is more interesting than “humor” from a communication perspec-

tive is to focus on the qualities of a “sense of humor” and what it brings to
bear on the process of effective communication, rather than limit oneself to
the particular applications or “episodes” of humor in various settings. This
approach forces us to examine the full effects of humor on communication
without necessarily relying on prefabricated examples of humor (each with
its own inherent researcher-imposed personal and cultural biases) or looking
for external signs we may have come to associate with humor such as smil-
ing, laughter, or knee-slapping; albeit that such signs are likely to be present
when humor is in full force. In fact, as we shall see, considering the obvious
difference between “humor” and a “sense of humor” forces us to distinguish
between the more superficial aspects of funny, laugh-out-loud moments in
life and a deeper, wiser, more light-hearted approach to life in general.
While in agreement with Alice Meynell’s proclamation that “The sense
of humor has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act
of laughter.” (Partnow 1977) I must also find room for Fleet’s definition of
humor, first published in 1890, which comes rather close to a universal state
of mind relating humor to imprefection: “It is this imperfection in one form or
another which furnishes the risible element in any incident, presenting inge-
nuity, which excites laughter or the smile of risibility as well as admiration.”
(Fleet 1970) He is quick to point out that the term imperfection should not be
construed as a moral deficiency.
Given the wide range of existing definitions, and sensing a personal dis-
sonance from my inability to resign myself to any single one, I took on the
challenge of finding a broad enough definition to satisfy a variety of tastes.
To this end, I posed the question “How do you define humor?” via e-mail and
in person to approximately 120 students, colleagues, and friends with varied
cultural backgrounds; a fortunately trivial task in Hawaii. Though some used
the masculine and predetermined definition and were specific about what
constitutes humor for them (an element of surprise or incongruity, for ex-
ample; or a thinly veiled display of hostility or aggression); I received a much
broader range of definitions – as well as related words and concepts - from
women and men who self-identified as lacking a sense of humor (apparently,
as defined by the respected mainstream) or of having no desire or ability to
be humorous.
One thread which tended to come from non-Western traditions equated
humor with wisdom of the highest order and sought to differentiate this con-
cept from the more mundane “joke.” This, in itself, defies the accepted lump-
ing together of humor and jokes (or creating, telling, or understanding jokes as
546 Dineh Davis
the primary testing ground for determining one’s humor quotient!) by many
Western humor researchers. Along these lines, another wrote: “I also think
that maybe both happiness and humor evoke that same feeling in a person...
the feeling of satisfaction maybe?” Though Gruner would zero in on the word
“satisfaction” here as an indication of “winning,” there is no reason to assume
that someone else has, by default, “lost” something in the process.
Humor is the ability to mock reality; a will to experience joy (versus condem-
nation for one’s awkwardness)” said one man who had pondered for several
weeks why he was always so serious and unable to appreciate humor. The
revelation came to him quite self-consciously in a friendly get-together in
which others, near-strangers, had tried to put him at ease by making light of
his awkwardness. Here was a situation that was not “funny” for any of the
participants, yet it brought a sudden and deep appreciation for what became
the embodiment of the self-definition of humor in a highly-reasoned humor-
ous moment. A final thought on a sense of humor sums up the various points
made so far: “A sense of humor to me is the ability, desire and willingness to
sieve through all that tragedy and suffering, and recognize the little pockets
of optimism and hope. It is like panning for gold- you have to go through all
the dirt and muck first. (Lim 2002)
Humor is the quintessential manifestation of the human psyche exposed and

potentially bared to its core. Seeing the humor in what someone else takes
quite seriously and therefore recognizing the critical role that pure subjectiv-
ity of the receiver of information plays in humor is best portrayed in a clas-
sic anthropological study published in a most respected scholarly journal
depicting the strange rites and rituals of the Naciremas (Miner 1956) – who
ultimately turn out to be the American “tribe.” In two separate readings -
which is typically what it takes most readers to come to grips with the full
flavor of this piece - absolutely nothing external to the reader need change at
all. On second reading, the only shift is in the internal frame of reference and
perspective of the reader. This perspective is sure to change and take on a hu-
morous overtone on how North Americans have been looking at tribes around
the world and reporting their scientific findings on their behaviors, rites, and
rituals – purportedly in a fully objective manner. The moral of the Naciremas
account from my personal perspective is that what we may take for granted
in our daily lives (such as brushing our teeth or going to the dentist) will
sound strange and ritualistic indeed to the uninitiated. This strangeness, when
played back to us with a different sensibility, will suddenly seem absurd and
therefore humorous; albeit the action and outcome remain unchanged. It is
this seemingly arbitrary shift in the internal perception and interpretation of
the world that casts some doubt on the narrower definitions of humor and its
relationship to a sense of humor.
Thus, still hesitating to choose a single, exclusionary definition for humor,
I propose this broader (and therefore much more vague) concept: humor is
any sudden episode of joy or elation associated with a new discovery that is
self-rated as funny. A sense of humor is the subtle but consistent ability to
remain lighthearted in a wide range of circumstances, from the obvious oc-
casions of happiness and joy to the more sacred and grave encounters with
distress and tragedy. Given that all interpretations by humans are ultimately
subjective and self-directed, this definition extends to any discovery in its
broadest sense, as it becomes conscious in one individual’s mind and causes
that person to believe she or he has experienced the essence of humor. Such
joy is created intrinsically, but may manifest itself outwardly in smiles or
laughter and is very much affected by a person’s general environment, includ-
ing immediate natural and social surroundings as well as the larger cultural
contexts.
Having established my preference for a subjective and inclusive defin-
ition of humor from a personal perspective, I must indulge in a paradox of
offering some options on what humor may not be – from a social perspec-
tive or in certain specified contexts. As a culture, we have come to acknow-
ledge the Political Correctness of not using hurtful humor to stratify society.
In a more specific context, it seems perfectly logical to differentiate among
terms that may be considered synonymous with humor. In a lucid example of
this variety, Kronenberger (Kronenberger 1972) differentiated between wit
and humor as follows:
Where wit is a form of criticism or mockery, humor includes an element
of self-criticism or self-mockery; where wit tends to proclaim imperfection,
humor wryly acknowledges it; where wit undresses you, humor goes naked.
At its best, humor simultaneously hurts and heals, makes one larger from
a willingness to make oneself less. It has essentially much more breadth than
wit, from being much more universal in appeal and human in effect. If harder
to translate or explain, it often need not be explained or translated at all, re-
vealing itself in a sudden gesture, a happy juxtaposition. We speak constantly
of ‘the humor of the situation,’ almost never of the wit; just so, virtually every-
thing that is farcical or funny derives from humor gone a bit wild. (p. 11)
The list of synonyms for humor and related words and concepts is obviously
quite long. In reviewing such a list, it becomes quite apparent that one cannot
arbitrarily include or exclude any one of them based on their positive or nega-
tive connotations. I asked a broad range of individuals to provide me with
548 Dineh Davis
words they associated with humor. The following sample compilation from
their suggestions will indicate the quite subjective interpretation of the con-
cept of humor – given that some of these words have quite negative connota-
tions: burlesque, cachinnate, chestnut, clown, comic, farce, farceur, farcical,
fleer, fun, funny, hilarity, inside joke, irony, irreverent, jape, jest, jester, jocos-
ity, jocularity, jovial, joke, jolly, joy, laugh, laughter, merry, mirth, mockery,
nicker, pantagruelism, parody, practical joke, riant, ribald, ridden, ridicule,
ridiculous, risible, risqué, roast, sarcasm, satire, scoff, scurrilous, silly, sneer,
snigger, tease, wag, waggery, wheeze, wit. This exercise provides further evi-
dence of the subjectivity of humor in a single society.
Literature review
As with any social-scientific disciplinary creation of the last century or two,

the roots of communication studies (and, therefore, humor studies from
a communication perspective) go deep into the realm of philosophy, rhetoric,
language, and politics of Plato and Aristotle. Such matters are well represent-
ed by Morreall in his chapter on philosophy. As the modern scientific forces
became stronger with influences of psychology, sociology, anthropology,
economics, and the like, communication as a discipline turned to methods of
inquiry with heuristic values and more readily quantifiable answers to ques-
tions that lent themselves more readily to having definitive answers. In this
fledgling discipline that had to establish its legitimacy as a science within the
positivist tradition of its time, one could hardly fault the scholars for avoiding
the study of humor – which could easily be classified as frivolous and nones-
sential to those most interested in funding the research needed to streamline
the command structures of the military and business world.
Given the scientific recognition of ambiguity and subjectivity at the very
core of inquiries in the natural and social sciences, there has been a slow
shift in acknowledging merit in the study of concepts that don’t readily lend
themselves to quantification or absolute answers. It is in this context that
I will now move forward in the recent history of humor studies in the field of
communication. Where I have found specific references to research already
accomplished within the discipline, I have noted such efforts. Otherwise,
the following narrative offers a more personal version of elements that affect
humor.
As will be reviewed below, most communication scholars have focused
on how humor is formed for communication purposes, (such asBerger 1976;
Berger 1993) and its functionality or applicability in various contexts and cir-
cumstances (Alberts 1990; Bippus 2000; Boland and Hoffman 1983; Grun-
er 1997; Honeycutt and Brown 1998; McGhee and Chapman 1980; Meyer
2000; Perry et al., 1997). These issues are potentially less complex and more
amenable to objective observation, thus lending themselves more readily to
scientific inquiry. What is less directly examined is what affects the send-
er’s perceptions of humor and what allows the recipient to understand the
true intentions of the sender of a humorous message. Such inquiries face
the familiar dilemmas of too many variables within the social environment
(Chapman et al., 1980). Therefore, after defining humor and offering a brief
literature review - based on sources of influence, I will turn to those issues of
a purely subjective nature such as gender and humor, and my perspective on
the role of archetypes in universalization of humor.
A discussion of the physiognomic origins of laughter and the innate pre-
disposition of humans to use these facial gestures to signal peace, happiness,
or submission and to enhance harmony and survival is beyond the scope of
this discussion, but is well documented in a variety of related disciplines
and in early works (see, for example, Chapman and Foot 1976; Haig 1988).
Nevertheless, by focusing specifically on the positive social role that such
nonverbal communication plays, it is hard to relegate the origins or func-
tions of humor to an arbitrary subset of human needs for communication
and interaction. Rather, we must recognize the central role of humor in any
human communication and strive to legitimize its continued and systematic
study.
Humor begins within and may remain entirely within the individual
(such as in self-talk or self-discovery); and as such can be dealt with within
the disciplines of philosophy or psychology. Once it manifests itself in any
public sphere where two or more individuals are involved, however, we can
most justifiably examine its consequences or effects within the discipline of
communication. As with any human communication environment, we can
identify several clusters of elements that can affect a single act of humor
communication. One of the earliest and simplest communication theories
describing the functions of mass communication identifies the critical elem-
ents in this process as the sender, message, receiver, channel, and outcome
(“Who says what in which channel to whom and to what effect?” (Lasswell
1948). Depending on the specific focus of researchers in the field, numerous
other elements have been identified since then.
The following compilation and expansion on those elements recogniz-
es the complexity and nuances of understanding and enjoying humor from
550 Dineh Davis
a communicative perspective. Though I have chosen to define humor in its

broadest possible sense to form a unifying umbrella for this concept, it is only
fitting that the sources of influence be identified much more specifically to
illustrate the subjectivity of humor.
–– Sender: Will obviously have the same generic characteristics as shown
below for the receiver. I have focused on the receiver since humor, more
than any other genre of communication, implies an overt or hidden desire
for the recipients’ enjoyment and depends on their positive and clear under-
standing for its success. Mood is everything – but not necessarily just for
the sender – as may be the case for many other forms of communications.
Predispositions and individual differences pointing to a person’s proclivity
toward using or attempting to use humor in certain settings and behavior
related to such decisions has been studied systematically, leading to a re-
liable Humor Orientation Scale (Booth-Butterfield and Booth-Butterfield
1991). The Booth-Butterfield studies can also show a positive relationship
between self-ratings and projections of those who are close friends or asso-
ciates. Still, one of the self-fulfilling (or self-defeating?!) prophecies found
in many humor studies that rely on self- and other-ratings is that in all like-
lihood those with a similar sense of humor form closer ties. In fact, it may
be far more interesting to take such Humor Orientation (HO) study results
as a base to determine whether similarities in HO scores can be an indicator
of other shared predispositions.
–– Receiver: Along with the sender, will have innate personality character-
istics and predispositions that embody archetypical elements of moods,
values, virtues, sins & vices; intelligence, as well as the hidden and uncon-
scious elements of the self. Given the complex nature of each receiver’s
inherent disposition and his or her social construction of the world, those
who have attempted to conduct research in this area have had to focus their
study on an extremely limited domain, such as the receiver’s evaluation of
humorous and nonhumorous speeches for credibility (for example,Chang
and Gruner 1981; Hackman 1998). One of the exception to this approach
is a study of teasing and recipient reaction to this form of humor, which
is greatly affected by the receiver’s personal perception of the sender’s in-
tent. This study confirms our common sense that when the sender’s intent
is interpreted as serious, then the teasing is simply “not funny” (Alberts et
al., 1996).
–– Culture: human-made elements in the environment arguably have the most
distinct effects on the perception of humor as confirmed by cross-cultural
studies (such asBremmer and Roodenburg 1997; Hackman and Barthel-
Hackman 1993). Ethnic jokes are the most blatantly obvious manifest-
ation of this effect. However, cultural biases and effects are not limited to
regional, national, or racial/ethnic differences among us. Other subcultures
such as gender, sexual orientation, various disabilities, and age are among
the many classifications that provide cohesion for the inner circle and tend
to exclude “outsiders” in humor-related circumstances.
–– Environment: natural elements such as the weather, geographic location,
seasons, and the like serve not only as unique settings for humor but also
affect the perception and mood of humor recipients. Despite the negative
emotions associated with natural disasters, such settings provide one of the
staple scenarios for jokes: storms and floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and
the like provide ample opportunities to throw together those human elem-
ents in society that don’t typically interact under normal circumstances.
Supernatural elements (such as humans meeting at heaven’s gate or in the
depths of hell; appearance of ghosts or aliens, etc.) are also used in abun-
dance to add mystery and magic to the environment.
–– Surroundings: combination of human and natural elements in a more im-
mediate sense, can determine the receptivity of the humor recipient. For
example, the same joke that may be considered quite hilarious in a locker
room with same-sex friends, may fall flat at a formal dinner party with the
same set of friends, but within a larger group. I am, therefore, separating
the more specific concept of “surroundings” from the more general vari-
ations of an environmental or cultural system. Furthermore, within such
specific surroundings, other characteristics will continue to cause situation-
al differences. Thus, the adage: “You had to be there!”
–– Situational characteristics:
–– Mood: Based on the surroundings, as described above, receptivity can
change dramatically. Even the sequencing of jokes can result in after-
effects or residual mood-shifts that will affect the outcome of new in-
teractions
–– Demographics of EACH of the senders and receivers and bystanders in
the surroundings: Age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, race, ethnicity,
education, economic status, power status, birth order, ad infintum…
–– States of life: Pregnancy, Infancy, Toddlerhood, Childhood and being a
“student” – preschool through grad school, dating & courtship, Marriage
& divorce, old age, death, illness, & other morbidities. Clearly, even
within the same category in the “state of life” one must remain sensitive
to the recipient’s moment-to-moment situation to make sense of what
may be appropriate humor. For example, what may be quite a funny and
552 Dineh Davis
pleasant activity to a woman in the first trimester of her pregnancy may

simply become physiologically or emotionally unbearable in the second
or third trimester (at such a time, for example, don’t plan a surprise funny
movie marathon aboard a three-hour trolley ride with no rest-stops - if
you plan to impress her with your sense of humor!)
–– Time of day; era or epoch and all other variations in time. Time, in larger
increments, clearly involves a change of culture and human sensibilities.
Just as some people wish to remain in the most pleasant time of their lives
by keeping their hairstyle or clothing fixed in that era, so do some tend
to keep the same perception of what’s funny when all around them the
world may have changed. In shorter time increments, we might consider
the same concept of external appearance and relate it to a single day. One
may change clothes when going to bed, going to work, or going to formal
or informal parties after work. Humor may need the same shift throughout
the day or week – but many tend to have a “one size fits all occasions” at-
titude about practical jokes, teasing, clowning, and other forms of humor
that are hard to sell independent of the time factor.
–– Opportunities: in the context of interactivity options; relationship with mes-
sage sender; relationship of demographics to surrounding environment; re-
lationship of innate characteristics to surrounding environment, etc. What
is most important to consider is whether the opportunity for interaction
will allow the sender to clarify misunderstandings or offer the recipient
a chance to respond, if one is needed. Of course, there may be a physical
opportunity – in that both the sender & receiver are in the same location at
the same time – but this does not take into account the power-relationship
that may prevent the recipient to be honest or forthcoming with a heartfelt
response.
–– Channel of communication: With new communication technologies pre-
senting themselves more rapidly than we can assimilate, not only do such
channels present an abundance of opportunities for innovative modes of
communication, but they also provide a wealth of resources for humor and
can themselves become the butt of new jokes. In fact, one can easily deter-
mine the diffusion level of new communication technologies by how often
they are referred to in humor-based situations (just think of when VCR/
clock-setting jokes entered our collective consciousness and the creativity
humorists show in the context of ubiquitous computing, such as the bath-
room scale locking your refrigerator door!) Back to the uses & effects of
media choice on humor reception, here is a very brief synopsis of uses &
effects;
–– face-to-face & live; humor use is studied as a turn-taking cue; atten-

tion-getting device; display of hearership; and an invitation to elaborate
(O’Donnell-Truijillo and Adams 1983) At best, all communication has
the potential for ambiguity. Humor, on the other hand, has every rea-
son to build in ambiguity simply for its effect. Though I am not aware
of any full scale studies in this context, I have suggested elsewhere the
incongruity resulting in our expectation of what is real and what is vir-
tual when hearing recorded messages where a real voice was expected
(Davis 1995). It is, therefore, quite possible to make positive use of this
element of ambiguity to create sudden shifts in meaning, even after the
message has been delivered. It is quite common that something said in
earnest will be turned into a “joke” if the sender of the message has the
opportunity to observe the recipient’s facial or body language. If the se-
rious message is not received well, the sender can always plead “I was
just joking” and save face. This, of course, becomes much more difficult
in mediated circumstances.
–– mediated: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many, many-to-one; one-
way; two-way; synchronously interactive & “live”, etc. When a message
– even one with little nuance to its meaning – is relayed over a techno-
logically mediated channel of communication, we are immediately in-
troducing some level of ambiguity for the recipient in that the individual
has to take it “on faith” that the message received is in fact the message
sent and that it has in no way changed during the transmission process.
Technology, however, is not infallible. On the one hand it may be pos-
sible to use this fallibility to “back out of ” humor-gone-awry. On the
other hand, once the damage is done, it is far more difficult to recover
from mistakes; especially because a documented message is harder to
forget and easier to collect, archive, and pass on to others. Thus, what
may have been ephemeral in a face-to-face circumstance, is now likely
to haunt the sender or receiver indefinitely. It is my contention that this
is why not much “spontaneous” humor takes place in fully on-line class-
room settings (Alarcon 2001).
–– Message, or the humor itself which can be verbal or nonverbal; planned
or spontaneous; intentional or unintentional (Keysar 2000); effortless or
contrived; directed or undirected (toward a given recipient or bystander,
or a larger audience); as well as purposive or purposeless. Messages are
further analyzable based on whether they achieve their internal goal of
conveying what the message producer intended (Edwards and Chen 2000)
and their function (Meyer 2000). The latter perspective which focuses on
554 Dineh Davis
the sender’s intent is, in fact, the locus of a great deal of research in com-
munication and humor. Such functions, as succinctly described by Meyer
(2000) fall into two major categories of unity/division and are further sub-
divided as follows:
–– To unite (helping to bring people together in one group)
–– Identification:
–– as credibility enhancer
–– for group cohesiveness and resource for affiliation (Murstein and
Brust 1985; O’Donnell-Truijillo and Adams 1983)
–– to communicate feelings
–– to deepen relationships
–– to enhance uncertainty reduction
–– To clarify issues or positions
–– To create or promote division (separating the in-group from Others)
–– For enforcement of social norms
–– To facilitate differentiation. All of the above functions are fully ex-
plored by Meyer (2000)
–– Context: Ranges from interpersonal (Honeycutt and Brown 1998; Wanzer
et al., 1996) and small group settings (Bethea et al., 2000) to organizational
(Brown 1990) and mass media contexts (Perry et al., 1997) and in every
imaginable field of endeavor. In addition, to the basic issues of context,
scholars have also paid attention to the recontextualization of rhetoric as
in the case of re-presentation and creation of the “Dole humor myth” (Le-
vasseur and Dean 1996). The concept of context is too broad to quantify in
this chapter, so the following examples serve as a somewhat random walk
through the context territory:
–– Interpersonal relationship building and maintenance (O’Donnell-Truijillo
and Adams 1983; Payne 2001); role of humor in overcoming communica-
tion apprehension (Hackman and Barthel-Hackman 1993); and functions
of humor in conversation (Graham et al., 1992)
–– Educational setting (Wanzer and Frymier 1999)
–– Intercultural studies (Hackman and Barthel-Hackman 1993)
–– Political humor and its effectiveness in political campaigns and gaining
popularity in office (Chapel 1978; Levasseur and Dean 1996; Meyer 1990;
Moore 1992) and even an analysis of the role of cartoons in depicting the
role of the first lady/first wife (Edwards and Chen 2000)
–– Religious settings (Jablonski 2000)
–– Humor in public address is a very well studied area both in terms of edu-
cation and effectiveness (Chang and Gruner 1981; Grimes 1955a; Grimes
1955b; Gruner 1967; Gruner 1985; Hackman 1998).
–– Effects of humor in mass media (King 2000; Perry et al., 1997)
–– Bystanders: though not typically considered a part of the communication
environment, we must add the “innocent” bystander who may easily play
an unforeseen role in the creation, execution, or enjoyment of the humor in
any potentially humorous communication act and thus lose the bystander
status in the process of humor assimilation!
–– Disciplinary bystanders: though we associate the study of humor with a var-
iety of arts, humanities, and social science disciplines, we are less inclined
to look for connections to certain other disciplines such as mathematics. To
illustrate that humor can be studied from nearly every angle, Paulos (Paulos
1980) offers a book on mathematics and MacHovec (MacHovec 1988) re-
lies on the astronomical concept of syzygy to build a theory of humor that
once again demonstrates the subjective perceptions of the receiver even
when the outcome is a scientific offering.
As can be deduced from the above list and the numerous additional elements
at play in any given communication act, humor is likely to be too subtle, field-
dependent, and riddled with individual differences to lend itself readily to
communication research at an inclusive or unified level. The most universally
visible and therefore the most researched and explored forms of humor are
those that are premeditated and contrived. These consciously purposive forms
of humor may, in fact, form the smallest subset of all experienced humor in
daily life for the majority of the world’s population. Just the same, because of
the convenience and availability of such resources as well as their reproduc-
ibility, observability, and sharability through public media, this is the primary
base for most humor research in the field.
Issues
There are a wide range of issues to be considered in the study of humor in com-
munication. The literature review section above provides a glimpse of where
most research has taken place, thus leaving open a wide range of topics that
remain to be explored by future researchers. I have chosen two inter-related
issues that are of potential interest to the general public and that blend well
with my subjective approach to the concept of humor in communication.
556 Dineh Davis
Humor and gender
In response to my inquiry regarding the definition of humor – especially as

represented by Gruner’s unified model of humor as a win–lose game (1997)
– a female professional (engineer) responded as follows:
Got me thinking regarding the ‘win/lose’ strategy: There exists the socio-
logical tendency to dichotomize ‘us vs. them’, however, I do not feel that it is
a grand theory at all. Rather, in my opinion it is our INABILITY to see beyond
this dichotomy that restricts us in this life. It was suggested to me recently by
a very ‘intelligent’ individual (my framing) that there is NO SUCH THING
as win/win; there is just compromise/compromise or win/lose. The implicit
assumption: that ‘our’ goals are conflicting, that we cannot ‘both’ get what we
want at the same time. I thought that this was a rather pessimistic take on the
subject… You REALLY made me wonder about myself & my own outlook
on life (although it might explain why I really don’t appreciate much humor
(ethnic, gender, etc) - to me it is insulting even if I am not “the party” being
selected out. However, am I taking it too seriously? And, is humor a game? Is
life a game? If I only had these answers...
A female professor of literature shared similar thoughts:
I don’t own a television set myself [because I would spend far too much time
watching], but have been house-sitting for some friends who have cable and
I decided to catch up on viewing some sitcoms. I was amazed and depressed
at all the dissing that goes on. How is this funny? It is especially depressing
to see women (and worse yet, women on women) using this technique to get
laughs. Don’t we get dissed enough every day of our lives? Why do we need
to subject ourselves to even more of this in the name of humor?
One of the most useful theories applied to communication acts and outcomes
from the perspective of the “underdog” is the Standpoint theory which ac-
knowledges the unique perspective of those in less powerful positions. It con-
tends that while those in power need see and interpret events only from their
own point of view, those with less power have to learn at least two perspec-
tives based on their status in life: that of the group in power as well as that of
their own. This is simply a matter of survival. A clear example of Standpoint
theory in the context of humor involves the very definition of this term.
McGhee (1979) notes in his study of children that it is not considered
socially acceptable to ask children to react to humor that relies on sexual
innuendoes whereas it is permissible to share aggressive and hostile humor
with kids. This points out the dilemma referred to earlier in defining “humor”
and how other researchers had defined humor in the existing literature. There
is considerable anecdotal evidence that the majority of the fans of the Three
Stooges are boys and men. Because boys and men find inflicting physical
pain upon others (such as poking someone’s eyes out or beating them over
the head) as hilarious, it seems perfectly natural to define humor within such
parameters that make physical abuse a funny – or at the very least, a trivial -
matter.
It is not so much an objection to Three Stooges – for humor is subject-
ive and therefore if this is what some find funny, so be it. I am in no position
to deny someone their reality of considering physical abuse done in jest as
funny. What is more bothersome is the exclusionary clause that tends to limit,
from my standpoint, what I may find equally humorous from the definition
for humor. In other words, why would a scholar/researcher limit my real-
ity by using Three Stooges as an example of humor but a win/win game of
word-play or a challenge to create a new, and potentially funny word for an
existing concept as “not funny” - by declaration - simply because this mental
challenge does not have a punch-line or a loser? The following may serve as
another illustration of how such declarations or exclusive definitions may
bias our views of what can be legitimately considered funny.
Past studies have identified a greater ability on the part of boys and men to
create humor (as self-defined by men). It is also well-documented by educa-
tors that the single category of verbal skill at which boys, on the aggregate,
outscore girls on the SAT exams is the understanding and making of analo-
gies. It may be interesting to research the common connection between the
skill of solving analogies, and the linking of two incongruous concepts, i.e.,
a mainstream definition of humor. This, in turn leads to the types of riddles
that can only be solved by their makers, thus easily associated with the win/
lose theory of humor as a game.
Of course, there are those among us who have no particular genetic or
socially constructed mandate to try to solve riddles; in which case there is
more amusement when the riddle is presented “solved” in a joke’s punch line.
One such joke used by a stand-up comic recently can be represented as a rid-
dle here: How is an Irishman at the beach the same as a fork in a microwave
oven? A much older example that uses an analogy format yet defies – or de-
feats – the logical semantic purpose has been used on bumper stickers and
T-shirts: “A woman without her man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Another
variation on this theme is metaphor building as a common joke script. An ap-
propriate example in this case would be: “Women are like dictionaries, they
have a million different words to describe the same thing.”
558 Dineh Davis
McGhee (1979: 211) cites a 1933 study by Brackett confirming that pre-
school boys and girls at play show equal amounts of laughter. Once children
reach school age, social and cultural norms for humor have already become
better established. Is it any wonder then, that if the prototypical jokes “tested”
with children are reinforcing humor preferred by men or boys that they will
show a preference for it in research settings as well? The long-term differ-
ences continue to show divergent reactions by men and women to the same
stimuli considered to be humorous in nature. For example, King (2000) re-
ports a distress reaction by women who watch movies where the hero makes
wisecracks, but that subsequently reduces their stress level when measured
after viewing televised depictions of nonhumorous real violence. Converse
to this reaction, men watching the same wisecracking hero found the film
less distressful than the women, yet noted greater distress when watching the
real nonhumorous violence. Although these reactions were extremely short-
lived, they still point to a basic difference in the way such information is
processed by women and men, which the researchers are attributing to their
disposition.
The same social roles that boys and girls learn in their early school years
are also reflected in their later intimate relationships and well into their mar-
riage. Men tend to be the joke-tellers while women stay with their supportive
roles of enjoying the jokes offered (Honeycutt and Brown 1998). McGhee
(1979) showed tremendous foresight, however, in predicting that the women’s
movement of the early 1970s was likely to produce a feminine genre of humor
that could have universal appeal. As with all other social movements, the out-
come was perhaps not quite as immediate as hoped for, but by 1993 Morreall
(1993) was reporting the following differences in the origins and delivery of
traditionally masculine and emerging feminine forms of humor: While men
displayed a competitive attitude stemming from distrust, hostility, envy, and
jealousy, used a negative tone and singled out victims and aimed to make
some people feel good at the expense of others, women’s humor stemmed
from a caring concern for everyone and depended on a cooperative attitude
to bring everyone together and make them feel good. Men were more likely
to single out one person and target the weak while women took aim at the
powerful but did so in a positive light and focused on what many of us do.
Women have also been noted for using more self-disparaging humor than
men (McGhee 1979: 206)
One of the advantages of Xerox-lore, Fax-humor, and Internet-based
humor is that the collective contributions from a wide range of participants
lend and even-handedness to gender-based humor. For example, metaphor
lists are combined to present both male and female perspectives on a variety
of topics. One of the most popular examples of this genre involves compar-
ing both men and women to computers. Here are two finalists in this genre:
A computer must be female because as soon as you make a commitment to
one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it. Yet,
a computer must be male because they’ll usually do what you ask them to
do, but they won’t do more than they have to and they won’t think of it on
their own.
The singular subjectivity of the experience of humor as compared to other
universal states of mind is quite apparent when we begin to delve into our
mass media instruments. One might notice, for example, that American tel-
evision programs don’t resort to fake audience “gasp tracks” to show surprise
or fear in scary scenes, whereas many feel compelled to use laugh tracks to
increase audience compliance to consider something humorous. In fact, this
points to two different observations regarding the truly subjective nature of
humor: (1) that despite the universality of humor in human life, there is no
single way to represent, depict or evoke this emotion beyond the verbal and
visual cues (such as showing or hearing an audience’s laughter) whereas, for
example, we might find a universal aural or musical cue to arouse other emo-
tions – such as fear or grief; and (2) there is a need to reinforce the concept
of humor in mass presentations or use social pressure to bring every viewer
into compliance with what the media (message sender) would like to dictate
or establish as a humorous “norm.”
Use of laugh tracks, even when taken from a “real” audience but super-
imposed over a single person’s way of seeing and interpreting creates simply
an illusion of humor, therefore putting the onus on the individual viewer to
justify why they “just don’t get it.” Gender differences point toward women’s
greater proclivity to enjoy humor as a social construction above and beyond
their equally inherent ability to see the logic of a humorous piece. (McGhee
1977) Why, then, do so many men and women consider the use of laugh-
tracks offensive? Would such contrivances not be superfluous if something
rang genuinely funny to the audience because of a shared sense of humor?
The mere fact that girls and women feel socially compelled to laugh at
a joke and see humor where none really existed for them before should not
be a license for promoters of any message to capitalize on this behavior to
further their own cause. Still, what the public hears from the scientific com-
munity is that laugh-tracks work, rather than the how or why of this phenom-
enon. Clearly, we offer few courses to men and women on media literacy
and its gendered nuances. Thus we continue with a sanctioned exploitation
560 Dineh Davis
technique well within the accepted parameters of the application of scientific

research to promote industry. The deeper pervasive level of social impact
also prevails by not openly acknowledging human differences in the context
of “equally valid” frames of reference as opposed to the dichotomy of right/
wrong or better/worse.
Humor archetypes in communicating frailties
For this issue, I would like to begin by building the following scenario: Let
us presume, for the purposes of this discussion, that there is only one “proto-
type” human on earth who embodies the entire human race as we know it
today. Because this person is alone and strictly a unified prototype, we need
not gender-differentiate, nor can we recognize a race or ethnicity. Finally,
because time and distance are not of the essence, there is no need to consid-
er space/time variations that affect its sensibilities. In a Jungian tradition we
may consider this person the embodiment of our collective unconscious. This
person, then, will possess all the human qualities we recognize and attribute
– in part – to those around us today. This is Every Human about whom myths
and legends abound.
Psychologists and other social scientists rediscovered through scientific
methods the essence of Every Human in ancient myths and folklore: that,
in the aggregate, people have a predictable set of personality traits. Some
traits may be more pronounced – or even overpowering – in some individ-
uals while minimized or not quite as apparent in others. Clearly, it is more
than a coincidence that various spiritual traditions of the world have identi-
fied a similar set of vices and virtues for their own practitioners. A reason-
able representation of such vices in Western tradition are the Seven Deadly
Sins: pride, gluttony, covetousness, sloth, lust, envy, and anger. If we were to
look carefully at the majority of scripted jokes and humor around the world,
we would be sure to find that the greater percentage of the cause for laughter
stems from violations of what – somewhere deep in the recesses of our mind
- we hold to be moral values.
Now, let us look back at our Every Human. In some cultural traditions for
the telling of a humorous story all the qualities of Every Human are trans-
ferred into a single character, typically necessitating the creation of an idiot-
savant. Such is the case of Mulla Nasr’aldin, the ever-present character in all
Sufi jokes. Sometimes he seemingly behaves like an idiot, sometimes he is the
wisest person around. The stories may make us laugh or they may just make
us wonder. While Mulla Nasr’aldin served the Sufis well, for the rest of us it
may be easier to provide a wider range of culturally discernible “shorthand”
joke characters that epitomize certain qualities. Thus, stereotypes are born.
Rather than speak of the frailty within, some of us are happy to attribute
shortcomings to the “Other” (thus freeing ourselves of the need for the virtue
of humility, I might add!) Once we become familiar with humor from other
cultures, it is relatively easy to see that the stereotypes are localized or glo-
balized depending on the country and the occasion and the level of national-
ism (among, I’m sure, hundreds of other variables that shall remain unac-
counted for here). Suffice it to say that if we wish to have a joke “work” with
little set-up or prior character-building, it helps to have an easily identifiable
cast of characters ready for plucking. We are constantly building new stere-
otypes and the media play a large role in perpetuating the process. A cosmo-
politan audience, for example, has no problem catching on to the innuendoes
posed by Rueters (Reuters News Service 1999) in the following news story:
LONDON (Reuters) – If you are Swedish, you stroke it. If you are Spanish,
you beat it. If you are German, you cover it in food. And if you are British,
you use it as an excuse not to have sex. The attention-grabbing personal com-
puter is taking over. A quarter of Britons would rather be on their PC than
making love. And more than half of the population admits to talking to the
screen – not bad for a nation which once ridiculed Prince Charles for talking
to his plants.
PCs in Spain suffer violence with 57 percent of owners admitting to hit-
ting them, according to a survey of computer use in five European countries
by technology giant Microsoft. Another 18 percent of Spaniards are driven to
tears of frustration while Germans are distinctly unamused by them – only
one in six has enjoyed a laugh with their PC.
If variations on this theme continue to appear or if the same story is widely

distributed and quoted, we begin to make new associations, extending na-
tional stereotypes to include their attitude toward personal computers. Such
is also the basis for what Bormann (Bormann 1982) refers to as inside jokes,
more generically identified as a fantasy based on understood archetypes.
A most appropriate example of building archetypes in a universal and unbi-
ased environment is the work of Russian artist and clown Slava Polounine
(Polounine 2001).
Humor and pathos permeate Slava’s multiple-award winning SnowShow.
The nonverbal nature of this theatrical performance makes it accessible to
a wide, cross-cultural audience. Once we move past the fact that its audience
is self-selected to enjoy this form of comedic fantasy, it is easy to pick out
562 Dineh Davis
the human archetypes without ever having to rely on verbal language. The
performers’ only reference to gender shifts is through voice or sound pitch
differences (both roles being performed by the same performer, which further
minimizes human differences). Universal qualities of ambivalence and strug-
gle with cosmic issues such as life and death, love and loss, joy and sadness,
fantasy and nightmare, loneliness and fear are portrayed nonverbally. Lim
(Lim 2001) begins his review of this program as follows;
It was pure delight … and to my surprise the child in me came out to play….
The musical choreography was enticing, with opera, classical, samba and
jazz; all adding up to paradoxically sculpt and shape reason and gibberish,
emotion and anesthesia, significance and inconsequentiality, into the dream
that is SLAVA’S SNOWSHOW. A clown laughs at society’s ills, while we
laugh at the clown… Comic tragedy- a paradox that somehow really works.
In SLAVA’S SNOWSHOW, the discovery is within the individual. Skim the
surface and laugh at the antics; then Slava dares you to plunge into the soul
and really, really look.
It is, therefore, my contention that if we begin to view and to communicate
what we perceive as humorous in the context of Every Human, we can see
past the stereotypes that had to be created in order to allow humor to function.
By this I am referring to the inherent “needs” of humor with its dependence
on a short and fast-moving set-up that does not get caught up in having to
explain an entire culture’s interpretations of vices and virtues. Of course, that
may be easy for me to say since I don’t necessarily see myself as fitting any of
the pat and negative stereotypes – except as a woman. I am quite sympathetic,
however, to the plight of the visibly “blonde” or the “jock” who does not
share the low intelligence gene with the stereotypes and see nothing funny
about such humor, even if it is rationally represented as a simple joke script.
Perspectives and conclusion
One could make a case for the argument that humans exist to fulfill their
desire and capacity to lead happy, joyful, and playful lives. As such, one
cannot preclude a sense of humor closely associated with well-being. His
Holiness the Dalai Lama has lectured and written extensively on the Art of
Happiness and the merits of a joyful life (Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho and Cutler
1998). One does not often associate the games of one-upmanship and acts of
hostility and aggression with the Dalai Lama. Yet, for anyone who is famil-
iar with this man, it would be difficult to say that he does not have a highly
developed and keen sense of humor and appreciation for this form of human
communication.
A sense of humor is seen, potentially, as a stand-in for a larger cluster
of positive human traits that may be too nebulous to enumerate. This trait
does seem to represent to many an indication of a better overall “mood” and
a greater facility in dealing with conflicts and stress. A good sense of humor,
therefore, can be a good indicator of an individual’s stability, values, needs
and interests, imagination and intelligence, and a reasonable credential for
long-term life or business partnerships (Murstein and Brust 1985). On the
other hand, these are not necessarily the inherent qualities of someone who
studies humor or delivers humorous lines or jokes in a personal or profes-
sional capacity. Almost anyone can be taught to laugh at jokes or to deliver
them during a public address, but developing a sense of humor must come
from within. Yet, communication scholarship has not necessarily differenti-
ated in any systematic way the concept of having a sense of humor from that
of being humorous.
Humor can be used as the most vivid prototype for all manner of com-
munication because of its great depth –with biological origins - as well as its
amazing breadth and persistence across cultures and contexts. It exemplifies
an archetypal response that is very difficult to fake. While many can feign
seriousness or remain expressionless under difficult circumstances (e.g., by
having a “poker face”) most false laughter is easily detectable and a sense of
humor remains apparent only when it actually exists. It can therefore be one
of the most accurate measures of a person’s true attitude toward others.
There are many intriguing questions in life for which we cannot devise
straightforward scientific experiments or even conduct “doable” research in
a systematic manner. If we eliminate enough variables that can affect a per-
son’s humor we are sure to approach such a small subset of the field that gen-
eralizations become problematic. On the other hand if we choose to overlook
so many factors related to this equation in an attempt to develop a unified the-
ory of humor, the concept will become so nebulous as to render the general
theory relatively useless for scientific inquiry. Just the same, this complexity
should not keep us from looking at the wonder of humor in communication
and its positive influence and strong effect in every context of human inter
action.
Humor and its ensuing laughter come from ironies, incongruities, surpris-
es, and paradoxes that surround us, and from simply living our mundane daily
lives. They need not be contrived or premeditated, nor have a punch line, or
demand a logical explanation. They simply need to be enjoyed.
564 Dineh Davis
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Verbally expressed humor and translation
Delia Chiaro
Introduction
It is a well known fact that verbally expressed humour (VEH) travels badly.
Regrettably, beyond the boundaries of the society in which it originates, VEH
will encounter two major barriers which will restrict its purpose: different
languages and different cultures. Translations are attempts at demolishing
these apparently insurmountable barriers but, the translation of VEH is a no-
toriously arduous task the results of which are not always triumphant. Gener-
ally considered to be untranslatable, yet systematically translated, no matter
how complex the VEH in question, the translator feels obliged to desperately
search for an adequate solution to what is often a multifaceted linguistic and/
or cultural rebus. As far as humorous discourse is concerned “Il en est de la
traduction comme des sports: la limite semble pouvoir toujours être reculée.”
(Laurian 1989: 6).
This chapter aims at examining issues concerning the interlingual1 transla-
tion of VEH (i.e. translation from one language to another) within the broader
framework of Translation Studies (TS).
Humour and translation
Scholars of TS have, however, generally dedicated little energy to the sub-

ject of humour. This new discipline, having recently gained independence
from both comparative literary studies and linguistics (Bassnett 1980: 13)
in a struggle to gain its academic feet, has been mainly concerned with es-
tablishing its theoretical foundations and the bulk of research carried out in
the field has been principally occupied with issues concerning the transla-
tion of biblical, historical and literary texts. TS have been, as a result, very
much dedicated to the written mode and studies in interpreting and other
forms of oral and multimedia translation2 such as automatic translation and
screen translation, are still relatively new. Thus, the issue of the translation of
humorous discourse has been largely ignored and it is likely that such neglect
570 Delia Chiaro
has been due to the sheer complexity involved in the production of adequate
translations which were initially witty in intent. Hence, apart from the odd
exception, (Laurian and Nilsen eds. 1989; Mateo 1995; Ballard 1996; Pisek
1997), the translation of VEH has been generally swept beneath the carpet
and ignored. Furthermore, scholars who have dared venture into the field,
have tended to approach the subject from a literary angle, typically analysing,
for example, the puns of Shakespeare (Delabastita 1993) and Joyce (Golden
1996). Only recently have TS begun to wake up to the fact that both humour
and translation can also occur beyond the realms of purely literary phenom-
ena. Yet despite this, in two entire volumes dedicated to the translation of
puns (Delabastita ed. 1996, 1997), only three essays endeavour outside the
literary to deal with the translation of humorous phenomena in oral and/or
multimedia texts (see Chiaro 2000a). Furthermore, it would appear that hu-
mour scholars have also largely ignored the issue of translation, exceptions
being Vandaele (2003) and Chiaro (2005) who have attempted to bring to-
gether Translation and Humour Studies.
The issue of the interlingual translation of VEH, whether written or oral,
opens up an extremely problematic area within the discipline of TS. In fact,
whether the kind of VEH to be translated is a short text such as a joke, whether
it is a longer text such as a novel or a more polysemiotic entity such as a film,
a play or a sitcom and whether we are dealing with puns or irony, satire or
parody, the transposition from source language (SL) to target language (TL)
will present the translator with a series of thorny problems which will be both
practical and theoretical in nature. Such difficulties are due to the fact that
the translation of VEH manifestly touches upon the most central and highly
debateable issues in TS, those of equivalence and translatability.
In this respect, the translation of VEH shares many problems with the
translation of conventional poetry. In poetry linguistic deviation is very
high. As well as the presence of unusual lexical collocations and irregular
word order, poetry relies on patterns of repetition at all levels of sound, syn-
tax, lexis and meaning. Furthermore, the visual impact of a poem is also es-
sential, and this is even more so the case with regard to more unconventional
poetic forms such as concrete poetry. As it is highly improbable that any two
languages will share such similar features as to be able to reflect identical
effects, poetry is theoretically untranslatable. Yet, paradoxically translations
of poetry do obviously exist. However, just how comparable a Shakespear-
ian sonnet in Italian is to its original is a disputable issue. No matter how
proficient the translator may be, the very nature of the two codes in question
make a mockery of the concept of formal equivalence. In other words, the
Verbally expressed humor and translation 571
formal features of the poem, the length, the shape, rhymes, rhythm and other
stylistic devices contained in the target text (TT) are bound to be unlike
those of the source text (ST). Thus readers are forced to content themselves
with some manner of linguistic compromise in the name of functional cor-
respondence. Although what results in the TL is a poem on the same topic
as the SL poem, it is likely to share few physical and consequently poetic
similarities to the ST. Yet, albeit a new poem, it is still a poem and, as long
as readers are willing to accept it as such, it is a translation of the ST, thus
the function of the ST remains respected. (For detailed discussions of the
untranslatability of poetry see: Kristeva 1968; Lefevère 1975; Popovič 1976;
De Beaugrande 1978.)
VEH in translation suffers a similar fate to poetry in translation. How-
ever, whereas in conventional poetry the translator attempts to emulate the
SL unyielding patterns of stanza, rhythm and rhyme, in the case of humour
s/he has to deal with anarchic breaking of such patterns. For example, puns,
a common feature in jokes, are notoriously untranslatable. When dealing with
an example of wordplay which pivots around a pun, an interlingual transla-
tion is bound to involve some kind of compromise due to the fact that the
chances of being able to pun on the same word in two different languages is
extremely remote. And even in the prospect of such a possibility, the chances
of finding the same type of pun (i.e. a homophone, a homograph, a homonym
etc.) are even slimmer. Thus, as with poetry, generally speaking, as far as the
translation of VEH is concerned, formal equivalence is sacrificed for the sake
of dynamic equivalence. In other words, as long as the TT serves the same
function as the ST, it is of little importance if the TT has to depart somewhat
in formal terms from the original. Some feature of the ST is lost in exchange
for a gain in the TL.
“Don’t you mean purpose?” said Alice. “If I’d been the whiting,” said Alice,
whose thoughts were still running on the song, “I’d have said to the porpoise,
‘keep back, please, we don’t want you with us’.”
“They were obliged to have him with them’, the Mock Turtle said:” No wise
fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.”
“Wouldn’t it really?” said Alice in a tone of great surprise.
“Of course not,” said the Mock Turtle: “why if a fish came to me and told me
he was going on a journey, I should say ‘with what porpoise?’”. (Lewis
Carroll 1962: 91)
“Si j’avais été à la place du merlan” déclara Alice, qui pensant encore à la
chanson, “ j’aurais dit au brochet : ‘En arrière s’il vous plaît ! Nous n’avons
pas besoin de vous!’”
572 Delia Chiaro
“Ils étaient obligés de l’avoir avec eux,” dit la Simili-Tortue : “aucun poisson

doué de bon sens n’irait où que ce fut sans un brochet ?”
“Vraiment !” s’exclama Alice d’un ton stupéfait.
“Bien sur que non. Vois-tu, si un poisson venait me trouver, moi, et me disait
qu’il va partir en voyage, je lui demanderais : ‘avec quel brochet?’”
“N’est-ce pas : ‘projet’ et non : ‘brochet’ que vous voulez dire ?”
(Carroll, translated by Papy 1961: 140, quoted in Ballard 1996: 344.)
In order to produce an effective French translation of the pun porpoise/pur-

pose the translator transforms the SL fish into a pike: brochet thus enabling
him to manipulate the word brochet into a pun with the word projet. Clearly
the ST and the TT are quite dissimilar both in formal terms and in semantic
terms, a porpoise is a very different fish from a pike and thus the TT loses part
of the significance of the ST. On the other hand the TT retains a pun, albeit
a different one from the ST. Interestingly, even though totally diverse from
the ST, the pair brochet/projet similarly to porpoise/purpose, is also almost
homonymic in nature and in this sense quite comparable to the original. Over
and above equivalence, however, the humorous purpose (or should we say
porpoise?) of the text is maintained in the translated version.
Likewise, the problem of fidelity to the ST also arises when VEH is
based on aspects of the world which are typical only of the source culture
as frequently occurs in satire and parody. How, for example, can Richard
Curtis’s parody of the Shakespearian tragedy The Skinhead Hamlet<3/i> be
efficiently translated? All the characters are skinheads and the comic effect
of the play is created through the parody of this category of typically British
layabouts. Renowned above all for their violent behaviour, their lack of in-
tellect and their poor command of the English language which is thick with
four-letter words and obscenities, these delinquents reduce the play to a lin-
guistic brawl which, to complicate translational matters further, is delivered
in Cockney, the traditional dialect of London’s East End. Now, is the hypo-
thetical translator to simply let sleeping dogs lie and hope that the reader
will have sufficient knowledge of the Shakespearian play and the phenom-
enon of Skinheads to be able to appreciate the parody via a word for word
translation, or is s/he to manipulate the text in such a way to make it more
comprehensible in the target culture? It is highly likely that cultures outside
the UK will not be completely familiar with the phenomenon of skinheads
let alone possess a corresponding genre of youth culture. And even if they
do, will continental skinheads necessarily speak in a non standard variety of
their language like their English counterparts? Linguistic variation consti-
tutes an important problem in multimedia translation (see Pavesi 1994 and
1996). So the next question is, which TL variety can replace Cockney? The
connotations attached to a Cockney accent are quite different from those be-
longing to a Sicilian, a Neapolitan or a Viennese accent. Thus the translator
is on the horns of a dilemma, either s/he translates the text as faithfully as
possible in the hope that the recipient’s world knowledge will suffice to ap-
preciate its humorous intent or s/he is unfaithful to the ST and rewrites it
substituting skinheads with some other genre of local youth. In the case of
such a culture-specific text, either way, loss in correspondence to the ST is
likely to be greater than gain.
In fact, the substitution of one culture with another is rarely a winning
option. The Italian version of the US sitcom The Nanny (CBS Television,
1993–1999.)was broadcast in Italy between 1995 and 1999. The sitcom stars
Jewish nanny Fran Fine (Fran Drescher) from Flushing, Queens who falls in
love with her gentile boss Maxwell (Charles Shaughnessy). Like many US
sitcoms and series, The Nanny is heavily based on Jewish-American culture
(e.g. The Passed-Over Story; The Hanukkah Story) and New York Yiddish
terms are used quite liberally for comic effect. However, while across Eu-
rope the sitcom retains its ‘Jewishness’ (Die Nanny in Germany; Une Nou-
nou d’enfer in France), in Italy, La Tata4 Fran was transformed into an Ital-
ian born immigrant, Francesca Cacace, who goes to live with her relatives
in Queens. Thus many allusions to Kosher culture are replaced with others
pertaining to Frosinone, a town in South-central Italy where Italian Fran was
born. This choice was made by translators and dubbing-scriptwriters5 of the
series who considered Italian audiences to have insufficient knowledge of
Jewish-American culture to understand what was going on and thus inter-
vened and replaced the original situation with another one closer to the target
culture. In the following example, Fran’s teacher Steve, invites her on a date
on a Saturday, but then retracts when he remember that it is his nephew’s
Bar Mitzvah.
Original Italian dub Back-translation

STEVE: What about STEVE: Facciamo STEVE: What about
Saturday? domenica? Sunday?
FRAN: I’m sorry. FRAN: Mi dispiace. FRAN: I’m sorry.
STEVE: Oh STEVE: Oh STEVE: Oh
FRAN: Wha? FRAN: Cosa? FRAN: What?
STEVE: I’m sorry, STEVE: Ah no, STEVE: Oh no, I’ve got
it’s my nephew’s Bar domenica ho la famiglia the family over for lunch
Mitzvah. a pranzo, siamo italiani. we’re Italian.
574 Delia Chiaro
In Italian, the invitation is changed from Saturday to Sunday and the excuse
for Steve changing his mind becomes the obligation to have lunch with his
family. Again, reminiscing about her daughter’s birth, Fran’s mother Silvia,
remembers how she almost ate meat on Jewish New Year:
Original Italian dub Backtranslation

SYLVIA: Fran, you’re ZIA ASSUNTA: Io AUNT ASSUNTA:
my daughter. I remember mi ricordo che avevo I remember ordering
every detail of your birth ordinato due uova two eggs for breakfast
like it was yesterday. a colazione, e me and that they bought me
I remember I ordered le hanno portato di chocolate eggs because it
two eggs over peas, they cioccolata perché era was Easter! In fact. I ate
came scrambled, but I’m Pasqua! Tanto che le them right up and you
not a complainer. Then ho mangiate senza looked like a funny little
I’m thinking they were discutere e tu sembravi toad! Your mother burst
so delicious and I found un ranocchietto venuto into tears when she saw
pieces of meat in it. I had male! Tua madre quando you!
to push it away it was ti ha visto è scoppiata
Rosh Hashana. a piangere!
In the Italian version, Fran’s mother (who for some bizarre reason, in the Ital-
ian version becomes her aunt) is given chocolate eggs for breakfast, because
it is Easter. Notably, the irony of the stereotypical Jewish mother: “I’m not
a complainer” is also deleted in the translation. Yet, amazingly perhaps, the
series was extremely successful in Italy and was given several re-runs, yet
such gross manipulation is beginning to become less tolerated by ever more
knowledgeable audiences (Chiaro 2008).
2. Major issues in Translation Studies
2.1. Equivalence
Although rather démodé in the 21st century, the issue of the fidelity or the
faithfulness of translation is one which has raged for hundreds of years with
regard to the translation of sacred, historical and literary texts. The question
regarded how much formal freedom a translator could exercise in the TT with
respect to the ST. What was the unit of text to be translated at any given time;
the word, the phrase, the sentence or the paragraph? How was the translator to
overcome the hurdle of different word order? This debate divided translators
between those who were SL oriented, and consequently preferred a transla-
tion which perfectly mirrored the ST and tried to remain as closely as possible
to the original text and those who were TT oriented and favoured a translation
in which the ST served as a model from which the translator was free to elab-
orate a completely new TT. Steiner pertinently takes stock of centuries of tug-
of-war between these two factions as follows: “…the craft of the translator
is…deeply ambivalent: it is exercised in a radical tension between impulse to
facsimile and impulse to appropriate recreation.” (1975: 235).
Consequently, through the centuries theorists argued either in the direc-
tion of the word or in the direction of sense without ever coming to any clear
conclusions or even getting much further than their Roman predecessors.6
The word/sense debate continued well into Romanticism and beyond and it is
also worth reflecting on Steiner’s view of translation history: “List St.Jerome,
Luther, Dryden, Hölderin, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Nietsche, Ezra Pound,
Valéry, MacKenna, Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin Quine – and you
have very nearly the sum total of those who have said anything fundamental
about translation.” (quoted in Bassnett 1980: 74).
Fortunately, nowadays there is a greater realization that neither fidelity or
freedom are mutually exclusive, No longer restricted to the sacred or the liter-
ary, translators are faced with a myriad of extremely diverse text types which
stretch from scientific documents and technical manuals to advertisements
and multimedia texts such as films and web pages. Thus, whether to take an
SL oriented approach or a TL oriented approach will depend not only upon
the text itself, but also upon the modality in which it is couched, as well as
its intended recipients. In the case of interlingual translation, texts need to be
adjusted and/or localised for them to be able to pass into the target culture. As
we shall see, the issue of equivalence is especially significant with regard to
the translation of VEH because the nature of these texts tends to be such that
the ST is either so language-specific or culture-specific that the translator is
compelled to make radical changes in the TT if s/he wishes to retain the text’s
original communicative function i.e. that of attempting to amuse the recipi-
ent, or at least making a recognizable attempt at doing so.
What has fifty legs and cannot walk?
Half a centipede.
(Laurian 1989: 6)
In order to translate this riddle into French and produce a functional equiv-
alent, i.e. an utterance which functions as the same riddle in French, the
576 Delia Chiaro
number fifty has to be transformed into five hundred simply because in France
centipedes are known as mille-pattes (literally ‘thousand-pedes’):
Qu’est-ce qui a cinq cent pattes et qui ne peut pas marcher?

La moitié d’une mille-pattes.
Needless to say the two riddles are no longer formally equivalent – they could,
of course never be so even between closely related languages such as French
and Italian, let alone French and English – yet they are equivalent in several
other ways. If we test the translated riddle according to the equivalence typolo-
gies formulated by Koller (1979: 187–191; 1989: 100–4) we find that despite
the number of legs the insect actually has, the riddle does in fact possess what
he labels connotative equivalence. In other words, both ST and TT supposedly
refer to the same thing in the real world and on the basis of their referential or
denotative equivalence the two texts trigger off the same or similar concepts
both in the SL and TL cultures: The riddle also passes the test of text normative
equivalence (1989: 102) as it contains SL and TL words which are adopted
in similar communicative contexts in both cultures, in this case the frame of
a riddle What has…but…/ Qu’est-ce que a…et… Finally the riddle also pos-
sesses pragmatic (ibid.) or dynamic (Nida 1964) equivalence as it should pro-
duce the same effect on both SL and TL recipients i.e. that of being recognized
as a riddle. In such a loose sense the two riddles may be considered as being
equivalent.
Furthermore, with regard to equivalence, the 20th century produced a ser-
ies of dichotomies which range from Nida’s distinction between formal trans-
lations and dynamic translations (1964, 1969, 1975) to Newmark’s division
between semantic translations and communicative translations (1982, 1988,
1991). Although these scholars shift the emphasis onto the process of transla-
tion, it would appear that different labels are however being attached to similar
concepts. With the realization that equivalence cannot be absolute, Nida im-
agines that translation should aim at “closest natural equivalent of the source
language message” (1975: 12) hence mitigating the extreme positions of the
past. Yet all this rings uncomfortably familiar. Thus, when all is said and done,
the issue of equivalence seems to have come full circle and rather like the dog
that bites its tail, it has essentially made little progress. On balance, are such di-
chotomies any different from what was deduced by Cicero in the first century
BC? Is it best to produce a text which strictly reflects the ST with the risk of it
being user-unfriendly or are we better off with a text which is to some degree
divorced from the ST yet digestible by the target culture?
Of course, with reference to VEH, this issue is particularly relevant, precise-

ly because we are dealing with such an extreme area of language use in which,
as we said, the probability of even the slightest formal equivalence must surely
be especially remote. Hence, theorists such a Toury who consider equivalence
to be “…any target-language utterance which is presented or regarded as such”
(1985: 20) thereby accepting any ostensible translation no matter its linguis-
tic or aesthetic quality, provide convenient alibis for the acute indeterminacy
of translated VEH. Consequently, recent debates on equivalence have been
favouring TT oriented approaches which are becoming ever more divorced
from formal equivalence or faithfulness. For example so-called Skopostheorie
(Vermeer 1989) puts the intended function or Skopos of a text in pole position,
a convenient approach so far as the translation of VEH is concerned.
“Well, have a plum,” said the doctor in an effeminate voice. “If you swal-
low the stone you’ll put on weight.” (The Children of Dynmouth, William
Trevor.)
In this case the issue of translational equivalence becomes more intricate

as the wordplay in the question involves punning. A plum contains a stone,
a word which as well as having the meaning of ‘kernel’, can also refer to a unit
of measurement, more exactly concerning weight. In Italian, a plum will
contain a nocciolo rather than a ‘stone’, besides which, a ‘stone’ is a pietra a
‘piece of rock’ which does not denote weight in any way. The Italian transla-
tors offer the following solution:
‘Mangia I tordi’ egli gli disse in falsetto. ‘Così ingrasso dottore?’ ‘Cinqu-
etti!’ (translated by Lucia Sinisi and Chris Williams)
The substitution of ‘plum’ with tordi ‘thrushes’ allows the patient to ‘chirp’
cinguettare a verb which in the second person singular of the present tense
(tu) cinguetti is conveniently (loosely) homophonic with ‘five hundred grams’
= cinque etti = cinqu’etti .
Naturally the two texts are very different both formally and semantical-
ly yet the translators have succeeded in retaining the concept of weight gain
from the ST into the TT. Popvič’s notion of the “invariant core” (1976) can
be useful here. According to Popovič if a dozen translators were given the
same poem to translate they would come up with twelve different versions yet
all would have something in common. These shared elements are the stable,
constant, basic ingredients of the ST, the existence of which can be proven
578 Delia Chiaro
through experimental semantic condensation. If the invariant core in the pre-

vious example consists of the concept of weight and if the Skopos in the SL
was to amuse, should it matter if equivalence is somewhat skewed compared
to the ST as long as if the original function is fulfilled? Furthermore, why
shouldn’t functional equivalence be acceptable equivalence?
At this point it is worth considering notions which suggest that equiva-
lence is “illusory” (Snell-Hornby 1988), that it “creates a presumption of
complete interpretative resemblance” (Gutt 1991: 186); that it is a “functional
concept that can be attributed to a particular translational situation” (Neu-
bert 1994: 413–414) and finally, and possibly most convincingly, that it “is
crucial to translation because it is the unique intertextual relation that only
translations, among all conceivable text types, are expected to show” (Stec-
coni 1994: 8). Together with Stecconi, Pym (2000) defines equivalence by
examining translation itself in contrast to non-translation. In other words, to
what degree can a TT formally dissociate itself from the ST yet still be seen
as a translation? Can we go as far as accepting Lefevère’s “rewritings” (1992)
as being translations?7 In the case of VEH the answer is likely to be closer to
yes than to no. If the notion of equivalence can be seen as the “affirmation of
the social existence of translation” (Pym 2000: 14) then we have a construc-
tive concept, but until we define non-translation, it is totally useless.
Thus, instead of assessing equivalence in absolute terms, the issue can
be approached in terms of degrees of equivalence. Toury’s ‘equivalence
postulate’ does not seek to establish prescriptive criteria of equivalence but
treats its existence as given. “The question to be asked is (…) not whether
two texts are equivalent but what type and degree of translation equivalence
they reveal” (1980: 47). Finally, Pym (1992) avoids the difficulty of pinning
down the nature of equivalence to linguistic meaning and views translations
adopting a metaphor taken from economics and seeing them seen as transac-
tions and equivalence in terms of equality of exchange value. We have thus
come full circle. By accepting translations as given (Toury op.cit.) the issue
of equivalence is reduced to degrees of equivalence, with equivalence itself
remaining largely undefined.
Let us consider that both ST and TT are two totally independent entities
which are represented by two circles (see Fig. 1).
As we have seen, it would be absurd to think that a translator can create
a carbon copy of the ST, or that the two texts can perfectly mirror each other.
Thus we could say that what occurs in the process of translation is a kind of
linguistic compromise which transforms the content of the ST into a fresh
form in the SL.
ST TT
Figure 1.
If each language is an independent and autonomously functioning system sui

generis, then we cannot expect that the asymmetry between its signs and the
extralinguistic entities and their conceptualisations will reflect an identical
pattern across languages. (…) The roots of these interlingual asymmetries
should be looked for, first and foremost, on the level of our conceptualisation
of our knowledge and experience of the world and the way it is fixed in lan-
guage. (…) The way we conceptualise our world also seems to acquire some
language and culture-specific features. (Alexieva 1997: 141)
However, translations are atypical text types in virtue of the fact that their
being is possible because of the existence of a primary text in another lan-
guage. On the one hand, if a translation of a text exists as a totally new entity,
represented by a new circle, this circle can never be entirely independent of
the original circle from which it stems. Thus, instead of two independent cir-
cles, a translated text can be conceptualised in terms of a single circle deriv-
ing from the pre-existing circle of the ST. Let us imagine the occurrence of
a sort of osmosis of the quintessence of the ST which permeates into the TT
to create a translation. The quality, naturalness and indeed degree of equiva-
lence of this translation could well be defined in terms of the least critical
area between two the texts in question. We could now consider ST and TT
in terms of two concentric circles with the area of overlap between the two
representing the least critical area between the two texts. Thus if we compare
Figure 2a to Figure 2b, in which the shaded areas represent the least critical
area, the latter represents the more natural text in the TL. In other words, the
greater the least critical area, the better the translation.
a. b.
ST TT S TT
T
Figure 2.
580 Delia Chiaro
The following traditional riddle is firmly embodied in centuries of British

children’s culture:
Q. What’s black and white and red all over?

A. A newspaper.
Now, let us consider two feasible solutions into Italian:
a. Che cosa è nero, bianco e rosso ovunque?

L’Unità (Left-wing newspaper traditionally associated with the Italian
Communist Party and with left wing sympathizers in general).
b. Una zebra con l’abbronzatura. (a zebra with a suntan).
Two very diverse solutions neither of which manage to encapsulate the se-
mantic bivalency attached to the words ‘red/read’ nevertheless, solution
a does capture the ‘reading’ element of the original riddle coupled with the
metaphorical value of the colour term ‘red’ attached to a popular left wing
newspaper L’Unità. We could thus assign the translated riddle with an aver-
age area of criticalness such as that illustrated by the shaded area of Figure 2.
However what we are doing is translating a children’s riddle and let us not
forget that it is unlikely that the average 7- to 10-year old will be au fait with
the intricacies of press and politics. Thus it might be more reasonable to as-
sign a greater shaded area to solution b (see Fig. 2) simply because, unlike
solution a, in terms of Skopos it is clearly a children’s riddle. Although the
‘reading’ element is lost, the riddle certainly gains in the kind of silliness nor-
mally associated to children’s riddles and no longer requires access to adult
knowledge resources (Attardo 1994). We can thus conclude that solution b
possesses a greater degree of equivalence than a.
2.2. Translatability and untranslatability
Closely linked to equivalence the concept of translatability refers to the cap-

acity of some kind of meaning being transferred from one language to another
without undergoing radical changes. Naturally, debates ensue regarding the
issue of exactly what kind of ‘meaning’ is involved and consequently it is ex-
tremely hard to argue that all meanings are always translatable. Applying the
concept of untranslatability to a humorous text is an easy task. The following
Italian joke for example, (first heard Summer 2002) contains all the ingredi-
ents necessary to render it ‘untranslatable’.8
Hai saputo che Monica Lewinsky riprende a lavorare nella Casa Bianca?
Sembrerebbe che dovrà prima superare una prova scritta.
(Literally: Have you heard that Monica Lewinsky is going to start work-
ing at the White House again? Apparently she’s got to sit a written exam
first.)
In English the joke is a non starter owing to the fact that the two opposing
scripts of the ST (Raskin 1985) are no longer such in the TT. There is a mis-
match in the two scripts simply because the testing systems which exist in
schools and colleges in most English speaking countries and are very differ-
ent from those in Italy. In Italian schools and universities most courses end
with a written test or examination called a prova scritta, which is in turn fol-
lowed by a viva known as a prova orale, literally an ‘oral test’. Thus the Italian
joke works on the opposition of scritto/orale (written/oral) and the obvious
references to Ms Lewinsky’s extra-curricula activities at the White House. In
English-speaking cultures, the absence of an examination organization sys-
tematically based on ‘written first’ + ‘oral testing second’(i.e. viva) would
render a translation which included the term ‘written’ slightly contorted for
the recipient who would need to unravel the conundrum in order to arrive
mentally at the polysemic term ‘oral’. An understanding of the ‘written/oral’
opposition in the real world is essential to gaining an understanding of the
contrasting humorous text – a good linguistic translation which refers to hav-
ing to pass a viva would simply not do in humorous terms. In such a sense
the joke remains untranslatable.
The basic problem in theories for and against translatability is the relation
between ST locutionary acts and meanings which are subject to mediation in
the act of transference into the TT. Thus, traditionally, the concept of translat-
ability can work in one of the following three ways:
a. according to rationalists, meanings are universal and are generally trans-
latable.
b. according to relativists thinking and speaking are inextricably linked and
translation is thus “an attempt at solving an impossible task” (Humboldt
1796/1868:vi).
c. according to compatibilists all languages are highly individual but they
can be translated and the translators task is to make sense of the ST and
at the same time express their understanding of it.
582 Delia Chiaro
This issue can be most clearly illustrated through kind of hermeneutic argu-
ment which is linked to the untranslatability into French of the utterance “The
first word of this sentence has three letters” since the first word can only have
two letters (Le premier mot…) and thus translation is forced to adopt the prin-
ciple of necessary sacrifice (Burge 1978). For example, an acceptable instru-
mental translation could be Le premier mot de la phrase en anglais a trois
lettres. Such dynamic translatability thus depends on the TL. As far as VEH is
concerned, more often than not, translational sacrifice is frequently inevitable
and the concept of dynamism can be quite useful.
2.2. Sociocultural issues
If a joke is to be translated interlingually, the process involved requires the

translator to transcend the purely linguistic and to analyse the ST in order to
produce a TT through a process of restructuring. Nida’s well known model
(1969: 484) illustrates the process which a translator must elaborate in order
to produce a TT which is an acceptable reflection of the original text.
Although Nida’s model is applicable to any translation, the analysis and
restructuring involved in the translation of VEH is likely to be more complex
compared to the process involved in the translation of a highly referential
text. Cicero was the first to observe that VEH could be divided into humour
which is linguistic in nature and humour which is referential: “For there are
two types of wit, one employed upon facts, the other upon words” (De Ora-
tore, II, LIX)(1965: 377), and from Cicero onwards it has been commonly
argued that humour which depends on the linguistic sign is untranslatable in
the sense that like poetry, formal equivalence is impossible (Attardo 1994:
28–29) while referentially based humour is less likely to resist translation.
source language receptor language

text translation
analysis restructuring
transfer
Figure 3.
What do they write on the bottom of Guinness bottles in Ireland?

Open other end.
To demonstrate that resistance to translation is a feature of VEH whether

linguistic or referential in nature, let us attempt a translation of this British
English underdog joke into Italian. Now, despite the ease which is usually
attributed to the interlingual translation of non-linguistic jokes as opposed to
that of referential jokes, the example chosen presents numerous difficulties.
In fact, it would be quite meaningless to Italians if translated literally. Un-
less they are acute observers of British culture they are unlikely to know that
the Irish are the butt of English stupidity jokes. Thus, the obvious strategy
which springs to mind would be to localise the joke for the recipient cultures
by substituting the Irish butt of the joke with the local stupid group which
appears in Italian and German underdog jokes. Now, the peripheral group
in Italy is not an ethnic group but a professional one – the carabinieri one
of Italy’s police forces (Davies 1998).9 Thus the translator has the option of
transforming an Irish joke into a carabiniere joke. The next hurdle to over-
come is the fact that there is no national drink in Italy, or rather, although
Birra Peroni and Nastro Azzuro are national beers, they do not have the
same association with Italy as Guinness has with Ireland. Although widely
consumed, substituting Guinness with wine would not be an adequate so-
lution and neither would substitution with well known alcoholic beverages
like Strega, Campari or Martini. The point is that Italians are not great con-
sumers of alcohol outside meals, and, unlike the Irish, are not stereotypically
renowned for their drunkenness. However, Italians do consume soft drinks
and juices. So, Coca Cola, for example, could be an effective substitution
for Guinness. Finally, the whole text needs to be placed in an environment
solely frequented by carabinieri because if the TT were placed out of con-
text, as in the ST, it would not make any sense because most Italians can
work out which end of the bottle is to be opened, thus rendering the instruc-
tions on the bottom of the bottle superfluous. Thus the bottle is transformed
into a can, and the can is positioned inside a drink dispenser in a caserma
(police station).10 We have now produced a text which is recognizable as
a joke in Italian culture.
he cosa scrivono sul fondo delle lattine di Coca Cola che si trovano nei
C
distributori di bibite nelle caserme dei carabinieri?
Aprire dall’altro lato.
584 Delia Chiaro
source language receptor language

text translation
carabinieri/coke/
guinness /ireland
police station
analysis restructuring
local stupid group

where to place joke?
transfer
italians not heavy drinkers
Figure 4.
Mounin saw translations as a series of significations in one culture which

become replaced with significations in another culture (1963). Replacing the
Irish with carabinieri certainly produces a different joke but the signification
of the two groups in their respective cultures is extremely similar (cfr. Dav-
ies). Naturally the same joke could have been translated without a change in
cultural signification. In other words, it could have remained an Irish joke
in the Italian language and it could well be argued that such an approach in
which the ST is not manipulated would teach the recipient something about
the source culture. True but we would no longer have a joke. We can apply
similar reasoning for a translation into German:
Warum ist die österreichische Flagge oben und unten rot?

Damit man sie auf jeden Fall richtig aufhängt.
(Why is the Austrian flag made up of two red stripes and a white stripe in
the middle? So that the Austrians don’t hang it upside down.)
In this translation the decision was made to replace part of the SL the joke’s
invariant core (i.e. drink) with another object, a flag, arguing that, the in-
variant core is not the object itself but the geometry of the object, i.e. in the
original text the top and the bottom of a bottle were easily confused by the
stupid group. As the Austrian flag is composed of a white stripe sandwiched
in between two red stripes, in the TT it is the colours placed at the top and
the bottom of the flag which must be simplified so as not to be confused by
the butt of the joke.
Thus we have seen that translation is not simply a matter of substituting

the words of one language with those of another and adapting the syntax to
suit it. Each language is inextricably linked to the culture to which it belongs,
thus the process of interlingual translation, while being a primarily linguistic
activity, also involves the transposition of a series of extra linguistic features
inherent to the source culture:
…before the joke can be discharged in all its swiftness there is much to be ap-
prehended about cultural and social facts, about shared beliefs and attitudes,
about the pragmatic bases of communication. (…) We share our humour with
those who have shared our history and who understand our ways of interpret-
ing the experience. There is a fund of common knowledge and recollection,
upon which all jokes draw with instantaneous effect.” (Nash 1985: 9)
Let us consider the apparently straightforward translation of the English word

tea with the Italian word tè. While both words denote a product derived from
the chopped leaves of a tea plant, arguably, the English word for tea conveys
a set of associations missing from the corresponding Italian word. Although
tea bags are now widely used in the UK, the ritual which accompanies the
use of loose tea leaves is by no means obsolete. Thus, English tea is usually
brewed in a pot until it is quite dark in colour and consequently strong before
consumption. It is drunk hot, with milk, often in a mug, and accompanied by
biscuits or cake. In Italy tè is often prepared directly in a cup (or glass) by
pouring hot water directly over a teabag. It is much lighter in colour, therefore
weaker and tends to be drunk highly sugared and with a slice of lemon. The
same beverage is drunk cold in the summer. The traditional British cuppa is
served as an antidote when one is tired or emotionally upset (hence the ex-
pression ‘to offer tea and sympathy’) and is usually drunk in large quantities
which would be unheard of in Italy. Teapots are kept warm beneath woollen
tea cosies and tea itself is stored in special recipients known as tea caddies.
Furthermore, in Britain, office and factory workers intersperse their day by
taking regular tea breaks11 while the word tea also refers to many people’s
main meal of the day – not to be confused with afternoon tea or even high
tea which are meals consumed between lunch and dinner by a different social
class of person. Finally, in British English, a small crisis is known as a storm
in a teacup and if someone or something is not someone’s cup of tea it means
they are not the kind of person or thing that they like. So, even though the
words tea and tè denote exactly the same substance, they conjures up quite
dissimilar meanings in the two cultures. Thus, between languages meanings
tend to be approximate, not necessarily because of the absence of a particular
586 Delia Chiaro
term in one of the languages, but simply because the signification of a term
may not coincide in the two cultures.
No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as represent-
ing the same social reality. The worlds in which societies live are distinct
worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached. (Sapir
1956: 59)
Consequently, the process of translation is not merely a linguistic activity but

also involves the careful consideration of the world in which the language is
produced. Let us consider the following dialogue from the opening scenes of
Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994, USA):
vincent: You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in Paris?
jules: They don’t call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
vincent: No man, they’ve got the metric system, the don’t know what the
fuck a Quarter Pounder is!
jules : So what do they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
vincent: They call it a Royale with cheese.
jules: Royale with cheese.
vincent: That’s right.
jules: What do they call a Big Mac?
vincent: A Big Mac’s a Big Mac only they call it Le Big Mac.
jules: Le Big Mac. What do they call a Whopper?
vincent: I don’t know, I never went to a Burger King. You know what they
put on French Fries instead of Ketchup?
jules: What?
vincent: Mayonnaise.
The observations made by a rather ineloquent hit man Vincent (John Tra-
volta) in this brief dialogue with Bible basher Jules (Samuel L. Jackson)
are unwittingly worthy of any serious treatise on translation theory. The fact
that Quarter Pounders are known as Royales in France appears to fill Jules
with wonder until Vincent explains that within the metric system, the original
label would be meaningless. Further amusement is caused by the fact that the
French precede the item Big Mac with the definite article le and in addition
prefer mayonnaise to ketchup on their fried potatoes. Indeed, the excellent
linguistic mediations produced, presumably, by hidden teams of linguists,
semioticians and translators behind multinationals like MacDonald’s reveal
the meticulous research that must go into the internationalisation (and hence
localisation) of their products. Of course a Quarter Pounder would make no

sense in metric Europe. And the absence of an article before a noun would be
unthinkable in French. A glimpse at a menu in Paris or Rome does not indeed
reveal a straight translation of a menu in Washington, but both a linguistic and
semiotic localisation of a slice of North American culture. Not only do we
find mayonnaise for European French fries but pasta dishes in Macdonald’s
in Rome while beer is readily available in many European outlets. Thus suc-
cessful translation does not simply involve the translation of words, but also
the translation of worlds.
“Mummy, Mummy, is it still a long way to France?”

“Shut up and keep swimming!”
“Maman, Maman, est-ce que l’Angleterre loin?”
“Tais-toi et continue à nager!”
The substitution of England for France does indeed provide an adequate so-
lution for a joke which contains neither paranomasia nor features which are
strikingly referential in nature. Yet, as a French colleague checking my trans-
lation dryly pointed out, “Why should someone French want to go to Eng-
land?” Naturally, the pre-suppositions underlying the two exchanges are rad-
ically diverse. Different languages, different worlds.
2.4. Puns
Naturally, when the VEH in question is dependant upon a pun which owes
its meaning to the very structure of its own language, once divorced from
and transported into another language, it is unlikely to be able to function
any longer as a pun. With the logic of the Age of Reason, Addison defines
the pun as:
… a Conceit arising from the use of two words that agree in the Sound, but
differ in the Sense. The only way to therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to trans-
late it into a different Language. If it bears the Test you may pronounce it
true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been
a Punn. (1928 [1711]: 343)
Furthermore, let us not forget the etymology of the term ‘translation’ from
the Latin traductio which not only meant ‘transposition’ but also a rhetoric-
al device and, according to Lausberg: ”Figures of moderate similarity are
588 Delia Chiaro
included within the term traductio…” which he goes on to gloss with the
French terms jeu de mot/calembour and the English term ‘pun’ (1967: 147).
And it is precisely the pun which embodies the concept of untranslatability.
In the same way as it is ‘impossible’ to flawlessly represent countless cultural
phenomena in another language, an identical imitation of a language’s puns
would be equally arduous. However let us, for the sake of argument consider
Laurian’s challenge (1989: 8) regarding the impossibility of translating the
following quip into any other language:
The world is so full of problems that if Moses came down Mount Sinai
today, two of the tablets he would be carrying would be aspirins.
The ‘impossible’ pun is, of course, the item ‘tablets’ which, according to Lau-
rian, it would seem, only in English can refer both to slates of stone, rock or
marble as well as to drugs. What Laurian together with many others probably
means by the term untranslatable is based on the fact that the item ‘tablet’ is
only paranomastic in English and that consequently a semantically identical
translation into another language would be impossible. Thus the following
literal translation into Italian is simply not a joke :
Il mondo è talmente pieno di problemi che se oggi Mosé scendesse dal
Monte Sinai, due delle tavole che porterebbe sarebbero aspirine.
However, a feasible Italian translation below ignores the pun on ‘tablet’ but
nevertheless creates a good line by retaining a significant slice of the ST in-
variant core i.e. insufficiency and medication.
Il mondo è talmente pieno di problemi che se oggi Mosé scendesse dal
Monte Sinai, anziché contenere i 10 comandamenti, le due tavole dovreb-
bero prescrivere una serie di medicinali.
‘The world is so full of problems that if Moses came down Mount Sinai
today, instead of the 10 commandments the tablets should prescribe a list
of medications.’
However, examples of such a high degree of lingua-cultural specificity are

plentiful. “According to Freud, what comes between fear and sex?” the an-
swer is clearly: fünf. Again, the joke only works in English which happens to
have two words that are the homophones of two German numbers, which in
turn, just happen to be connected with Freud’s well known preoccupation.
In conclusion, as with the issue of equivalence, at the end of the day trans-
latability is a question of linguistic and cultural compromise. If a translation
of VEH is necessary, it seems only fair that the means should justify the
functional ends of attempts to amuse even if formal equivalence is compro-
mised.
3. VEH and multimedia translation
Complex as they may appear, the issues examined so far are pretty straight-
forward when compared to the intricacy of having to translate an instance of
VEH embedded within a multimedia text. As the term itself suggests, a mul-
timedia text is both created and received via a number of different tech-
nological media. Thus, a film, which is produced with cameras, recording
equipment and computers and is then perceived by audiences audio-visually
is a typical example of a multimedia text, as are conference interpretations
and automatic translations. As we shall see, such texts require extra attention
in the translation process, as we are no longer simply translating a written
text in Language A into a written text in Language B. Characteristically, the
process of an audiovisual translation such as a film, as opposed to traditional
translation, also requires matching the visual and verbal codes of the original
product to the verbal codes of the target language – bearing in mind that the
visual code remains the same. Multimedia translations include the linguistic
mediation for a vast assortment of text-types which span from automatic and
on-line translations to theatrical products (plays, musicals, opera, etc.); au-
dio-descriptions available in museums and art galleries; films for cinema and
dubbed, subtitled and ‘voiced-over’ products for television, video cassettes,
DVDs, computer games and mobile phones.
Screen translations are normally oral texts based upon the translation of
written scripts, in the case of dubbing, dubbing-scriptwriters need to bear
in mind the tricky question of lip-synchronization and of matching the new
script to the lip movements of the TT (Paolinelli and Di Fortunato 2006). If
subtitling is the chosen mode of translation, operators need to bear in mind
issues regarding condensation of the message and the timeliness of the words
on screen, in other words, they must ensure that audiences have enough time
to read the subtitles and follow the action of the movie at the same time
(see Ivvarson 1992). Thus, screen translation is concerned with spoken texts
which are totally dependent on a visual code. For example, a hypothetical
episode of a typical US soap or sitcom regarding a ‘baby shower’ will re-
590 Delia Chiaro
quire some sort of extra linguistic mediation for the average Italian, French
or German viewer who will need some gentle nudging to be able to put two
and two together and understand a North American custom which is clearly
illustrated on screen but for which no word exists in the respective target lan-
guages.
Translating VEH on screen
Since a film is a complex semiotic entity communicating verbal signs acous-

tically (dialogue), visually (written texts, such as letters, newspaper head-
lines etc.) coupled with non-verbal signs acoustically (music, background
noises etc.) and visually (actor’s movements, facial expressions, setting of the
film etc.) the translator’s intervention is limited to only one of these aspects
– the dialogue – leaving all the other features unchanged. In a comedy which
may well rely on many of these features simultaneously in order to create the
desired effect, the verbal code is the only area which can be manipulated to
aid the target culture in capturing the humour. Thus, most translational prob-
lems which regard VEH on screen are similar to those which regard written
texts but multiplied several times owing to the restrictions which the visual
code impose upon the translation.
Selbst jene Übersetzer, die in der absoluten Treu zum Original (wie auch
immer definiert und praktiziert) ein Dogma sehen, müssen in solchen Fäl-
len entweder kampflos das Feld räumen (und damit auf Komik verzichten)
oder ihren Prinzipien untreu werden und selbst neue, andere komische El-
emente erfinden und einbringen, über die auch das ZS-Publikum lachen kann.
(…) Gerade bei der Bearbeitung von Filmmaterial, das zur Erheiterung des
Publikums gemacht worden ist, sollte die vielbeschworene’treu zum Origin-
al’ hinter dem Bemühengen zurück stecken, auch das Zielpublikum lachen zu
machen. (Müller quoted in Whitman-Linsen 1992: 141).
Those translators who see absolute translation as a dogma must, field in such
cases, either abandon the field (and give up translating comicity) or betray
their principles and find humorous ideas elsewhere in the text so that the tar-
get audience can laugh too.(…) it is indeed in the elaboration of a screen text,
created to amuse the public that ‘fidelity to the original’ should be relegated
to second place behind attempts to make the target audience laugh. (My
translation)
Let us begin with a straightforward example taken from the British comedy
A Fish called Wanda (Charles Chrichton, 1988, UK). This film is highly de-
pendent on audiences’ recognition of the stereotypes and many cultural refer-

ences too. Denton (1994) reports Wanda, who, commenting on the stupidity
of her ‘ brother,’ Otto declares:
“He’s so dumb he thought that the Gettysburg Address was where Lincoln
lived.”
This joke is both linguistic and cultural. Italian has no polysemy attached to
the term ‘address’ and Italian audiences are likely to be unaware of the epi-
sode in the American Civil War with which British and American audiences
are familiar, so in the Italian version we find:
“È così stupido, credeva che Piccadilly Circus fosse un circo equestre.”

(Literally “He’s so dumb he thought Piccadilly Circus was actually a cir-
cus”)
The core component of Otto’s stupidity is maintained through the reference

of an internationally recognized landmark. Furthermore the pun on Circus/
circo is, in a way, similar to the pun on ‘address’. However, this is a relatively
simple translational problem to solve as the visuals on screen simply present
the characters conversing hence making lip synch the only serious difficulty.
Bosinelli (1994: 17) provides the following example from the Italian transla-
tions of Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977, USA):
ORIGINAL ITALIAN DUB BACKTRANSLATIONS
Io sono per la concisione I’m for conciseness
[…] […] No, really, you,
“Did you eat yet, or No, ma davvero, tu, non I don’t think, go on,
what […]” ci credo, ma dai, per la conciseness, you must
“No, didchoo? Not ‘did concisione, vorrai dire mean circumcision
you’, di dchoo eat? per la circoncisione[…] […]
Jew? Not did you eat, C’è la vendita speciale di There’s a special sale in
but Jew eat? Jew Jew Wagner Street, Signore, Wagner Street, Sir, you’ll
eat?” ne resterà inebriato. get drunk.
ITALIAN SUBTITLES
Ti vedo un po’ giù…deo You look down Jew.
The original wordplay based on the assonance between ‘did you’ and ‘Jew’
is replaced by wordplay between concisione/conciseness & circoncisione/
circumcision and an extra compensatory line which includes a corrupted
592 Delia Chiaro
inebriato/drunk which becomes inebreato which incorporates the item ebreo

= Jew. The semantic core of Judaism is retained by sacrificing formal equiva-
lence while in the subtitled version (literally: ‘you seem a bit down Jew’ giù
= down/ giudeo = Jew) vice-versa occurs. However, as in the example from
Wanda, the absence of close up shots and visuals tightly linked to the words
allow for such translational freedom. This is not always possible. Further-
more, for purely technical reasons linked to the speed of the screen utterance
and the time necessary for the audience to read the translation, the subtitled
version is extremely short and highly reduced in comparison to both original
and dubbed versions.
Thus, generally speaking, as with written texts, it would appear that in the
event of puns on screen, translators and dubbing scriptwriters tend to go for
one of the following four options:
a. leave the pun unchanged in the SL;
b. replace the SL pun with a TL pun;
c. replace the SL pun with an idiomatic expression in the TL or
d. ignore the pun altogether
3.1.1. Leaving the pun unchanged
Presumably dubbing-scriptwriters are forced to keep the original pun in the SL

when they have no other option. The plot of comedy Blame it on the Bellboy
(1991, Mark Hermann, UK) hinges on a bellboy at Gabrielle’s Hotel in Venice
who misunderstands the names of three English clients – Mr Melville Orton
who is in Venice to buy some property for his boss, Mr Maurice Horton who is
there on a blind date and Mr Michael Laughton a hired killer. The close hom-
ophony of these names, all of which contain the traditionally confusing ‘l’ and
‘r’ sounds make up a rhetorical device which is frequently used for humorous
means – the homeoteuleuton. When the bellboy, who is unable to distinguish
the three names gives each guest the wrong message, we have all the necessary
ingredients for an Anglo-Italian farce for which no translation is required.
3.1.2. Replacing the SL pun with a TL pun
This solution is the most difficult and consequently the less frequently adopt-
ed of all and dependent on the dexterity of the translators and dubbing-script-
writers, at least one aspect of the original pun may still be captured. Natu-
rally, this is the most satisfying solution for audience. A good example occurs
in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994, Mike Newell, UK) when novice
priest Rowan Atkinson botches-up one of the four ceremonies by missing
out certain sounds in the litany. The Italian dubbing-scriptwriters solved the
problem by adding syllables to the Italian litany thus creating an equally ir-
reverent effect:
ORIGINAL DUB BACKTRANSLATION

In the name of the Father Nel nome del Padre, del In the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Figlio e dello spiritoso and of the son and of the
Holy Goat… Santo… lively ghost
…to be your awful …la tua illegitima your illegitimate wife
wedded wife… sposa…
However, here too, apart from lip-synch, we are still not facing really tricky
screen translation problems of the calibre of the classic scene in which dean
of faculty Groucho Marx signing a document in Horse Feathers (Norman
McLeod, 1932, USA) asks someone to give him a seal, Harpo quite typic-
ally produces an animal. In Italian the item ‘seal’ sigillo is monosemous so
the film’s dubbing-scriptwriters were faced with running the risk of puzzling
spectators with a word to word translation. Long before the days of digitali-
sation, the visual code could not be modified in any way and by a stroke of
luck, the dubbing director came up with Focalizziamo as a solution meaning
literally, ‘Let’s focus on it’. Although different in formal terms, a claim for
equivalence can easily be made not only in terms of communicative function
(i.e. it is clearly a joke) but also because a portion of the ST core meaning is
retained through the stem foca which denotes the animal ‘seal’.
The Italian translations of Marx Brothers’ films are a never-ending source of
inspired solutions to puns on screen. In Monkey Business (Norman McLeod,
1931, USA) we find the following exchange:
groucho: Columbus was sailing on his vessel…

chico: On his what?
groucho: Not on his what, on his vessel. Don’t you now what a vessel is?
chico: Sure I can vessel (He whistles a tune).
The pun is based on the weak homophony between ‘vessel’ and ‘whistle’. There
is no way the translator can escape the pun as Chico is seen unambiguously
594 Delia Chiaro
whistling in a lengthy close-up shot. In Italian a vessel is a caravella phonet-

ically similar to caramella denoting a sweet or a candy.
groucho: Ma Colombo, bordeggiando con le sue caravelle…

chico: Le sue cose?
groucho: Bordeggiando con le sue caravelle. Non sai cosa sono le cara
velle?
chico: Cioccolate, caravelle (whistles)
“Cioccolate, caramelle” followed by whistling was the familiar cry of ven-

dors in Italian cinemas in the thirties and forties. Thus Chico actively whis-
tling into the camera creates little mismatch between the visual code and the
dialogue.
3.1.3. Replacing the SL pun with an idiomatic expression in the TL
Once again the Marx Brothers offer an interesting example, in Duck Soup
(1933, Leo McCarey, USA). Groucho (Firefly) is president of Freedonia and
Chico and Harpo are two incompetent spies:
trentino (President of Sylvania): “But I asked you to dig up something

I could use against Firefly. Did you bring his record? (Pinky pulls out
a gramophone record from his coat.)
Once again we have a typical screen translation dilemma as the object of the
joke is clearly visible to audiences. Ignoring a reference to a record would
simply create a non sequitur. The problem is resolved by replacing the polyse-
mous ‘record’ with an idiom: cambiare disco = ‘ to change the subject’ (liter-
ally ‘change the record’ in which the word disco denotes a disc/record).
trentino: “Volete rispondermi a tono una volta per tutte! Cambiate disco
per Bacco!”
3.1.4. Ignoring the pun altogether
Interestingly, when a pun is ignored, one is never sure whether the omission
is a deliberate translation strategy or the lack of recognition of the pun in the
original text. An example of an unchanged pun occurs in The Big Chill (1983,
Lawrence Kasdan, USA) when Sam (Tom Berenger) is reluctant to father
Meg’s (Sarah Kay Place) child :
Sam : “You’re giving me a massive headache!”

Place: “Your’re not gonna use that old excuse, are you? You’ve got
genes!”
In response, Berenger, typecast as a good looking imbecile, looks down at

his trousers and touches them bemused. The Italian version becomes hai dei
buoni geni but the literal translation of the original, the Italian word geni, is
monosemous and can only refer to chemically patterned information. Fur-
thermore, it bears no phonological resemblance to the universal word for
denim trousers, jeans. Thus Italian audiences must have wondered why Ber-
enger should touch and glare at his jeans as he does (see Chiaro 1992).
3.2. Between success and failure
Dubbed comedies in many European countries tend to receive harsh criticism

from ever more discerning audiences who are aware that jokes and quips
do not always work in their translated versions. Nevertheless, several Brit-
ish comedies, A Fish called Wanda, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Full
Monty (1997, Peter Cattaneo, UK), Notting Hill (1999, Roger Mitchell; UK)
and The Diary of Bridget Jones (2001, Sharon Maguire; UK&USA) have
been huge box office successes worldwide despite inevitable linguistic and
cultural barriers which tend to make humour so difficult to export and conse-
quently appreciate. Interestingly, these comedies contain very few puns and
therefore present fewer difficulties in translation than comedies which are
denser in terms of word play. Could density of wordplay, and consequently
difficulty in translation, be the reason why so many comedies are destined to
flop outside their country of origin? Yet the Marx Brothers, whose films were
an endless concatenation of what are frequently visually dependent puns,
were popular the world over too, although it could be argued that Hollywood
monopolized the cinema at the time. On the contrary, Italian film comedian
Totò contemporary of the Marx Brothers whose style was not so different did
not make it beyond Italy despite excellent subtitled versions.12
On the other hand, it would appear that much VEH on the big screen tends
to be based on irony rather than punning, yet, as Zabalbeascoa13 observes,
596 Delia Chiaro
if the viewer has no access to the cultural presuppositions behind the irony,
despite a straightforward translation which apparently presents no particular
culture-specific or linguistic difficulties, the humour involved may well be
lost. Zabalbeascoa considers the opening monologue of the film Trainspot-
ting (Danny Boyle, 1996, UK):
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a fuck-
ing big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players,
and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental in-
surance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home.
Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose
a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY
and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that
couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking
junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing
your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the
selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your
future. Choose life. I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the
reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you’ve got heroin?
Linguistically basic and undemanding in terms of interlingual translation, the

irony appears to come across equally well outside the UK. The contradiction
in the text does, of course, depend upon the monologue with the constant
repetition of the item ‘choose’ coupled with a gripping visual text in which
we witness heroin addicts Renton and Spud firstly being chased by the police
and then lying on the ground motionless and drugged in a filthy and squalid
environment. The ironic ‘choose’ – the slogan of countless advertising cam-
paigns and the banner of Thatcherism – jars against the detailed mockery
of the middle class British dream which is depicted on the screen. Neither
Renton nor Spud has chosen the life they disparagingly criticize but total
squalor instead. Apart from requiring the knowledge of a culture in which
homes are furnished with three piece suites and men indulge in DIY at week-
ends, the viewer also needs to understand the opposing script (Raskin op.
cit.) in which, by choosing heroin, what is being disparaged by the speaker is
replaced by the dismal underworld of drugs. The fact that, in this case, such
recognition is not a only a linguistic skill but a question of cognitive com-
petence in which the visual code plays an imperative role, may well be the
reason why the humour succeeds cross-culturally.
In fact, box office takings prove that the films mentioned previously
have been to the taste of audiences world wide. Yet we can never be cer-
tain whether audiences appreciate the films in the same way from culture
to culture. For example, watching the same film, do Italian audiences laugh
in the same places as British audiences? And does this depend on a differ-
ent sense of humour or could it depend upon the translation? The charac-
ter of Charles (Hugh Grant) in Four Weddings and a Funeral comes across
very differently in the Italian version precisely because of the translation-
al choices adopted (Chiaro 2000c). In the original, he is a dithering, over-
grown ex-public schoolboy who is unable to get his act together with cool
American beauty Carrie (Andie McDowell). His sexual insecurity is reflect-
ed in his speech as he stumbles through his lines in a stereotypically British
way. A glance at any electronic corpus of spoken British English will reveal
a high frequency of hesitations, repetitions and general verbal treading of
water. Thus Charles’s speech contains endless examples of vague language
such as ‘sort of…’; ‘…or something…’; ‘…and anything…’; ‘…and every-
thing…’ ; ‘you know…’; ‘sort of…’ etc. In translation this vagueness is lost
as dithering Charles is transformed into assertive Charles and consequently
he becomes less amusing.
Do you think…you might agree not to marry me, and do you think not
being married to me may be something you might consider doing for the
rest of your life? I do, do you?
Italian Charles is far more self confident:
Tu credi che…tu saresti d’accordo di non diventare mia moglie? E credi
che il fatto di non sposarmi è una possibilità che potresti valutare, voglio
dire per il resto della tua vita? Vuoi?
Such subtleties require investigation. If culturally diverse audiences do laugh

in different places, how far does this depend upon culture-specific presuppo-
sitions and how far on the quality of translation. Comic films are successful in
more cultures yet for different reasons (Chiaro 2003). Translation must surely
play an important role. However, even if we may quite safely hypothesize that
quality of translation can either break or make a comedy, it is however one
single factor among many which contribute to a film’s success. Even if we
could provide sufficient data to show that quality of translation is a significant
variable in the success of a comic film, let us not forget other variables such as
the actors, screenplay, script, other films on the circuit at a particular moment
in time, socio-economic factors regarding audiences, advertising campaigns
598 Delia Chiaro
Success
Flop
‘Source’ nation ‘Dubbed’ nation
Figure 5.
and the psychological state of spectators themselves. Thus it would be quite

hard to discern exactly why so many imported comedies flop in their trans-
lated versions.
A matrix such as Figure 5, in which the success of a film in two coun-
tries is compared could be helpful (Chiaro 2000). The variable which is of
interest is represented by the arrow which cuts across the graph in which the
constant of quality is clearly implicated. Films which place themselves in the
two upper squares would obviously be well dubbed, those in the bottom right
hand square are patently flops. What would be interesting to find out is how
far the language variable is responsible for the non-success of a film outside
its country of origin. Investigations could show us why, how and to what ex-
tent quality of translation influences the success of a film.
4. The role of translation in Humour Studies
Being an inter-discipline, translation could well play an important role in em-

pirically grounded cross-cultural research within the field of Humour Stud-
ies. While much cross-cultural research so far has dealt with descriptions of
national styles of humour (Ziv 1988; Davies 1998) there is no research which
investigates humour as an individual difference variable across more cultures
(see Ruch 2002).
There is, in fact, a growing feeling among scholars of a certain lack of inter-
disciplinarity14 within the field, one which is itself still wanting in a definition
of the very term with which it is concerned. Apart from attempting to under-
stand what different cultures find humorous and why, we are still unaware of
exactly what is understood by the term humour in all cultures. A pilot psyc-
holexical investigation carried out via the World Wide Web sought, amongst
other things, to establish humour related terms in as many languages/cultures
as possible.15 This laudable first step, however, involved the administration of
a questionnaire which was couched in the English language. Linguistic im-
perialism apart, the pre-suppositions underlying the English term in the first
place may well differ greatly from the equivalent term in another language
and culture. Thus psychologists and lexicographers would do well to work
hand in hand on such projects. And beyond the theories of equivalence and
translatability of jokes and quips discussed at length in this chapter, surely
such a new and unexplored area within Humour Studies is exactly where
Translation Studies can be most beneficial.
Some steps in this direction are beginning to bear their fruits. Special
issues dedicated to humour and translation of prestigious journals have un-
derscored the need for interdisciplinarity and have included studies on areas
such as dealing with humour in conference interpreting and perception of
humour in screen translation (Vandaele 2003; Chiaro 2005). Furthermore,
recent empirical studies carried out in the field of screen translation in Italy
show that translation does indeed have an impact on the positive humour
response of foreign audiences (Antonini et al 2003; Chiaro 2004, 2007; An-
tonini 2005; Bucaria 2006; Bucaria and Chiaro 2008). Based on Ruch’s 3WD
Test (1992, 2001) which originally set out to measure personality and sense
of humour, the quoted studies all aim at measuring the humour response to
VEH in translation in comparison to the response of the same attempts at
humour in the TL. And results clearly show that, bearing in mind Ruch’s
strait-trait variable, while humour responses are very similar both in Italian,
US and UK audiences in the case of non-verbal humour, less positive are
responses when interviewees are faced with instances of VEH in translation.
Furthermore, when the VEH in question is complex, the positivism and de-
gree of the response appears to depend on the quality of the translation (Chi-
aro 2007, 2008). Naturally, there is a need for more studies on robust samples
in numerous language combinations before any kind of generalization can be
made.
600 Delia Chiaro
Conclusions
This chapter has attempted to provide an overview of the chief issues tradition-
ally connected to the translation of VEH, namely equivalence and translate-
ability. While these two concerns render the actual translation of humorous
discourse difficult, shared language and encyclopaedic knowledge between
perpetrator and recipient of VEH are paramount for it to be conveyed suc-
cessfully. As we have seen, the field of translation of VEH is a particularly
interesting one in terms of scope of research as a better understanding of
humour responses to translated VEH can provide significant insight into the
whys and wherefores of sense of humour and to the extent of its culture-
specificity.
Notes
1. A distinction first made by Roman Jakobson, intralingual translation refers to

a process of rewording in which the verbal signs in a language are re-interpreted
into the same language, interlingual translation, or translation proper, refers to
when the verbal signs are interpreted into another language while intersemiotic
translation, or transmutation refers to verbal signs which are interpreted with
signs outside the verbal system such as books adapted into films, plays, musicals
etc. (1959: 232–9)
2. The term ‘multimedia translation’ refers to translations which are perceived by
the recipient via more than one channel; e.g. a subtitled film which can be sim-
ultaneously seen, read and heard or an interpreted lecture which can be followed
visually and at the same time aurally in the source language as well as through
headphones in the target language. Such translations are also defined as being
multimedia because they are produced via the implementation of several tech-
nological devices e.g. dubbing a film into a foreign language requires the use of
sophisticated audio-visual equipment; automatic, on-line translations of hyper-
texts require the implementation of electronic parsers etc.
3. The Skinhead Hamlet is available on-line at http://sa.rochester.edu/drama/skin-
head.html. The ‘Google’ search engine provides automatic interlingual transla-
tions which unwittingly illustrate many of the issues discussed in the present
chapter .
4. For a full discussion of the Italian version of The Nanny see Chiara Frezza
(1998) The Adaptation of an American Sitcom: the case of The Nanny/La Tata
and Francesca Maccario (2005) Humour e riferimenti culturali: il caso di ‘The
Nanny.’ Unpublished dissertations, SSLiMIT (Advanced School of Modern Lan-
guages for Interpreters and Translators) University of Bologna at Forlì, Italy.
5. Following the word-for-word translation of the script, it is the job of dubbing-

scriptwriters to adapt the new text to the visual code on screen by, for example,
ensuring that actors’ lip movements are synchronized to the target language,
a task which inevitably results in linguistic distortions. It is also their job to en-
sure that the translated dialogues sound like naturally occurring Italian.
6. Cicero was the first to speak in support of translations ad sensum as opposed
to translations ad verbum, followed by Horace who advised the translator to be
faithful to “the meaning and not the word order” (Steiner 1975: 236). However,
the Middle Ages favoured word for word translations of the Bible and the prac-
tice of ‘interlinear’ translation in which the translated words were inserted above
the original text was quite common as it was thought that the order of words was
divinely ordained. Moreover, two famous Bible translators St.Jerome and Martin
Luther aimed at producing more readable versions for their audiences. In his Ein
Sendbrief von Dolmetzchen Martin Luther argues that his rendering of the Bible
in German could be understood by people in the marketplace. Of course, Luther
thought that he had been divinely inspired to interpret the Bible for the people,
nevertheless, his TT audience oriented approach was extremely modern for the
16th century. By this time however, scholars had begun to favour translations in
which the author’s intentions were given preference over the words themselves
although at the same time there was a strong feeling that translations had to re-
main faithful to the aesthetics of the originals (e.g. the translations of the classics
of Etienne Dolet; Joachim Du Bellay and George Chapman. See also Steiner
1975: 8).
This French pre-eminence in translation theory reflects the centrality of the
French language and culture following the decline of Latin. Although audience
oriented like Bible translators, the French were mainly concerned with transla-
tions of literary, and especially poetical texts, thus the desired effect was no long-
er didactically oriented and aimed at giving their readers pleasure (see Ulrych
1992: 17–18). Such thinking was followed by the moderate view which began
to emerge in the Age of Reason. The English essayist Dryden proposed a middle
ground between a “faithful” and a “free” translation. He categorized the transla-
tion process in English dividing translations into three basic types: two extreme
methods; metaphrase, a literal and word-for-word translation and imitation, an
extremely free translation which was loosely modelled on the ST. In Dryden’s
third alternative paraphrase, the true sense of the original was to be rendered in
acceptable TL. However, reasonable as this may sound, it was more easily said
than done. Many 17th century French translators began to take great liberties
when translating the classics, radically adapting them to suit the linguistic and
literary tastes of the time. Such translations were so divorced from the originals
that they gave rise to the term les belles infedèles. Steiner labels this trend “mi-
metic freedom” (1975: 262).
Worthy of note is Göethe’s strikingly modern view of translation (1819). In
his taxonomy he speaks of one type of translation which acquaints the reader
602 Delia Chiaro
worth the source culture, another which enters into the spirit of the target culture
and a third which absorbs the sense of the ST but reconstructs it without radic-
ally altering the original.
7. Rewritings refer to adaptations of source texts. For example, how far can West
Side Story be considered an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and
how far can it be considered a translation?
8. Of course I have provided a translation thus rendering the term ‘untranslatable’
a contradiction in terms. However, what is commonly meant by the term refers
to the transfer of meaning across two or more languages without undergoing rad-
ical changes.
9. As Davies points out, most carabinieri traditionally come from Southern Italy
where unemployment is high and joining this military police force is a guarantee
of a regular income, so in a sense, these police officers do belong to an ethnically
marked group.
10. ‘Barracks’ would be a more adequate translation because carabinieri are to all
effects a military force.
11. Interestingly, during such breaks, nowadays coffee is probably drunk as much as
tea!
12. Interestingly, at the turn of the 21st century, Toto’s films are undergoing a pro-
cess of reappraisal both in Europe and the USA – Totò Stars and Stripes, a tour
of 15 of the comedian’s films subtitled by Gordon Poole have been successfully
reviewed not only in Italy but also in the UK and across the USA from New York
to San Francisco .
13. Lecture entitled Translating Audiovisual Irony. On the nature of the audiovisual
text and the semiotic factors of its translation delivered in May 2002 at the De-
partment of Interdisciplinary Studies in Languages, Translation and Cultures,
University of Bologna at Forlì on the occasion of the conclusion of the Depart-
ment’s Postgraduate Course in Multimedia Translation.
14. The presidential address ‘Humour Research’ given by Willibald Ruch at the 14th
International Conference of the International Society of Humour Studies (ISHS)
held in Bertinoro, Italy in July 2002 while describing the state of the art within
the field also contains a clear appeal for a more interdisciplinary approach. Vic-
tor Raskin in his keynote speech preferred the term ‘multidisciplinarity’ to point
out that such a vast area of research be constrained to individual landlocked dis-
ciplines.
15. Questionnaire elaborated by Willibald Ruch and administered to ISHS members
via web in May–June 2002.
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Visual humor
Cartoons: Drawn jokes?

Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
Introduction
Visual humor is, of course, humor, and cartoons are to visual humor what
jokes are to verbal humor: the prototypical case that we should be able to ac-
count for before we venture out to other forms. This chapter1 will outline the
state of the art and open issues in cartoon research. For the orientation of the
reader, we will use a comparative perspective to verbal humor and a focus on
the essential differences and similarities.
Humor, as this primer proves, is a multidisciplinary field. But research-
ers formulate their humor theories most often for verbal humor, in particular,
verbal jokes. Lowis and Nieuwoudt (1995) correctly state that cartoons are
often used in humor research, with an implicit assumption of their full com-
patibility with verbal humor (e.g., Paolillo 1998, Coulson 2001), but that few
researchers have touched on the specific phenomenology of cartoon humor or
motivated their use of cartoons rather than jokes. Redlich, Lewine, and Sohler
(1951) are among the exceptions, in that they explain the dual nature of car-
toon humor: the pictorial representation (“iconic character”) and the symbol-
ic nature, both of which need to be understood in order to “get the joke”. The
question is whether assumptions about verbal humor are simply transferrable
to visual humor. Not many studies focus on cartoons for their specific qual-
ities, but usually rather for the convenience of the material in psychological
studies or for the thematic contents.
That the cartoon as a field of humor has been neglected can also be illus-
trated, for example, by van Alphen’s (1996: 217) reduction of humor to ag-
gression in her statement that it is a verbal weapon. She claims that humor,
jokes, gags, irony, sarcasm and black humor are all expressed through verbal
means, completely ignoring cartoons. For Behrens (1977) as well “visual
wit” is hardly visual at all: Cartoon drawings and comic strips are considered
verbal humor embellished with a picture, and the pictures by themselves as
not humorous. Obviously, these observations, while often true for mixed text-
ual/pictorial humor, clearly overlook purely pictorial cartoons that have no
verbal elements at all.
610 Christian F. Hempelmann and Andrea C. Samson
One could claim that the trend to focus on verbal humor is fostered by the
linguistic dominance of humor research. But the reality is rather that linguists
do what linguists do, namely, use their well-developed array of theories and
methodologies on texts. This leaves pictorial humor in its peculiarity for
fields that are underdeveloped scientifically, or simply do not care for this
peculiarity of their material, but only for the contents, like the field of cultur-
al studies. Psychologists or sociologists also usually don’t much care if the
humorous material used in their studies was verbal or pictorial (e.g., Ruch
1992; Rothbart and Pien 1977), but – as we will try to show – they probably
should. For example, while Suls (1972) focused on jokes and explicitly on
verbal cartoons, nonverbal cartoons were not integrated in his work and it
remains unclear if they would have changed his results.
Social studies is the application of humor research that tells us something
about the users of humor, while theoretical research is development of humor
theory, telling us about humor itself. Both avenues are necessary and benefit
from each other, but the focus of this chapter is to outline humor theory for
research on visual humor. It is not intended to provide a complete historic-
al overview of cartooning through the ages and cultures, but to provide the
reader with the tools to carry out research, either of the social, historical, cul-
tural kind, or, in the vein of the work that is the focus here, theoretical, cog-
nitive, linguistic, psychological research. Thus, content issues will be largely
ignored. Structurally, what should prove helpful is that the distribution of
the essential humor elements in the stimulus is not as restricted and forcedly
linear as in verbal humor. The interaction of verbal and visual parts in mixed
cartoons provides a good starting point for such research, for example to dis-
tinguish the phases of humor cognition, such as a setup, incongruity detec-
tion, and (partial) resolution. An additional emphasis can be the difference
between cognition (joke recognition) and appreciation (funniness).
The themes and characters of humor are in principle independent of the
semiotic medium, that is, if they are verbalized or (partially) drawn. Content-
related distinctions in verbal humor migrate easily to the domain of visual
humor. Even subgroups like punning are found in both domains (see below).
Thus, as indicated, content issues will be largely ignored.
The visual domain,2 in which symbols necessarily have to resemble that
what they stand for, has relevant peculiarities, as this chapter will show. One
important difference between jokes and cartoons falls outside of our exper-
tise and will only be mentioned briefly here: jokes usually have no authors,
are folkloristic products, while cartoons usually do have an author with a dis-
tinct drawing style and topical preferences who also signs his or her work.3
Visual humor 611
This entails that we should not expect to find spontaneous cartooning in ana-
logy to conversational joking.
Again, we oversimplifyingly claim that cartoons are jokes that convey part
of the necessary information through pictures rather than text. So, for now,
assume that all that you have read in this primer about verbal humor holds
for cartoons as well. This chapter will indicate where different assumptions
are warranted. They are most obvious in the formal domain, where the encod-
ing of humor into purely pictorial – or an interaction of pictorial and verbal
– symbols offers different formal and aesthetic possibilities than in purely
verbal ones. We also assume this stimulus difference to have an effect on cog-
nitive processing. Thus, from our contrastive perspective, there are two main
differences between verbal, linguistic jokes and pictorial, visual cartoons:
The aesthetic (formal) difference and the different loci (and probably modi)
of cognitive processing, both surfacing as formal differences. Aesthetics is,
shall we say, a wide field, and field markers are few and far between. Most
existing work, and consequently the larger part of this chapter, will address
cognitive aspects.
In sum, one can distinguish between the content of the humorous text, its
meaning, and its formal pictorial or verbal representation, the material aspect
of the stimulus. This distinction is artificial, as the processing of a stimulus
and the surface properties of a stimulus determine each other, but it is use-
ful for structuring the discussion. Content elements can be anything that is
available as a script to potential audiences and can be brought into opposition
and overlap in the material stimulus. As this introduction tries to outline, we
won’t focus on content elements of humor, but rather on specific cognitive
aspects of cartoon processing and, to some degree, aesthetic elements of the
material cartoon stimuli. For this, we propose the following categorization of
studies on cartoon humor, in order to then pick groups that have chosen the
same purview:
1. Studies that use cartoons in order to address research questions derived
from humor theories. In such studies, reactions to cartoons (evaluated
funniness, laughter) are dependent variables in tests of humor theories.
Examples are studies by Shultz (1976), Suls (1972), or Hirt and Genshaft
(1982), who investigated the effect of incongruity and complexity on the
perception of humor.
2. Studies that focus on the content of cartoons, such as gender stereotypes
(Herzog 1999, Love and Deckers 1989; Thompson and Zerbinos 1995),
social stereotypes (e.g., Bogardus 1954; Anderson and Jolly 1977), pol-
itical and social aspects (e.g., Abe 1998), or sexual themes in cartoons
(e.g., Brodzinsky and Rubien 1976; Felker and Hunter 1970, Derks
1992; Herzog and Hager 1998). Giarelli and Tulman (2003) provide use-
ful approaches for methodological issues (sample selection, data collec-
tion and data analysis) to investigate such questions.
3. Studies that use cartoons to address research issues that are not directly
related to humor or humor theories, and, for example, investigate mem-
ory processes (Schmidt and Williams 2001) or neuronal activation pat-
terns evoked by cartoons in which one has to ascribe mental states to
characters (Theory of Mind, e.g., Gallagher et al. 2000; Marjoram et al.
2006), or Theory of Mind and schizophrenia (Corcoran, Cahill and Frith
1997, Marjoram et al. 2006).
4. Research on cartoonists. For example, Fisher and Fisher addressed the
childhood of comedians (1981) and the personality structures of car-
toonists (1983). Pearson (1983) found higher Psychoticism and Neuroti-
cism scores in cartoonists. Samson and Huber (2007) found differences
in the use of formal features in male and female cartoonists.
5. Studies that investigated the influence of formal features on humor ap-
preciation, for example aspects related to the drawing (degree of abstrac-
tion/reality, number of panels). For example, Huber and Leder (1997)
investigated the effects of the number of panels or analyzed effects of
the degree of reality on the humor response (Sheppard 1977, 1983).
6. Finally, studies that explicitly address cartoons and their specificities for
humor. For example, Paolillo (1998) attempted to investigate whether
the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH, Attardo and Raskin 1991)
is applicable to visual humor as well, but did not develop why he con-
siders cartoons different from jokes, while Watson, Matthews and All-
man (2006) investigated differences between language-dependent and
picture-dependent cartoons in cognitive processes and their neural cor-
relates.
Expanding the discussion of the last two types of research that actually ad-
dress cartoons and their peculiarities, the following main part of this chapter
will continue with a brief historical overview, a definition of cartoons, their
general differentiation from verbal humor, an overview of studies on formal
and aesthetic aspects of visual humor, and a closer look at cognitive humor
processes in verbal and visual humor and studies on cognitive aspects of
cartoon processing.
Visual humor 613
Brief historical overview
Depending on cultural and linguistic traditions, there is varying terminology

for the multiple forms of pictorial humor. Caricatures are probably the oldest
form of pictorial humor, where caricare (L.) means “to overload, exagger-
ate.” The main stylistic devices here are distortion and exaggeration, and the
main sujet famous people. Caricatures have been documented since antiquity
with a blurry boundary between naïve-grotesque art forms and deliberate
caricatures. Humor combined with visual art can already be found in Ancient
Egyptian, Roman and Greek iconography (as reported by Wright 1875, see
Bonaiuto 2006; Eichler 1965; Mitchell 2004), mostly based on anatomic-
al disproportions regarding size of heads, shapes of noses, etc. In medieval
times one can discern caricature-like features in so-called “shame paintings”
(Schandmalereien), which were intended to be pictorial pillorying, as well
as in grimacing adornments and gargoyles on churches (Eichler 1965). In
the 16th century several artists used elements of caricatures, such as Hol-
bein, Bruegel, and Bosch. In the 17th century humorous elements intended to
mock the people who are depicted in them, can be found in the work of the
Carraccis (Italian painters of the Bolognese School). Hogarth, and after him
Rowlandson and Gillray, were famous British caricaturists of the 18th cen-
tury, while the French dominated the genre in the 19th century with Gavarni,
Daumier and Doré. Several journals were founded, such as “La Caricature”
(1830) or “Charivari” (1832). When caricatures began to use social, political
and personal satire, the art of cartoons was born (Eichler 1965). Töpffer, a
French-speaking Swiss who published strip cartoons from 1831 on, is often
considered the first cartoonist in the modern sense (Gombrich 1960, Kun-
zle and Inge 2007). By the end of the 19th century, German “cartoonists”
emerged, such as Wilhelm Busch or Heinrich Zille, Thomas Theodor Heine,
Rudolf Wilke, or Olaf Gulbransson. In the English literature, the first comic
to be published is assumed to be James Swinnerton’s “The little Bears and
Tigers” in 1892. For a more detailed overview, see Kunzle (1973).
The term cartoon originally comes from the Italian word “cartone” and
means a strong, heavy paper or pasteboard. It denotes a full-size drawing made
on paper as a study for further drawings, such as a painting or tapestry. Car-
toons were typically used in the production of frescoes to accurately link the
component parts of the composition when painted onto plaster over a series
of days. From this origin, cartoons came to be used to signify a line drawing
in one panel done on a piece of paper (Eichler 1965). English satirical journal
Punch applied the term to satirical drawings by publishing some parodistic

drafts for frescoes (also called cartoons) and making the term’s new meaning
permanent. In sum, in terms of the history of art, a cartoon can be considered
a drawing, originally as an abstraction of a painting that has humorous con-
tent (Woschek 1991). Since the 20th century, cartoon is used as an umbrella
term for all forms of humorous drawings, such as caricatures, gag-cartoons
(i.e., a single-panel cartoon, usually including a caption), short funny stories,
and later even for animated cartoons, a dominant meaning in the American
context. Finally, cartoon and comic overlap in meaning, and some artists are
hard to categorize, e.g., Claire Bretécher, Hogli, Robert Crumb, or Gilbert
Shelton.
Definition of cartoons
On the basis of this brief overview, and before we can set out to outline the
existing research on cartoons, it is helpful to provide a working definition as
a basis of further refinements, as well as to differentiate cartoons from related
forms of visual humor to clarify the purview of this chapter.
Cartoons are understood as a humor-carrying visual/visual-verbal picture,
containing at least one incongruity that is playfully resolvable in order to un-
derstand their punch line. Obviously, we’re starting out with a definition that
would hold for jokes as well, plus the visual elements. Cartoons are jokes
told in a picture (drawing, painting, etc.) comprising one or only a few panels
(Nilsen and Nilsen 2000).
The style of cartoons is most often characterized by simple lines, exagger-
ated features, as well as sketch-like and simplified figures. There are substan-
tial differences between the formal styles of cartoonists, as can be seen from
a comparison of works by different cartoonists: cartoons by Gary Larson, for
example, show his typical rounded shapes, round people with small heads
and white glasses which can be contrasted to the more realistic and detailed
drawing style of Robert Crumb.
In order to clarify what we consider cartoons, it is necessary to distinguish
them from related objects, such as comics or caricatures: Comics – in contrast
to cartoons – are orientated towards stories, their artwork is more detailed,
more often anatomically correct, and the drawing more often closely resem-
bles reality. Whereas a cartoon consists of one or only a few panels, com-
ics, or graphic novels contain more panels, sometimes over several pages. In
cases where a cartoon consists of several panels, the purpose of the earlier
Visual humor 615
panels is to set up the punch line in the very last one (Meilhammer 1989). In
comics, stories with the same characters can be told, whereas in cartoons, the
characters are most often flat and interchangable. In cartoons, a punch line is
always present, commonly with additional incongruities or funny elements.
In comics it is not necessary that there are punch lines or funny elements.
Whereas cartoons are most often published in newspapers, magazines (how-
ever, sometimes also in anthologies or books), comics most often come in
the form of books. Obviously it is often difficult to decide whether a certain
stimulus is a cartoon or a humorous comic.
Cartoons can more easily be distinguished from caricatures, which are in
some way their historical predecessors (see above). A caricature is a picto-
rial representation of an object, usually a politician, exaggerating some of
its features, in order to allow a more distinct characterization (someone with
a big nose gets an even bigger one in the drawing) or metaphorical meanings
(someone with a big belly is voracious in a figurative sense). Cartoons often
incorporate caricatures or exaggeration as general stylistic devices. But some
cartoons also portray a very realistic drawing style. The essential difference to
cartoons is that besides the exaggerations of certain body parts (which some-
times stand for certain personality characteristics) there doesn’t have to be
a punch line. If there is a punch line, we claim that the stimulus is a cartoon.
Attempts at reducing all visual humor to a (specific form of) visual meta-
phor are as unenlightening as attempts to describe humor in general in terms
of metaphor or conceptual blends. In recent years, the concept of ‘picto-
rial metaphor’ was applied to advertising (Forceville 1996) and film (Car-
roll 1996), in addition to cartoons (Morris 1993; El Refaie 2003). Carroll’s
(1996) definition of visual metaphor is exemplary for the often underdefined
and/or overspecific nature of the concepts involved: He assumes that there
is a visual fusion of elements from two separated areas into one spatially
bounded entity.
Visual puns
One distinct subgroup of cartoons, the closer discussion of which can serve as
an introduction to the distinction of visual and verbal humor well, are visual
puns (Lessard 1991; Hempelmann and Samson 2007; Mitchell 2007). Visual
puns have in common that one visual element signifies two meanings simul-
taneously, or in other words, activates two scripts at the same time. As this
single visual component is related to two meanings, visual puns are difficult
to transpose into the verbal domain. They are analogous to verbal/linguistic

puns in the verbal domain.
Linguistic symbols are arbitrary (Saussure 1916). There is no inherent
relationship between the concept of knife, and the sound sequence [naif],
witnessed among other things by the fact that in a language other than Eng-
lish a completely different sound sequence can stand for the same concept,
e.g., one written as “Messer” in German. A visual symbol for the concept of
knife, on the other hand, must always resemble that which it stands for, as
this resemblance is how the concept is evoked. Such a symbol could not, for
example, be round like a circle, but must be elongated and pointed, regard-
less of how much it is abstracted or may rely on context in a picture, such as
a symbol for an object that is cut with the knife or a symbol for a hand that
holds it. Their iconicity, that is, their visual resemblance of that which they
stand for, will mean that different levels of abstraction lead to different de-
grees to which a visual pun is compatible with both its meanings.4
As always in the messy domain of human symbolic communication, both
observations, the arbitrariness of the linguistic signs and the iconicity of the
visual one are gradational and show exceptions. There are groups of linguis-
tic signifiers that have a sound resemblance to that which they signify. This
well-known phenomenon of onomatopoeia works when words denote events
or objects that involve sound and thus can imitate that sound, for example
animal calls. But onomatopoeia is restricted to this very small group of con-
cepts. On the other side are conventionalized visual symbols, like traffic
signs, where a red octagon may denote the concept stop, although it is usu-
Figure 1. Example of a visual pun. Cartoon by Oswald Huber ©.

Visual humor 617
ally accompanied by the word “stop” as well. In effect, these have become
arbitrary graphemes. But while a motivated relationship is the exception for
linguistic symbols, it is the rule for visual ones.
Here, we will finally use the only example of a cartoon, which are always
incredibly hard to get permission for.5 It is an example of a visual pun, which
plays on the similarity of a flower head and its stem to a brain and its spinal
cord. This visual pun might play on the idea of “growing your mind” (see
Figure 1).
Overview of differences to verbal humor
With this discussion and after having emphasized the general similarity of
jokes and cartoons so far, we are now in a position to focus on the crucial dif-
ferences between verbal humor and (verbal-)visual humor, such as cartoons.
We will begin this section by briefly summarizing the formal differences,
some of which have already been mentioned above. Here, the first aspect
is that jokes are told in a linear way, although they are not necessarily proc-
essed that way, as we know from research in reading and eyetracking experi-
ments (e.g., Mitchell, Graesser, and Louwerse, in submission). In humor in
particular, the discovery of the incongruity leads to backtracking to parts of
the setup that need to be reinterpreted (cf. Attardo 1991: 140). In the picture
part of a cartoon, on the other hand, usually no clear order of processing is
forced in the way text does, but there are tendencies to follow a general order,
which can crucially be directed by the artist creating entry points and paths
in their picture (see section on aesthetic aspects below). Jokes are disclos-
ing information very judiciously. There is no room for semantic ornament
as the listener is paying close attention to any clue hinting at the expected
incongruities or helping them with their playful resolutions. In cartoons the
artist has more if not unlimited room to place details, which may not be re-
lated to the central elements of the humor at all or provide further non-focus
incongruities. Similarly, it is more of a strain on the suspension of disbelief
to place additional fully backgrounded incongruities into verbal humor than
into cartoons (cf. Hempelmann and Attardo, in press). Characters in cartoons
have faces, so their emotions can be depicted unobtrusively by giving them
expressions, while characters in jokes would have to be explicitly described
as having certain emotions or words used that reflect emotional states. As
mentioned, a general difference is that jokes work on the textual semiotic
level, while cartoons use the iconic visual one, possibly with textual support.
This leads to the possibility to distribute the key elements of humor differ-
ently in cartoons: the central incongruity can be in the picture and the resolu-
tion trigger in the text, or the picture sets up the humor while the incongruity
holds between picture and text, for example. As mentioned, conversational
cartooning is theoretically possible, but we should assume its rare occur-
rence. Conversational joking, on the other hand, is common and by some
fields, e.g., conversation analysis and discourse analysis, claimed as the most
frequent and important type of verbal humor, not least because canned jokes
don’t fall into their purview. Finally, another enormous formal difference is,
of course, iconicity as discussed in the section on visual puns.
Formal differences
This section will summarize how existing research has addressed formal dif-
ferences so far. Several books and articles on cartooning try to define formal
elements that are characteristics of cartoons. Gerberg (1989), for example,
lists atmosphere, calligraphy, and texture (e.g., washed out, slightly playful,
aggressive, or precise lines), cast, dialogue, gestures, background, compos-
ition and selectivity. He adds differences in silhouetting and shading: the
main character can be made to stand out by contrast and brightness and more
detail than the surroundings, as well as omitted background immediately
around it.
This is one possible attempt of describing essential formal features of
cartoons. Other attempts to enumerate formal features have been published,
but they tend to be unsystematic and are usually not informed by a theory
(e.g., Keener 1992; Maddocks 1982; Whitaker 1994). Formal features of vis-
ual humor might be subsumed into the following groups: formal features of
textual elements, the depicted characters in the cartoon, the verbal and non-
verbal interaction, including the characters’ emotions; the spatial represen-
tation (e.g., of the incongruity), the drawing itself and aspects of humorous
elements (e.g., incongruities or resolution enablers). The last group will be
addressed in the section about cognitive aspects of cartoon processing. The
existing research on formal aspects that relate to drawing styles and place-
ment of elements in a cartoon is the focus of this section.
Ring (1975) shows that the position of speech balloons influences the
recall of information. Information in balloons on the right or left top are re-
called more easily than those positioned below the center. Jones, Fine, and
Brust (1979) tested the proportional effect of the pictorial component and
Visual humor 619
textual components of cartoons on humor ratings. The components of car-

toon humor were analyzed in order to determine the effects of caption, pic-
ture, and interaction between caption and picture on the humor rating of the
whole cartoons. Cartoons were presented either complete, or with picture or
caption missing. They found that the humor of the cartoon picture alone was
positively related to the humor rating of the entire cartoon, particularly in
the case of highly humorous cartoons. McKay and McKay (1982) compared
non-captioned cartoons to captioned cartoons and to the independent ratings
of the picture and captions of the captioned cartoons. Captioned cartoons
were rated as significantly funnier than the independent ratings of pictures
or captions. They found a difference in funniness between strictly pictorial,
non-captioned cartoons and non-captioned cartoons with text in the picture
in that the first were rated funnier. Herzog and Larwin (1988) studied humor
appreciation for captioned cartoons as a function of cartoon category and
eight predictor variables: complexity (how complex, as opposed to simple-
minded, is the humor in the cartoon), difficulty (how hard is it to understand
the humor of the cartoon), fit (how well the caption fits the drawing), depth
(between the surface meaning and the deeper meaning of the cartoon), visual
humor, artwork (how good is the quality of the artwork in this cartoon), vul-
garity, and originality. The variables fit, visual humor and artwork are specific
for cartoons (in particular, the drawing or picture-text interaction), whereas
the others can be judged for jokes as well, because they concern humor elem-
ents in general. Cartoons judged to have the most originality and the best fit
were appreciated most. A non-metric factor analysis of appreciation ratings
yielded four dimensions of cartoon categories, which were named Sexual, In-
congruity, Social Issues and Marriage-Family. Interestingly, the authors also
found both structural and content categories to influence humor appreciation,
similar to the extended research of Ruch and colleagues (e.g., Ruch and Hehl
1998). The differences between the findings of these studies (for example
the different content classes) are probably a result of different methods or
stem from the different stimuli used in their experiments. Overall, the stud-
ies summarized here are able to show that the interaction of pictures and text
(e.g., the fit between the two, Herzog and Larwin 1988) increase the apprecia-
tion or funniness ratings of cartoons.
Huber and Leder (1997) varied the number of panels as one aspect of a car-
toon’s complexity. Contrary to their expectations, the less compact version
was evaluated as funnier than the compact one. This result seems to be due to
the fact that less compact cartoons are easier to understand. Woschek (1991)
compared cartoons without facial expressions of the characters to redrawn
cartoons with facial expressions (and vice versa) and demonstrated that car-
toons with emotional facial expressions are rated as less funny than cartoons
without. Brooks (1977) tested the hypothesis that memory for pictorial ma-
terial is dependent on initial comprehension of the depicted relationships.
Cartoon pictures with and without action lines indicating movement were
presented to children of different age. Only older children (ninth-graders in
contrast to second- and sixth-graders) benefit from action lines as cues to the
interaction between actors. The results are discussed in terms of the action
(interaction) being the basis of comprehension and, consequently, picture
recall. Karabas (1990) analyzed the effect of hair as one formal element in
Turkish cartoons with respect to viewers’ attitude toward the persons and
situations in the cartoons. The amount and shape of hair serve as formal signs
to condition the viewer to expect certain personality traits and/or behavior.
In the studies described so far, formal elements were always used as in-
dependent variables and their effect (e.g., on appreciation) was investigated.
Samson and Huber (2007) had a different approach: They investigated the
effect of the cartoonists’ gender on the use of formal features of cartoons.
They analyzed 21 formal features of cartoons, such as number of panels, text,
number of words, caption, number of (speaking) characters, emotional ex-
pression, instrument (pen, brush, etc.), color, position of the punch line and
type of joke (incongruity-resolution and nonsense cartoons), etc. The main
results show that female cartoonists use more text, have more text in picture,
speech balloons, have more words, and also draw more panels – obviously
they are using a different narrative style in telling jokes in cartoons. Fur-
thermore, women more frequently draw cartoons with incongruity-resolution
humor, whereas men prefer to draw cartoons with nonsense humor. This is
not in line with previous results on humor appreciation in dependence of the
perceiver’s gender regarding the preference for incongruity-resolution and
nonsense humor (e.g., Ruch and Hehl 1998).
Some studies considered drawing style or design elements, for example
exaggeration. Sheppard (1983) compares humorous photographs to redrawn
cartoons. Photographs are judged more humorous than cartoons. This may
suggest that the cognitive frame established by the viewer is different for
cartoons and photographs and replicates previous results by Sheppard (1977)
where photographs were compared to cartoons with the same content. Thus,
caricature-style exaggeration doesn’t seem to be enough to make a picture
funny. But distortion or exaggeration of existing features are not the only
means of cartoon drawings. So from these studies it can not be concluded
that photographs in general are funnier than cartoons which can provide to-
Visual humor 621
tally unreal scenes and situations not to be found in photographs. Dirr and
Katz (1989) show that realistic illustrations were preferred over “cartoons”.
However, cartoons in their study were simple line drawings of situations not
containing a punch line. Therefore, the results are not generalizable for car-
toons in general. The research group of Bonaiuto investigated the effect of
several formal aspects in the picture. Bonaiuto and Giannini (2003), for ex-
ample, show higher humor scores in humorous illustrations in their original,
rounded, caricature shapes, devoid of shadow effects, in contrast to modi-
fied illustrations with angular, more realistic shapes, rich in chiaroscuro (i.e.,
a very realistic and detailed graphic treatment, rich in contrast). Other ex-
periments show that reassuring and playful shapes and colors evoke higher
humorous responses than the same illustrations with alarming and serious
shapes and colors, presumably because playful-reassuring drawing styles fa-
cilitate humor through the avoidance of conflict overloading or excessive
emotional involvement (for more details, see Bonaiuto 2006).
Apart from experiments that investigate funniness or preference ratings on
cartoons and realistic pictures, there are some studies that examine effects of
exaggeration or simplification on recognizability. Ryan and Schwartz (1956)
show that the modes of representation, such as photographs, shaded draw-
ings, line drawings or cartoon, influence speed of perception. Cartoons facili-
tate processing as the visual elements are reduced to the essential information
and were therefore recognized faster than line drawings, shaded drawings,
and photographs. Similarly, Fraisse and Elkin (1963) show “caricatures” of
common objects are recognized faster than photographs. Likewise, redrawn
caricatures of faces are better recognized than the original faces (Mauro and
Kubovy 1992). Rhodes, Brennan, and Carey (1987) demonstrate that compu-
ter-generated caricatures of individuals familiar to the subjects of the experi-
ment were identified more quickly (but not more accurately) than veridical
line drawings. In contrast, Tversky and Baratz (1985) using caricatures of
well-known people failed to demonstrate the hypothesized superior recogniz-
ability of caricatures. Hagen and Perkins (1983) compared caricatures of un-
familiar faces to photographs and showed that photographs are more recog-
nizable. Overall, some studies confirm the “superportrait hypothesis” (a face
is more recognizable after exaggerating distinctive features than a veridical
portrait) where others failed (see Table 1 for an overview).
To summarize, this section provides an overview of research on formal
elements of cartoon, mainly focusing on studies that considered the influence
of formal elements of cartoons on cognitive and affective processing (for an
overview, see Table 2). Although it is impossible to control stimulus material
Table 1. A selection of studies that investigated the abstraction level of the drawing
style or degree of distortion as the dependent variable and the measured
dependent variables (such as funniness ratings or preference). Further, the
main results are listed
Independent Dependent
Author(s) variable variable Main results
Sheppard Photographs and cartoons Humorous rating Photographs >
(1977) (same content, not identical cartoons
events)
Sheppard Photographs and redrawn Humorous rating Photographs >
(1983) cartoons cartoons
Dirr & Katz Realistic illustrations and
Preference Realistic
(1989) cartoons (same events) illustrations >
cartoons
Ryan & Photographs, shaded line Perception speed Cartoons >
Schwartz drawings, line drawings, (threshold for photographs,
(1956) cartoons (same object) recognition) shaded line
drawings > line
drawings
Fraisse & Photographs, cartoons (same Recognition Cartoons >
Elkin (1963) object) speed photographs
Rhodes et al. Computer generated Identification Caricatures >
(1987) caricatures, veridical line veridical line
drawings drawings
Tversky & Caricatures and photographs Recognition Photographs >
Baratz (1985) of famous people caricatures
Hagen & Caricatures and photographs Recognition Photographs >
Perkins (1983) of unfamiliar faces caricatures
Mauro & Photographs of faces and Recognition Caricatures >
Kubovy (1992) caricatures of same faces faces
Bonaiuto (e.g. Cartoons in simple, Humor response Simple, round >
2006) round drawing style vs. chiaroscuro
cartoons with shadows, in
more realistic style with
chiaroscuro effects
Cartoons with bright, playful Playful, bright >
color > dark, serious colors dark, serious
Note: The main results are listed with < and >, which indicate whether cartoons are preferred
over more realistic drawings or not (e.g., on recognition speed or humor appreciation).
Visual humor 623
Table 2. Overview of the studies that investigated and analyzed formal features of
cartoons
Categories Formal feature(s) Authors
Panels Number of panels Huber & Leder (1997), Samson &
Huber (2007)
Text Text (in picture: Samson & Huber (2007), Ring (1975)
elements indicating text or speech
balloons), caption,
number of words
Text & Proportional effect of Herzog & Larwin (1988), Jones et al.
picture picture and text (1979), McKay & McKay (1982), Carroll
et al. (1992), Watson et al. (2006)
Drawing, Degree of abstraction/ Ryan & Schwartz (1956); Sheppard
picture reality (1977, 1983), Fraisse & Elkin (1963),
Hagen & Perkins (1983), Tversky &
Baratz (1985), Rhodes, Brennan & Carey
(1987), Dirr & Katz (1989), Mauro &
Kubovy (1992)
Degree of Samson & Huber (2007)
partial distortion
(Tendenzselektion,
Woschek 1991)
Characteristics of the Bonaiuto (see 2006), Samson & Huber
drawing style: details, (2007)
color, brightness, style,
lines, background
Localization of the Samson & Huber (2007)
punch line
Visual artwork Herzog & Larwin (1988)
Logical Paolillo (1998), Samson, Zysset & Huber
mechanisms (2008), Tsakona (in press)
Characters, Number of (speaking) Samson & Huber (2007)
Emotions characters
Hair Karabas (1991)
Action-lines Brooks (1977)
Expressed emotions Woschek, (1991), Samson & Huber
(2007)
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 cogni-
tive processes on humor as they manipulated formal elements. Although Logical Mechanisms
are strictly speaking not purely formal aspects, studies that analyzed cartoons with respect
to their Logical Mechanisms are listed as well (see section on cognitive aspects of cartoon
processing).
for all those formal elements that might influence humor processing, humor
scholars working with cartoons need to keep them in mind and try to con-
trol as many as possible (e.g., choosing humorous cartoons randomly from
a large pool of stimuli, using only non-verbal cartoons instead of captioned
and non-verbal, controlling the number of pictures or degree of reality).
Some formal features that are mentioned in books on cartooning haven’t
been investigated at all, for example, “composition” or “selectivity”. Further
research might address such elements. It would also be interesting to find the
humorously optimal level of exaggeration or simplification of a drawing or if
the position of the punch line influences the processing of cartoons. For ex-
ample, are cartoons funnier if the punch line is on the right side of the picture,
as Gerberg (1989) proposes. Similarly, Woschek (1991) assumes that eye
movement from left to the right predicts order of processing. He also postu-
lates that in cartoon processing several cognitive schemata are simultaneously
activated, because of the high capacity of visual symbols. Accordingly, we
suppose in pictorial humor there may potentially be more incongruities than
in verbal humor. And, as Samson and Huber (2007) show, there are several
locations for the incongruity: text, picture, or between text and picture. There
are several interesting open research issues here.
Aesthetics aspects
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-
Visual humor 625
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 add-
itional 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 ‘supranor-
mal’ stimuli evoke activation more strongly in some areas in the brain than
natural stimuli. Another artistic law relevant for cartoons might be that stim-
uli 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 as-
pects 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 cer-
tain 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
on humor processing. Most enumerations of aesthetic/formal/cognitive elem-

ents are not theory-driven and not (all) of these elements have been systemat-
ically 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 Au-
gustin 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 mech-
anisms. 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 humor-
ous 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 else-
where in this primer. Because of the fundamental identity of semiotic pro-
cesses, 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 car-
toons, the triggers for the various stages of cognition are distributed not strict-
ly 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 con-
stellations 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-
Visual humor 627
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 car-
toons 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 cap-
tioned cartoons a sequence that begins with the picture and then moves on to
the caption, and also requires an additional assumption, namely that the pic-
ture 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 expect-
ation 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-res-
olution 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 ap-
pearance 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 reso-
lution, while nonsense humor takes up the opposite extreme, closest to no
resolution, but at least pretending to having one. This latter position, again,
corresponds closely to that of Rothbart and Pien (1977: 37).
Shultz (1972), together with Suls (1972) and Jones (1970) another pro-
ponent of the revival of incongruity-resolution in the early 1970s, describes
experiments based on the assumption that there are distinct incongruity
(‑triggering) und resolution(-triggering) elements, which are thus individual-
ly removable (cf. also Shultz and Horibe 1974; Jones 1970). This assumption
is problematic, as Pien and Rothbart (1976) point out. But if those triggers
are discernible, we assume that it may be easier in cartoons with or without
text as there is a distribution over more symbol material and across semiotic
boundaries (text/picture).
On this basis we can now formulate the central issues in terms of gen-
eral humor cognition and specific cartoon cognition that has been addressed
in previous research on humorous cognition in cartoons. After introducing
the extant work, we will be in a position to formulate the remaining central
desiderata for research on the cognition of cartoon humor. In the following,
some exemplary studies on cognitive aspects of cartoon processing shall be
outlined.
Several authors attempted to describe mechanisms that make a visual car-
toon funny, for example homomorphic rhyme, metamorphic rhyme, homo-
morphic pun, radical juxtaposition, displacement, hybridization, paradox,
exaggeration, part/whole substitution, parody, exaggeration, simplification,
simple contrasts bisociation, substitution, etc. (see, for example, Behrens
1977; Gombrich 1978; Woschek 1991; Morris 1993). The question is whether
these mechanisms are specific for visual humor or not. As these attempts are
not theory-driven, we suggest to operationalize underlying mechanisms that
influence cognitive humor processing by means of one of the parameters de-
scribed and defined by the GTVH: the Logical Mechanisms (LMs). LMs de-
scribe the relation of two opposed scripts, or the cognitive rule that has to be
recognized in order to understand the punch line. Attardo, Hempelmann and
DiMaio (2002) described at least 27 LMs such as juxtaposition, substitution,
role reversal, exaggeration, etc. Two studies showed that besides other para-
meters of the GTVH such LMs are applicable to visual humor and therefore
describe the underlying cognitive mechanisms of cartoon humor (Paolillo
1998; Tsakona in press). Although we suggest to use LMs to describe the un-
derlying cognitive rules, further research might compare the above mentioned
intuitive attempts to describe mechanisms in visual humor with the LMs in
order to find out which describe identical and which different mechanisms.
The groundbreaking study by Carroll, Young, and Guertin (1992) already
mentioned above uses eyetracking to investigate processing stages in cartoon
perception. In the 36 captioned single pictures used in this study the text as
Visual humor 629
well as the picture were necessary to get the joke (neither element was suf-
ficient by itself). They were able to distinguish two processing stages: the
exploratory stage (visual analysis of the picture and identification of charac-
ters and objects in the picture, shorter fixation duration, more fixations and
longer saccades) and a search-and-problem-solving stage (deeper process-
ing, incongruity-resolution or problem solving, shorter fixations). During
the search-and-problem-solving mode eye-movements come under control
of top-down processes. This study shows that humor is processed at least
in two stages. In a second experiment Carroll et al. (1992) investigated car-
toons in which the caption did not fit the picture. In this mismatch condition
subjects make more than three additional fixations and stage two processing
is extended.
Interestingly, the authors found some differences in what people look at
first and in what order they view pictures and captions. For example, in the
picture-first condition the picture is first considered, but only preparatorily,
elements get memorized in order to retrieve this information during caption
reading. Then they read the caption where the incongruity-resolution takes
place. The authors state that appreciation is only then possible if both, text
and picture was explored. Because the picture was in the beginning looked at
cursorily, after reading the caption the picture was explored again. In the cap-
tion-first condition the processes happen in reverse order. Woschek (1991)
assumed that this processing pattern occurs only when there is an incongruity
in the text as well as in the picture.
The time how long the picture is examined depends on whether the cap-
tion has been read before the picture is checked or not. The average fixation
duration was significantly longer in the caption-first condition than in the
picture-first condition. The first few fixations are supposed to correspond to
the exploratory stage. After that the average fixation time for the picture-first
condition drops quite dramatically, whereas the caption-first condition, with
all of its integration activity, continues to show the long fixation times (Car-
roll et al. 1992).
It would be most interesting to conduct further studies on cartoon process-
ing and eye movements. We assume, for example, that in pure nonverbal car-
toons fixation times could give information about processing stages and time
course as well.
Brain imaging studies can reveal cognitive processes underlying humor
comprehension and appreciation. The earliest study with functional mag-
netic resonance imaging (fMRI) used strictly verbal materials which were
presented via head phones (Goel and Dolan 2001). However, most of the
fMRI studies on humor processing used visual materials such as (captioned)

cartoons or short movie clips. Pure non-verbal cartoons were used for ex-
ample 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-resolu-
tion) 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 ex-
ample 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 incongrui-
ties 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 inves-
tigated explicitly the difference between more verbal or more visual depend-
ent 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, in-
cluding 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 experi-
ence 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 ma-
terials 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
Visual humor 631
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 sev-
eral 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 mech-
anisms 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 con-
trol group.
Summary
This chapter on visual humor provides an overview on cartoon research and

some historical and theoretical background that should prove useful for read-
ers who are interested in doing their own research on this subject. It empha-
sizes the general universality of the semiotic processes of humor comprehen-
sion, 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
cognitive process in verbal and visual humor, there are crucial differences in
cognitive as well as aesthetic characteristics, surfacing as formal differences,
which can increase or decrease the affective response towards the cartoon:
Several studies demonstrated that degree of abstraction and drawing style
alter the humor response. Whenever it is impossible to control stimuli for
all of these factors, it should be kept in mind that they can influence humor
appreciation as well as the recognizability of a picture’s intended funniness
(see Bonaiuto 2006).
However, there are many open questions which might be addressed in
further research: As we have shown, the aesthetic components are largely
unexplored when they are not reduced to individual formal features. For ex-
ample, how can the aesthetic dimension of cartoons be captured, how can it
be distinguished from the cognitive component? Furthermore, some of the
formal features are far from having been sufficiently investigated yet: the lo-
calization of the incongrous visual element in the cartoon – are cartoons fun-
nier if the elements are on the right part of the image, as might be suggested
from the reading order? Another research opportunity might be to investigate
whether different locations of essential humor components may lead to eas-
ier detection by removal or alteration of incongruent elements. The method
of eliminating incongruent (funny) visual elements of cartoons was already
used, for example by Mobbs and colleagues (2003).
In this overview we have also shown the fruitful implementation of
methods such as eye tracking or fMRI in research on (non-verbal) cartoons.
In the future, these methods might help to answer further questions on the
semiotic processes involved in cartoon appreciation or on processing pecu-
liarities of purely nonverbal cartoons. Here, we have covered cartoons as
one possible form of visual humor. However, there are other forms of visual
humor that might be (and partly already were) addressed in further theoretic-
al considerations or experimental research, for example funny movies, funny
photographs, but also humor in visual art. The latter provides an interesting
and relatively new field for humor scholars for which most of the consider-
ations presented here are valid.
Notes
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.
Visual humor 633
2. A seminal introduction to comics and cartoons, itself entertaining because hu-

morous, 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 com-
mercial 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 per-
mission to use his work here.
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Index of authors
Aarne, Antti 192 Antonini, Rachele 599

Abadie, Ann J. 255 Antonopoulou, Eleni 116–117, 127,
Abe, Goh 160, 167, 611 129
Abelson, Robert 107 Apte, Mahadev L. 6, 32, 73, 184,
Abrahams, Roger 120, 187, 189 303–306, 310–311, 316–317, 319,
Abramis, David 460–461 361, 365, 379
Accoce, Jeannine 74, 319 Apter, Michael J. 32
Adams, Bruce 159 Araki, Kenji 125
Adams, Douglas 250 Archakis, Argiris 117
Adams, Katherine 553, 554 Aristotle 24, 29, 102–103, 214–218,
Adams, Scott 472 225, 298–299, 306, 310, 313, 363,
Addison, Joseph 221, 587 399–402, 525, 548
Adler, Christine M. 482 Arnoult, Lynn H. 505
Aharonson, Haim 69 Arora, Sanjay 28, 315
Aiello, J. R. 310 Asimakoulas, Dimitris 113
Al-Khatib, Mahmoud A. 131 Asimov, Isaac 530, 541, 633
Alarcon, Christy 553 Attardo, Salvatore 4, 7, 28, 50,
Alberts, J. K. 549, 550 101–113, 115–117, 119, 121–124,
Alexander, Richard D. 79, 307, 413, 127–130, 157, 178, 308, 310, 314,
528, 533 319, 336–338, 342, 345–346, 348,
Alexieva, Bistra 579 352, 356, 363, 412, 425–426, 433,
Allard, Louis-Paul 163, 163 524, 536–539, 580, 582, 612, 617,
Allen, M. 309 626, 628
Allik, Jüri 72, 73 Atwill, Janet M. 430, 432
Allman, John M. 612 Aubouin, Elie 117
Allport, Gordon W. 38, 456–457, 486 Augustin, Dorothee 405–406, 626
Alpern, Lynne 461, 462
Alsua, Carlos J. 61 Babad, Elisha Y. 44, 44
Altfreder, Olga 54, 54 Babcock-Abrahams, Barbara 189
Alves, Julio 311 Bachorowski, Jo-Anne 24, 79
Ammons, Elizabeth 252 Bailly, G. 337
Anderson, Bonnie P. 408 Bain, Alexander 307, 310, 313, 460
Anderson, Craig A. 505 Bainum, C. 460
Anderson, Ronald E. 611 Baker, Katherine H. 251, 288, 493
Andor, Jozsef 131 Baker, Russell 251, 288, 493
Andrew, Christopher 170, 246, Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 189–190, 377,
258–259 385, 417, 420, 526–527, 531
Andries, Lise 103 Ballard, Michel 570, 572
Anthony, Susan 29, 249, 307, 315 Balshine, Sigal 79
642 Index of authors
Banc, C. 159, 168 Bennett, Barbara 251, 259

Banfi, Emanuele 131 Benton, Gregor 369
Bänninger-Huber, Eva 21, 22 Bergen, Doris 65
Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua 347 Berger, Arthur Asa 417, 548–549
Baratz, D. 621–623 Berger, Peter 1, 367, 378
Bariaud, Françoise 65, 74, 319 Berger, Phil 300
Barnes, Gordon E. 301, 484 Bergmann, Linda S. 419–420
Barnet, K. 310 Bergson, Henri 4, 228–229, 235, 253,
Barreca, Regina 243, 251, 259, 263, 261, 265, 299, 303, 305–307, 310,
266, 301, 311, 409, 411, 413–414 313, 364–365
Barrett, Tracy 316 Berk, Lee S. 450, 453, 468–469, 490,
Barron, William L. III 33 492
Barsoux, Jean-Louis 463 Berk, Ronald A. 430
Bartels, Mathias 63 Berlyne, Daniel E. 18
Barthel-Hackman, T. A. 550, 554 Bermant, Chaim 311
Bassnett, Susan 569, 575 Bete, Tim 417
Basso, Bob 463 Bethea, Lisa Sparks 554
Basso, Keith H. 119, 191 Betts Van Dyk, Krista K. 421
Bateson, Gregory 194 Bier, Jesse 283, 299, 311
Batts, John S. 316 Bihrle, Amy M. 53
Bauman, Richard 187, 200–201, Bilger, Audrey 409–412
203–204 Billig, Michael 103, 365–366,
Baumgartner, Jody C. 257 382–383, 385
Bausell, R. Barker 489 Binsted, Kim 124, 336–337, 340, 354
Baym, Nancy 125 Bippus, A. M. 549
Beattie, James 226, 308 Birden, Lorene 54
Bechterew, Wladimir Michailowitsch Bizi, Smadar 503
von 18 Blair, Walter 169, 172, 251, 283, 299
Beckmann, Petr 159 Blissett, Sonia E. 505
Bedford, Anthony P. 299 Blount, Roy 251
Beeman, William O. 119, 120 Blumenfield, Esther 461
Beermann, Ursula 28, 47, 54, 62, 64 Boatright, Mody C. 252
Behrens, Laurence 423 Boden, Margaret A. 124
Behrens, Roy R. 609, 625, 628 Boeke, W. 18
Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin 503 Bogardus, Emory S. 611
Belke, Benno 626 Boland, R. J. 549
Bell, Michael J. 203, 244 Bonaiuto, Paolo 613, 621–623, 625,
Bell, Nancy J. 118, 128, 507 632
Bell, Steve 169, 592 Bonanno, George A. 488
Ben-Amos, Dan 174 Bönsch-Kauke, Marion 63, 65
Bender, Amanda 47, 59 Booth, Wayne C. 411–413, 418, 431
Bendix, John 188 Booth-Butterfield, Melanie 550
Bendix, Regina 430 Booth-Butterfield, Steven 550
Index of authors 643
Bormann, Ernest G. 561 Bucaria, Chiara 107, 127, 599

Boskin, Joe 283, 299, 301 Buchowski, M. S. 489
Bostdorff, D. M. 430 Buckman, Elcha Shain 457
Botkin, B. A. 252 Budd, Louis J. 231–232, 241, 256, 291
Bouchard, Thomas J., Jr. 76 Buela-Casal, Gualberto 51–52, 59
Bouché, Thérèse 102 Burgdorf, Jeff 78
Bowen, Barbara C. 402, 406, 408–409 Burge, Tyler 164, 249, 582, 586
Boyd, Rosangela K. 454, 474 Burke, Kenneth 416, 421
Bradbury, Thomas N. 249, 253, 507 Burma, John 371–372
Bradford, Arthur L. 418 Burns, Inger H. 201–202
Bradney, Pamela 365 Burns, Thomas A. 201–202
Branner, Rebecca 117 Burroughs, W. Jeffrey 495
Brdar, Ingrid 75 Buscaldi, Davide 125
Bremmer, Jan N. 102–103, 550 Buttny, Richard 117
Brennan, Susan 28, 621, 623 Byron, Stuart 300
Bressler, Eric R. 79
Brice, C. 424 Cady, Edwin H. 256
Bricker, Victoria Reifler 188 Cahill, Connie 612, 631
Bridgeford, Tracy 430 Camarena, Phame 311, 496
Briggs, Charles L. 62, 203 Cambell, N. 121
Brodzinsky, David M. 44, 310, 612 Camfield, Gregg 252, 263
Bronner, Simon J. 187–188, 201 Campbell, Donald T. 39, 58
Brooks, Mel 112, 260, 293 Campbell, George 407
Brooks, Penelope H. 620, 623 Campbell, N. 116
Brown, Mary Helen 554 Cancian, Francesca 186
Brown, Renee 549, 554, 558 Cantor, Joanne R. 29–30, 307
Brown, Robert L. 411 Carey, Susan 28, 594, 621, 623
Brown, Stuart B. 78 Carlson, Charles R. 482
Brown, T. Graham 18, 53, 78 Carlson, Richard S. 252
Browne, Stephen H. 412–413 Caron, James E. 78
Brownell, Hiram H. 53 Carpenter, R. 313
Bruehl, Steven 482 Carrell, Amy T. 4, 36, 38, 55, 63–64,
Brunswick, Nicola 300 70, 115, 319, 356
Brunvald, Jan Harold 159 Carretero-Dios, Hugo 51–52, 59
Brust, Robert G. 77, 554, 563, 618 Carroll, Lewis 244, 249, 570–571
Brutsche, Martin H. 63 Carroll, Noël 203, 615, 623
Bryant, Chad 166 Carroll, Patrick J. 623, 628–629
Bryant, Gregory A. 123 Carstensen, Laura L. 507
Bryk, Anthony S. 505 Carver, Charles S. 503
Brzozowska, Dorota 131 Cassell, Justine 336
Brône, Geert 129 Cattani, Adelino 417
Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, Cattell, Raymond B. 45, 59
Dalai Lama XIV 562 Ceccarelli, Fabio 101
Cerf, Bennet 251 Collins, Sharon M. 418

Chabanne, Jean-Charles 319 Colston, Herbert L. 122–123
Chafe, Wallace L. 79, 104, 116, 121, Connors, Robert J. 424
125 Consalvo, Carmine 310
Chang, Mei-Jung 19, 70, 301, 550, 555 Cook, Guy 127
Channon, Shelley 27 Cook, Mark 484
Chapel, Gage William 554 Cooper, Colin 58
Chapman, Anthony J. 18, 65, 68, 73, Corbin, Suzanne 47, 59
311, 317, 544, 549, 601 Corcoran, Rhiannon 612, 624, 631
Charland, Maurice 431 Corduas, Marcella 112, 121, 131
Charles, Lucille Hoerr 188 Corrigan, Robert W. 252
Charney, Maurice 246, 246 Cosentino, Donald 190
Charpentier, Hélène 102 Coser, Rose 365–366, 368, 375
Chen, Guo-Hai 40, 61, 75, 553–554 Coulson, Seana 103, 126, 128, 609
Chen, Huey-Rong 553–554 Cousins, Norman 311, 316, 451–453,
Chen, K. Y. 489 479, 496
Cheriff, Adam D. 492 Cox, Donald S. 482
Cherkas, Lynn 75–76, 78 Cox, Harvey 228, 231–232
Chiaro, Delia 5, 127, 570, 574, 595, Cox, Joe A. 310, 406, 430
597–599 Craig, David M. 262, 299
Chlopicki, Wladysław 109, 121, 131 Craik, Kenneth H. 35, 40–43, 45, 53,
Chomsky, Noam 5–6, 337 61–62, 317, 485
Chornovol-Tkachenko 131 Crawford, Mary 120, 375, 387, 425
Churchill, Elizabeth 169, 428 Crile, J. W. 313
Cicero 102, 216, 218–219, 225, 227, Cronbach, Lee J. 57, 58
306–307, 313, 402–406, 408–409, Crosbie, John S. 252
576, 582, 601 Crowley, Daniel J. 190
Clark, Kimberley C. 299 Crystal, David 127
Clark, William Bedford 299 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly 19
Clarke, Danielle 408, 414 Culler, Jonathan 252
Coan, James 507 Culpeper, Jonathan 121
Cochran, Robert 159 Cunningham, Michael R. 507
Cogan, Dennis 493 Cunningham, William A. 27, 44
Cogan, Rosemary 493 Curcò, Carmen 129–130
Cohan, Catherine L. 507 Cutica, Ilaria 126
Cohen, Sarah Blacher 257, 262–263, Cutler, Howard C. 562
284, 300
Cohen, Sheldon 483, 507 Dahlberg, W. A. 430
Coleman, James S. 172, 178 Daiute, Collette 415, 422
Coleman, Robin 388 Dale, Iain 169
Coleman, Stephen 370 Dale, J. Alexander 503
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 344, 344 Dance, Kathryn A. 482
Collins, Randall 386 Danielson, Larry 190, 190
Danzer, Amy 503 Dobi, Shobi 453

Darwin, Charles R. 17, 24, 75, 77–78, Dohrenwend, Bruce P. 482
103, 297 Dolan, Raymond J. 125–126, 629
Daum, Irene 613, 27 Donaldson, Toby 124
Davidson, Karina 493 Donawerth, Jane 408
Davidson, Richard J. 21 Dore, Margherita 127, 255
Davidson-Katz, Karina 311 Doty, William G. 253
Davies, Catherine Evans 118, 128 Dougherty, L. M. 23
Davies, Christie 4, 24, 73, 157–160, Douglas, Mary 112, 171, 186, 189,
163, 167–168, 172, 174–175, 246, 250, 363, 431, 433
177–178, 194, 196, 202, 301, 311, Downe, Pamela J. 117, 120
317, 369, 372, 379–381, 383–384, Drack, Phillip 24
387, 583–584, 598, 602 Draitser, Emil 311, 372
Davies, Patricia 24 Drennan, Robert E. 252
Davies, Sarah 170 Dresner, Zita 256, 259, 301, 311,
Davis, D. Diane 416, 421, 425 412–413
Davis, Dineh 4, 553 Drew, Paul 119
Davis, Jessica Milner 73, 131, 243, Droz, Marilyn 465, 465
262, 264, 267 Duckworth, George E. 102
Davis, Murray 363, 376–378 Dudden, Arthur 283, 299, 301
De Beaugrande, Robert 571 Duffey, Nelda S. 29–30, 507
Dean, Kevin W. 287, 293, 554 Dunbar, Robin 79
Deckers, Lampert H. 25, 28, 32–34, Duncan, Jack W. 310
315, 611 Dundes, Alan 158–159, 162–163, 168,
Defays, Jean-Marc 131 178, 187, 193–195, 202–203, 300,
Dekker, Rudolf 382, 387 367, 372, 633
Delabastita, Dirk 127, 570 Dunn, M. L. 106, 256
Deloria, Vine, Jr. 258 Durgnat, Raymond 300
Deneire, Marc 127 Durkheim, Emile 178, 386
Denton, John 591 Dworkin, Earl S. 34
Deren, Veronica 319 D’Zamko, Mary Elizabeth 311
Deriabin, Peter 170
Derks, Peter 27–28, 44, 51, 126, Edwards, Carol 200
310–311, 315, 502, 507, 511, 612 Edwards, Janis L. 553–554
Descartes, René 102, 219–220 Efran, Jay S. 34
Desclos, Marie-Laurence. 102 Eggins, Suzanne 117
Dews, S. 122 Ehrenberg, Tamar 310, 311
Diener, Ed 47, 66, 73 Ehrenstein, Walter H. 28
Dillon, Kathleen M. 493, 493 Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenäus 79
Dimitrovsky, Lilly 319 Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi, Gabriella 192
Dirr, Karen L. 621–623 Eichler, Richard W. 613
Dixon, Norman F. 503 Eisner, Joel 300
Dobbin, James P. 316, 505 Eisterhold, Jodi 118–119
Ekman, Paul 21–24, 75, 315, 337, 488, Fillmore, Charles 107, 117
490 Fine, Elizabeth C. 203
El Refaie, Elisabeth 615 Fine, Gary A. 361, 366, 374, 618
Elitzur, Avshalom C. 319 Finney, Fail 259
Elkin, E. H. 255, 621–623 Finney, Gail 414
Ellis, Bill 196 Fisher, Rhoda L. 202, 265, 317, 456,
Ellis, Lori 456, 465 612
Ellis, Yvette 121 Fisher, Seymour 202, 265, 456, 612
Elshtain, Jean Bethke 408, 414 Fisher, W. R. 544
Emerson, Joan 374, 374 Fiske, Donald W. 39, 58
Emmons, Robert A. 47 Flashner, Graham 255
Epskamp, Kees P. 311 Fleet, F. R. 545, 545
Erb, Michael 22, 38 Fletcher, Doug 453
Erdman, Manny 172, 172 Fletcher, M. D. 254, 453
Ermida, Isabel 131 Flexner, Stuart Berg 252
Ernst, Gordon E., Jr. 256 Fogel, Alan 24
Ertel, Suitbert 28 Folkman, Susan 482
Esler, Murray D. 482 Foot, Hugh C. 18, 73, 317, 549
Espy, Willard 252 Forabosco, Giovannantonio 25, 27, 53,
Esser, Claudia 43, 62 64, 73–74, 311
Etgen, Mike 310 Forceville, Charles 615
Everts, Elisa 118, 120 Ford, Thomas 171–172, 355, 383
Eysenck, Hans-Jürgen 26, 48, 71, Fortunato, Eleonora Di 589
73 Forward, Susan 307
Fowler, Dorreen 255
Fabrizi, Michael S. 44 Fox Tree, Jean E. 123, 123
Fahnestock, Jeanne 424, 424 Fraisse, P. 621
Falk, Robert 254 France, A. 415–416
Falkenberg, Irina 63 Frank, Mark G. 22, 247, 258, 315
Farb, Peter 252 Frankl, Viktor 251, 286, 455–456
Fay, Allen 455 Franzini, Louis R. 311
Fedo, Michael 255 Frater, J. 416, 417
Fein, O. 122, 433 Fredrickson, Barbara L. 482
Feinberg, Leonard 253, 254 Freedman, Jim 186, 188
Feingold, Alan 45, 484 Freeman, Derek 159, 160
Feldman, Ofer 431 Freiberg, Jackie 474
Feleky, Antoinette 18 Freiberg, Kevin 474
Felible, Roma 466 Freud, Sigmund 29, 38–39, 48, 60,
Felker, Donald W. 612 103–104, 158, 170–171, 175,
Fellbaum, Christiane D. 356 177, 193, 198, 202–203, 222–225,
Ferguson, Mark 383 233, 253, 261, 265, 299, 303–304,
Feyaerts, Kurt 129 309–310, 362–364, 389–390, 410,
Filby, Ivan 374 454, 479, 486, 503, 534, 588
Fricke, Harald 121 Gervais, Matthew 78–79, 104

Friedman, Bruce J. 254 Giannini, Anna Maria 621
Friedman, Bud 291 Giarelli, Ellen 612
Friedman, Howard S. 497, 500 Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. 119, 122–123,
Friesen, Wallace V. 21–22, 337, 488 411, 418
Frijda, Nico 33 Gibney, Frank 170
Frith, Christopher D. 612, 631 Gibson, Donald E. 311, 452
Fry, P. S. 499 Giles, H. 117
Fry, William F. 104, 303, 305–306, Gillooly, Eileen 414
308–312, 316, 449, 452, 456, 468, Gilmore, David D. 189
488–490 Giora, Rachel 122–123, 126, 128, 433
Frye, Northrop 250, 252–253 Glauser, Nadine 54
Frymier, A. B. 554 Glazer, Mark 187
Fuller, Katherine L. 27 Glenn, Cheryl 408, 411, 414
Fuller, Linda 388 Glenn, Phillip J. 117, 120
Führ, Martin 60, 65 Gluckman, Max 188
Goddard, Cliff 123
Gabora, Liane 103 Godkewitsch, Michael 28
Gadish, Orit 319, 507 Goel, Vinod 125–126, 629
Gajda, Stanisław 131 Goffman, Erving 374, 386, 390
Galanter, Marc 381 Goldberg, Ken 43, 125, 224, 292, 294,
Gale, Steven H. 243, 245, 256, 341
265–267, 299 Golden, Sèan 382, 570
Galiñanes, Cristina Larkin 121, Goldstein, Donna 370, 377
130–131 Goldstein, Jeffrey H. 18, 26, 29, 283,
Gallagher, Helen L. 490, 612, 624, 631 299, 315, 456, 479, 507
Galligan, E. 250 Goldstein, Kalman 247
Galloway, David 254 Gombrich, Ernst H. 613, 628
Gamble, Jennifer 78 Goode, C. Edward 423
Gander, Fabian 64 Goodenough, Florence L. 78
Gans, Eric 411 Gordon, Dexter B. 169, 256, 263, 266,
Ganter, Granville 414, 430–431 301, 414, 456, 602
Gardner, Howard 53 Gossen, Gary H. 191
Garland, Ron 256, 267, 299, 301, 463 Gottman, John M. 507
Gasquet-Cyrus, Méderic 119, 120 Gouin, Rachel 370
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 258, 343 Graban, Tarez Samra 4, 402, 412
Gedda, Luigi 75 Graesser, Arthur C. 617
Geffcken, Katherine A. 402, 404 Graff, Richard 267, 399
Gehring, Wes 284, 300, 317 Grant, Mary 597
Geismar, Maxwell 255 Grauer, Neil A. 263
Gelkopf, Marc 311 Grawe, Paul H. 243, 259–260,
Genshaft, Judy 611 266–267
Gerberg, Mort 618, 624 Gray, Jeanette 38
Gray, Jonathan 379, 388 Hallowell, A. Irving 191

Greenbaum, Andrea 415, 417 Hampes, William P. 501, 507
Greenfeld, Anne 316 Hamrick, Phillip 129, 129
Gregory, J. C. 194, 291, 309, 421 Hannah, T. Edward 55, 499, 505
Greig, J. Y. T. 303–304 Hanse, Joseph 165
Grice, H. P. 108, 115, 129, 539 Hansen, Kristine 415
Griffin, Sharon 47 Harlow, Ilana 188
Grimes, Wilma H. 555, 555 Harmon, William 244, 253
Grimshaw, Melissa 62 Harper, Donna A. S. 258
Grodd, Wolfgang 22, 38, 53 Harris, Anne C. 27
Gross, Alan 399, 424 Harris, Charles B. 254
Grotjahn, Martin 175, 309, 454 Hartwell, Patrick 415, 424
Gruchala, Pawel 131 Haselton, Martie G. 27
Grumet, Gerald W. 28 Hasenoehrl, Ruediger U. 63
Gruner, Charles R. 30, 103, 383, 399, Haskins, Ekaterina V. 411
544, 546, 549–550, 555–556 Hauptman, Don 252
Guertin, Michael S. 628 Hauschild, Thomas 372
Guidi, Annarita 105, 106 Hausmann, Franz Josef 346
Guiraud, Pierre 104 Hay, Jennifer 117–120, 125, 203, 268,
Gulotta, Guglielmo 131 374–375
Gundelach, Peter 372 Hayden, Bradley 261
Gupta, Dhruv 125, 341 Hayworth, Donald 79
Gurewitch, Morton 263 Hazlitt, William 226–227, 231, 235,
Guth, Hans P. 415 307
Gutt, Ernst-August 578 Hecker, Erich 18
Günther, Ulrike K. 120, 125 Hegel, Georg W. F. 307, 313, 421, 424
Hegelson, Candace 424
Haakana, Markku 119 Hehl, Franz-Josef 18, 20, 29, 49, 51,
Habermann, Günther 24 64–66, 74, 485, 619–620, 627
Habermas, Jürgen 377 Heitler, M. 18
Hackman, M. Z. 550–551, 554–555 Helgason, Asgeir R. 484
Haddad, Jay 372 Hembree, E. A. 23
Haellstroem, Tore 484 Hempelmann, Christian F. 4–5, 7,
Hagen, Margaret A. 621–623 49–50, 106, 123, 339–340, 343,
Hager, Andrew J. 612 345, 351–352, 536, 615, 617, 628
Hager, Joseph C. 22 Hener, Tamar 494
Haggerty, Susan 311 Herzog, Thomas R. 27, 611–612, 619,
Haig, Robin Andrew 311, 549 623, 625
Haiman, John 122 Hewitt, John Alexander 79
Hale, Constance 318, 423 Heymans, Gerardus 18
Hall, George Stanley 18 Hickman, William C. 187
Hall, Phil 418 Hicks, Brian M. 76
Hallett, Ronald A. 316 Hieatt, Arron C. 495
Hill, Carl 104 Huber, Tania 21–22, 24, 47, 49

Hill, Hamlin 251, 283, 299 Hubert, Walter 492
Hiller, Harry 370 Huffman, Lois E. 417
Hillhouse, Joel J. 482 Hughes, Joseph J. 258, 263, 293, 402,
Hillson, Tim R. 28 404
Hilscher, Matthew B. 63 Hulstijn, Joris 123–124, 354
Hiltebrand, Damian 64 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 581
Hinrichs, Kim T. 61 Humes, James C. 308
Hirsch, Rolf D. 63, 70 Hunt, L. 313
Hirstein, William 625, 625 Hunter, Dede M. 612
Hirt, Michael 611 Hurley, Kathleen Ann 430
Hislop, Ian 169 Hutcheon, Linda 255, 413, 419
Hobbes, Thomas 30, 103, 219–220, Hyers, M. Conrad 231–232
226, 233, 235, 299, 306–307, 310, Hymes, Dell 203
313, 363, 368, 527 Hynes, William J. 253
Hochberg, Fran 75 Hösli, Karin 62
Hoffman, R. 102, 549
Hofstadter, Douglas 103 Inge, M. Thomas 201, 256, 299–300,
Hofstede, Geert 73, 74 613
Hogan, Walter 257 Isen, Alice M 460
Holcomb, Christopher 125, 316, 415, Islam, Asad 24, 175, 230
430, 432–433 Ivvarson, Jan 589
Holcomb, Kathleen 407 Iwase, Masao 126
Hollingworth, Harry Levi 18 Izard, Carol E. 23, 23
Holman, C. Hugh 244, 253 Izzett, Christin D. 411, 418
Holmen, Jostein 499, 500
Holmes, Janet 117–118, 120, 125, 252, Jablonski, Carol J. 554
367, 375 Jakobson, Roman 600
Hols, Edith J. 430 James, Ann 454, 613
Holt, Dan G. 299, 311 James, William 18
Homer, Brian 169, 252, 525 Jandorf, Lina 482
Honeycutt, James M. 549, 554, 558 Janes, Leslie M. 508
Honeyman, A. M. 187 Jarvie, I. C. 186
Hopkins, Chris 316 Jaskanen, Susanna 127, 127
Horibe, Francis 628 Jefferson, Gail 116, 178, 295, 300, 374
Hornby, Peter 172 Jefferson, Gail 374
Horowitz, Jeannine 102 Jenkins, Ron 370
Howe, Norman E. 79 Jhally, Sut 388
Howell, Tes 129 Johansen, Ruthann Knechel 255
Howitt, Dennis 384 Johnson, Ben 248
Hsu, Hui-Chin 24 Johnson, Kathy E. 104
Huber, Oswald 612, 619–620, Johnson, T. R. 421
623–624, 630, 633 Jolly, Elaine 611
Jones, James M. 73, 253, 410, 528, Kiniry, Malcom 419
534, 595, 618, 623, 628 Kirsh, Gillian A. 43, 62
Jordan, G. 197, 418 Klein, Allen 311, 454
Joubert, Laurent 102, 408 Kline, Paul 29, 57
Jung, Wonil Edward 78–79, 250, 560 Klingman, Avigdor 69
Jurich, Marilyn 259 Klinkowitz, Jerome 255
Klions, Herbert L. 503
Kalland, Steve 310 Klosek, Judi 463
Kallen, H. M. 313 Klügel, Kilian 63
Kamei, T. 492 Kobler, James B. 126
Kant, Immanuel 26, 103, 226, 261, 308 Kochman, Thomas 120
Karabas, Seyfi 319, 620, 623 Koestler, Arthur 25, 103, 250, 253, 265
Karasik, V. I. 131 Kolasky, John 159
Kashdan, Todd B. 76 Kolberg, Karen 465
Kasriel, Judith 75 Koller, Marvin 366
Kataria, Madan 479, 481 Koller, Werner 576
Katz, Alice A. 621–623 Koponen, Maarit 127
Katz, Jack 381, 386, 621–623 Koppel, Mark A. 44
Kaufer, David 409, 411, 425 Korotkov, David 55, 499, 501, 505
Kaufman, Gloria 311 Kotthoff, Helga 104, 116, 119–120
Kawahara, Shigeto 106 Kowal, Sabine 117, 117
Kazanevsky, Vladimir 311 Kraepelin, Emil 18
Kazarian, Shahe S. 40, 61, 75 Krantzhoff, Erhard U. 63, 69
Keener, Polly 618 Krikmann, Arvo 129, 159
Kehl, D. G. 243, 260–261, 267 Krinsky, David 300
Keim, Inken 120 Kristeva, Julia 571
Keinan, Giora 319, 503 Kronenberger, Louis 547, 547
Keith-Spiegel, Patricia 24, 27, 307, Kropscott, Laura S. 27
310, 313 Krueger, Robert F. 76, 265
Keller, Dan 256, 455, 474 Kubie, Lawrence 454
Kelly, Fred C. 255, 289, 454 Kubovy, Michael 621–623
Keltner, Dacher 22, 488, 508 Kueneman, Karen 311, 493
Keough, William 257 Kuhlman, Thomas 456
Kercher, Stephen 301 Kuiper, Nicholas A. 43, 62, 316, 387,
Kerkkanen, Paavo 483 482, 483, 500, 501, 502, 504
Kerr, M. E. 257 Kuipers, Giselinde 4, 6, 52, 157, 196,
Kerr, Sarah T. 507 372, 375, 380–381, 383, 385,
Keysar, Boaaz 553 387–388
Kierkegaard, Soren 227–228, 231, 457 Kumano, H. 492
Kiley, Frederick 254, 256 Kunst-Wilson, William R. 624
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie 424, 424 Kunzle, David 613, 613
King, Cynthia M. 212, 255, 290, 423, Kushner, Malcolm 311, 462
555, 558, 586 Kutas, M. 126
Kyrston, Victor H. 418 Leung, Kwok 72

Köhler, Gabriele 28, 33–34, 37–38, 44, Levasseur, David G. 554, 554
46, 52–53, 55–56, 59, 63, 317 Levenson, Robert W. 507, 507
Levine, Jacob 59
LaFave, Lawrence 372 Levy, Barbara 263
Labov, William 120, 187 Levy, Jonathan 415
Lampert, Martin D. 40, 317, 485 Lewis, C. S. 249
Lang, Candace 1, 108, 252, 258, 262– Lewis, Jerry 260, 269, 293, 294
263, 266, 292, 319, 334, 354, 412, Lewis, Paul 243, 264–265, 268,
417, 420, 425, 587, 589, 600, 602, 370–371, 378, 382–384, 388,
630 571
Lanham, Richard A. 423, 426–428 Liao, Chao-Chih 120
Larsen, Gwen 38 Lim, Daniel 164, 300, 532, 546, 562
Larsen, Randy J. 47 Limon, John 300
Larwin, David A. 619, 623, 625 Limón, José E. 203
Lasswell, Harold 549 Lincoln, Kenneth 258, 430, 591
Latta, Robert L. 25 Linderman, Frank B. 258
Lauer, Jeanette C. 507 Lippman, Louis G. 106
Lauer, Robert H. 507 Lipps, Theodor 18, 27
Laurian, Anne-Marie 127, 569–570, Lipset, Seymour Martin 172, 178
575, 588 Littman, D. C. 123
Lausberg, H. 587 Liverpool, Hollis V. 73
Lawler, Donald 255 Lloyd, Sally A. 30, 292
Lazarus, A. L. 255 Lockyer, Sharon 370–371, 373,
Lazarus, Richard S. 482 384–385, 388, 430
Le Goff, Jacques 102 Loehlin, John C. 76
LeMaster, J. R. 256 Loehr, Dan 337
Leach, Jerry W. 187 Lohman, John 190
Leacock, Stephen 251 Loomis, Diane 465
Leary, James P. 187 Louwerse, Max M. 617
Leder, Helmut 612, 619, 623, 626 Love, Ann Marie 527, 611
Lederer, Richard 415, 424 Lowe, John 301, 414
Lee, Judith Yaross 255 Lowis, Michael J. 70, 609
Leeds, Christopher 311 Lucariello, J. 123
Lefcourt, Herbert M. 40, 52, 59–60, Lucas, Teresa 127
311, 316, 469, 480, 482, 485, 488, Luck, Michael 336
493, 496, 501, 504–505, 507 Ludovici, Anthony M. 307, 313
Lefevère, André 571, 578 Lundell, Torborg 310
Legman, Gershon 158, 158 Lundy, Duane E. 507
Leite, Catherine 62 Lunsford, Andrea A. 408, 416–417,
Lemeunier, Thierry 125 423
Lessard, Denys 615 Lyman, Bernard E. 20
Lessard, G. M. Levison 124 Lynn, Kenneth 251, 423, 461
McAndrews, Kristin M. 259 Marjoram, Dominic 612, 624, 631

McClelland, David C. 492 Marra, Meredith 118, 120
McCloud, Scott 633 Martin, David 178
McCluskey-Fawcett, Kathleen A. 65 Martin, Leslie R. 484, 498
McCoy, K. 507 Martin, Lillian J. 18
McCrae, Robert R. 72–73 Martin, Rod A. 3–4, 18, 20, 23–24,
McCroskey, James C. 63 28, 38–40, 48, 52, 55–56, 59–61,
McCubbin, James A. 482 63, 68, 75, 79, 309, 311, 316–317,
McCue, Melissa 493 450, 454, 468–469, 480, 482–485,
McDavid, Jr. 251 487, 489, 492, 499–502, 504–505,
MacDonald, Dwight 255, 586 510
McDonald, Skye 122, 256 Martineau, William 367
McDonald, Walter 256 Maslow, Abraham 479, 486–487
McDonough, Craig J. 339 Mast, Gerald 300
McDougall, W. 313, 452 Masten, Ann S. 311
McDowell, John Holmes 252, 597 Masumura, S. 492
McEntire, Nancy Cassell 187 Matthews, Benjamin J. 612
McGhee, Paul E. 18, 20, 23, 26–27, Mauro, Robert 621–623
29–30, 32, 36–38, 44, 49, 52–53, May, Rollo 479, 503
55–56, 63, 65–66, 70–71, 78, 228, Mazlack, Lawrence J. 124, 340
283, 299, 310–312, 450, 456, 467, Mazzella, Ronald 45, 484
488, 507, 544, 549, 556, 558–559, Mbangwana, Paul 311
627 Mead, Margaret 159–160
MacGregor, Alex J. 75 Meilhammer, Tonie 615
McGuire, Francis 454 Menache, Sophia 102
McKay, M. E. 619, 623 Ménager, Daniel 103
McKay, T. D. 619, 623 Merbaum, Michael 485
McMahon, Maureen 418 Meredith, George 253, 259
Maas, Cliff 63 Mervis, Carolyn B. 104
Macaulay, M. 424 Metcalf, C. W. 466
Machline, Vera Cecilia 399 Meunier, Raymond 18
MacHovec, Frank J. 555 Meyerhofer, Nicholas J. 316
Macklin, Pat 172 Mey, J. L. 123
Maddocks, Peter 618 Meyer, John C. 549, 553–554
Madini, Mongi 131 Michell, Gillian 425
Mahony, Diana L. 495 Michels, Robert 172
Makarius, Laura 188 Middleton, Russell 372
Malinowski, Bronisław 177–178, 191 Mihalcea, Rada 124–125, 340
Manke, Beth 76 Mill, John Stuart 177
Mann, Brenda 377 Miller, Geoffrey F. 47, 79
Marc, David 300 Miller, Nancy Weitz 416
Mardiganian, Aurora 175 Miller, Susan 419
Maria, Rosa 410 Mills, Brett 387
Minchoff, Brian 493 Murstein, Bernard I. 77, 554, 563

Mindess, Harvey 47, 59, 104, 306, 313, Muschard, Jutta 130
317, 456 Myers, David G. 66
Miner, Horace 546 Myers, Greg 417
Minois, Georges 102–103
Minsky, Martin 107 Nack, Frank 356
Mintz, Lawrence E. 4, 250, 299, 318 Nardini, Gloria 117, 120
Mitchell, Alexandre G. 613, 615 Narváez, Peter 187–188
Mitchell, Heather H. 617 Nash, Walter 261, 585
Mitchell, William E. 189 Neale, John M. 482
Mitchell-Kernan, Claudia L. 120 Nelms, Jodi 123, 127
Mitrokhin, Vasili 170 Nelson, Arvalea J. 40, 317, 485
Mitz, Rick 300 Nelson, T. G. A. 121
Mobbs, Dean 126, 632 Nerhardt, Göran 627
Moller, M. 492 Neroni, Lydia 75
Monro, D. H. 311 Neubert, Albrecht 578
Moody, Raymond A. 267, 452, 479 Nevo, Ofra 69–70, 316, 319, 372
Moore, Mark P. 261, 296, 554 Newman, Michelle Gayle 506
Morain, G. G. 127 Newmark, Peter 576
Moran, Carmen C. 503 Nezlek, John B. 502, 507, 511
Moran, Joseph M. 126 Nezu, Arthur M. 505
Morgan, Marcyliena 120 Nezu, Christine M. 505
Morkes, John 125, 336 Nickels, Cameron 298
Morreall, John 4, 216, 224–227, 235, Nicholl, Sorrel 500
239, 299, 311, 318, 361–362, 371, Nichols, Robert C. 76, 249
399, 450, 463, 548, 558 Nida, E. A. 576, 582
Morris, Jonathan S. 257 Nieuwoudt, Johan M. 70, 609
Morris, Linda A. 301, 414 Nijholt, Anton 123–125, 336, 340, 354
Morris, Ray 615, 628 Nikiforidou, Kiki 129
Morrison, Monica 187 Nilsen, Alleen P. 4, 250, 257, 268, 299,
Morrow, P. D. 367 417, 614
Moulin, Francis 124 Nilsen, Don L. F. 4, 127, 250, 256,
Mounin, Georges 584 257, 268, 284, 298, 299, 317–318,
Mowrer, Donald E. 311 415, 417, 570, 614
Mulder, Matthijs P. 336 Nirenburg, Sergei 5–7, 348
Mulkay, Michael 79, 367, 374–375, Noppa, Henry 484
377–378 Norrick, Neal R. 116, 119, 204
Mullany, Louise 118 Norrick, Neill 375
Mullen, Patrick B. 204 Novak, William 174, 257
Müller, Ralph 104, 121, 131 Nwokah, Evangeline E. 24
Muller, William Edward 131, 417
Mundorf, Norbert 310 O’Brien, J. 122–123
Murray, Robert P. 293, 416, 484 O’Connell, Daniel C. 117
O’Connell, Walter E. 456, 487 Paulson, Terry 462

O’Donnell-Truijillo, Nick 553–554 Pavesi, Maria 572
Oakley, T. 128 Payne, David A. 554
Obrdlik, Antonin J. 166, 368–369 Pearce, S. 122
Oeberst, Andriens 626 Pearson, Paul 61, 612
Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie 117, 412 Pearson, Terry R. 61, 612
Olinger, L. Joan 482, 504 Pennebaker, James W. 499
Olsen, Lance 250, 430 Pepicello, William J. 105, 417
Olson, Clark D. 430, 432 Perez, Cristino 51–52, 59
Olson, James M. 508 Perkins, David 621–623
Olson, Kathryn M. 430, 432 Perry, Stephen D. 549, 554–555
Olson, Kirby 317 Peterson, Christopher 19, 46–47, 60
Olson, S. Douglas 102 Peterson, L. 417, 419
Oring, Elliott 4, 25, 159, 161, 170, Peters, Tom 458, 460
174, 178, 184, 186, 188, 191–192, Petrenko, Maxim S. 7
194–197, 199, 202, 204, 300, 308, Pexman, Penny M. 411
311, 344, 361, 363, 367, 380–381, Pickering, Michael 371, 373, 383–385,
383–384, 387, 389 388, 430
Oshima, Kimie 372 Pickering, W. S. 178
Ott, Christiane 74, 319 Pien, Diana 25, 49, 312, 610, 627–628
Overholser, James C. 505 Pieper, Gail W. 430
Owusu-Bempah, Kwame 384 Pinsker, Sanford 254, 256
Owren, Michael J. 24, 79 Pisek, Gerhard 570
Oxford, G. S. 117 Pizzini, Franca 365
Ozawa, Fukujiro 126 Plato 29, 103, 213–215, 235–236, 261,
Özkök, Bora 187 298, 306, 310, 313, 356, 363, 399,
401, 548
Page, Tim 255 Platt, Tracey 54
Pain, Helen 493 Pollard, Arthur 254
Palmer, Jerry 112–113, 299, 363, 367, Pollio, Howard R. 44, 460
370, 383–384 Polounine, Slava 561
Panksepp, Jaak 75, 78 Popovič, Anton 571, 577
Panoutsopoulou, Theodora 311 Porcu, Leide 120
Pantic, Maja 337 Porteous, Janice 104
Paolillo, John C. 609, 612, 623, 628, Porterfield, Albert L. 499, 501, 505
631 Porter, James 416
Paolinelli, Mario 589 Posen, I. Sheldon 188
Park, Nansook 47 Poveda, Daniel 128
Partington, Alan 116, 122, 125 Powell, Chris 59, 75, 365–367, 369,
Partnow, Elaine 545 379
Paton, George 361, 367, 369, 374, 379 Powell, Falvey C. 311, 485, 501
Patton, David 484 Powelson, John A. 53
Paulos, John Allen 103, 555 Praeger, Charles 250
Pratt, Alan R. 254, 419 Redlich, Frederick C. 59, 609
Preuschoft, Signe 75 Reeves, C. 415, 417
Priego Valverde, Béatrice 117 Reuters News Service 561
Priest, Robert F. 62, 77 Rhodes, Gillian 28, 621–623
Propp, Vladimir 107, 113, 541 Richler, Mordecai 251
Provine, Robert R. 117, 120–121, 260, Riemann, Rainer 76
366, 385 Rim, Yalom 504
Proyer, René T. 47, 53–54, 62, 74 Ring, Erp 618, 623
Pughe, Thomas. 255 Risden, E. L. 316
Puhlik-Doris, Patricia 38, 505, 508, Rishel, Mary Ann 416
511 Rissland, Birgit 63
Pulman, Stephen 125, 340 Ritchie, David 409, 433
Purdie, Susan 121 Ritchie, Graeme 106, 124, 337–338,
Purdy, Jedediah 254, 413, 418 340, 408–409, 433
Pym, Anthony 578 Ritchie, Joy 408
Roberts, Paul 239–240, 423, 426–428
Quintilian 102, 215, 402, 404–405, Robinson, Dawn 365, 367, 374–375
408 Robinson, Vera 453
Rodden, Frank A. 22, 38, 53
Rackl, Lorilyn 479 Roeckelein, Jon E. 20
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 185–186, 364 Rogerson-Revell, Pamela 117
Radday, Yehuda 311 Romero, Eric J. 61
Rader, C. 309 Ronald, Kate 408
Rahman, Jacquelyn 120 Roodenburg, Herman 102–103, 550
Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. 79, 625 Rose, Mike 419
Ramani, S. 311 Rosenberg, Erika L. 22–23, 501
Ramsay, Edward Bannerman 161 Rosen, Leonard J. 423
Rapp, Albert 307, 313 Rosenheim, Eliyahu 319
Rapp, Alexander M. 22, 38 Rosier, Laurence 131
Raskin, Victor 1, 5–7, 11–12, 25, 32, Ross, Alison 121, 417, 425–426
50, 52, 103, 107–109, 115, 121, Ross, Bob 462
123, 127, 170, 178, 250, 303, 305, Ross, Charles 316
308, 310–311, 314, 317–318, Rosso, Paolo 125
336–338, 342, 344–345, 347–349, Rosten, Leo 257
351, 353–355, 363, 372, 425, 427, Rothbart, Mary K. 25, 33, 49, 265,
524, 534–536, 539, 581, 596, 602, 312, 610, 627–628
612, 626 Rotton, James 23, 494, 497
Rath, Sigrid 20, 22, 51–52, 317 Rourke, Constance 257
Raudenbush, Stephen W. 505 Rouzie, Albert 421–422
Raulin, Jules M. 18 Rowland, Robert C. 431
Raz, Tal 494 Royot, Daniel 243, 260, 268
Read, Raymond L. 310 Rubien, Janet 44, 612
Redfern, Walter 252 Rubin, Louis D., Jr. 250, 284, 300
Ruch, Willibald 3, 6, 18, 20–24, 26, Schulz, Max F. 254, 289
28–29, 33–34, 36–38, 44, 46–56, Schutz, Charles E. 311
58–60, 62–66, 70, 73–76, 109, Schwartz, Carol B. 621–623
178, 284, 310–311, 315, 317, Schwartz, Shalom H. 73
319, 336–337, 363, 385, 469, 482, Schwarzwald, Joseph 494
484–488, 490, 495, 499, 502, 540, Schwitalla, Johannes 120
598–599, 602, 610, 619–620, 627 Schwoebel, J. 122
Ruiz Moneva, Angeles 130 Scogin, Forrest R. 485
Rusch, Sandra 71 Scott, James 259, 369
Russell, David 167, 251, 287, 416 Scott, John R. 188
Rust, John 75, 507 Scott, Nina M. 316
Ruszkiewicz, John J. 417 Sears, Richard N. 48
Rutter, Jason 120, 284 Seaver, Paul W., Jr. 258
Ryan, Cynthia A. 311 Sechrest, Lee 44
Ryan, T. A. 621–623 Secor, Marie 424
Ryff, Carol D. 502 Seitel, Peter 203
Sacks, Harvey 200 Seligman, Martin E. P. 19, 46–47, 60
Safer, Elaine B. 243, 245, 255, 268 Selzer, Jack 424
Safranek, Roma 485 Semino, Elena 121
Salameh, Waleed A. 53, 309, 311, 456 Shalit, Gene 251
Samson, Andrea C. 5, 21, 49, 612, 615, Shats, Mark 494
620, 623–624, 630 Shelley, Cameron 123–124
Sanborn, Kate 409–410 Shepherd, Jean 255
Sapir, Edward 586 Sheppard, Alice 612, 620, 622–623
Sarmany-Schuller, Ivan 501 Sherman, Lawrence W. 311
Saroglou, Vassilis 40, 43, 61–62 Sher, Phyllis K. 78
Sassenrath, Simone 37, 63–64, 70 Sherwood, Steve 418
Savin, William 306, 309–311, 316 Sherzer, Joel 192
Sayre, Joan 365 Shibles, Warren 299
Scariot, Christel 40, 61 Shiffman, Limor 370, 381
Schaaf, Barbara 256 Shinohara, Kazuko 106
Schank, Roger C. 107 Shloss, Carol 255
Schaub, Thomas H. 255 Shultz, Thomas R. 25, 312, 611, 628
Scheff, Thomas 367, 385–386 Shuttleworth, J. M. 254
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 117 Sifianou, Maria 116–117
Schill, Thomas 485 Sigal, Marcia 311
Schirmer, Otto 18 Simmons, John 540
Schmidt-Hidding, Wolfgang 43, 46, 71 Simon, Jolen M. 501
Schmidt, Stephen R. 612 Simpson, Paul 121
Schmitz, J. R. 127 Siporin, Steve 187
Schmitz, Neil 250 Sirc, Geoffrey 420
Scholl, Peter A. 255 Sjöbergh, Jonas 125
Schopenhauer, Arthur 226, 308, 310 Skowron, Justyna 131
Skrobocki, Eugeninez 159 Stone, Laurie 300

Slade, Diana 117 Stopsky, Fred 465
Sloane, David E. E. 243, 262–264, Strapparava, Carlo 124, 336, 339–340
269, 299–300 Strebeigh, F. 417, 419
Smith, Alden Clarke 415, 417, 430 Streeck, Juergen 120
Smith, Jane E. 507 Suh, E. M. 73
Smith, K. C. P. 32 Sully, James 452
Smith, Mary R. 86 Suls, Jerry M. 25–27, 29, 31, 49, 103,
Smith, Seba 286, 287 228, 313, 315, 610–611, 626–
Smith-Lovin, Lynn 365, 367, 374–375 628
Smoski, Moria J. 24 Sutcliffe, Rebecca 408
Snell-Hornby, Mary 578 Sutherland, Christine Mason 408
Snieder, Harold 75 Svebak, Sven 32, 45, 317, 485, 499–
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen 254 500
Sohler, Theodore P. 59, 609 Swearingen, C. Jan 401, 405–406,
Sommer, Karin 37, 62 431–432
Sonnichsen, C. L. 252 Sykes, A. J. M. 186, 365
Sontag, Susan 266 Szameitat, Diana P. 24
Spector, Tim D. 75 Szende, Thomas 127
Speier, Hans 368–371
Spencer, Gary 311 Takahashi, Yumiko 316
Spencer, Herbert 17, 222–223, 362 Takizawa, Osamu 124
Sperber, Dan 115, 122, 129, 409 Tallman, Richard S. 187, 204
Spinath, Frank M. 76 Tan, Josephine 450, 453, 468–469,
Spradley, James 377 490, 507
Sroufe, L. Alan 33, 78 Tannen, Deborah 118, 125
Staley, Rosemary E. 27 Tanner, Stephen L. 316
Stanton, Annette L. 482 Tan, Stanley A. 450, 453, 468–469,
Stecconi, Ubaldo 578 490, 507
Steffens, Dean 424 Tavarelli, Paola 188
Steger, Michael F. 76 Taylor, Dean 124, 340
Stein, Mary Beth 430 Taylor, Frederick 457
Steiner, George 575, 601 Taylor, Shelley E. 482
Stephenson, Richard 365 Tecucianu, Frederique 319
Stevens, Markus F. 63, 474 Tedlock, Dennis 203
Stewart, Donald 432–433 Tepper, Inbal 494
Stocking, Holly 372 Teshimovsky-Arditi, Mina 319
Stock, Oliviero 124, 336, 339, 354 Theibaux, Marcelle 408
Stoft, P. E. 309 Thein, Melinda Taylor 62, 77
Stokker, Kathleen 369–370 Thompson, Richard 63
Stoller, Paul 189 Thompson, Stith 192
Stolz, Heidi 71 Thompson, Teresa L. 611
Stone, Arthur A. 482, 506 Thorelli, Irene M. 33
Thorson, James A. 59, 75, 311, 485, Van Giffen, Katherine 310
501, 503 van Hoof, Jan A. R. A. M. 77
Tijus, Charles-Albert 124 van de Vijver, Fons 72
Tilton, John W. 254 Vandaele, Jeroen 113, 127, 570, 599
Tinholt, Hans Wim 125, 340 Varma, V. S. R. D. 311
Titze, Michael 53–54, 74 Vasey, George 489
Todt, Dietmar 119, 121 Veale, Tony 129
Tollefson, Donald L. 59 Velker, Barbara 488, 495
Toombs, Sarah Eleanor 256 Verdon, Jean 102
Totten, Mary C. 493 Vermeer, Hans 577
Toury, Gideon 577–578 Vettin, Julia 119, 121
Tower, C. 415, 418 Viana, Amadeu 117
Trachtenberg, Stanley 256, 299 Vickers, Scott B. 259
Tragesser, Sarah 106 Viikberg, Jűri 159
Trédé, Monique 102 Viktoroff, David 303–305
Trembath, David L. 507 Vitanza, Victor 415, 421
Trevor, William 577 Vives, Juan Luis 258, 408
Triezenberg, Katrina E. 4–5, 7, 12, Volpe, Michael 402
129, 355, 537
Trouvain, Jürgen 116, 121 Wagg, Stephen 371, 379
Tsakona, Villy 110, 117, 623, 628, Wagner, Jane 292
631 Waldoks, Moshe 174, 257
Tsur, Reuven 319 Waldorf, V. Ann 507
Tucker, Joan S. 256 Walford, Geoffrey 178
Tulman, Lorraine 612 Walker, Nancy A. 259, 263, 283, 299,
Tümkaya, Songül 40, 61 301, 311, 410–411, 414
Turek, Joy 47, 59 Wallace, Ronald 254, 261
Turner, W. Craig 299 Walle, Alf H. 199, 374
Tversky, B. 621–623 Waltz, William 493
Tyler, Kathryn 286, 296 Walzer, Arthur 409
Wanzer, M. B. 554
Uberoi, J. Singh 165 Wanzer, Melissa Bekelja 554
Uekermann, Jennifer 27 Ward, John 414–415
Ulea, V. 266 Ward, Stephen 370
Ulrych, Margherita 601 Ware, Aaron P. 35, 40, 42–43, 45,
Unger, Lynette S. 311 61–62
Utsumi, Akira 122–123 Warnick, Barbara 412
Warren, Rosalind 299, 311
Vaid, Jyotsna 78, 104, 126–127 Waters, Everett 33, 78
Vaillant, George E. 486 Waters, Janet C. E. 20
Valdimarsdottir, Heiddis 482 Watkins, Mel 120, 258, 284, 301
van Alphen, Ingrid C. 609 Watson, David 499
Van Auken, Philip M. 310 Watson, Karli K. 612, 623, 630
Weber, Alan 415, 422–423 Winkel, Mark 315

Weber, Marco 76 Winner, E. 122
Weber, Max 380 Winston, Mathew 254, 299, 428
Wechsler, Robert 255 Wisse, Jakob 402–403
Weiner, E. Judith 128 Withalm, Gloria 112
Weinstein, Matt 464 Withers, Carl 252
Weir, Kelly 38 Womack, Deanna F. 431
Weisberg, Robert W. 105 Wonham, Harry 263
Weisenberger, Steven 263 Wood, James 250
Weisenberg, Matisyohu 494 Wooten, Patty 452–454
Weisfeld, Glenn E. 79 Woschek, Bernard P. 614, 619,
Weiss, Elizabeth 300 623–625, 628–629
Weiss, R. L. 509 Wrench, Jason S. 63
Weizenbaum, Joseph 355 Wright, Elizabethada A. 412–413
Wells, H. G. 162 Wright, Thomas 613
Welsch, Roger L. 193 Wu, Ying Choon 126
Wernblad, Annette 255 Wyss, Tobias 64
Wertheimer, Molly Meijer 408
Whitaker, Steve 618 Yacowar, Maurice 255
White, E. B. 243, 530 Yan, Gao 255
White, Katherine S. 243, 530 Yip, Jeremy. A. 63
White, Sabina 311, 496, 503 Yokogawa, Toshihiko 124
Wickberg, Daniel 382, 387, 486 Young, Jason R. 628
Wicker, Frank W. 33 Yurchak, Alexei 159, 168
Wiget, Andrew 258 Yus Ramos, Francisco 115, 130
Wild, Barbara 22, 38, 53, 63, 75, 474,
630 Zajdman, Anat 319
Willard-Holt, Colleen 311 Zajonc, Robert B. 624
Williams, Alan R. 612 Zelvys, V. I. 319
Williams, Dana A. 120, 126 Zerbinos, Eugenia 611
Williams, David 415, 424 Zerkowitz, Judit 121, 131
Williams, Joseph M. 415, 423 Zigler, Edward 44
Willis, Amy C. 33 Zijderveld, Anton 361, 376, 378–379,
Wills, Thomas A. 483, 507 385
Wilson, Christopher P. 28, 33 Zillmann, Dolf 29–31, 307, 372
Wilson, David Sloan 75, 78–79, 104 Zinsser, Judith P. 408, 423
Wilson, Deirdre 104, 115, 122, 129, Ziv, Avner 45, 73, 258, 311, 317, 319,
409 507, 598
Wilson, Glenn D. 75, 78 Zucker, Wolfgang 189
Wilson, James D. 256 Zurawik, David 285
Wilson, Steve 464 Zweyer, Karen 66, 488, 495
Wilson, Thomas 406–407 Zysset, Stefa 49, 623, 630
Subject index
acronym, 196 audience, 2, 5, 41, 115, 117, 118,

adjacency pair, 116, 119 119, 200, 215, 216, 225, 238,
adoxography, 531 246, 264, 282, 285, 288, 289,
aesthetics, 18, 47–52, 65, 188, 203, 291, 292, 303, 304, 305, 307,
204, 601, 611, 624–626 308, 310, 312–315, 363,
aggression, 28, 29, 61, 76, 104, 119, 374, 384, 400, 401–402, 404,
166, 175, 176, 177, 188, 406–407, 411–413, 416, 417,
193–194, 305–306, 307, 313, 419, 424, 425, 428, 430, 431,
363, 368–369, 375, 382–385, 432, 433, 450, 451, 527, 531,
390, 527, 531, 535, 536, 545, 537–539, 553, 559, 561, 590,
562, 609 592, 593, 601
agon, 531 Audience-Based Theory of Verbal
allegory, 404, 535, 536 Humor, 310, 314
ambiguity, 11, 102, 105, 240, 246,
373, 374, 376, 378, 384, 401– backtracking, 11, 617
404, 426, 470, 531, 541, 548, bathos, 531
553 bawdy, 525, 526, 527, 528, 531,
anaphoric, 340, 341 532
quasi, 345–346 Belles-Lettres, 244
American (see also Black) 298–301 Bible, 212, 213, 216, 229, 230–232,
Humor Studies Association, 262, 258, 303, 419, 535, 586, 601
268, 269, 298, 301, 317 Bildungsroman, 247
political cartoons and comics, 246 blending, 103, 128
anachronism, 531 bona-fide communication, 539
anagogy, 535 Borscht Belt, 290
anaphora resolution, 341 braggadocio, 531
antaclasis, 531 Broadway variety show, 290
anthropology, 4, 37, 73, 183, 203, 298, Broca’s area, 126, 630
548 burlesque, 188, 221, 222, 246, 264, 290,
anti-masque, 531 292, 412, 531, 548
antiphrasis, 531
apprenticeship novels, 247 caricature, 258, 263, 264, 613, 615,
archetypal characters, 248, 260, 264, 620, 621
560–562 carnival, 189, 190, 365, 377, 526, 527
Arizona State University, 252, 267, 268, cartoon, 26, 28, 48, 52, 58, 59, 69, 75,
318 169, 222, 224, 263, 285, 388,
aspects 609–640
aesthetics, 624–626 cartoonist, 613
cognitive, 626–631 censorship, 158, 263, 264, 383, 528
662 Subject index
cheerfulness, 24, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 55, comparative

56, 62, 63, 66, 77, 482, 485, 487, -historical approach, 378–382
497, 498 method, 158, 162, 163, 167, 168,
Christianity, 216, 228, 229, 231, 232, 241 172, 174, 175, 177, 178
clown, 188, 189, 261, 449, 451, 452, 453, competence, 7, 44, 114, 115, 116, 119,
454, 527, 531, 532, 533, 548, 335, 355, 356, 410, 418, 483,
561, 562 507, 596
co-reference, 11, 523 composition
cognitive process, 24–28, 342, 344, 632 contact zones in, 419, 429
comedies of manners, 247 humor as critical expression in, 415
comedy humor as disciplinary enculturation
African-American, 120, 284, 413 in, 416
Black, 254, 531 humor as disciplinary negotiation in,
high, 246 1, 6, 184, 188, 301, 316, 317,
history of, 229–230, 247–248, 290, 319, 334, 362, 376, 384, 415,
454, 538, 548 416, 417, 423, 424, 425, 429,
Irish, 247 548, 555
New Comedy, 214, 525 humor in first-year, 416–418,
new wave stand up, 290, 291 419–420, 426, 429
physical, 262, 292 pedagogy of, 415–430
queer, 246 professional and business writing in,
romantic, 292, 533 423, 429, 430
screwball, 293, 300 textbooks and handbooks in, 18,
sick, 28, 41, 43, 48, 52, 179, 193, 195, 251, 400, 426
196, 367, 534 writing tutorials in, 418
situation (sitcom), 283, 388, 530, 570, computer databases, 298
573, 589, 600 conceit, 536, 587
television, 109, 111, 295, 297, 300 concept, 8, 25, 33, 35–37, 40, 43, 46,
Spanish, 247 53, 54, 58, 60, 73, 103, 104,
stand-up, 245, 300, 417, 486, 490 107, 108, 110, 120, 123, 128,
television, 245, 284, 292, 294, 296 183, 211, 223, 226, 232, 246,
comic strip, 281, 284, 285, 288, 289, 258, 260, 266, 282, 283, 308,
300, 472 316, 335, 336, 341, 345, 348,
highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow, 352, 384, 416, 421, 484, 501,
282, 283, 528, 531 543–548, 550–559, 563, 570,
film 577, 578, 580, 581, 582, 588,
newspaper comic, 288 615, 616
performance studies of, 283 connector, 106, 107, 333
comic theater, 292 consumption, 282, 284, 335, 483, 489,
commedia dell’arte, 264 585
communication contrast, 44, 49, 103, 122, 123, 165,
mediated, 125, 387, 422, 557–558 173, 174, 176, 220, 240, 286,
studies, 4, 388, 400, 548 368, 377, 529, 535, 578, 614,
Subject index 663
618, 620, 621, 627 dozens, 120, 187, 236, 290, 291, 297,
conversation analysis, 116, 125, 618 318, 452, 460, 465, 526
coon caricature, 264 drawing style, 610, 614, 615, 620, 622,
coon songs, 264 623, 625, 626, 632
cooperative principle (CP), 108, 115 driving schools, 466
coping, 39, 40, 55, 60, 61, 65, 68, 70, Duchenne display, 21, 496
73, 195, 289, 316, 454, 482, dyadic tradition, 188
485, 487, 502, 503, 504, 505,
506, 509, 510 economy, 103, 104, 224, 309, 460, 463
coping humor scale (CHS), 40, 60, 70, eiron, 531
485, 502 eironeia, 401
CORHUM, 131, 318 embarrassment, 2, 22, 117, 132, 365,
corpus, 117, 119, 120, 123, 125, 132, 383, 385, 386, 596
426, 597 embodied computational agent (ECA),
cross-cultural perspectives, 71–75 336–337
cross-national perspectives, 71–75 emotion, 19, 39, 51, 77, 78, 160, 161,
cultural differences, 123 213, 224, 233, 235, 236, 237,
culture, 4, 35, 37, 72–74, 131, 159, 165, 307, 336, 385, 386, 389, 405,
175, 183, 190–192, 238, 246, 406, 480, 481, 482, 485, 491,
256–259, 262, 263, 266–268, 493–496, 510, 536, 559, 562,
281–294, 296–301, 311, 335, 630
374, 375, 379, 387, 399, 418, enthymeme, 532
431, 432, 459, 463, 473, 538, environment, 75, 76, 77, 192, 418, 453,
547, 550, 552, 562, 572, 573, 459, 462, 469, 473, 532, 547,
575, 576, 579, 580, 583–587, 549, 550–552, 555, 561, 583,
590, 596–602 596, 625
equivalence, 65, 570, 571, 572,
democracy, 169, 171, 172, 176, 178, 574–580, 582, 589, 592, 593,
286 599, 600
derision, 30, 39, 103, 117, 313, 385 ethos, 400, 402, 403, 404, 405, 417, 431
diction, 536, 538, 539 evolution, 6, 77–79, 229, 237, 307, 308,
disambiguation, 11, 105, 106 310, 318, 432, 537
discourse analysis, 115–118, 119, 123, exclusion, 175, 303, 364, 366, 383, 385
131, 412, 424, 618 eye tracking, 632
disjunctor, 106, 107
disparagement, 29, 30, 31, 39, 103, 307, fabliau, 532
310, 313, 372 facetiae, 402, 406, 408, 409
dissoi logoi, 402, 409, 412, 421 and vir bonus, 404
distancing, 195, 504 Facial Action Coding System (FACS),
distribution, 61, 110, 111, 112, 131, 22–24, 337, 481, 488, 495–496,
282, 284, 610, 628 510
doggerel, 261 factor analytic studies, 48, 51, 54–57,
double entendre, 296, 536 486
664 Subject index
familiarity, 101, 119, 261, 282, 538, 423, 424, 426, 431, 532, 533,
539, 626 540, 550, 558, 559, 572, 573,
fantasy, 232, 250, 253, 254, 259, 289, 613
544, 561, 562 God, 189, 212, 213, 217, 230, 231, 247,
farce, 247, 262, 264, 425, 532, 533, 252, 261, 356
548, 592 grotesque, 250, 253, 260, 377, 531,
film 532, 613
comedy, 267, 284, 292, 293, 294,
300 hahacronym, 124, 339
criticism, 266 heritability, 75
flyting, 532 hierarchy, 109, 187, 262, 341, 363, 365,
folklore, 73, 160, 167, 192, 197, 200, 366, 367, 368, 425
249, 252, 281, 286, 297, 299, Horatian satire, 249
300, 379, 560 hospitals, 69, 240, 318, 319, 365, 449,
studies, 4, 183, 184, 203 452, 453, 454
fool, 212, 213, 248, 290, 307, 527 hostility, 61, 103, 104, 166, 174, 175,
vs. jester, 532 177, 188, 193, 194, 212, 219,
wise, 286–287, 295 238, 239, 246, 249, 307, 313,
formal features, 571, 612, 618, 620, 362, 367, 368, 369, 372, 380,
624, 632 383, 384, 455, 462, 471, 488,
formalism, 8, 334 545, 558, 562
frame, 7, 19, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 52, human–computer interface (HCI), 336,
56, 126, 186, 200, 265, 298, 339
306, 374, 375, 409, 421, 433, humor
546, 576, 620 analysis of
functional magnetic resonance imaging automatic, 374, 569, 589, 600
(fMRI), 627, 629, 630, 631, 632, and
627, 629 aggression, 28, 29, 61, 76, 103,
functionalism, 366, 367 104, 119, 166, 175, 176, 177,
188, 193, 194, 305–309, 313,
gelotophobia, 53, 54 363, 368, 369, 375, 382–384,
gender, 30, 66, 120, 132, 187, 259, 263, 390, 527, 531, 535, 536, 545,
310, 349, 361, 375, 377, 379, 562, 609
381, 399, 424, 425, 430, 465, health advocacy, 3, 451–457,
544, 549, 551, 556, 558, 559, 468–471
560, 562, 611, 620 hierarchy, 109, 187, 262, 341,
issues 561–563 363, 365, 366, 367, 368, 425
genre, 108, 112, 119, 157, 166, 185, hostility, 61, 103, 104, 166, 174,
191–192, 247, 249, 250, 252, 175, 177, 188, 193, 194, 212,
254, 261, 262, 264, 266, 267, 219, 238, 239, 246, 249, 307,
282, 283, 288, 290, 291, 292, 313, 362, 367, 368, 369, 372,
296, 300, 301, 380, 381, 387– 380, 383, 384, 455, 462, 471,
388, 400, 411, 416, 417, 420, 488, 545, 558, 562
Subject index 665
non-seriousness, 373, 374, 378, virtue, 46, 47, 77, 214, 215, 217,
382, 383 218, 401, 561, 579
power, 64, 74, 168, 170, 175, 176, as an
193, 217, 220, 238, 252, 288, ability, 43–46
306, 338, 344, 353, 363, 368, aesthetic perception, 47
369, 370, 375, 384, 409, 411, behavior, 17, 23, 27, 32, 35, 36, 37,
412, 413, 415, 418, 420–429, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46, 52, 55–59,
433, 452, 454, 472, 531, 551, 61, 64, 69, 72, 75, 77, 116, 158,
552, 556 186, 200, 204, 229, 283, 292,
psychology, 3, 6, 17, 18, 19, 23, 303, 305, 312, 313, 316, 355,
44, 46, 57, 69, 73, 77, 108, 177, 377, 401, 405, 407, 409, 415,
185, 220, 228, 240, 265, 298, 422, 454, 456, 467, 485, 526,
299, 315–316, 317, 334, 355, 528, 534, 550, 559, 620
449, 450, 452, 454, 456, 460, Black, see comedy, Black
461, 465, 467, 548, 549 children’s, 65, 184, 246, 311
resistance, 188, 189, 196, 361, comparative, 4, 131, 157–163,
367, 368, 369, 370, 377, 166–168, 172, 174–178, 194,
410–417, 456, 469, 583 197, 202, 203, 301, 362, 364,
social structure, 184, 186, 187, 378, 379, 380, 382, 383, 569,
366 609
appreciation, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, competence, 7, 44, 114–116, 119,
33, 44–48, 51, 52, 55, 56, 59, 335, 355, 356, 410, 418, 483,
64–67, 69, 70, 73–78, 124, 203, 507, 596
227, 228, 239, 251, 261, 282, computational, 5, 123–125, 333–354
298, 310, 312, 315, 372, 381, contexts, 196–203
387, 388, 418, 469, 484, 485, conversational, 375, 384, 387
487, 507, 546, 563, 610, 612, creation of, 36, 52, 56, 335
619, 620, 622, 625, 629, death, 114, 170, 174, 179, 189, 196,
632 217, 230, 249, 252, 261, 449,
as 453, 454, 500, 526, 531, 541,
art, 203–204 551, 562
catharsis, 367, 385 dark side of humor, 42, 46, 382, 383
as a development, 65–68, 389, 610
character strength, 19, 35, 46–47, disaster, 196
76 enhancer, 537, 538
coping mechanism, 39, 73, 506 ethics of, 237, 238, 239, 268
cultural production, 400, 414, event, 9, 11, 20, 22, 36, 113, 119,
430–433 195, 196, 200, 201, 304, 305,
rhetorical device, 400–408, 412, 315, 351, 363, 411, 432, 474,
425, 426, 432, 587, 592 534, 592
social activity, 303–306, 416 failed, 405
temperament, 35, 36, 37, 38, 44, feminist vs. feminine, 413–415
45, 46, 55, 482, 485, 487 gender-based, 263, 558
666 Subject index
humor (contd.) literature, 5, 18, 19, 20, 33, 38, 41,

generation of, 3, 6, 34, 67, 124, 170, 43, 44, 53, 60, 101–120, 123,
223, 333, 335, 336, 337, 339, 126, 184, 191, 192, 211, 221,
340, 347, 348, 352, 353, 386, 226, 232, 243, 244–246, 248,
418 250–268, 281, 283, 284, 288,
automatic 290, 295, 298–300, 316, 368,
Hispanic, 203, 258 408, 417, 451, 454, 457, 461,
history of, 230, 538, 548 473, 480, 488, 490, 523–533,
in 536, 537, 539, 540, 541, 548,
advertising, 294, 297, 388, 474, 549, 555, 556, 557, 613
596, 597, 615 medical benefits of, 452
church, 190, 213, 216, 407, 526, nonsense, 27, 49, 64, 66, 67, 74, 78,
527, 528 485, 620, 627
education, 464–466, 472–473 performance, 44, 65, 115, 335
song, 190, 213, 423, 465, 471, political, 299, 301, 368, 369, 370,
474, 531, 571 371, 373, 410, 412, 430–433,
the workplace, 118, 125, 195, 554
310, 318, 369, 429, 450, 451, production, 43, 44, 70, 76, 365, 496
457–464, 466, 467, 470–472 Quotient Test, 259
instruments 57–65 referential, 345, 346
3 Witz-Dimensionen (3WD), 64, research, 310–311
76, 599 multidisciplinary, 2, 7, 316, 609
Humor Styles Questionnaire first-timers in, 1, 2
(HSQ), 39, 40, 55–56, 61, 487, part-timers in, 3
502, 506, 508–511 response, 17, 20–23, 29, 32, 40, 48,
State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory 51, 54, 59, 60, 72, 78, 116, 124,
(STCI), 34, 62, 63–64, 70, 74, 126, 176, 195, 211, 227, 230,
482, 487, 510 232, 237, 263, 265, 297, 315,
Humor Behavior Q-Sort Deck 364, 374, 385, 387, 403, 406,
(HBQD), 40, 42, 55–56, 61–62, 418, 422, 425, 484, 485, 534,
74 552, 556, 563, 595, 599, 612,
international conference on, 73, 258, 622, 626, 632
316- 319, 602 ritual, 173, 185, 188–191, 365, 379,
Internet, 2, 12, 161, 257, 297, 387, 386, 585
450, 479, 506, 511, 558 scholarship, 116, 131, 178, 263, 264,
Jewish, 174–177, 191, 192, 198, 298, 300, 316, 362–364, 385,
199, 202, 203, 217, 255, 257, 387, 388, 389, 400, 403, 410,
258, 263, 269, 285, 290, 369, 415, 422, 429, 430, 431, 563
372, 381, 384, 573, 574 sense of, 3, 32, 35–47, 52, 55, 56,
literary, 4, 5, 243, 244, 245, 246, 58–71, 74–78, 159, 228, 229,
249, 250, 251, 259, 260, 266, 230, 231, 232, 259, 307, 316,
267, 301, 409, 523, 524, 529, 317, 336, 379, 381, 382, 409,
534, 537 410, 459, 462, 464, 467, 469,
Subject index 667
473, 479, 481–488, 492, 493, 110, 122, 125, 126, 128, 333,
496–510, 544–547, 550, 552, 334, 339, 363, 377, 611, 612,
559, 562, 563 617, 618, 621, 624, 625, 626,
sick, 48, 193, 196, 367 627, 628, 629, 630, 632
social functions of, 367, 389 release, 103, 104, 211, 221, 222,
styles, 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 53, 55, 223, 224, 233, 264, 304, 309,
61, 62, 73, 74, 379, 381, 483, 310, 313–314, 362, 415, 450,
486, 487, 502, 505, 506, 508, 453, 468
509, 510, 511 relief, 221–225, 233, 235,
support, 117, 119, 374 313–314, 362, 368, 378
taboo, 42, 120, 188, 293, 374, 379 script-based semantic theory
talk show, 283, 296, 297 (SSTH), 7, 25, 107–109,
television, 169, 195, 196, 245, 246, 114–115, 126–128, 310, 314,
257, 266, 281, 283, 284, 285, 338, 339, 341, 342, 343, 347,
290, 292, 293, 294, 296, 299, 353, 537, 541
300, 387, 486, 524, 530, 556, verbal humor, 314
559, 573, 589, 596 superiority, 24, 29, 30, 31, 39, 103,
therapeutic, 306, 309, 311, 319, 449, 211, 212, 214, 215, 220, 221,
452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 479, 225, 228, 229, 233, 234, 246,
481, 482, 483, 503 249, 305, 307, 310, 313, 362,
theory of 363, 368, 381, 383, 384, 389,
audience-based theory of verbal 390, 399, 531
humor, 310, 314–15 verbal, 5, 7, 36, 45, 50, 55, 63,
conflict, 25, 27, 73, 166, 174, 177, 108, 120, 234, 294, 310, 338,
185, 186, 240, 268, 288, 296, 342, 347, 399, 417, 425, 534,
361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 367, 536, 609, 610, 611, 612, 615,
368–373, 377, 378, 380, 383, 617–618, 624, 626, 631, 633
390, 421, 422, 423, 461, 463, verbally expressed (VEH), 569–608
487, 621 visual, 5, 204, 260, 419, 429, 431,
disparagement, 29, 30, 31, 39, 559, 570, 589, 590, 593, 594,
103, 307, 310, 313, 372 596, 600, 601, 609–632
functionalist, 165, 166, 362, HUMOR: International Journal of
364–368, 374, 377, 383 Humor Research, 2, 262, 267,
general theory of verbal humor 268, 298, 316
(GTVH), 7, 50, 104, 108–117, humorlessness, 34, 38, 52–54, 56, 65,
121, 124–131, 310, 314, 338, 215, 218
341, 342, 425, 536, 537, 541, humorology, 6, 316–319
612, 626, 628 humorous
incongruity, 104, 211, 215, 219, characters, 35, 245, 248
221, 225–229, 231, 233–236, genres, 119, 370, 381, 387, 417
240, 311–313, 363, 389, 463 mode, 377, 385
phenomenology, 373, 424, 609 plot, 112
processing, 20, 27, 31, 32, 35, poetry, 261
668 Subject index
humorous (contd.) 412, 425, 433

triple, 532 isotopy, 101, 104, 106
humours, 248 disjunction model (IDM), 107
hyperbole, 532
jab lines, 110, 112, 114
inclusion, 303, 385 Japanese kyògen, 264
incongruity, 17, 20, 24–28, 31, 33, JAPE, 124, 337, 338, 340, 548
48–51, 53, 64–67, 73, 74, 77, jester, 341, 532, 548
102–108, 121–123, 126, 129, Jewish characters in prime-time televi-
130, 170, 211, 215, 219, 221, sion, 285
223, 225–229, 231, 233–237, joke
240, 246, 260, 308, 310–312, as genre, 108, 112, 119, 157, 166,
315, 344, 345, 362, 363, 389, 185, 191, 192, 247, 249–254,
411, 421, 431, 463, 480, 541, 261, 262, 264, 266–267, 282,
545, 553, 610, 611, 614, 283, 288, 290–292, 296, 300,
617–620, 624–631 301, 380, 381, 387, 388, 400,
incongruity resolution, 27, 31, 48, 49, 411, 416, 417, 420, 423, 424,
50, 51, 64, 66, 67, 73, 74, 77, 426, 431, 532, 533, 540, 550,
129, 130, 246, 620, 626, 627, 558, 559, 572, 573, 613
628, 629, 630, 631 Auschwitz, 193
individual differences, 19, 24, 27, 29, blonde, 194, 195, 202, 380, 381, 562
30, 36, 45, 48, 68, 69, 485, 550, cycles, 185, 192–196, 202, 203, 251,
555 265, 372, 384
intent, 558 dead baby, 193
interdisciplinary scholarship, 264–266 disaster, 11, 179, 195, 196, 367, 387
interlingual translation, 570, 571, 575, elephant, 193, 194, 199, 244, 471,
583, 585, 596, 600 535
International Society for Humor Studies ethnic, 4, 28, 30, 48, 157, 158, 166,
(ISHS), 2, 262, 267, 268, 298, 167, 178, 192, 194, 238, 255,
301, 316–319, 602, 632 263, 264, 268, 284, 294, 295,
intervention programs, 69–71 296, 299, 301, 311, 313, 368,
invariant core, 577, 578, 584, 588 371, 372, 373, 379, 380, 381,
inventio, 400, 406 383, 384, 424, 453, 551, 556,
ironic tone, 123 583
irony, 21, 34, 102, 104, 118, 119, Jewish–American Princess, 202
122–123, 126, 128, 131, lawyer, 246, 289, 381, 462
199, 228, 245, 246, 248, 254, Polish, 131, 162, 165, 172, 193, 194,
255, 259, 318, 376, 400, 401, 195, 199, 202, 238, 384, 404
404–413, 418, 423–433, role of, 190, 373, 375, 378, 400, 480,
531–534, 548, 570, 574, 595, 503, 508, 549, 554
596, 602, 609 quadriplegic, 193
frame-shifting in, 409, 433 script, 557, 562
relevant inappropriateness in, 123, stupidity, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171,
Subject index 669
172, 173, 174, 178, 179, 194, light verse, 261

195, 202, 231, 234, 238, 379, limerick, 532
380, 583, 591 linguistics, 4, 5, 6, 101–105, 120, 131,
teller, 200, 202, 239, 303, 304, 305, 185, 188, 268, 298, 299, 339,
313, 314, 315, 333, 335, 346, 341, 400, 424, 569
363, 384 cognitive, 107, 128–129
under Socialism, 169, 171, 178, 179 computational, 7, 334–337, 354–355
Yekkes, 381 relevance theory in, 115, 121,
joking 129–130
practical, 187, 381, 548, 552 literary
relationships, 68, 184, 185–188, 303, ballad, 244
304, 306, 364, 365 enhancer, 537–539
journalism, 281, 283, 286, 288, 295 fairytale, 107, 541
literary terms, 530–534
kairos, 404, 408, 416, 417 low comedy, 246
knowledge resource
language (LA), 108, 114, 294, 425, social order, 366, 166, 187, 189, 364,
536 365, 367, 372, 377, 417
logical mechanism (LM), 50, maintenance of social order, 366
108–111, 114, 129, 314, 341–
347, 352, 425, 536, 537, 539, malaprop, 532
540, 630, 631 malice, 214, 235, 239, 305, 306, 307,
narrative strategy (NS), 108, 50, 108, 313
109, 114, 314, 425, 426, 427, mass media, 170, 281, 292, 554, 555,
536, 539 559
script opposition (SO), 50, 108, 110, meaning, 2, 7, 8, 9–11, 36, 46, 47, 53,
114, 123, 314, 341, 342, 345, 60, 106, 114, 122, 171, 189,
346, 352, 353, 425, 535, 536, 195, 196, 221, 245, 246, 248,
537, 538, 539, 540, 541 252, 262, 287, 290, 292, 335,
situation (SI), 108, 114, 425, 536 340, 344–349, 355, 356, 374,
target (TA), 108, 114, 425, 536 376, 382–384, 387, 388, 389,
390, 401, 406, 419, 433, 486,
lampoon, 251, 293, 297, 532 525, 530–536, 553, 570, 577,
language 578, 580, 587, 593, 601, 602,
rules of, 11 611, 614, 619
laugh tracks, 559 meaning making, 367
laughable, 23, 119, 120, 131, 226, 304 text-meaning representation (TMR),
laughter, 23–24, 120–121, 385–386, 9
488–500 media, 66, 68, 125, 170, 178, 195, 196,
grades of, 260 238, 257, 281, 284, 292, 297,
types of, 488 362, 371, 387, 388, 479, 486,
lexicon, 8, 33, 338, 348, 352 489, 490, 509, 524, 534, 552,
liberation, 103, 104, 367 554, 555, 559, 561, 589
670 Subject index
Menippean satire, 532 pain tolerance, 316, 479, 482, 493, 494,
message type, 557 495, 496, 509
metaphor, 190, 404, 530, 536, 557, 558, paraprosdokian, 533
578, 615 parody, 250, 254, 255, 262, 263, 388,
methodology, 5, 6, 18, 60, 106, 184, 400, 408, 410, 411, 412, 413,
354, 376, 400, 491 415, 418–420, 423, 424, 427,
Middle Comedy, 525 428, 531, 533, 539, 548, 570,
mime, 533 572, 628
minstrel shows, 290 as social critique, 383, 416–418,
mock, 21, 222, 265, 286, 381, 401, 424, 423, 433
433, 546, 571, 613 pathologies of humor and laughter,
epic, 269, 533 52–54
heroic, 533 performance, 35, 43, 44, 47, 54, 56, 59,
modality, 10, 575 64, 65, 115, 116, 187, 200, 203,
mode adoption, 119 262, 281–285, 290, 291, 292,
mood, 31–38, 43, 52, 55, 56, 60, 61, 62, 294, 334, 335, 340, 341, 355,
63, 64, 70, 188, 304, 454, 469, 381, 420, 485, 504, 531, 561
491, 495, 501–506, 544, 550, personality, 3, 17, 18, 35, 36, 40, 46,
551, 563 47, 48, 54, 57, 59, 61, 62, 63,
morale-boosting, 4, 369, 370 65, 66, 72, 73, 75, 76, 202, 484,
motivational processes, 21, 28–31, 70, 527, 532, 550, 560, 599, 612,
450, 462, 464, 495 615, 620
phenomenology, 373, 376–378, 424,
narrative functions, 107 609
narratology, 106 philosophy, 1, 4, 5, 17, 18, 121, 176,
Native American, 251, 259 213, 215, 227, 229, 232, 237,
literature, 258 240, 263, 362, 400, 407, 450,
trickster tales, 247 458, 463, 548, 549
natural disambiguation mechanism, philosophy of science, 5
11 phonetic distance, 105, 106
natural-language processing (NLP), picaresque novels, 253
333–336, 339, 340, 347–354, play
355, 356 serio-ludic, 422
neural correlates, 612 playfulness, 19, 32, 33, 36, 37, 55, 56,
neurolinguistics, 125–126, 132 63, 64, 68, 70, 71, 218, 232,
non-seriousness, 373, 374, 378, 382, 241, 383, 386, 464, 471, 472,
383 473
pleasure, 41, 42, 43, 48, 214, 218, 221,
Old Comedy, 214, 525, 531 224, 225, 226, 228, 234, 236,
ontological semantics, 7–12, 336, 347– 238, 303, 304, 309, 401, 421,
350, 353, 354 601
ontology, 8, 347, 348, 351, 356 po-faced reaction, 119
oxymoron, 282, 536 poetics, 102, 131, 214, 401, 525
Subject index 671
politeness, 118, 130, 532 539, 557, 563, 614, 615, 620,
popular 621, 623, 624, 627, 628
culture, 4, 190, 191, 246, 257, 258, Purdue University, 318
262, 263, 266, 281–298
theater, 287, 290, 294 radio, 171, 290, 292, 294, 297, 383
power, 166, 168, 170, 175, 176, 188, rationality, 174, 195, 213, 228, 229,
220, 238, 252, 288, 363, 368– 236, 237, 239, 380
370, 375, 384, 409, 411–422, reception, 284, 285, 388, 552
426, 428, 429, 433, 454, 472, recipient/audience, 2, 5, 26, 29, 31,
525, 551, 552, 556, 558 41, 48, 49, 52, 115–119, 200,
black power, 193 215–216, 225, 238, 246, 264,
power differences/divisions, 370, 282, 285, 288–292, 303–315,
375 363, 374, 384, 400–407, 411–
power distance, 74 419, 424, 425, 428, 430–433,
power relations theory, 168 450, 451, 527, 531, 537–539,
therapeutic power, 306, 311 549–554, 559, 561, 573, 575,
pragmatics, 115, 116, 118, 120, 122, 581, 583, 584, 590, 592, 593,
129, 417 600, 601
principle of least disruption, 118 relief, 29, 33, 189, 247, 309–310, 313,
production, 43, 44, 70, 76, 78, 117, 314, 366–367, 369, 385, 452
174, 176, 200–201, 284, 304, repartee, 41, 45, 529, 533
337, 365, 399, 400, 402, 414, repertoire, 116, 201, 372
430–433, 495, 496 repetition, and variation, 105, 245, 315,
pronoun, 340 539, 570, 596
prototypicality, 128 research, ethnographic, 285
psychology, 3, 6, 17, 18, 19, 23, 44, 46, resolution, 25–27, 31, 48–51, 64, 66,
57, 69, 73, 77, 108, 177, 185, 67, 73–74, 78, 103, 106, 108,
220, 228, 240, 265, 298, 299, 121, 126, 129, 130, 228, 233,
317, 334, 355, 449, 450, 452, 234, 246, 294, 295, 312, 345,
454, 456, 460, 461, 465, 467, 541, 610, 618, 620, 626–631
548, 549 anaphora resolution, 341
pun, 105–106, 335, 338, 339, 341–347, Restoration comedy, 533
352, 356, 385, 531, 533, 536, rhetoric, 199, 215, 298, 399–433, 463,
571, 572, 587–589, 591, 548, 554
592–595, 628 ribaldry, 533
cratylistic syllogism, 344–345 riddle, 108, 193, 337, 557, 575, 576,
imperfect, 342–344 580
perfect, 342–343 rogues, and picaros, 248, 253
pseudopunning, 345–346
taxonomy, 106 sacred, 188, 230, 232, 547, 574, 575
visual, 615–617 salience, 27, 29, 49, 128, 433
punch line, 28, 49, 51, 109, 110, 111, sarcasm, 21, 34, 39, 216, 249, 254, 418,
112, 130, 222, 308, 529, 537, 426, 427, 428, 486, 533, 548, 609
672 Subject index
satire, 21, 48, 169, 232, 247, 250, 252, signifying, 120, 258
253, 254, 263, 264, 288, 290, smart allusions, 245
291, 293, 370–371, 400, 408, smile, 17, 21, 22, 24, 32, 41, 46, 55, 218,
413, 415, 418, 431, 486, 525– 247, 305, 315, 366, 459, 461,
529, 532, 533, 548, 570, 572, 613 481, 485, 487, 545
Juvenalian, 249 smiling, 21–23, 24, 38, 51, 75, 77, 78,
social criticism in, 410, 417, 539 79, 184, 240, 249, 254, 315, 385,
stereotypes in, 66, 72, 239, 245, 348, 488, 495, 545
410, 538, 539, 561, 562, 591, 611 social
scalability, 124, 335, 355 cohesion, 366
scatology, 188, 533 control, 188, 364, 365, 383
script, 7, 25, 50, 107–109, 121, 123, sciences, 5, 211, 298, 364, 548
126, 127, 128, 170, 310, 314, sociology, 361–398
338, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, comparative research in, 157, 162,
350–353, 379, 380, 410, 425, 379
531, 534–541, 557, 562, 589, conversation analysis in, 116, 125,
596, 597, 601, 611 618
script opposition, 50, 108, 123, 314, ethnography of, 370
341, 342, 346, 352, 353, 425, experiment in, 29, 30, 418, 459, 587,
535–541 621, 629
good/bad, 11, 351 historical analysis in 306–310
normal/abnormal, 11, 114 interview in, 53, 171, 201, 473
real/unreal, 11, 25 methodology of, 5, 6, 18, 60, 106,
sense of humor, 3, 32, 35–47, 52, 55–71, 184, 354, 376, 400, 491
74–78, 159, 228, 229, 230, 231, survey in, 35, 41, 101, 123, 128, 130,
232, 259, 307, 316, 317, 336, 379, 184, 196, 284, 285, 286, 296,
381, 382, 409, 410, 459, 462, 464, 300, 459, 461, 499, 561
467, 469, 473, 479, 481–488, sophistication, 13, 178, 246, 340, 381,
492, 493, 496–510, 544–547, 389, 404, 410–413, 416, 418,
550, 552, 559, 562, 563 422
measurement, 3, 23, 35, 40, 52, 57, levels of, 12, 249
58, 60, 62, 480, 484, 485, 487, source
577 language (SL), 570, 571, 572, 575,
humor scale (SHS), 63, 36, 40, 47, 576, 578, 584, 592, 594
59–64, 68, 70, 485, 501, 502, text (ST), 169, 216, 217, 226, 256,
508 318, 452, 571, 572, 573, 574,
sex, 7, 12, 25, 29, 49, 50, 64, 76, 170, 575, 576, 577, 578, 579, 581,
178, 179, 186, 195, 201, 202, 582, 583, 584, 588, 593, 601,
203, 222, 282, 287, 293, 351, 602
363, 411, 413, 496, 531, 533, spoonerism, 534
535, 551, 561 squib, 534
signifier, 105, 194, 195 stack, 111
and signified, 260, 345 statistics, 354
Subject index 673
stereotype, 71, 203, 238, 258, 259, 410, multimedia translation, 589–598
427, 538 triumph, 103, 225, 370, 531
strand, 111, 112, 114 trope, 534
stress, 36, 39, 40, 52, 55, 60, 61, 63,
64, 70, 74, 247, 316, 449–454, university presses, 263
458–459, 462–470, 482–483, untranslatability, 571, 580, 582, 588
487, 488, 490, 492, 500,
503–511, 558, 563 validity, 39, 45, 51, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61,
stylistics, 129, 400, 419 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 166, 170, 511
sublimation, 103 vaudeville, 290, 291, 292, 294
superiority, see power verbal
symbol, 193, 194, 421, 616, 628 abuse, 307
symbolic interactionism, 373–376, 390 verbal dueling, 187, 191
taboo, 42, 120, 188, 293, 374, 379 Western Humor and Irony Movement
target (WHIM), 318
language (TL), 570, 571, 573, 575, wit, 28, 42–46, 54, 59, 71, 75, 76, 78,
576, 579, 582, 592, 594, 599, 601 214, 218, 220–221, 224, 227,
text (TT), 571, 572, 574, 575, 576, 232, 245, 246, 249, 253, 254,
577, 578, 579, 581, 582, 583, 267, 306, 308, 366, 370, 371,
584, 589, 601 400–410, 433, 486, 527, 528,
teasing, 39, 54, 185, 291, 307, 465, 473, 534, 543, 547, 548, 582, 587, 609
486, 508, 550, 552 Greek views on, 53, 75, 102, 117,
tension management, 367 212, 213, 215, 216, 231, 247,
text 248, 313, 401, 523–527, 530,
world representation, 110 531, 533, 613
-meaning representation (TMR), 9, Renaissance views on, 102, 103, 405,
11, 348 406, 408, 412, 420, 525, 526, 536
textual studies, 284 Roman views on, 102, 215, 216, 247,
theory of mind, 612, 624, 631 249, 313, 402, 526, 527, 533,
Tom Swifties, 124 575, 600, 613
tragedy, 18, 102, 195, 196, 227, 240, women
261, 404, 525, 527, 546, 547, humor
562, 572 and morality arguments, 413
traits, 19, 32, 35–41, 49, 56, 58, 59, 62, for mixed audiences, 410
66, 72, 73, 76, 77, 231, 255, 336, humorists, 301, 408–415
340, 484, 485, 560, 563, 620 WordNet, 12, 339, 356
transgression, 382–385 wordplay, 160, 249, 333, 336, 345, 346,
translatability, 126–127, 570, 580–582, 379, 418, 571, 577, 591, 595
589, 599 Workshop Library World Humor
translation studies, 569, 574, 599 (WLWH), 317, 318
equivalence, 574–580
sociocultural issues, 582–587 young-adult novel, 247

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The Primer of Humor

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The primer of humor research / edited by Victor Raskin.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Theory of humor and practice of humor research: Editor’s notes

Psychology of humor ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 17

A primer for the linguistics of humor������������������������������������������������������� 101

Undertaking the comparative study of humor ����������������������������������������� 157

Humor in anthropology and folklore ������������������������������������������������������� 183

Philosophy and religion ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 211

Literature and humor ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 243

Humor and popular culture ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 281

Historical views of humor ����������������������������������������������������������������������� 303

Computational humor: Beyond the pun? ������������������������������������������������� 333

The sociology of humor ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 361

Beyond “Wit and Persuasion”: Rhetoric,composition, and humor

Applications of humor: Health, the workplace, and education����������������� 449

Humor and health ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 479

Humor in literature ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 523

Communication and humor����������������������������������������������������������������������� 543

Verbally expressed humor and translation ����������������������������������������������� 569

Cartoons: Drawn jokes? ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 609

Index of authors ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 641

The first-timer pest and the idea of the book

It is somewhat odd to organize an interdisciplinary primer by the disciplines

mentioned under Linguistics, talks about computational humor. Triezenberg,

Things left unsaid or said differently

This author’s main discipline, linguistics, is the most theoretically advanced

t­heory comes complete with a methodology that generates descriptions for

reading a paper in such a discipline, one has to reverse-engineer the underly-

Ontological Semantics of Humor

The author’s original Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor (SSTH –

sentence and, ultimately, of the entire text in a simple LISP-like formalism

(2) inform definition “the event of asserting something to provide

source value Japan

It is probably somewhat premature yet to attempt a full-fledged ontologic-

My interest in sophistication started with humor: I realized that there were

(1) He was a man of letters, He worked at the Post Office. (0)

Sophistication can be also measured in psychological experiments: fewer and

(7) – Difference between the Sparrow and ??: no bail-out → have to

Perhaps sophistication correlates with the number of missing links in infer-

Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin

Fonetika/Phonetics and Non-Phonetics. A 70th Birthday Festschrift

Psychology is about people. Hence the psychology of humor refers to the

it should be consid­ered that excellent research on humor is done outside of

The “this is funny” perception

The core of the experience of humor is the perception that something is

Smiling is the most frequent response to jokes. A review of studies reveals

Numerous theories have been proposed to explain the perceived funniness

be a necessary condi­tion for humor (Deckers 1993). From this perspective,

How are jokes cognitively processed? Perhaps we need to distinguish three

This idea is part of a different two-stage model. Lipps noted already in

humor. Ac­cording to Freud (1905), repressed impulses find relief in a dis-

Mood and other states

Humor may be facilitated or impaired by certain types of mood, frame of

Table 1. The definitional components of the state concepts

Humor as a personality trait

McGhee (1999) presented a multi-faceted concept of the sense of humor.

for being in good humor) was considered to be composed of a prevalence of

ease, to facilitate relationships, and to reduce interpersonal tensions. Accord-

when aggregated, styles of humorous conduct, and the application of the

IV+. Earthy humorous style IV–. Repressed humorous style

the statements they determined the degree of social desirability. Based on

effect. Thus, it is appropriate to conceptualize this aspect of humor as abil-

Psychology of humor �� 17

A primer for the linguistics of humor�� 101

Undertaking the comparative study of humor �� 157

Humor in anthropology and folklore �� 183

Philosophy and religion �� 211

Literature and humor �� 243

Humor and popular culture �� 281

Historical views of humor �� 303

Computational humor: Beyond the pun? �� 333

The sociology of humor �� 361

Applications of humor: Health, the workplace, and education�� 449

Humor and health �� 479

Humor in literature �� 523

Communication and humor�� 543

Verbally expressed humor and translation �� 569

Cartoons: Drawn jokes? �� 609

Index of authors �� 641

theory comes complete with a methodology that generates descriptions for

(2) inform definition “the event of asserting something to provide

(7) – Difference between the Sparrow and ??: no bail-out → have to

it should be considered that excellent research on humor is done outside of

be a necessary condition for humor (Deckers 1993). From this perspective,

humor. According to Freud (1905), repressed impulses find relief in a dis-