Joke

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(Redirected from Jest)
This article is about the form of humour. For other uses, see Joke (disambiguati
on).
"Jest" redirects here. For the horse, see Jest (horse).
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well
-defined narrative structure to make people laugh. It takes the form of a story,
usually with dialogue, and ends in a punch line. It is in the punch line that t
he audience becomes aware that the story contains a second, conflicting meaning.
This can be done using a pun or other word play such as irony, a logical incomp
atibility, nonsense or other means. Linguist Robert Hetzron offers the definitio
n:
A joke is a short humorous piece of oral literature in which the funniness culmi
nates in the final sentence, called the punchline In fact, the main condition is
that the tension should reach its highest level at the very end. No continuation
relieving the tension should be added. As for its being "oral," it is true that
jokes may appear printed, but when further transferred, there is no obligation
to reproduce the text verbatim, as in the case of poetry.[1]
A good joke is succinct, containing no more detail than is needed to set the sce
ne for the punchline at the end. In the case of riddle jokes or one-liners the s
etting is implicitly understood, leaving only the dialogue and punchline to be v
erbalised. The shaggy dog story is in a class of its own as an anti-joke; althou
gh presenting as a joke, it contains a long drawn-out narrative of time, place a
nd character, rambles through many pointless inclusions and finally fails to del
iver a punchline. Jokes are a form of humour, but not all humour is a joke. Some
humorous forms which are not verbal jokes are: involuntary humour, situational
humour, practical jokes, slapstick and anecdotes.
Identified as one of the simple forms of oral literature by the Dutch linguist A
ndr Jolles (de),[2] jokes are passed along anonymously. They are told in both pri
vate and public settings; a single person tells a joke to his friend in the natu
ral flow of conversation, or a set of jokes is told to a group as part of script
ed entertainment. Jokes are also passed along in written form or, more recently,
through the internet.
Stand-up comics, comedians and slapstick work with comic timing, precision and r
hythm in their performance, relying as much on actions as on the verbal punchlin
e to evoke laughter. This distinction has been formulated in the popular saying
"A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny".[note 1]
Contents [hide]
1 Telling jokes
1.1 Framing: "Have you heard the one "
1.2 Telling
1.3 Punchline
1.4 Responding
1.5 Shifting contexts, shifting texts
1.6 Joking relationships
2 Printed jokes and the solitary laugh
3 Electronic joking
4 Joke cycles
4.1 Tragedies and catastrophes
4.2 Ethnic jokes
4.3 Absurdities and gallows humour
5 Classification systems
6 Joke and humour research
6.1 Psychology
6.2 Linguistics
6.3 Folklore and anthropology
6.4 Computational humour
6.5 Physiology of laughter
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
9.1 Footnotes
9.2 Bibliography
10 External links
Telling jokes[edit]
Telling a joke is a cooperative effort;[3][4] it requires that the teller and th
e audience mutually agree in one form or another to understand the narrative whi
ch follows as a joke. In a study of conversation analysis, the sociologist Harve
y Sacks describes in detail the sequential organisation in the telling a single
joke. "This telling is composed, as for stories, of three serially ordered and a
djacently placed types of sequences the preface [framing], the telling, and the
response sequences."[5] Folklorists expand this to include the context of the jo
king. Who is telling what jokes to whom? And why is he telling them when?[6][7]
The context of the joke telling in turn leads into a study of joking relationshi
ps, a term coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups within a culture
who engage in institutionalised banter and joking.
Framing: "Have you heard the one "[edit]
Framing is done with a (frequently formulaic) expression which keys the audience
in to expect a joke. "Have you heard the one ", "Reminds me of a joke I heard ", "S
o, a lawyer and a doctor "; these conversational markers are just a few examples o
f linguistic frames used to start a joke. Regardless of the frame used, it creat
es a social space and clear boundaries around the narrative which follows.[8] Au
dience response to this initial frame can be acknowledgement and anticipation of
the joke to follow. It can also be a dismissal, as in "this is no joking matter
" or "this is no time for jokes".
Within its performance frame, joke-telling is labelled as a culturally marked fo
rm of communication. Both the performer and audience understand it to be set apa
rt from the "real" world. "An elephant walks into a bar "; a native English speake
r automatically understands that this is the start of a joke, and the story that
follows is not meant to be taken at face value (i.e. it is non-bona-fide commun
ication).[9] The framing itself invokes a play mode; if the audience is unable o
r unwilling to move into play, then nothing will seem funny.[10]
Telling[edit]
Following its linguistic framing the joke, in the form of a story, can be told.
It is not required to be verbatim text like other forms of oral literature such
as riddles and proverbs. The teller can and does modify the text of the joke, de
pending both on memory and the present audience. The important characteristic is
that the narrative is succinct, containing only those details which lead direct
ly to an understanding and decoding of the punchline. This requires that it supp
ort the same (or similar) divergent scripts which are to be embodied in the punc
hline.[11]
The narrative always contains a protagonist who becomes the "butt" or target of
the joke. This labelling serves to develop and solidify stereotypes within the c
ulture. It also enables researchers to group and analyse the creation, persisten
ce and interpretation of joke cycles around a certain character. Some people are
naturally better performers than others, however anyone can tell a joke because
the comic trigger is contained in the narrative text and punchline. A joke poor
ly told is still funny unless the punchline gets mangled.
Punchline[edit]
The punchline is intended to make the audience laugh. A linguistic interpretatio
n of this punchline / response is elucidated by Victor Raskin in his Script-base
d Semantic Theory of Humour. Humour is evoked when a trigger, contained in the p
unchline, causes the audience to abruptly shift its understanding of the story f
rom the primary (or more obvious) interpretation to a secondary, opposing interp
retation. "The punchline is the pivot on which the joke text turns as it signals
the shift between the [semantic] scripts necessary to interpret [re-interpret]
the joke text."[12] To produce the humour in the verbal joke, the two interpreta
tions (i.e. scripts) need to be both compatible with the joke text AND opposite
or incompatible with each other.[13] Thomas R. Shultz, a psychologist, independe
ntly expands Raskin's linguistic theory to include "two stages of incongruity: p
erception and resolution." He explains that " incongruity alone is insufficient t
o account for the structure of humour. [ ] Within this framework, humour appreciat
ion is conceptualized as a biphasic sequence involving first the discovery of in
congruity followed by a resolution of the incongruity."[14] Resolution generates
laughter.
This is the point at which the field of neurolinguistics offers some insight int
o the cognitive processing involved in this abrupt laughter at the punchline. St
udies by the cognitive science researchers Coulson and Kutas directly address th
e theory of script switching articulated by Raskin in their work.[15] The articl
e "Getting it: Human event-related brain response to jokes in good and poor comp
rehenders" measures brain activity in response to reading jokes.[16] Additional
studies by others in the field support more generally the theory of two-stage pr
ocessing of humour, as evidenced in the longer processing time they require.[17]
In the related field of neuroscience, it has been shown that the expression of
laughter is caused by two partially independent neuronal pathways: an "involunta
ry" or "emotionally driven" system and a "voluntary" system.[18] This study adds
credence to the common experience when exposed to an off-colour joke; a laugh i
s followed in the next breath by a disclaimer: "Oh, that's bad " Here the multiple
steps in cognition are clearly evident in the stepped response, the perception
being processed just a breath faster than the resolution of the moral / ethical
content in the joke.
Responding[edit]
Expected response to a joke is laughter. The joke teller hopes the audience "get
s it" and is entertained. This leads to the premise that a joke is actually an "
understanding test" between individuals and groups.[19] If the listeners do not
get the joke, they are not understanding the two scripts which are contained in
the narrative as they were intended. Or they do "get it" and don't laugh; it mig
ht be too obscene, too gross or too dumb for the current audience. A woman might
respond differently to a joke told by a male colleague around the water cooler
than she would to the same joke overheard in a women's lavatory. A joke involvin
g toilet humour may be funnier told on the playground at elementary school than
on a college campus. The same joke will elicit different responses in different
settings. The punchline in the joke remains the same, however it is more or less
appropriate depending on the current context.
Shifting contexts, shifting texts[edit]
The context explores the specific social situation in which joking occurs.[20] T
he narrator automatically modifies the text of the joke to be acceptable to diff
erent audiences, while at the same time supporting the same divergent scripts in
the punchline. The vocabulary used in telling the same joke at a university fra
ternity party and to one's grandmother might well vary. In each situation it is
important to identify both the narrator and the audience as well as their relati
onship with each other. This varies to reflect the complexities of a matrix of d
ifferent social factors: age, sex, race, ethnicity, kinship, political views, re
ligion, power relationship, etc. When all the potential combinations of such fac
tors between the narrator and the audience are considered, then a single joke ca
n take on infinite shades of meaning for each unique social setting.
The context, however, should not be confused with the function of the joking. "F
unction is essentially an abstraction made on the basis of a number of contexts"
.[21] In one long-term observation of men coming off the late shift at a local c
af, joking with the waitresses was used to ascertain sexual availability for the
evening. Different types of jokes, going from general to topical into explicitly
sexual humour signalled openness on the part of the waitress for a connection.[
22] This study describes how jokes and joking are used to communicate much more
than just good humour. That is a single example of the function of joking in a s
ocial setting, but there are others. Sometimes jokes are used simply to get to k
now someone better. What makes them laugh, what do they find funny? Jokes concer
ning politics, religion or sexual topics can be used effectively to gage the att
itude of the audience to any one of these topics. They can also be used as a mar
ker of group identity, signalling either inclusion or exclusion for the group. A
mong pre-adolescents, "dirty" jokes allow them to share information about their
changing bodies.[23] And sometimes joking is just simple entertainment for a gro
up of friends.
Joking relationships[edit]
The context of joking in turn leads into a study of joking relationships, a term
coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups within a culture who take p
art in institutionalised banter and joking. These relationships can be either on
e-way or a mutual back and forth between partners. "The joking relationship is d
efined as a peculiar combination of friendliness and antagonism. The behaviour i
s such that in any other social context it would express and arouse hostility; b
ut it is not meant seriously and must not be taken seriously. There is a pretenc
e of hostility along with a real friendliness. To put it in another way, the rel
ationship is one of permitted disrespect."[24] Joking relationships were first d
escribed by anthropologists within kinship groups in Africa. But they have since
been identified in cultures around the world, where jokes and joking are used t
o mark and re-inforce appropriate boundaries of a relationship.[25]
Printed jokes and the solitary laugh[edit]
There are many joke books in print today; a search on the internet provides a pl
ethora of titles available for purchase. They can be read alone for solitary ent
ertainment, or used to stock up on new jokes to entertain friends. Some people t
ry to find a deeper meaning in jokes, for example "Plato and a Platypus Walk int
o a Bar... Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes".[26][note 2] However a deeper
meaning is not necessary to appreciate their inherent entertainment value.[27]
Magazines frequently use jokes and cartoons as filler for the printed page. Read
er's Digest closes out many articles with an (unrelated) joke at the bottom of t
he article. The New Yorker was first published in 1925 with the stated goal of b
eing a "sophisticated humour magazine" and is still known for its cartoons.
The practice of printers to use jokes and cartoons as page fillers was also wide
ly used in the broadsides and chapbooks of the 19th century and earlier. With th
e increase in literacy in the general population and the growth of the printing
industry, these publications were the most common forms of printed material betw
een the 16th and 19th centuries throughout Europe and North America. Along with
reports of events, executions, ballads and verse they also contained jokes. Only
one of many broadsides archived in the Harvard library is described as "1706. G
rinning made easy; or, Funny Dick's unrivalled collection of curious, comical, o
dd, droll, humorous, witty, whimsical, laughable, and eccentric jests, jokes, bu
lls, epigrams, &c. With many other descriptions of wit and humour."[28] These ch
eap publications, ephemera intended for mass distribution, were read alone, read
aloud, posted and discarded.
Earlier during the 15th century,[29] the printing revolution spread across Europ
e following the development of the movable type printing press. This was coupled
 with the growth of literacy in all social classes. Printers turned out Jestbook
s along with Bibles to meet both lowbrow and highbrow interests of the populace.
One early anthology of jokes was the Facetiae by the Italian Poggio Bracciolini
, first published in 1470. The popularity of this jest book can be measured on t
he twenty editions of the book documented alone for the 15th century. Another po
pular form was a collection of jests, jokes and funny situations attributed to a
single character in a more connected, narrative form of the picaresque novel. E
xamples of this are the characters of Rabelais in France, Till Eulenspiegel in G
ermany, Lazarillo de Tormes in Spain and Master Skelton in England. There is als
o a jest book ascribed to William Shakespeare, the contents of which appear to b
oth inform and borrow from his plays. All of these early jestbooks corroborate b
oth the rise in the literacy of the European populations and the general quest f
or leisure activities during the Renaissance in Europe.[29]
The earliest extant joke book predates the printing press by a millennium; it is
from the 4th century A.D. The Philogelos (The Laughter Lover) is (hand-)written
in Greek and contains a collection of 265 jokes by Hierocles and Philagrius. Th
e humour in this collection is surprisingly familiar, even though the typical pr
otagonists are less recognisable to contemporary readers: the absent-minded prof
essor, the eunuch, and people with hernias or bad breath. The Philogelos even co
ntains a joke similar to Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch".[30]
One of the world's oldest jokes was included in a political treatise inscribed o
n a roll of papyrus: "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload
of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh t
o go catch a fish". Funny or not, this Egyptian riddle joke has been dated at 16
00 B.C.[31] Looking further, all "oldest" jokes identified have two things in co
mmon: firstly, they were all written down, and secondly, their structure is rema
rkably similar to modern day jokes.[note 3]
Any joke documented from the past has been saved through happenstance rather tha
n design. Jokes do not belong to refined culture, but rather to the entertainmen
t and leisure of all classes. As such, any printed versions were considered ephe
mera, i.e., temporary documents created for a specific purpose and intended to b
e thrown away. Many of these early jokes deal with scatological and sexual topic
s, entertaining to all social classes but not to be valued and saved.
Electronic joking[edit]
The advent of electronic communications at the end of the 20th century introduce
d new traditions into jokes. A verbal joke or cartoon is emailed to a friend or
posted on a bulletin board; reactions include a replied email with a :-) or LOL,
or a forward on to further recipients. Interaction is limited to the computer s
creen and for the most part solitary. While preserving the text of a joke, both
context and variants are lost in internet joking; for the most part emailed joke
s are passed along verbatim.[32] The framing of the joke frequently occurs in th
e subject line: "RE: laugh for the day" or something similar. The forward of an
email joke can increase the number of recipients exponentially; 5 x forwarding a
joke to 5 recipients = 3,125 recipients in the course of an afternoon.
Internet joking forces a re-evaluation of social spaces and social groups. They
are no longer only defined by physical presence and locality, they also exist in
the connectivity in cyberspace.[33] "The computer networks appear to make possi
ble communities that, although physically dispersed, display attributes of the d
irect, unconstrained, unofficial exchanges folklorists typically concern themsel
ves with".[34] This is particularly evident in the spread of topical jokes, "tha
t genre of lore in which whole crops of jokes spring up seemingly overnight arou
nd some sensational event flourish briefly and then disappear, as the mass media
move on to fresh maimings and new collective tragedies".[35] This correlates wi
th the new understanding of the internet as an "active folkloric space" with evo
lving social and cultural forces and clearly identifiable performers and audienc
es.[36]
A study by the folklorist Bill Ellis documented how an evolving cycle was circul
ated over the internet.[37] By accessing message boards that specialised in humo
ur immediately following the 9/11 disaster, Ellis was able to observe in real ti
me both the topical jokes being posted electronically and responses to the jokes
. "Previous folklore research has been limited to collecting and documenting suc
cessful jokes, and only after they had emerged and come to folklorists' attentio
n. Now, an Internet-enhanced collection creates a time machine, as it were, wher
e we can observe what happens in the period before the risible moment, when atte
mpts at humour are unsuccessful".[38] Access to archived message boards also ena
bles us to track the development of a single joke thread in the context of a mor
e complicated virtual conversation.[37]
Joke cycles[edit]
Main category: Joke cycles
A joke cycle is a collection of jokes about a single target or situation which d
isplays consistent narrative structure and type of humour. Some well-known cycle
s are elephant jokes using nonsense humour, dead baby jokes incorporating black
humour and light bulb jokes, which describe all kinds of operational stupidity.
Joke cycles can centre on ethnic groups, professions (viola jokes), catastrophes
, settings ( walks into a bar), absurd characters (wind-up dolls), or logical mech
anisms which generate the humour (knock-knock jokes). A joke can be reused in di
fferent joke cycles; an example of this is the same Head & Shoulders joke refitt
ed to the tragedies of Vic Morrow, Admiral Mountbatten and the crew of the Chall
enger space shuttle.[note 4][39] These cycles seem to appear spontaneously, spre
ad rapidly across countries and borders only to dissipate after some time. Folkl
orists and others have studied individual joke cycles in an attempt to understan
d their function and significance within the culture.
Joke cycles circulated in the recent past include:
Conditional joke
Bar jokes
Bellman jokes
Blonde joke, lawyer joke and Microsoft joke cycles.
Challenger (Space Shuttle) jokes[40]
Chernobyl jokes[41]
Chicken jokes
Two cow jokes
Dead baby jokes[42]
East Frisian jokes in Germany
Essex girl joke cycle in the United Kingdom[43]
Helen Keller joke cycle[44]
Irish jokes
Island jokes
Jew and Polack joke cycles[45]
Jewish American Princess and Jewish Mother joke cycles[46]
Knock-knock jokes[47]
Lightbulb jokes[48]
Little Willie and Quadriplegic joke cycles[49]
Manta jokes
NASA joke cycle[50]
Newfie joke cycle in Canada[51]
Persian Gulf War jokes[52]
Polish jokes
Redneck jokes
Russian jokes
Viola jokes[53]
Wind-up doll joke cycle[54]
Yo Mama jokes
Sardarji jokes
Tragedies and catastrophes[edit]
As with the 9/11 disaster discussed above, cycles attach themselves to celebriti
es or national catastrophes such as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the d
eath of Michael Jackson, and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. These cycles
arise regularly as a response to terrible unexpected events which command the n
ational news. An in-depth analysis of the Challenger joke cycle documents a chan
ge in the type of humour circulated following the disaster, from February to Mar
ch 1986. "It shows that the jokes appeared in distinct 'waves', the first respon
ding to the disaster with clever wordplay and the second playing with grim and t
roubling images associated with the event The primary social function of disaster
jokes appears to be to provide closure to an event that provoked communal grievi
ng, by signaling that it was time to move on and pay attention to more immediate
concerns".[55]
Ethnic jokes[edit]
The sociologist Christie Davies has written extensively on ethnic jokes told in
countries around the world.[56] In ethnic jokes he finds that the "stupid" ethni
c target in the joke is no stranger to the culture, but rather a peripheral soci
al group (geographic, economic, cultural, linguistic) well known to the joke tel
lers.[57] So Americans tell jokes about Polacks and Italians, Germans tell jokes
about Ostfriesens, and the English tell jokes about the Irish. In a review of D
avies' theories it is said that "For Davies, [ethnic] jokes are more about how j
oke tellers imagine themselves than about how they imagine those others who serv
e as their putative targets The jokes thus serve to center one in the world to rem
ind people of their place and to reassure them that they are in it."[58]
Absurdities and gallows humour[edit]
A third category of joke cycles identifies absurd characters as the butt: for ex
ample the grape, the dead baby or the elephant. Beginning in the 1960s, social a
nd cultural interpretations of these joke cycles, spearheaded by the folklorist
Alan Dundes, began to appear in academic journals. Dead baby jokes are posited t
o reflect societal changes and guilt caused by widespread use of contraception a
nd abortion beginning in the 1960s.[note 5][59] Elephant jokes have been interpr
eted variously as stand-ins for American blacks during the Civil Rights Era[60]
or as an "image of something large and wild abroad in the land captur[ing] the s
ense of counterculture" of the sixties.[61] These interpretations strive for a c
ultural understanding of the themes of these jokes which go beyond the simple co
llection and documentation undertaken previously by folklorists and ethnologists
.
Classification systems[edit]
As folktales and other types of oral literature became collectibles throughout E
urope in the 19th century (Brothers Grimm et al.), folklorists and anthropologis
ts of the time needed a system to organise these items. The Aarne Thompson classif
ication system was first published in 1910 by Antti Aarne, and later expanded by
Stith Thompson to become the most renowned classification system for European f
olktales and other types of oral literature. Its final section addresses anecdot
es and jokes, listing traditional humorous tales ordered by their protagonist; "
This section of the Index is essentially a classification of the older European
jests, or merry tales humorous stories characterized by short, fairly simple plo
ts. "[62] Due to its focus on older tale types and obsolete actors (e.g., numbsku
ll), the Aarne Thompson Index does not provide much help in identifying and classi
fying the modern joke.
A more granular classification system used widely by folklorists and cultural an
thropologists is the Thompson Motif Index, which separates tales into their indi
vidual story elements. This system enables jokes to be classified according to i
ndividual motifs included in the narrative: actors, items and incidents. It does
 not provide a system to classify the text by more than one element at a time wh
ile at the same time making it theoretically possible to classify the same text
under multiple motifs.[63]
The Thompson Motif Index has spawned further specialised motif indices, each of
which focuses on a single aspect of one subset of jokes. A sampling of just a fe
w of these specialised indices have been listed under other motif indices. Here
one can select an index for medieval Spanish folk narratives,[64] another index
for linguistic verbal jokes,[65] and a third one for sexual humour.[66] To assis
t the researcher with this increasingly confusing situation, there are also mult
iple bibliographies of indices[67] as well as a how-to guide on creating your ow
n index.[68]
Several difficulties have been identified with these systems of identifying oral
narratives according to either tale types or story elements.[69] A first major
problem is their hierarchical organisation; one element of the narrative is sele
cted as the major element, while all other parts are arrayed subordinate to this
. A second problem with these systems is that the listed motifs are not qualitat
ively equal; actors, items and incidents are all considered side-by-side.[70] An
d because incidents will always have at least one actor and usually have an item
, most narratives can be ordered under multiple headings. This leads to confusio
n about both where to order an item and where to find it. A third significant pr
oblem is that the "excessive prudery" common in the middle of the 20th century m
eans that obscene, sexual and scatological elements were regularly ignored in ma
ny of the indices.[71]
The folklorist Robert Georges has summed up the concerns with these existing cla
ssification systems:
Yet what the multiplicity and variety of sets and subsets reveal is that folklore
[jokes] not only takes many forms, but that it is also multifaceted, with purpo
se, use, structure, content, style, and function all being relevant and importan
t. Any one or combination of these multiple and varied aspects of a folklore exa
mple [such as jokes] might emerge as dominant in a specific situation or for a p
articular inquiry.[72]
It has proven difficult to organise all different elements of a joke into a mult
i-dimensional classification system which could be of real value in the study an
d evaluation of this (primarily oral) complex narrative form.
The General Theory of Verbal Humour or GTVH, developed by the linguists Victor R
askin and Salvatore Attardo, attempts to do exactly this. This classification sy
stem was developed specifically for jokes and later expanded to include longer t
ypes of humorous narratives.[73] Six different aspects of the narrative, labelle
d Knowledge Resources or KRs, can be evaluated largely independently of each oth
er, and then combined into a concatenated classification label. These six KRs of
the joke structure include:
Script Opposition (SO) references the script opposition included in Raskin's SST
H. This includes, among others, themes such as real (unreal), actual (non-actual
), normal (abnormal), possible (impossible).
Logical Mechanism (LM) refers to the mechanism which connects the different scri
pts in the joke. These can range from a simple verbal technique like a pun to mo
re complex LMs such as faulty logic or false analogies.
Situation (SI) can include objects, activities, instruments, props needed to tel
l the story.
Target (TA) identifies the actor(s) who become the "butt" of the joke. This labe
lling serves to develop and solidify stereotypes of ethnic groups, professions,
etc.
Narrative strategy (NS) addresses the narrative format of the joke, as either a
simple narrative, a dialogue, or a riddle. It attempts to classify the different
genres and subgenres of verbal humour. In a subsequent study Attardo expands th
e NS to include oral and printed humorous narratives of any length, not just jok
es.[73]
Language (LA) " contains all the information necessary for the verbalization of a
text. It is responsible for the exact wording and for the placement of the functi
onal elements."[74]
As development of the GTVH progressed, a hierarchy of the KRs was established to
partially restrict the options for lower level KRs depending on the KRs defined
above them. For example, a lightbulb joke (SI) will always be in the form of a
riddle (NS). Outside of these restrictions, the KRs can create a multitude of co
mbinations, enabling a researcher to select jokes for analysis which contain onl
y one or two defined KRs. It also allows for an evaluation of the similarity or
dissimilarity of jokes depending on the similarity of their labels. "The GTVH pr
esents itself as a mechanism of generating [or describing] an infinite number of
jokes by combining the various values that each parameter can take. Descriptive
ly, to analyze a joke in the GTVH consists of listing the values of the 6 KRs (w
ith the caveat that TA and LM may be empty)."[75] This classification system pro
vides a functional multi-dimensional label for any joke, and indeed any verbal h
umour.
Joke and humour research[edit]
Many academic disciplines lay claim to the study of jokes (and other forms of hu
mour) as within their purview. Fortunately there are enough jokes, good, bad and
worse, to go around. Unfortunately the studies of jokes from each of the intere
sted disciplines brings to mind the tale of the Blind men and an elephant where
the observations, although accurate reflections of their own competent methodolo
gical inquiry, frequently fail to grasp the beast in its entirety. This attests
to the joke as a traditional narrative form which is indeed complex, concise and
complete in and of itself.[76] It requires a "multidisciplinary, interdisciplin
ary, and cross-disciplinary field of inquiry"[77] to truly appreciate these nugg
ets of cultural insight.[note 6][78]
Psychology[edit]
Sigmund Freud was one of the first modern scholars to recognise jokes as an impo
rtant object of investigation.[79] In his 1905 study Jokes and their Relation to
the Unconscious[80] Freud describes the social nature of humour and illustrates
his text with many examples of contemporary Viennese jokes.[81] His work is par
ticularly noteworthy in this context because Freud distinguishes in his writings
between jokes, humour and the comic.[82] These are distinctions which become ea
sily blurred in many subsequent studies where everything funny tends to be gathe
red under the umbrella term of "humour", making for a much more diffuse discussi
on.
Since the publication of Freud's study, psychologists have continued to explore
humour and jokes in their quest to explain, predict and control an individual's
"sense of humour". Why do people laugh? Why do people find something funny? Can
jokes predict character, or vice versa, can character predict the jokes an indiv
idual laughs at? What is a "sense of humour"? A current review of the popular ma
gazine Psychology Today lists over 200 articles discussing various aspects of hu
mour; in psychospeak[neologism?] the subject area has become both an emotion to
measure and a tool to use in diagnostics and treatment. A new psychological asse
ssment tool, the Values in Action Inventory developed by the American psychologi
sts Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman includes humour (and playfulness) a
s one of the core character strengths of an individual. As such, it could be a g
ood predictor of life satisfaction.[83] For psychologists, it would be useful to
measure both how much of this strength an individual has and how it can be meas
urably increased.
A 2007 survey of existing tools to measure humour identified more than 60 psycho
logical measurement instruments.[84] These measurement tools use many different
approaches to quantify humour along with its related states and traits. There ar
e tools to measure an individual's physical response by their smile; the Facial
Action Coding System (FACS) is one of several tools used to identify any one of
multiple types of smiles.[85] Or the laugh can be measured to calculate the funn
iness response of an individual; multiple types of laughter have been identified
. It must be stressed here that both smiles and laughter are not always a respon
se to something funny. In trying to develop a measurement tool, most systems use
"jokes and cartoons" as their test materials. However, because no two tools use
the same jokes, and across languages this would not be feasible, how does one d
etermine that the assessment objects are comparable? Moving on, whom does one as
k to rate the sense of humour of an individual? Does one ask the person themselv
es, an impartial observer, or their family, friends and colleagues? Furthermore,
has the current mood of the test subjects been considered; someone with a recen
t death in the family might not be much prone to laughter. Given the plethora of
variants revealed by even a superficial glance at the problem,[86] it becomes e
vident that these paths of scientific inquiry are mined with problematic pitfall
s and questionable solutions.
The psychologist Willibald Ruch (de) has been very active in the research of hum
our. He has collaborated with the linguists Raskin and Attardo on their General
Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) classification system. Their goal is to empirical
ly test both the six autonomous classification types (KRs) and the hierarchical
ordering of these KRs. Advancement in this direction would be a win-win for both
fields of study; linguistics would have empirical verification of this multi-di
mensional classification system for jokes, and psychology would have a standardi
sed joke classification with which they could develop verifiably comparable meas
urement tools.
Linguistics[edit]
"The linguistics of humor has made gigantic strides forward in the last decade a
nd a half and replaced the psychology of humor as the most advanced theoretical
approach to the study of this important and universal human faculty."[87] This r
ecent statement by one noted linguist and humour researcher describes, from his
perspective, contemporary linguistic humour research. Linguists study words, how
words are strung together to build sentences, how sentences create meaning whic
h can be communicated from one individual to another, how our interaction with e
ach other using words creates discourse. Jokes have been defined above as oral n
arrative in which words and sentences are engineered to build toward a punchline
. The linguist's question is: what exactly makes the punchline funny? This quest
ion focuses on how the words used in the punchline create humour, in contrast to
the psychologist's concern (see above) with the audience response to the punchl
ine. The assessment of humour by psychologists "is made from the individual's pe
rspective; e.g. the phenomenon associated with responding to or creating humor a
nd not a description of humor itself."[88] Linguistics, on the other hand, endea
vours to provide a precise description of what makes a text funny.[89]
Two major new linguistic theories have been developed and tested within the last
decades. The first was advanced by Victor Raskin in "Semantic Mechanisms of Hum
or", published 1985.[90] While being a variant on the more general concepts of t
he incongruity theory of humour, it is the first theory to identify its approach
as exclusively linguistic. The Script-based Semantic Theory of Humour (SSTH) be
gins by identifying two linguistic conditions which make a text funny. It then g
oes on to identify the mechanisms involved in creating the punchline. This theor
y established the semantic/pragmatic foundation of humour as well as the humour
competence of speakers.[note 7][91]
Several years later the SSTH was incorporated into a more expansive theory of jo
kes put forth by Raskin and his colleague Salvatore Attardo. In the General Theo
ry of Verbal Humour, the SSTH was relabelled as a Logical Mechanism (LM) (referr
ing to the mechanism which connects the different linguistic scripts in the joke
) and added to five other independent Knowledge Resources (KR). Together these s
ix KRs could now function as a multi-dimensional descriptive label for any piece
of humorous text.
Linguistics has developed further methodological tools which can be applied to j
okes: discourse analysis and conversation analysis of joking. Both of these subs
pecialties within the field focus on "naturally occurring" language use, i.e. th
e analysis of real (usually recorded) conversations. One of these studies has al
ready been discussed above, where Harvey Sacks describes in detail the sequentia
l organisation in the telling a single joke.[92] Discourse analysis emphasises t
he entire context of social joking, the social interaction which cradles the wor
ds.
Folklore and anthropology[edit]
Folklore and cultural anthropology have perhaps the strongest claims on jokes as
belonging to their bailiwick. Jokes remain one of the few remaining forms of tr
aditional folk literature transmitted orally in western cultures. Identified as
one of the "simple forms" of oral literature by Andr Jolles (de) in 1930,[2] they
have been collected and studied since there were folklorists and anthropologist
s abroad in the lands. As a genre they were important enough at the beginning of
the 20th century to be included under their own heading in the Aarne Thompson ind
ex first published in 1910: Anecdotes and jokes.
Beginning in the 1960s, cultural researchers began to expand their role from col
lectors and archivists of "folk ideas"[78] to a more active role of interpreters
of cultural artefacts. One of the foremost scholars active during this transiti
onal time was the folklorist Alan Dundes. He started asking questions of traditi
on and transmission with the key observation that "No piece of folklore continue
s to be transmitted unless it means something, even if neither the speaker nor t
he audience can articulate what that meaning might be."[93] In the context of jo
kes, this then becomes the basis for further research. Why is the joke told righ
t now? Only in this expanded perspective is an understanding of its meaning to t
he participants possible.
This questioning resulted in a blossoming of monographs to explore the significa
nce of many joke cycles. What is so funny about absurd nonsense elephant jokes?
Why make light of dead babies? In an article on contemporary German jokes about
Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Dundes justifies this research: "Whether one finds
Auschwitz jokes funny or not is not an issue. This material exists and should be
recorded. Jokes are always an important barometer of the attitudes of a group.
The jokes exist and they obviously must fill some psychic need for those individ
uals who tell them and those who listen to them."[94] A stimulating generation o
f new humour theories flourishes like mushrooms in the undergrowth: Elliott Orin
g's theoretical discussions on "appropriate ambiguity" and Amy Carrell's hypothe
sis of an "audience-based theory of verbal humor (1993)" to name just a few.
In his book Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach,[25] the anthropolog
ist Mahadev Apte presents a solid case for his own academic perspective.[citatio
n needed] "Two axioms underlie my discussion, namely, that humor is by and large
culture based and that humor can be a major conceptual and methodological tool
for gaining insights into cultural systems."[95] Apte goes on to call for legiti
mising the field of humour research as "humorology"; this would be a field of st
udy incorporating an interdisciplinary character of humour studies.[96]
While the label "humorology" has yet to become a household word, great strides a
re being made in the international recognition of this interdisciplinary field o
f research. The International Society for Humor Studies was founded in 1989 with
the stated purpose to "promote, stimulate and encourage the interdisciplinary s
tudy of humour; to support and cooperate with local, national, and international
 organizations having similar purposes; to organize and arrange meetings; and to
issue and encourage publications concerning the purpose of the society." It als
o publishes Humor: International Journal of Humor Research and holds yearly conf
erences to promote and inform its speciality.
Computational humour[edit]
Computational humour is a new field of study which uses computers to model humou
r;[97] it bridges the disciplines of computational linguistics and artificial in
telligence. A primary ambition of this field is to develop computer programs whi
ch can both generate a joke and recognise a text snippet as a joke. Early progra
mming attempts have dealt almost exclusively with punning because this lends its
elf to simple straightforward rules. These primitive programs display no intelli
gence; instead they work off a template with a finite set of pre-defined punning
options upon which to build.
More sophisticated computer joke programs have yet to be developed. Based on our
understanding of the SSTH / GTVH humour theories, it is easy to see why. The li
nguistic scripts (a.k.a. frames) referenced in these theories include, for any g
iven word, a "large chunk of semantic information surrounding the word and evoke
d by it [...] a cognitive structure internalized by the native speaker".[98] The
se scripts extend much further than the lexical definition of a word; they conta
in the speaker's complete knowledge of the concept as it exists in his world. As
insentient machines, computers lack the encyclopaedic scripts which humans gain
through life experience. They also lack the ability to gather the experiences n
eeded to build wide-ranging semantic scripts and understand language in a broade
r context, a context that any child picks up in daily interaction with his envir
onment.
Further development in this field must wait until computational linguists have s
ucceeded in programming a computer with an ontological semantic natural language
processing system. It is only "the most complex linguistic structures [which] c
an serve any formal and/or computational treatment of humor well".[99] Toy syste
ms (i.e. dummy punning programs) are completely inadequate to the task. Despite
the fact that the field of computational humour is small and underdeveloped, it
is encouraging to note the many interdisciplinary efforts which are currently un
derway.[100] As this field grows in both understanding and methodology, it provi
des an ideal testbed for humour theories; the rules must firstly be cleanly defi
ned in order to write a computer program around a theory.
Physiology of laughter[edit]
In 1872, Charles Darwin published one of the first "comprehensive and in many wa
ys remarkably accurate description of laughter in terms of respiration, vocaliza
tion, facial action and gesture and posture"(Laughter).[101] In this early study
Darwin raises further questions about who laughs and why they laugh; the myriad
responses since then illustrates the complexities of this behaviour. To underst
and laughter in humans and other primates, the science of gelotology (from the G
reek gelos, meaning laughter) has been established; it is the study of laughter
and its effects on the body from both a psychological and physiological perspect
ive. While jokes can provoke laughter, laughter cannot be used as a one-to-one m
arker of jokes because there are multiple stimuli to laugher, humour being just
one of them. The other six causes of laughter listed are: social context, ignora
nce, anxiety, derision, acting apology, and tickling.[102] As such, the study of
laughter is a secondary albeit entertaining perspective in an understanding of
jokes.
See also[edit]
icon Comedy portal
List of humour research publications
Notes[edit]
Jump up ^ Generally attributed to Ed Wynn
Jump up ^ NPR Interview with the authors Cathcart and Klein can be found at http
://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10158510
Jump up ^ Shaped by modern expectations in translation? Hard to say.
Jump up ^ How do we know that ___ had dandruff? They found his/her head and shou
lders on the ___.
Jump up ^ Contraceptive pills were first approved for use in the United States i
n 1960.
Jump up ^ Our focus here is with the contemporary state of joke research. A more
extensive survey of the history of various humour theories can be found under t
he topic Theories of humor.
Jump up ^ i.e. The necessary and sufficient conditions for a text to be funny
References[edit]
Footnotes[edit]
Jump up ^ Hetzron 1991, pp. 65 66.
^ Jump up to: a b Jolles 1930.
Jump up ^ Raskin 1985, p. 103.
Jump up ^ Attardo & Chabanne 1992.
Jump up ^ Sacks 1974, pp. 337 353.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1980, pp. 20 32.
Jump up ^ Bauman 1975.
Jump up ^ Sims & Stephens 2005, p. 141.
Jump up ^ Raskin 1992.
Jump up ^ Ellis 2002, p. 3; Marcus 2001.
Jump up ^ Toelken 1996, p. 55.
Jump up ^ Carrell 2008, p. 308.
Jump up ^ Raskin 1985, p. 99.
Jump up ^ Shultz 1976, pp. 12 13; Carrell 2008, p. 312.
Jump up ^ Coulson & Kutas 1998.
Jump up ^ Coulson & Kutas 2001, pp. 71 74.
Jump up ^ Attardo 2008, pp. 125 126.
Jump up ^ Wild et al. 2003.
Jump up ^ Sacks 1974, p. 350.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1980, p. 23.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1980, pp. 23 24.
Jump up ^ Walle 1976; Oring 2008, p. 201.
Jump up ^ Sims & Stephens 2005, p. 39.
Jump up ^ Radcliffe-Brown 1940, p. 196.
^ Jump up to: a b Apte 1985.
Jump up ^ Cathcart & Klein 2007.
Jump up ^ Berry 2013.
Jump up ^ Lane 1905.
^ Jump up to: a b Ward & Waller 2000.
Jump up ^ Adams 2008.
Jump up ^ Joseph 2008.
Jump up ^ Frank 2009, pp. 99 100.
Jump up ^ Mason 1998.
Jump up ^ Dorst 1990, pp. 180 181.
Jump up ^ Dorst 1990.
Jump up ^ Dorst 1990, p. 183.
^ Jump up to: a b Ellis 2002.
Jump up ^ Ellis 2002, p. 2.
Jump up ^ Gruner 1997, pp. 142 143.
Jump up ^ Smyth 1986; Oring 1987.
Jump up ^ Laszlo 1988.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1979.
Jump up ^ Davies 1998.
Jump up ^ Hirsch & Barrick 1980.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1971.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1985.
Jump up ^ http://www.npr.org/blogs/npr-history-dept/2015/03/03/389865887/the-sec
ret-history-of-knock-knock-jokes
Jump up ^ Dundes 1981; Kerman 1980.
Jump up ^ Davies 1999.
Jump up ^ Simons 1986; Smyth 1986; Oring 1987.
Jump up ^ Davies 2002.
Jump up ^ Kitchener 1991; Dundes & Pagter 1991.
Jump up ^ Rahkonen 2000.
Jump up ^ Hirsch 1964.
Jump up ^ Ellis 1991.
Jump up ^ Davies 1990.
Jump up ^ Davies 2008, pp. 163 165.
Jump up ^ Oring 2000.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1987, pp. 3 14.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1987, pp. 41 54.
Jump up ^ Oring 2008, p. 194.
Jump up ^ Brunvand 1968, p. 238; Dundes 1997.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1997.
Jump up ^ Goldberg 1998.
Jump up ^ Lew 1996.
Jump up ^ Legman 1968.
Jump up ^ Azzolina 1987.
Jump up ^ Jason 2000.
Jump up ^ Apo 1997.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1962.
Jump up ^ Dundes 1997, p. 198.
Jump up ^ Georges 1997, p. 111.
^ Jump up to: a b Attardo 2001.
Jump up ^ Attardo 1994, p. 223.
Jump up ^ Attardo 2001, p. 27.
Jump up ^ Attardo & Chabanne 1992, p. 172.
Jump up ^ Apte 1988, p. 7.
^ Jump up to: a b Dundes 1972.
Jump up ^ Carrell 2008, p. 304.
Jump up ^ Freud 1905.
Jump up ^ Oring 1984.
Jump up ^ Morreall 2008, p. 224.
Jump up ^ Ruch 2008, p. 47.
Jump up ^ Ruch 2008, p. 58.
Jump up ^ Furnham 2014.
Jump up ^ Ruch 2008, pp. 40 45.
Jump up ^ Raskin 1992, p. 91.
Jump up ^ Ruch 2008, p. 19.
Jump up ^ Ruch 2008, p. 25.
Jump up ^ Raskin 1985.
Jump up ^ Attardo 2001, p. 114.
Jump up ^ Sacks 1974.
Jump up ^ Dundes & Pagter 1987, p. vii.
Jump up ^ Dundes & Hauschild 1983, p. 250.
Jump up ^ Apte 2002.
Jump up ^ Apte 1988.
Jump up ^ Mulder & Nijholt 2002.
Jump up ^ Raskin 1985, p. 46.
Jump up ^ Raskin 1996, p. 17/349.
Jump up ^ Hempelman 2008, p. 354.
Jump up ^ Ruch 2008, p. 24.
Jump up ^ Giles & Oxford 1970; Attardo 2008, pp. 116 117.
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External links[edit]
The dictionary definition of joke at Wiktionary
Categories: JokesHumourTraditional stories
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